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Previous objections to this behavior from the WMF

In 2018, the WMF unilaterally removed the "selfunblock" ability from administrators, with minimal behind-the-scenes discussion, and no community consultation. At the time, there was a contentious discussion going on as to whether the community wanted to remove this ability, which went completely ignored by the WMF staff. I objected to the move for practical reasons, but regardless of the merits of the decision that was made, I noted my ideological objections, which are more relevant than ever before, and I think adequately summarize the problem we have right now:

  • "... the point of contention about WMF staff showing a complete disregard for the community is a bigger issue. Completely unacceptable in any business situation, additionally insulting coming from an NPO towards its own volunteers, and even more so in the context of the precedent that Jimbo set to purportedly let the community govern. If you're going to take a decision out of the community's hands while they're actively discussing something, at least have the decency to be accountable for that ... you're still suggesting that you don't even see what the big deal is here. There's a contentious community discussion going on, you guys make a judgment call on your end to handle it unilaterally, and to you, that's the long and short of it. To us, okay, you've unilaterally overridden a community consensus-building process, something we hold sacred, something that no member of the community, regardless of standing, would ever be able to do, and you don't even have the decency to explain to us what you're doing and why, not even to give us the slightest indication that you're listening to the community's concerns, or even that you take the concept of a community-based project seriously, at all. The fact that you find this backlash 'strange' suggests that you don't understand the high level of importance that longstanding precedent, and transparency, and communication, and accountability have here, and it's all just happily arbitrary on your end, that's concerning, because it reveals a large disconnect between the culture at WMF and the culture within the community itself. I don't think the WMF has disdain for the community, but those are the optics you project in situations like this." —Swarm, 27 November 2018 — ~Swarm~ {sting} 09:20, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I do not think it is fair to connect two unrelated incidents to make a case — the WMF devs working on Wikimedia-Site-requests are not related at all to the Trust & Safety team. There was an emergency situation and the devs took the correct reactive measure. There's no more to it. I do not have comments on your ideological rebuttal to the WMF but the removal of self-unblock right was necessary and warranted. --qedk (t 桜 c) 11:30, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
    • @QEDK: although I agree that these two parts of WMF are not related, I also have the same type of comments on yet another part of WMF. I have now for 10 years been 'fighting' to get an extension overhauled (one that regularly results in questions from the community), and have in the last 2 years written a suggestion in the yearly meta community wishlist. In this last year, I was bluntly told that even if the request would gather enough !votes (it didn't), it would still not be considered as the devs do not have time for that. They on the other hand have time to write VE, MV, Superprotect.  This is NOT a T&S problem only, it is a general situation with WMF that they seem not to consider the community and what the community wants. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:16, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
      • VE/MV were both in development for a long time and it was primarily that their development was so disconnected from the community that they being introduced received immediate backlash. As for superprotect, it was made to give WMF dictatorial rights, and I was, and I still am, in complete opposition to it, but bless the WMF for doing the correct thing and deprecating the right then. I agree that the WMF community engagement is well, not up to the mark, but that's probably an understatement. If I am right, though, you're referring to a MediaWiki extension, which although does intersect with the developers working on WMF sites, are done by different teams. And I am indeed aware of the voting system in place, the only way to sometimes get things done is to have a horde of editors agreeing with you, that there is an issue in the first place. I hope the WMF employs more people in technical areas with all the donations they get due to the hours we contribute for free, but I think, and I say this with great regret, the divide between the community and WMF is just getting wider and will continue being so. When WMF employees were involved in the community and worked in a close-knit group, things were better, but I doubt things will look like that anytime soon. But I'm sure, some of them, maybe a lot of them, are on our side, even if they were never editors in our community. --qedk (t 桜 c) 12:53, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Exactly. It is a third part of WMF that shows an utter disconnect from editor community. The WMF has their own plan, and what the community wants/accepts/needs does not matter. And that criticism is utterly ignored by WMF (and other bodies have similar tendencies) ... until you break someone's back and they lash out (and normally ArbCom would then pull out the banhammer, remove the editor, not the problem). Their (WMF's) response here, banning Fram, is the same, but it just resulted in more of the community lashing out (and I don't think we ran out of 'rogue admins', you can just wait for the next situation). You don't solve the tumor, you remove the symptom. I'm sorry, all of us, editors and admins alike, 'harass' vandals, spammers, COI-editors, copyright violators, editors who do not or insufficiently cite their sources and you name it (and some of them are utter persistent). There are two ways of stopping that harassment: block the editor, or give them the tools to solve the problem. That is why we have pillars, policies and guidelines, but WMF (and similarly, often, ArbCom) choses to use the opposite, ban the editor and deny them the proper tools. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:24, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Swarm: I disagree about your summation of the 'unblockself' change, this was certainly done in coordination with community discussions to meet a need, these discussions led to the building of the special vengenceblock exception that was also incorporated at the time. — xaosflux Talk 15:34, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Agreed. There was significant discussion on phabricator as well as other projects. Due to the global nature of account security, it was an action taken globally, and the WMF cannot ignore editors and discussions from other projects to favor English ones. Vermont (talk) 20:22, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

