I barely know shaggy. My only real interaction with them has been this incident, so maybe that is coloring my impression of the whole thing. However, there are three things that stick out to me.
1. This got out of hand really quickly partly due to their 'egging on' the participants in an off-site discord. This had the net effect of filling the recent edits staff tool with near-meaningless gibberish, while at the same time posting a "please downvote this" in the discussion section of the article in question.
2. The article was subject to deletion, AS PER POLICY. It first fell below the -10 threshold that placed it in deletion, then below the -20 threshold that made it subject to summary deletion. Staff responded, as per policy, and deleted the page. Shaggy then decided to "save" this article that had been deleted by reposting it in it's entirety on a page that was not subject to deletion. This was also accompanied by continued attempts to "egg on" the denizens of the offsite discord into carry on the tomfoolery that lead to the deletion in the first place.
3. I haven't been here all that long, but I have been here long enough to know how staff reacts to the eddies in the internet currents that cause these little whirlpools of activity. These kinds of "edit this" free for alls rarely end well and often end in headaches and frustration for all staff involved. I find it inconceivable that shaggy was somehow unaware of what type of response this sort of activity would provoke. Obviously it would be impossible to say for certain that that is the case, but we are fooling ourselves if we do not believe that SSSC is anything but predictable.
Again, I don't know shaggy, so all I have to go on are the actions I witnesses yesterday and the madness that ensued, which has carried on into today. The result of these observations is that I find it increasingly difficult to believe that shaggy was not acting in bad faith when all of this went down. I wont go so far as to say that this was planned, but I have no doubt that at some point during this whole episode the understanding of how this was affecting staff was considered.
Does this rise to the level of punishment? If this had been perpetrated by a new user, I have little doubt that they would have had their membership revoked at a minimum. A user encouraging a bunch of other users to shitpost and cause hours of work and headache for staff? Without a doubt a violation of our rules regarding trolling and don't be a dick.
A user, who was a former member of staff, and who has been around long enough to know the rules AND how staff responds to certain stimulus? This is so far beyond the pale that, quite frankly, I'm surprised we're even having a debate about it.
(account deleted)
