Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram/Archive 14

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End of community consultation on temporary and partial office bans

The Community consultation has ended, and T&S posted their conclusion to the talk page:

Hello all, and thank you so much for your input over the past month (and before that, as we designed the consultation). Let me open with the "big" question, and then we can talk about other points that emerged during the discussion: We hear your thoughts on this issue loud and clear, and we will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans. In line with the consultation’s feedback, these policy tools will not be reintroduced to the office action policy until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive. We originally implemented that change to policy believing that better-tailored Office Actions would be less disruptive to the communities. However, we understand that perception of these actions has been quite different. So, point taken: partial and temporary Office Action bans are off the table.

While the question of whether or not to use partial/temporary office action bans was the headline question of this consultation, we do know that many of you raised and discussed other important points. Here are our takes on some of the most common ones:

• Foundation should support local community governance. If that governance is so broken that the Foundation feels it must step in, it should be working to help the community fix its governance rather than focusing on individual problem users. We agree that this is a very good way to look at the issue of making self-governance within the Terms of Use framework more fit for the future. We commit that staff will work later this fiscal year on identifying and making more transparent how well projects govern themselves in relation to requirements of the Terms of Use. These findings also will provide communities with insights into how well they and their peer communities thrive respectively. We will, however, need to retain a role in addressing individual problem users or specific content that rises to the levels of issues mentioned in the Board directive (e.g. the handling of legal issues, threats of violence, cross-wiki abuse, child protection issues).
• Appealability of bans. We understand that many of you feel that Foundation office action bans - either temporary or permanent - ought to be appealable. Now that temporary bans are off the table, that leaves traditional Foundation global bans, and they will continue to be unappealable. The threshold for a Foundation global ban is much higher than the threshold for a partial or temporary ban and such a ban receives review from multiple people, including both members of the T&S and Legal teams before going into effect. This means that the issues that tend to lead to traditional Foundation global bans are not issues that would have resulted in a temporary or partial ban to begin with, and neither will they resolve with time.
• The Foundation should be open about what behavioral standards it uses to make decisions. While we will continue to not discuss rationales that lead to decisions in individual cases with uninvolved individuals, improving our documentation of the office action policies is something we are going to do later this fiscal year alongside the upcoming work noted in bullet one. We will take further steps to address this by making more transparent the standards against which these cases are assessed.
• The right of the accused to see the evidence and charges against them. As we've discussed at some length within the consultation discussion itself, this is a needle we try to thread but it’s not always possible. In many cases, telling the accused what the evidence or charges are is the same as identifying the complainant to the accused. That applies even if we anonymize the evidence or charges, as often the behavior or context is necessary for the accused to understand the accusations, and can be enough for them to identify the accuser(s). Sometimes that's ok because there are no safety concerns, but sometimes having the accused know who accused them is signing up the accuser for harassment, violence, or worse. If it comes down to choosing between privacy and safety of the accuser and the right of the accused to see all the evidence against them, we will and do prioritize the safety of the accuser. Protecting someone's physical or mental health must come first.
• The Foundation should go through community processes if it wants to sanction someone in that community under office action policy. This is not something that could work for the Foundation in its legal role as the platform provider setting the Terms of Use, and the office action policy in extension thereof in pursuit of those terms. There are some cases where the constraints of the law obligate us to act directly in order to mitigate a legal risk, protect the rights or safety of a third party, or act on behalf of the general public. In those sorts of cases, we are not able to defer to volunteers to discuss an issue and take action as they deem appropriate.  We will work on developing a framework to work with community self-governance bodies in cases where we feel local governance can handle an issue that is reported to us. For communities that have volunteer bodies whose members sign the basic volunteer NDAs, this might result in more clarity and transparency through mutual service-level agreements.

We want to thank you all again for taking the time to share your input and thoughts on this consultation. It has been incredibly valuable to us in understanding community thoughts on many aspects of Office Actions.