(←) You guys misremember. The community discussion was open and contentious at the time that "unblockself" was removed. "Vengenceblock" was added after the fact, as a result of condemnation and outcry. It was hastily added as a countermeasure, before things got out of hand. And, it is a reasonable countermeasure to accompany the removal of unblockself. I'm not trying to rehash that aspect. That said, the assessment of the WMF staff's behavior, in unilaterally making a major change to longstanding status quo behind the scenes with minimal discussion and no community consultation, is absolutely spot-on. ~Swarm~ {sting} 08:43, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Plans A-Z

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram § Plans A-Z

–MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 22:31, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Signing up to archived proposals

I am putting this question here, in the hope that more people will see it (I initially raised parts of this matter on the talk page where it got little response). Many of the earlier proposals on this page were archived by a bot after two days of inactivity (the same will eventually happen to even 'A suggested resolution' though that has had enough ongoing activity to avoid this ignominious fate). The bot-archived proposals have subsequently been collected at an archive titled 'general proposals'. I had intended to add my support to the proposal there that got the most support, namely 'The WMF was wrong to ban Fram, and we reject this overreach and have no confidence in the WMF's handling of office bans'. Can I still do this? Should I pull the proposal out of the archive to sign it, and then leave it to be archived again after 2 days, or is it simpler just to sign up to the archived version? Should these proposals have been formally closed at some point, rather than archived by a bot? Or is it better to try and pull everything together into a new set of statements, once it is clearer what is and is not happening, so that people can sign up to a new statement at that point, that will hopefully reflect community feelings and opinions on this? Carcharoth (talk) 12:13, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

I would consider to advertise a list of proposals at the top, and archive all that are here at the normal time there, updating the links. If people want to reconsider (I've seen 'not yet' votes) then that can happen there. If something there gains really traction, we can then consider what to do. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:19, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
If we do proposals it needs to be done in an organized way, or we will never get any consensus and get an alphabet soup (much like all the reform RFA proposals). Maybe have some sort of brainstorming and refining period before proposals are put up to vote? --Rschen7754 15:26, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Discussion is more important than word count. Although I understand that long pages can be difficult for people reading via mobile, I think there has been too much eagerness to archive discussions that are still active, and that needs to slow down. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:07, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Sitenotice

Setting up a sitenotice urging all editors to directly petition the WMF is the best idea I have. I'm sure this had been said before but I'm not sure why it can't be done. It's noticeable and minimally invasive, except to the image of the WMF ofc. It's a pretty simple community response and should be "that's that" from our side. --qedk (t 桜 c) 18:55, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Support

I agree with EllenCT's proposal that we should petition the WMF for the complete removal of the delegation, with a new agreeable solution being set into place at their next meeting. Ofcourse, the specifics cannot be determined by us, but individual petitioning is still individual petitioning. --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:05, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Oppose

