Board Thread:Shingeki no Kyojin Wiki/@comment-424719-20150404012154/@comment-5774380-20150404021643

Like I said in the thread when I revised the previous cases against Hfc2x and NeoSuperior, I strongly suggest to any user not familiar with these events to read all the information available before forming a judgment, because no opinion resulted from hearing the version of just one side can be considered impartial and objective. So I post here all the previous threads so anyone can know all the details of this situation:


 * 1) Proposal to Remove Hfc2x
 * 2) Discussion to block hfc2x
 * 3) Proposal to Remove NeoSuperior
 * 4) About the recent administrative changes

I'll be posting the rest of my answer soon.

EDIT: This is my answer:

Since most of my thoughts were already discussed in the 4th link, I'm going to extract here just some essential parts:

1. The issue with Hfc2x, as I concluded after reading the first three threads and after my 11-day conversation with PrelateZeratul, was a personal issue. As PrelateZeratul recognized at one point, Hfc2x never violated any rule, the only thing he could be blamed for sure was for creating an unpleasant work environment with his rude attitude and his refusal to talk to him.

However, I told PrelateZeratul that these were subjective matters. First, all of this happened outside the Wiki, so that automatically invalidates any possible violation of the terms, because the rules of the Wiki only apply within the Wiki. Second, you can't force people to act the way you want, each person has their own personality and sometimes you need to be more tolerant and work with it. And I got the impression, after reviewing everything PrelateZeratul told me, that he took many of the comments of Hfc2x too seriously.

About his refusal to make him an admin, he certainly said that he didn't want to promote him, but the important fact I addressed in the aforementioned link was that he promoted him anyway, so he actually overcame his personal feelings in that regard; and I don't know why PrelateZeratul continues using that fact as a proof of the contrary.

2. In the e-mail I sent to PrelateZeratul I expressed my dislike in the way in what he tends to misinterpret things, including even a list of 7 examples I identified, and all the accusations against me are yet more of the same:

I.I NEVER threatened to block him, that's an absolute lie. The only reference of a possible blocking of him was this:

"I was wondering if the set of your actions could be worthy of a preventive blocking (especially for the thing of the polls), though for now I won't do anything."

I will explain what was that "set of actions" below, but all I said was that I wasn't sure if such actions could be worthy of a blocking or not, though at the end I believed they were not (that's why he is obviously not blocked).

II. The claim that I intentionally dragged the situation for far too long is false too. If the conversation took some days was simply because I don't have all the day to be talking to him. There is A LOT of information to consider (those four threads are just one part, we discussed much more through Skype), and as I've pointed out several times, I tend to anayze everything very carefully before taking any decision. Also, I have a job, I'm an admin on another Wiki, I'm recently an admin in this Wiki, and I was working in the case of PrelateZeratul, all four things at the same time. Additionally, I was having conversations in parallel with the Wikia Staff and they were taking 2-3 days to answer each of my e-mails.

Handling situations like that is not regularly a problem to me, I'm used to be always busy and to do many things at the sime time; however, in addition to all that I had to deal with PrelateZeratul's increasing impatience and complainings when my evaluations of the case were not in his favor or when I required more time to analyze some points. At some moment, this continous insistence reached a point where I felt really pestered.

Curiously, the Wikia Staff had already warned me of that. They said that in their conversations "he became increasingly antagonistic when results didn't fall his way" and "I would advise just dropping the matter with the user". Sometimes I considered to take their advise and to remove PrelateZeratul from Skype, which was, curiously again, the same thing that Hfc2x did at some point and one of the accusations that PrelateZeratul claimed against him. That was when I realized that PrelateZeratul has a tendency to be always arguing and pestering people until they grant him his requests or simply cut off communication with him, and so Hfc2x's actions were suddenly not so strange.

Even so, I still have him added in Skype, but I told him that the e-mail with my resolution was intended to be my final decision of the case, because that situation had been extending for 42 days, consuming tons of my time and energy, and as he himself said, there were no more evidence to consider. That e-mail that I "tediously wrote" is actually 4370 words long and is full of examples and analysis of the whole case. And I still left open the possibility to continue discussing but I warned him that from now on I will be focusing in other things, because we simply can't continue discussing forever, or until he gets the answer that he wants.

III. The accusation that I demoted Gourgeist to secure my position is another lie. The reason for his demotion can be seen in the history of the page: "Gourgeist is demoted for deliberately lying and forging evidence in an important case". This user was a member of the Rollback users and Chat moderators and in the case against Hfc2x he posted a false testimony and even forged a screenshot to try to decieve the community. He's currently blocked for that reason, and I thought that those actions became him unworthy of occupying a position of trust and responsibility in the Wiki, hence his demotion.

IV. EVERY CHANGE that I've made in the site has been open to discussion and can be reverted at any time. Here I talk about the Message Walls, the new forum and other things, here about the achievements, here about the Canon Policy, and here about the Naming Policy. That latest issue is still waiting discussion (in the list of tasks we are currently talking about the use of English UK or US, the Naming Policy comes after that), so the thing about the page of Goggles is yet to be resolved. The reason why he complains about that is because he wants to delete the page because it's an unsettled matter, but I told him that we should give an opportunity to the user who created it because he was working hard to improve it, and removing useful content from the Wiki for that reason doesn't make sense.

