Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Lexicon

Note by Fut.Perf.

I see no serious evidence of "trying and failing to solve the dispute". Was any attempt ever made to do the normal thing and contact Lexicon himself and ask him to reconsider the block? If not, why not?

If no good explanation should be forthcoming, I might still close down this whole RfC for not being properly certified. At the moment, it isn't looking like it was achieving anything useful anyway. Just a new forum for partisan sniping from the two entrenched factions who have evidently had nothing constructive to say to each other for months.

For the record, I've indef-blocked the obvious sock-/meat-account ShalpherX (talk · contribs) and removed his "outside view" section from the main page. Sockpuppets are not welcome to leave "outside views" in RfCs, and if he had been a genuine new user there'd be no way for him to be familiar enough with the dispute to have anything useful to say. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:46, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Like I pointed out, Lexicon failed to reply to the posts following the first "warning" he gave Iwazaki. Admittedly he probably didn't know about the second AN/I posting. But the previous incivility on his part meant I'd prefer having this discussion with neutral input, as was suggested by an admin on WP:AN/I.

Just to make things clear, this RFC isn't about whether Iwazaki should have been blocked or not. It's whether Lexicon, who has had disputes with Iwazaki in the past, should have personally blocked him, instead of leaving it up to a neutral administrator to do what he thought was required.

There are no gray aspects of this part of WP:BP. Simply Administrators must not block users with whom they are engaged in a content dispute; instead, they should report the problem to other administrators. The incidents I have highlighted, and Lexicon's comments like "okay, this is the last time I'm going to bother responding to you" obviously show resentment on the part of Lexicon towards Iwazaki. On both occasions, if he was sure that Iwazaki had violated WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL, and given the first post was already on AN/I, he should have respected policies and left it up to an uninvolved admin to take whatever action he determined was required.

The main reason I filed this RFC was to ensure in the future, Lexicon doesn't use administrative privileges with regard to pages he is actively involved in or against users he has had disputes with. Also, for example, to make sure Taprobanus or someone else who commented on the other page doesn't bypass wiki policies and simply go to Lexicon and get him to protect their version of an article.

I'm not going to waste my time regarding the extensive trolling on the other page, because I frankly have better things to do. Just to reply to a few point raised by Haemo,

"This behavior has clearly been objectionable to the targets of his attacks, to the extent where they have requested administrator help with it. The result of that discussion was the warning which preceded the block."

They didn't "request administrator help with it", they specifically requested Lexicon, who they were already friendly with and who they knew had issues with Iwazaki, to do something about it. If there was a genuine policy violation in either case, why not let Wiki process play it's part, and leave it up to an uninvolved administrator to take action?

"I stand by my review of that block,"

I have absolutely no disagreement over the block review. If you think the block was justified, I'm fine with that. The problem is whether Lexicon, (for the umpteenth time now) who was involved in disputes with Iwazaki, should have personally blocked him, or whether, per policy, an uninvolved admin like yourself should have been asked to go over the case in the first place.

"The claims that Lexicon was in a content dispute with the user in question seem totally unfounded"

I don't believe I said they were currently involved in a dispute, but like I pointed out, there was clearly bad blood between the two users. Just like all users are expected to follow WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA and all the other policies, Administrators are expected to follow policies such as WP:BP. I believe Lexicon violated BP by blocking Iwazaki and it should be ensured he does not do so again. --snowolfD4 ^{( talk / @ )} 16:54, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I dont know whether you have noticed or not usually in RFC and RFA the accusers also become accused and the accusers have been punished along with the accused. Thats why we should be clear that when accusations are thrown about in an rfc all kinds of information will come out. For example how do you account for this ?

[1][2][3]. The reason why Sri Lanka specific wikipedians have not been banned outright for their behavior is due to the outright patience shown by those who are attacked. Because may be they might think that at the end all this time wasted attacking and arguing and disciplinary actions are time well wasted along with the already well wasted time. At least I am convinced that most people come to wikipedia to relax and do something useful for humanity and for posterity. Taprobanus 17:08, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Closing this RfC

As pointed out above, this RfC has not been properly certified, as it is not backed up by evidence of "trying and failing to resolve the dispute". Trying to solve a dispute means, by definition, that you try talking with the party involved, not just complaining about them to others. No attempt of that kind seems to have been made.

• At the first incident, of Lexicon's warning against Iwazaki in July ([4]), none of the followup posts even addressed the issue of a perceived impropriety of Lexicon's getting involved as an admin. It was all just a continuation of the ethnic bickering that had apparently gone on before.
• At the second incident (here), nobody approached Lexicon, not even with a notification of the discussion on ANI, as Snowwolf has himself admitted above.
• Of the two users who have signed the RfC, the second, Lahiru_k (talk · contribs), was apparently not involved in either of the two incidents at all. I can see no signs that he had any interaction with Lexicon during the days in question. (I asked him on his talk page if he could clarify his role, he said he could, but then did nothing.)

Thus, apparently zero attempt at dispute resolution before coming here. Plus, this RfC isn't going anywhere useful, as it is just being used for a continuation of the same kind of mutual bickering.

I'm not excluding the possibility that there actually was some kind of impropriety involved, but I can't judge this because there's little evidence of how strongly entrenched Lexicon's adversity towards Iwazaki was, if any. Presentation of evidence has been garbled.

This may ultimately need Arbcom to sort out, as such ethnic hotspot conflicts unfortunately often do. In that case, I certainly see a prospect of bans on both sides of the trench.

I'll be prepared to undo this deletion if evidence of prior, good-faith attempts at dispute resolution are yet brought forward.

Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:52, 18 September 2007 (UTC)