  • Mu.--WaltCip (talk) 20:21, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The whole dispute here boils down to that the WMF is perceived as having communicated this ban poorly, which is at least arguable. (Some seem to think the action itself was inappropriate, but that can't be determined except by the WMF, as the decision relies on private information, so that argument is a non-starter.) All the sky-is-falling drama over it is a ridiculous over-reaction to the perceived problem of 'they didn't tell us what they were doing well enough!'. The merits of it aren't cut and dried for people who are following it, never mind for random people being petitioned. (The community isn't particularly united against the WMF, as far as I see, only a rather vocal subset of it.) There's no need to drag readers into the dispute as well. Leave up the Pride central notice instead, and let's step back from this and breathe a bit. It's not the end of the world. —{{u|Goldenshimmer}} (they/their)｜😹｜✝️｜John 15:12｜☮️｜🍂｜T/C 20:36, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Just a question: Did you read anything about T&S's interactions with the Belgian branch yet? —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 20:41, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Jéské Couriano: Yes, I read the thread on the mailing list and some of the comments here yesterday. It's not clear to me which party to that dispute is correct. In my view, that issue should be discussed between WMBE, WMF, and the participants of the dispute, perhaps with lawyers; adjudication by a pitchfork-wielding mob seems inappropriate. I would not be opposed to the creation of an ombuds commission to arbitrate appeals to WMF's decisions. —{{u|Goldenshimmer}} (they/their)｜😹｜✝️｜John 15:12｜☮️｜🍂｜T/C 21:02, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose this, and D and E and probably more of the alphabet as well. I'm as disappointed as anyone with the slowness of a response, but I truly believe that Doc James would not go along with hoodwinking the community. Also, ArbCom is having a separate meeting with WMF (today, I think), and they would be very likely to tell us something when they are ready to do so (even if they tell us that they got stonewalled – and that, not what we have now, is what could reasonably trigger a strong community response). I think it's rather probable that the internal investigations have revealed a very serious screw-up, and they are being very careful to get their ducks in a row before they go public. That's an unfortunate situation, but it doesn't mean that we are being ignored. Grown-up people don't keep asking "are we there yet?" We have not yet reached a deadline. And I don't like making the encyclopedia less useful for our readers, either. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:38, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose for now, but not in principle. I said earlier in this discussion that we ought to wait at least until after this week to hear a substantive response. We are, after all, asking the leadership and Board of Directors of a pretty major organization for their responses, and that's not going to happen in a day or two—but it better not happen in a year or two, either. And such leaders are expected to deliver more than carefully crafted obfuscation when that's needed. At the very least, let's await hearing the outcome of the ArbCom call today before we do anything drastic. But I will be clear that if we keep getting stonewalling and thousand-words-to-say-nothing responses, further action, and possibly substantially more drastic action, may be required. Or in short, let's be reasonably patient, but let's also be very clear that this is not an "Ignore them and they'll go away" situation. Much as some people at WMF may like it to, this situation is not going to vanish on its own. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:43, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    Well said. --Yair rand (talk) 20:48, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Goldenshimmer. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:53, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I did, and I can't say I'm as worked up about it as anyone else. It seems like a he said, she said case, and I can't uncritically accept the alleged facts of either the incident or the investigation from the he-said side. I'm not sure what the correct resolution there should have been (and I don't think any of us here could be sure) but I what I read did not leave me up in arms. Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:47, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I just saw what Goldenshimmer wrote, and I agree with them entirely. Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:50, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
  • What would be in this sitenotice? "Wikipedia community angry after WMF tries to enforce a basic level of behavioural standards without getting a vote first"? "Wikipedia community bullies off at least one supportive admin after user with a long-term history of incivility is banned"? "Wikipedia community exposes all sorts of conspiracy theories and attempts to out harassment victim"? This page is an embarrassment, we shouldn't be trying to make it more public. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 20:59, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    Agree! Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:53, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