Samuel (WMF) (talk) 10:11, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

On behalf of Kbrown (WMF)

In short, the actions that led to this crisis are not going to be repeated, and the Trust and Safety team has recognized its role in dealing with "legal issues, threats of violence, cross-wiki abuse, [and] child protection issues". Looks good. It seems that the situation has come to an end. --Yair rand (talk) 17:07, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

First, the whole point of bullets is that they are not numbered. Secondly, In line with the consultation’s feedback, these policy tools will not be reintroduced to the office action policy until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive. What? Thirdly, we didn't need a consultation to know T&S wouldn't dare a repeat. Nothing else seems to have changed. Usedtobecool ^TALK ✨ 17:37, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

I, on the other hand, do not think at all that this outcome was inevitable. And I'm happy to see it: a refreshing example of WMF actually taking community feedback seriously. It seems to me that this statement is a reasonable one, and probably about the best that could be realistically expected. Now, the question will be whether or not they actually follow through on what they promise. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:48, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

This was never about partial and temporary office actions, despite what T&S would have you believe. T&S used partial and temporary office actions as a stalking horse for their recent objectionable behavior. (Stalking horse: A thing that is used to conceal someone's real intentions. Originally referred to a screen made in the shape of a horse behind which a hunter stays concealed when stalking prey.)

If T&S completely stops all use of partial and temporary office actions but continues the recent objectionable behavior using the same office action policy that has pretty much been around forever, the shit will hit the fan again and the board will end up telling T&S to consult with the community again.

If T&S decides to go back to doing things they way they did them before -- the way that nobody had a problem with -- everyone will be happy whether or not they retain the ability to perform partial and temporary office actions. It would just be another tool used to do what we hired them to do. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:04, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

What Guy Macon said. While all this has been going on, the self-same T&S people have been working and continue to work on drafting a "universal code of conduct" to be imposed on us by and enforced by themselves. This whole sorry saga was just a misfired opening salvo in T&S's power-grab over English Wikipedia's governance (and the governance of the other big largely autonomous wikis like de-wiki and Commons), not the end of it. ‑ Iridescent 16:12, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

From meta:Talk:Universal Code of Conduct#Already rejected:

"If nearly 50 editors randomly come across a proposal to ban the WMF from doing something, and every single one of them supports preventing the WMF from doing that thing, the WMF should probably not do that thing. If you try to push for it anyways, we will have a crisis on our hands, and anyone trying to do any productive work will despair as we yet again need hundreds of volunteers to try to stop the WMF from causing yet another catastrophe." --Yair rand, posted 17:09, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

I fear that we are heading to another huge time-wasting fight once again. The only solution will be a message from upper management: "Do that again and you are fired." --Guy Macon (talk) 16:44, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

In a true only-on-Wikipedia moment, the only person on that thread to support the imposition of a code of conduct is now indefinitely blocked for repeated violations of our (existing) conduct policies. Sometimes this place is beyond parody. ‑ Iridescent 17:29, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Unless you're the Evelyn Waugh of Scoop or Put Out More Flags -- I think he would have been able to deal with it. Hayford Peirce (talk) 17:39, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Based on what look like replies to me, I'd like to clarify what I said. I agree with other editors that there are serious problems that go beyond temporary and partial bans, and I did not mean to imply otherwise. But I disagree that such bans were never in any way part of the problem. Even though I agree that they were, to some extent, a stalking horse for deeper problems, they were also, nonetheless, significant problems in their own right. If others want to see this as a glass half (or more) empty, that's ok, but I see it as a glass that is half (more or less) full. And I think we can all agree that it matters a lot what happens going forward, as I already said above. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:57, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

• I do not see this as indicative of a conclusion that Office does not have a right to implement and enforce rules without notice to, let alone consultation, of the volunteer corp of a wiki project - outside of its legal remit and obligations. It is an acknowledgement that Office created more disruption to the project than the issue which it was trying to address in the manner in which it bypassed the community in the first instance and then its initial response to the reaction, and the difficulty in equating their requirements of anonymity to that of the open wiki method of dispute resolution. Unfortunately, it is only in this particular instance of limited (within a project space) action against individuals for behaviours allegedly within that space. There is no apparent conclusion that imposing Office decisions into and onto project space without reference to the project participants should be discarded. That I find troubling. LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:53, 23 November 2019 (UTC)