Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2010/Candidates/Stephen Bain

Stephen Bain

This is the talk page for discussing a candidate for election to the Arbitration Committee.
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Should not be returned to the committee

Stephen Bain should not be allowed to resume his role as an arbitrator. In the ARBMAC2 case, he left this gem, referring to admins as having "Atlas complexes". If that's not an uncivil attack on others I don't know what is, and for the record, these were the admins who were trying to enforce neutrality. Later, in the WMC-Abd case, Bain posted a remark in one of his votes of how I had "assessed community consensus" concerning a ban imposed on Abd. I did no such thing. I closed a discussion procedurally because Abd had accepted restrictions (this closing turned out to be a horrible mistake on my part because some matters were in fact left unresolved, notably the length of this ban). After seeing Bain's misrepresentation of my remarks, which I was willing to assume were a simple misreading, I went to his talk page to request that he correct his comments. After no response in 11 days, I requested it again. No result, and the case closed with the misrepresentations still there and permanently preserved on the page. Arbs who are unresponsive to concerns (not even giving me a response until after the case had already closed, let alone fixing his distortions) have no place on the committee. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 15:57, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

You consider it appropriate that administrators should be given the discretion to determine for themselves whether dispute resolution might be futile in a particular situation, and have free exercise of their administrative tools if they decide that it is? --bainer (talk) 05:11, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe I said anything of the sort. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 06:42, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

You said that the administrators sanctioned in that case "were trying to enforce neutrality". I'm presuming you consider neutrality to be a good thing. Do you therefore consider it appropriate that administrators should be given the discretion to determine for themselves whether dispute resolution might be futile in a particular situation, and have free exercise of their administrative tools if they decide that it is? --bainer (talk) 13:15, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I objected to the decision to sanction the administrators in that case, it is true, but that is not the objection I have raised here. There is room for debate on when users should be sanctioned. I do not see room to debate whether it's acceptable to insult users by suggesting that they have a complex, regardless of what abusive actions they may or may not have taken; this is simply unacceptable for any arbitrator (not really acceptable for any user). That is the objection I've raised here. The issues of what sanctions should have been made in that case and what should be done in intractable disputes are matters for another time and place, as neither can justify Stephen Bain's choice of language. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 14:41, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I was impressed by your contribution on the Eastern European Mailing List case

I remember that the case was practically wrapped up in a somewhat superficial fashion, when you add a full set of nicely articulated FOF's to be voted on. I personally think that properly articulated FOF's can be of more use than remedies in Arbcom cases. I was very impressed at the time that you put in the effort to do especially as the case could easily have been closed without it. I remember that you resigned left shortly afterward and I thought it was a shame as I hoping to see if this incident was a fluke or if you would continue to make the effort to articulate to people exactly where they went wrong.BirgitteSB 23:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

A minor correction: Stephen's term came to an end in December 2009, rather than him resigning. Carcharoth (talk) 04:15, 28 November 2010 (UTC)