    I think it was pretty clear that the purpose of the sitenotice was to encourage editors to petition the WMF regarding their actions. It does not need to be at all deliberately inflammatory in the manner you suggest, but as simple as, "This has happened. Please consider sending an email/petitioning/talking to these people." --qedk (t 桜 c) 21:26, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    That's not a reasonable, fair-minded summary of the situation at hand. If you can't accurately present the anti-WMF position(s), then kindly stop pretending that you can. Lepricavark (talk) 11:51, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
    I'm not trying to represent the anti-WMF position. This discussion alone has exposed some of the worst behaviour within the community that is collectively tolerated, two examples of which I gave in my (slightly glib) questions above. I doubt it would generate sympathy from the wider audience, and that's if people even cared to read/follow the discussion at all. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 15:37, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
    You may or may not be right about a lack of wider interest, but this would not be the first time we posted a site notice of little interest to the broader editing base. At any rate, I strongly disagree with your examples. There are ample reasons, well-defined in numerous posts on this page, for not framing this as an issue of the WMF simply trying to enforce a basic behavioral standard. In response to Jan's latest statement below, numerous editors have once again pointed out the numerous holes in the account given by the WMF. The WMF has had plenty of time to get its story straight, yet that still hasn't happened. Nor am I aware of any "supportive" admins being bullied off as you say (I believe I know who you are talking about, and suffice it to say that my version of events would be drastically different from what you have posited). Lepricavark (talk) 16:58, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose Per Seraphimblade-ish and that it's simply an overreaction. Further, I'm of the opinion that any consensus developed here is not enough to warrant a sitenotice, even one only for logged in users. Many of the moderate-viewed users and users who aren't particularly suited for this sort of discussion have left. In total, this page has had less than 400 editors, most of which haven't inputted recently. Vermont (talk) 21:01, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose this is the thing that keeps on giving. a sitenotice urging all editors to directly petition the WMF , who is speaking for the thousands amd thousands of wikipedia editors and readers that are not interested in this at all.Govindaharihari (talk) 21:12, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    Ah yes, because the Community wishlist survey, LGBT+, Anti-harassment tools sitenotices are assented to by 1000s of Wikipedia editors that are interested in them. Please keep your strawmans far and away from this thread and argue it on the basis that has been explicity argued, a community response. You're welcome. --qedk (t 桜 c) 21:24, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    not sure what your actually saying, but a tiny-is amout of the conrtibutors to this project are bothered about Fram being banned, sorry. Govindaharihari (talk) 21:30, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    What I am saying is, what makes you think that sitenotices are placed because thousand of editors assent to it? It's placed by a group of editors, or even one, to make a larger number aware of a certain matter, which is what we're trying to do now. --qedk (t 桜 c) 21:34, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    Sorry, this suggestion is going nowhere,there will be no such site notice, it's a rubbish idea, move on. The most embarrasing thing is when I see experianced quality contributors to the project suggesting and supporting such as this. Govindaharihari (talk) 21:37, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    Yes, in your mind, it certainly is going nowhere, but quit with your WP:IDLI attitude. Argue the merits of the idea instead of calling it a rubbish idea and asking me to move on, when there are multiple editors endorsing this as well, just because you don't like it does not discredit the idea. --qedk (t 桜 c) 21:42, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    well good luck to you. Govindaharihari (talk) 21:44, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    Govindaharihari: ...the whole rubbish emotional reaction of a vocal minority of the so called wikipedia community. That's your opinion, but among those 400 are many of the editors and admins who represent the core of users who are concerned by the way Wikipedia is organised and managed and who have been singly or jointly responsible for bringing about some of the most important changes over the years. Whilst I acknowledge your oppose, you are not one of those people and your comments lack seriousness and professionalism. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:53, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    Well, if you would indent correctly that would be a start. Govindaharihari (talk) 21:55, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    we are getting off track, I have commented, take it or leave it, I am happy with either, thanks Govindaharihari (talk) 21:57, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Oppose for now, but not in principle per Seraphimblade. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:41, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Belgium concerns about WMF

