User talk:KoA

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I'm sometimes online sporadically, although typically at least once a day unless it's around the weekend. I'll usually respond pretty quickly to any questions, but real life takes priority, so I may not always be the quickest to respond. Thanks for your patience if I'm offline for a bit.

One of the primary lessons from all this is, apparently, that if an editor is a repeated target of personal attacks, aspersions, and harassment on WP, that editor should expect to be warned by the Arbitration Committee. So let that be a lesson to you: stop being a target for personal attacks. Or else. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 16:03, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

From my perspective, I'm actually happy that you were nothing more than "warned". I've seen so many profoundly unfair outcomes of ArbCom cases that I look upon this as a good outcome. The other party has to watch their back far more than you will have to. I'll turn JoJo's lesson around a bit and say that, now, there are going to be personal attackers who will try to capitalize on this, by baiting you.

You might (maybe) remember that I had to sue (successfully) the university where I worked. One of the things my lawyer told me, and this is the lesson that I learned, is that I shouldn't worry about convincing the university administrators on the other side, but instead, look at how everything I might say would come across to a bystander (aka, judge), and the best way to accomplish that would be to be unfailingly polite to my adversaries, and leave them to do as they will (and they did, to my benefit!). That became something I've taken with me through life, and I've found it useful here on Wikipedia. Some editors, you won't change their minds, but that's OK. If you can start off on a footing of being gracious to editors, even when they are clearly in the wrong, you will be safe. Please trust me that this is a good approach, and one that you can benefit by working on. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:56, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is a great perspective on what on the surface seems to be a horrendous miss by ArbCom. ― "Ghost of Dan Gurney" (talk)  06:10, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Tryptofish, I hope you're recovering well. I totally get the attitude you have here. I have misgivings about how some things were done (or ignored), but you are right that it could be much worse. Still, my main concern now is that systemic issues were not addressed, and that's going to result in more heat in the topic rather than less that all editors in the topic, not just me and what you describe, are going to have to navigate. It feels like ArbCom just stirred things up in the topic more than gave us a better framework to manage recurring issues like battleground attitudes.

I remember your example well, though I have to admit I don't believe it would have mattered here for my recent edits. What seemed to matter here more was that I was involved in controversy at all in recent FOF listings on me rather than my actual edits navigating that. With your example in mind though, I still do want to ask you for advice on some specific examples I'll write out later when I have a bit more time, so just tabling this paragraph for a little bit.

One thing that's pertinent to what you've been mentioning elsewhere though is the issue of ArbCom nearly directly overriding the XRV consensus. The FoF on that did not pass, yet I still got a warning on edit warring despite the only recent example listed being the Dominion article where the community was pretty clear it was not the case. That seems very out of process, but outlines one of the major concerns I was seeing a few times when it came to bucking community consensus. Still, I've dedicated too much

WP:VOLUNTEER time to the case and plan on getting back to editing rather than dwelling on it all much more. KoA (talk) 20:34, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Thanks for those thoughts. I'll be very happy to try to answer those questions when you have them. Take your time.

I was thinking about that issue of the FoF versus the warning, even before you mentioned it. The way that I see it, is that the unsuccessful FoF was factually untrue, whereas you do have a history of reverting in other circumstances. Whether or not they warned you, there's no getting around the fact that, at times in the past, I have. For the foreseeable future, if you just don't revert (outside of unambiguous vandalism), nobody is going to have a way to "get" at you.

The original ArbCom GMO case didn't do much immediate good, but AE worked, subsequently. I expect that to happen that way again. That goes for the aspersions issue you discuss with JoJo, as well. ArbCom has this bad quality of always feeling like, once a dispute reaches them, they have to do something to both "sides", and as you know, I've compared that to "blaming the victim". That being the case, it ended up a lot better than it could have done. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:52, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks JoJo. To be clear, I won't (and can't) comment on the core locus of the case obviously with the interaction ban in place. I asked for the I-ban originally, so there's no issue from me on that. That's all I'm going to say there going forward. The below is reflecting on my individual editing outside of that scope.

I did email ArbCom about what was going on in the periphery of the case related to the COI section above and what Gtoffoletto was blocked for earlier. That also included a bit more personal information about myself (which I absolutely should not have had to do) asking for help with how bad the aspersions/harassment issue is getting. It's escalating, and the aspersions principle we crafted at the 2015 GMO case is not being taken seriously anymore. I even asked if they thought something like this could be addressed at this case (at least the behavior that happened in it and went against the Arb talk page guidance) or if it would need a more focused

WP:ARCA

. No response. Instead, I see editors engaging in that behavior being emboldened to the point that when their behavior is addressed, they are lashing out calling it abuse of the aspersions principle for doing what they're not supposed to be doing. The community in this topic worked hard to get a handle on that kind of behavior, but it seems to be descending to pre-2015 levels with that environment we're having to work with here essentially being dismissed.

I'm very mindful of

WP:POT

, but I do want to say you have a valid concern that being the target of personal attacks in these situations is being used to portray the target as engaging in battleground behavior. That's especially the case for someone like me who's been actively working for years on reducing the battleground behavior issues in ag. topics. In every situation from that very small list in findings just focused on me, I was trying to deal with existing battleground behavior pointed at me without escalating it or at least keeping it held at bay with calm but firm good-faith responses while working on content (also while working on talk pages with editors who ignored the comments and collaborated in good-faith). Ideally looking at anyone's behavior in that situation should involve splitting out what were measured responses dealing with inflammatory responses vs. true escalation by that editor instead. I'm always shooting for the former and avoiding the latter.

I don't want to belabor that battleground stuff right now, but the going-forward issue I'm seeing is how editors can keep repeated insinuations one is paid off by pesticide companies or other bad-faith stuff from disrupting the topic, especially when you state your own personal pre-disposition would be to avoid pesticides on your own user page due to repeated aspersions over the years. It just poisons the well where you get other editors joining in on it eventually or outright misrepresenting the targets, like comments at RfCs you pointed out. We have been discussing updated language over at

WP:ASPERSIONS that reflects the problem of repeating false allegations better, but I think it's clear the community needs to speak up on this more when it does happen after seeing clerk comments like this

. If I had made attacks like I was asking for help about, I would not expect to be walking away without a sanction. It just goes to show how messy things get with editors enter a topic with that mindset and why the 2015 case at least tried to give us a guardrail against it.

The advice I've gotten from others in general is that if you go to AE for help because someone is attacking you like this, it often falls flat just due to perception two editors are going at each other even if you've been acting entirely in good-faith. That should not happen, but it's an unfortunate reality I've seen. When someone who isn't the target asks for help, it's much clearer that there's a problem. That's why I say the main thing is the community needs to speak up more on these issues (as you did at ArbCom). If it had been another venue like AE, ANI, etc. it likely would have been considered. It could be this kind of stuff just needs to be brought up more at

WP:FTN or [WP:COIN]] more often when this comes up so people outside the topic and recognize the problem are aware of it. KoA (talk) 20:30, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

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