Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Candidates/MarkBernstein/Statement

MarkBernstein

Campaigns of harassment and extortion.

If we don’t address this challenge, society will address it (and us) in the sternest terms. Editors and administrators require protection from “colleagues” in the service of harassment conspiracies and PR agencies.

Knowing What’s Going On

In school, we learned that a glance at the encyclopedia does not make you an expert. (Was the current ArbCom absent that day? Never mind.) ArbCom has rushed blindly into complicated thickets. I will immediately take steps to create a blue-ribbon advisory panel on harassment.

Wikipedians and Waterfowl

We must clean our house, lest those who could advise and assist us dismiss Wikipedia as a nest of boobies. We should treat all editors alike. The best way to avoid being called a flock of juvenile loons is to stop acting like a flock of juvenile loons.

ArbCom should raise up the volunteers who are being trodden underfoot; they make lousy carpets and we have too many sprained ankles already.

Mysterious But Imaginative Strangers

My battered logs bear scars that attest to my experience. My opinion of the current committee’s Infamous, Thoughtless, Careless and Reckless handling of Gamergate received some attention. I have been (and am) frequently hounded by Wikipedia’s least reputable elements; I know what it is to be harried by mysterious strangers who have colorful vocabularies and excessive imagination. I understand the burdens of admins well, having contrived betimes to pose a burden myself.

Pie

ArbCom has encrusted itself in mock-judicial trappings. ArbCom requires more innocent merriment, and I’ll do my level best to supply it.

We need more pie. "There can be no stress in the presence of pie,” wrote David Mamet, and he was not wrong. T. S. Eliot wrote that "above all there must be cake," and though the cake is a lie, the pie (oh my!) is what we chiefly need. Wikipedia today is grimly serious when it should be having fun, and it dismisses serious dangers as mere laddish excess. Pumpkin and pecan; both are required.

With regard to identity, I am the only candidate to have provoked separate press statements from both ArbCom and WMF; they already know me. I am I, so I expect I'm already in compliance with the WMF identification policy. If not, and were pigs to have wings, I'd be happy to oblige.

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