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram § Wikimedia Belgium concerns about WMF

--qedk (t 桜 c) 17:11, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Not strictly related, but worth pointing out as it also concerns Trust and Safety actions. See this wikimedia-l post and thread: New board for Wikimedia Belgium + evaluation behaviour WMF. Long, but worth at least skim reading. Ends with: "At the General Assembly it was requested to request an internal audit in WMF to bring all the problems there to the light.". Carcharoth (talk) 16:51, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

This is probably one of the most scathing things that I've come across about the Trust & Safety team, and this is much, much worse than anything I've heard anywhere else. I'm moving this to the main page for further discussion with a set locus, I'll provide a summary explanation right after. --qedk (t 桜 c) 17:10, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
I have no words. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:13, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think this recent revelation deserves more discussion here, primarily because a lot of the community has operated under the conclusion that T&S has operated in an demonstrably bad, and probably accidental manner. But, reading the email thread above proves the fact that is behaviour that T&S has engaged in before, which makes it so much rarer that this was an incident gone bad, and not WMF overreaching their authority because they feel they have a right to. Keeping in mind, that multiple editors, some involved with the WMF stated that this should have been done better, if it was so, why is there no proper outcome yet? If T&S can bully entire organizations, I'm sure Fram is pebble lying by and it's even more worrying that this is the same Trust & Safety team that chose, and this is me paraphrasing, took a decision which went across desks and various levels of staff. I'm sorry but this just sounds like an echo room to me, where someone from the team just decides what to do and everyone goes with it. Is this team even capable of handling the other situations we entrust to them? I'm not so sure. But if I'm sure of anything, it is that our approach to this particular group of people (and the WMF as a whole) needs to change, including how we are choosing to respond as a community. --qedk (t 桜 c) 17:19, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I recall the Wikimania incident, it stuck with me because as a partially deaf person I also get the too loud and too close comments occasionally, I didn't realise (I don't think it was public previously) all the rest of it, only what was released on the mailing list. This is frankly evidence of an ongoing professional negligence issue within the WMF T&S team. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:17, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Wait, they signed off on using T&S to harass a disabled guy? Why the fuck do any of you let these people tell you what to do? They clearly are not worthy of your trust. If this incident had happened in the US, that guy could have sued for discrimination against him due to his disability and had a pretty good chance of winning. Jtrainor (talk) 19:00, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    TLDR for people reading the above comment: Someone at Grants worked in cohort with T&S to harass the treasurer of WMBE at a public conference, who btw was also disabled. Let that sink in. --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:13, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    If you read the responses in the thread, a sizable share of the responses attack the credibility of the person who wrote this email, despite that at least one person has stepped up to confirm at least part of the story. -- llywrch (talk) 20:05, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    The person who alleged they were harassed, confirmed the story and stated that they didn't want to be mentioned like this, but you're forgetting the context in which the email was written and the fact that they weren't asked to disclose their identity, nor was it disclosed (it is written as "anonymous complaints"). They made the assertion in the public forum, is that somehow the fault of the person? I really don't understand. As for the credibility of the person, it did eventually turn out to be a WMBE statement, which was written by a different person, so, again, I do not get your point. --qedk (t 桜 c) 20:15, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    Sorry, I didn't think my comment was vague. I simply pointed out that a number of people attacked the person who wrote the email, undermining the writer's credibility, instead of discussing what was contained in the email: ad hominem attacks. Which I hope it's clear I don't endorse. FWIW, a surprising share of the emails in the foundation mailing list were dismissive of our concerns in this matter, evidently believing the Foundation can do no wrong. -- llywrch (talk) 21:15, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    "...evidently believing the Foundation can do no wrong." Sadly, we've had a number of such comments on this very page. Enigmamsg 21:20, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    Thanks for clarifying. I get your point now, I took you in the manner exactly opposite and replied in that regard, apologies for that. --qedk (t 桜 c) 21:26, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
  • As someone who has a spectrum disorder this is absolutely appalling for me, and demonstrates that T&S aren't trustworthy for their role. Being able to separate a legitimate complaint from a spurious one should be a requirement for that position. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 19:57, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