3. About the rules, there is a clause that says: Policies need to be approached with common sense; adhere to the spirit rather than the letter of the rules, and be prepared to ignore the rules on the rare occasions when they conflict with the goal of improving the wiki.

I told him that was my vision of the rules: the improvement of the Wiki rather than a stick interpretation of them. The case of Goggles is an example. Removing useful content just because there is no rule that supports it is clearly a nonsense. We will discuss this matter at the right time, but until that it's better to keep that page where it is. There is no harm in having it there, and it's actually a good page; with the only questionable aspect of the title.

The case of Hange Zoë's gender was another example. At some point in the conversation in the Canon Policy we got two options: making an exception of the policy exclusive to this character, or rewriting the entire article in a confusing way and removing all pictures of Hange from the anime from the entire Wiki in order to mantain a strict canon interpretation. Though PrelateZeratul supported the second option, from my point of view that alternative was extreme and could only cause damage to the Wiki, so I decided to make the exception, which can be found here.

This entire case about Hfc2x/NeoSuperior/PrelateZeratul/me is yet another example. PrelateZeratul keeps arguing that his demotion was for illegal reasons, since there is no rule that states that posting private Skype conversations is prohibited. But actually, that was not the only action he commited that proved that he was unfit to remain as admin:

I. He is unable to put his personal issues aside from the Wiki issues, and tends to involve the community in them. The case against Hfc2x was a personal issue, as I concluded after reviewing all the evidence, but it was handled poorly, and after 5 threads and 45 days is still continuing and becoming bigger and bigger.

II. He tends to take exaggerated measures like wanting to remove and block old members of the community for those personal issues (he even still wanted to block Hfc2x after he resigned), or even for things that happen outside the site and that not compete to the Wiki.

III. As I already pointed out, he tends to misinterpret things, like the ones I've mentioned and other examples I included in the e-mail. Some of them:


 * Accusing the user TourguideNixon for violating the blocking policy, when it's actually impossible for him to violate it because he's not an admin and he has not the power to block anyone.
 * Accusing NeoSuperior for removing the poll of one of his threads because that was "illegal", "obstruction of the process" and "contra-productive to an open discussion", when actually, the Wikia Staff told him that he should NOT use polls, so the only one who was acting wrongly was himself. Have you noted that he has not included polls this time? That's because I made him see his error; though not before several attempts where he continued arguing that he was right and even lied to me to prove that.
 * Accusing Hfc2x for "abuse", "harassment", "bullying" and "violation of the rules", when he never violated any of them. PrelateZeratul finally recognized that his accusations were beyond the rules, but again, this was after a LONG discussion and continous objections from his part.

IV. He frequently lets his square interpretation of the rules cloud his judgement, making him willing to do actions that could only cause more harm than good. The cases of Goggles and Hange are some examples, the fact that he still believes that he should be the admin and I should resign due to my edit count is another. But more than that, as I noted in the previous point, his vision of the rules is frequently twisted and is capable of acussing people of crimes they never commited. This attitude is really worring and dangerous in an admin.

V. He doesn't know how to run fair discussions, or deliberately manipulates them. The first three cases were all of the same format: he posted his own version of the events and immediately opened a poll and allowed people to vote to decide the case. He never gave time to the accused to defend themselves, he included a poll when the Wikia Staff instructed him not to do it, and tried to decide the matter with only himself and his siblings as voters (and keeping that conflict of interest in secret until the Wikia Staff discovered it). No result derived from such a biased format can be considered fair and objective at any level; but until this day he hasn't recognized that fact.

About the thing of the polls, I have already mentioned that the Wikia Staff specifically instructed him not to include them. I explained to him that polls are not a way to decide these matters because sometimes people don't care in involving themselves seriously and just vote for the option that is winning. This is even seen in the proposal to remove NeoSuperior, when a user says "I do not understand the whole discussion, I am rather simple minded", "I know no details so I try to make it as simple as possible." Even in this same thread, Emperor Jarjarkine is saying the same things. That's why I always ask the contrary, to read all the information available before forming a judgment.

When I asked PrelateZeratul about the polls, he said they indicated that they had no problem with it and even appreciated it for the ease of counting votes, which was a total lie. The Wikia Staff said to me "Polls are not a way we would ever seriously consider a legitimate community vote", and "what he is telling you we told him is intentionally incorrect."

This is the set of actions I was talking about when I considered his blocking, though at the end I decided to do nothing. However, for all these points and some other more I explained in the e-mail, I concluded that there were enough reasons to justify his demotion and therefore I rejected his request to become an admin again.

4. About me "changing the rules in favor of my position", that was because I told him that the rules need to be updated, because they were copy/pasted from the Fairy Tail Wiki and are full of holes, with this entire situation being an example. I told him that "I will present to the community proposals about how the discussions should be run (because I don't want more discussions led in the way he did), new requirements to be an admin with less emphasis in the number of edits and more in the true capabilites of the person (because keep arguing that someone is more capable to be an admin than another just because their number of edits is higher is ridiculous, that's not what the adminship duties are about), a privacy policy against posting private conversations (because that certainly needs to be regulated), and many more."

Pay attention that I said "I will present to the community proposals", NOT that I will simply do this by my own. My intention is to discuss those matters after we finish with the current discussion about the Manual of Style.

To finish, I just want to ask something to the community: what do you think the adminship position is about? How would you evaluate if an admin is fit or unfit?