  •  Note: One of my personal concerns is the bigotry displayed in someone related to WMF making a comment ...suggesting that Belgium has no culture... (per the email). This could have easily been rectified by WMF doing an internal investigation, but according to the email this was never done. Seriously, that is not okay. >:/ (edit conflict) –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 20:02, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    I'm striking my statement until we know more. mailarchive:wikimedia-l/2019-June/092829.html gives me pause. (edit conflict) –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 20:33, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    Also this and this. @Pundit: Can you please set this conversation straight when you get the chance. It can probably use your personal insight before it gets too off-the-rails. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 20:48, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    The person in question stated in a later email that the way they were forced to step up is that the incident was being discussed, not that anyone actually forced the person, but that they felt like they were forced. They state that they had to step up to correct the wrong details when T&S had resolved the situation, which is questionable in its own right for two reasons: 1) the fact that they consider it harassment in bad faith when the person in question apologized for the behaviour which they stated was unintentional and might have been a product of their disability 2) there was never any proper investigation into the alleged harassment, simply that T&S took action. How in the hell is that permissible? --qedk (t 桜 c) 20:53, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    Bluntly put: it's not. If T&S is going to be acting on harassment claims it behooves them to investigate these claims as discreetly as possible. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 21:16, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    My understanding is that at Wikimania T&S team acts when someone reports to them harassment or discomfort. Given the fact that there definitely are misunderstandings (relating from different cultures, possible disabilities, and many other factors) they are mainly focused on minimizing risks, e.g. by asking an involved party to not engage any more, without passing a judgment if they were intentionally harassing anyone. I would definitely find it upsetting to learn that I made someone uncomfortable to the level that they reported me and I understand why the person involved felt this way, too. However, I think that the thing is blown out of proportion right now. AFAIK nobody was banned from an event. The only consequences were common sense - somebody got upset by you for whatever reason? Try to avoid them. Of course, the problem is that the person contacted by T&S will often feel hurt, too - and we need to care about their well-being as well. Unless there is something I don't know about this case, I don't think there is anything clearly easily improvable in the procedures though. Of course we can always improve them, and cases like this definitely should be reflected upon. This is my personal view - I basically don't have a better idea how T&S could operate better without risking a situation in which harassment reports are ignored because they may be misunderstandings. There is no need for intentionality or bad will - in fact, I think that we probably should clarify that T&S team intervenes not only in the cases of harassment (which to many may be immediately associated with crimes). Pundit|utter 05:36, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I would absolutely say that's related. I think it goes very much toward showing that this is not an isolated mistake, but rather may be indicative of a substantially deeper problem within T&S and perhaps the entire WMF. Especially serious are the allegations that the WMF sanctioned someone at least in part because he stood close to people to compensate for a hearing impairment, and mistreated people who had autism. (The latter especially hits home; I'm autistic myself.) If those things are true, they violate not only the WMF's own stated policy of nondiscrimination, but very possibly the law. In the US, that would be the Americans with Disabilities Act and many concurrent state regulations, and I'm sure European countries have analogous regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability. The fact that Trust & Safety did not apparently see fit to investigate and follow up on these very serious concerns show that this may not be an isolated instance of misjudgment, but rather point to a serious problem with the leadership and culture of that team (and makes a mockery out of any idea of them attempting to mitigate potential legal problems). Anyone who has been in management anywhere knows very, very well that when someone claims discrimination, you damn well better take that seriously. Blowing off discrimination complaints can be a very, very costly mistake, and does not uphold the WMF's fiduciary duties to those who donate to it. Paying for a preventable discrimination lawsuit would not be a good use of donor funds, to say nothing of the PR. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:29, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm as disturbed as anyone by the WMF banning an editor without any attempt at using the existing community based dispute mechanisms. However, I see this Belgium issue as so completely different in character that I think it's a potential distraction from the main issue at hand. Hopefully we will hear something soon from Doc James or Jimbo Wales as to whether there is any progress coming from recent the board meeting. Of course, it's better to do it right than to do it quickly.--Mojo Hand (talk) 22:37, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
  • It may be different in character, but the basic gist of it is not too dissimilar to leading theories about their behaviour here - T&S gets a report from someone who is feeling harassed, takes them at face value with little to no investigation, warns the person in as vague of terms as possible (thus making a course-correction impossible to do intentionally), and then sanctions them for not course-correcting. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 22:41, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
  • This response from a sitting trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation does not exactly inspire confidence. Beyond simply taking reports seriously, it strikes me as an implicit endorsement of confirmation bias a la irrational primacy. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:39, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Holy shit, that's frightening. First we have the WMF enabling harassment of a disabled officer of one of its constituent regional... uh... actually, I'm not sure exactly how to describe the relationship between WMF and WM Belgium. But WMF enabling harassment there, then blowing off concerns about it from all quarters, then having Trustees making excuses for T&S not doing their jobs. At a minimum, this demands an external audit of the WMF from top to bottom; it seems to indicate that T&S is running amok, and nobody else in the OFFICE is willing to try and stop it. rdfox 76 (talk) 23:45, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    "Wikimedia movement affiliates" is the official term. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 01:14, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I am not endorsing confirmation bias. My understanding of events is that a person got reported as "harassing" someone. This person was not banned from the event, but requested to avoid the person who felt uncomfortable. Given the nature of large events, and also the fact that the reported incident was not major, I basically do not know how the T&S procedure could be improved. I personally know the person who was reported and I genuinely believe he was acting in good faith and in an amicable way. It is absolutely possible to cause distress unintentionally. My understanding is that there were no longterm repercussions, and that the case is taken out now without good reason, while adding to the stress of the person who felt harassed now. Pundit|utter 06:07, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I too am concerned that a mere accusation of "that makes me feel uncomfortable" would be taken as harassment with enforceable warnings issued. In contentious issues, this is a recipe for abuse:
    Person A: "That's an absurd conclusion based on the available reliable sources"
    Person B: "I'm being persecuted! Make it stop, Mr Admin X!"
    Admin X: "Person A, your actions are clearly being perceived negatively and you should back off"
    Person A: "My conclusions are based on the available reliable resources. I'm open to other sources too"
    Person B: <makes another change to an article based on a highly biased, personal blog>
    Person A: "This is an example of what I'm talking about. Please stop" <reverts change>
    Person B: <private message> "Person A continues to repress the opinions of a notable minority. Make it stop, T&S!"
    T&S: "Person A has been previously warned for such behavior. Person A's actions are causing stress in the community. Person A is banned for 1 year"
  • I'd like to see clearer guidance on the subject before we all go around claiming we're offended. Buffs (talk) 17:03, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
The good news about this is that WMBE should be in an excellent position to begin forking the project. They represent Belgian editors for a Belgian edition, and could probably win their independence quickly. A set of independent national Wikipedias probably is probably a good way to reduce the bureaucratic abuses and create redundancy against national censorship. The bad news is that the rest of us have a malfunctional T&S team trying to destroy our project. Anyone knowledgeable of COINTELPRO should be asking, who is trying to destroy WMF with moles? Is it a company, or a government? Wnt (talk) 23:45, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
I sincerely suspect it's just the same sort of bureaucratic incompetence you see in any organization as it matures, and all of which can be driven entirely by cognitive biases rather than malice: Middle managers are more interested in keeping their job than doing their job and work hard to create the appearance that their team is not only worth keeping, but must be expanded; higher ups have little to no idea what actually goes on lower down, especially if there is no bad press and money is rolling in; everyone pretends to be an expert in whatever they are doing; growth is considered a good thing without exception; and it is more important to appear to solve a problem than to even identify the problem, let alone actually solve it. In my opinion, a major cultural advantage of Wikipedia's local administration and ArbCom over T&S is that we don't pretend to be the perfect, unimpeachable experts on conflict resolution, but instead consent to having our actions reviewed, as most of us admit to just being amateurs trying our best. "I am better off than he is,—for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know." I will admit the possibility that I am completely wrong about everything here, but the deliberate opacity we've been met with makes it impossible to tell the difference. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:29, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Someguy1221, I think you've hit upon a possible part of the issue. We see all these levels of review on the charts Jan and Sydney have posted above—but all those reviews are internal to WMF. And if someone says "no" to one, they still have to come to work with the people they just snubbed the next day. On-wiki, we know what we don't know, so to speak, so we've built in checks and balances. Admins have special permissions, but taking an action with one of those tools always generates a publicly-viewable log, and those actions are subject to review at Deletion Review, by posting an {{unblock}} request or contacting UTRS, objecting to the action at ANI, or any number of other means, and admins can always be held to account by ArbCom. For functionaries (checkuser/oversight), those things can't be reviewable publicly for obvious reasons, but the functionaries are reviewed by one another. (And having been on those teams, I can tell you that those peer reviews do in fact happen with some frequency; they're not just a hypothetical possibility). And of course, they can also be reviewed and held to account by ArbCom. ArbCom itself does indeed handle some matters that can't be disclosed to others, but ArbCom itself is reviewable by the community every year at election time. So, yes, that kind of stuff can happen. And that's not even necessarily to assert malice. It just may very well be that someone who's reviewing the decision might know that Joe generally knows his stuff, and dammit I've got five thousand things to catch up on, so, sure, I'll take a quick look at his ban proposal, looks fine, sign off, move on to the next thing I need to do today, failing to catch the crucial piece of context that Joe also missed. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:15, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
@Seraphimblade: you know I hadn't even considered groupthink, which you seem to be suggesting as playing a part. This is also in line with Llywrch's observation about the general dismissiveness in the email thread. It makes sense. Create for yourself a system where you are accountable to no one outside your little group, and you can choose to side with that little group, or with what is essentially a bunch of randos. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:44, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

‘The rule of law ..degenerates to rigidity and inertia in procedures and over-regulation, specialization of bureaucrats leads to civil servants who perform acts without understanding their consequences, and personal stability and arcane internal rules create a closed system out of touch with its environment. One possible consequence of the latter is groupthink. Groupthink means the unconscious minimizing of intra-organizational conflict in making decisions at the price of their quality, which can lead to disaster.'Wolfgang C. Müller, 'Governments and Bureaucracies,' in Daniele Caramani(ed.),Comparative Politics, Oxford University Press, 2017 pp.136-154 p.149

‘In too many corporations, . the incentive system was (and is) skewed against dissent and independent analysis. A 1962 study of young executives, for instance, found that the more anxious they were about moving up the job ladder, “the less accurately they communicate(d) problem-related information.” They were smart to do so. Another study of fifty-two middle managers found that there was a correlation between upward mobility and not telling the boss about things that had gone wrong. The most successful executives tended not to disclose information about fights, budget problems, and so on.’ James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, Knopf Doubleday 2005 p.205

These two are just an extremely small excerpt from a vast literature on bureaucracies and their problems, and what is disconcerting for many editors is that, in the massive bungling evident here, internally and at a communicative level, the body asserting this innovative power over an encyclopedic experiment seems totally unaware of the academic literature bearing on its own liabilities to error, groupthink, and the internal dynamics of closed organisations.Nishidani (talk) 09:05, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
There is no opposition in a echo chamber, effectively cultivating the "righteousness" of a certain action. The WMF T&S team seems to have a history of zero transparency and accountability, and acting on mere suppositions. Given the fact that we have observed this behaviour in the past and now, it is obvious that no one within the WMF has red-flagged their actions (which led me to conclude T&S is an echo chamber) otherwise, actions like this would not be met with increased stonewalling and lack of responses, when let's keep it mind, their main job is to enforce trust and safety. Gotta give it to them for being so ironic. --qedk (t 桜 c) 09:38, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Romaine now stated on the same mailing list that he will never attend any WMF-funded event as he does not feel safe to do so.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:37, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
For reference, the mailing list post is here. Carcharoth (talk) 14:51, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Jesus that's terrifying - at the top of any meta discussion page, we need a combined list of T&S-caused incidents. The issue with Fram could be viewed as a good-faith epic cock-up and abysmal communication. The Belgium issue warrants disciplinary actions to be taken against the T&S staff. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:44, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    I concur Buffs (talk) 18:46, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I know you're following @Doc James: (and heavily pinged) but I just wanted to make absolutely sure you were aware of this issue. No immediate outburst of anger but a well-thought through concern by an entire chapter. Depending on if the ZH-wiki issues are included we now have at least 3/4 major T&S issues, at least 1 of which is definitely not a good-faith incident. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:37, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The initial message, triggering this discussion, was a private message from Romaine (WMBE Board member) on his own initiative; not verified, nor approved by (the Board of) Wikimedia Belgium. Please read this reply carefully in order to try to bring more clarity.
I have immediately notified Romaine that he abused his function in the WMBE Board to communicate private matters on the general mailinglist.
Since Monday I am in private contact, both with T&S and the management of Wikimedia Nederland to follow-up this dispute. This caused delay in replying to this message. The Wikimedia Belgium Board will continue to evaluate the situation and take further measures.
Wikimedia Belgium wants to apologize for any moral damage that the initial message provoked.
What one member of the general assembly did propose is that an internal audit could be requested to investigate the general behavior, the working, the completeness of procedures, and the treatment of cases by the Trust and Safety (T&S), and the grants team.
Specifically, we have encountered as a chapter repeatedly during the last several years a lack of appeal, both in the T&S complaints handling, and in the grants team handling sAPG requests.
Specifically in the T&S handling procedures, the rights of the alleged offender are not sufficiently guaranteed. There is a possibility that rumors are invoking a punishment without careful verification of the facts, without the defendants being sanctioned in a neutral way, and without taking into account certain handicaps like hard-hearing, or autism.
That being said, please stop discussing this specific conflict publicly, because a lot of important details are missing, are single-sided interpretations, or even completely wrong.
-- Geertivp (talk) 22:15, 20 June 2019 (UTC) Geert Van Pamel, chair of Wikimedia Belgium.
Genuinely more impressive than anything we've had from WMF relating to the Fram case. Geert, I applaud you. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:18, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
OTOH, from my POV, this discussion highlights once again how we've failed as a community in our response. People have taken the private view of one individual as representing the whole organisation for no good reason. Further the incident which seems to be of most concern is not something new. I recall reading about a while ago, from somewhere. (I have little interest in wikimania or such things so not sure how I came across it. I think maybe it was from a signpost news report.) It's been extensively discussed and even before Geert Van Pamel's comments, I'm not sure there was any reason for us to discuss that specific case publicly here, especially without looking into the details which to be blunt I'm not sure how many here have. It would be rather sad if what I read a few months ago means I'm better informed than even 20% of the people commenting here. Nil Einne (talk) 00:35, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
P.S. A quick search found that the incident itself was about 11 months ago, or at least discussion of it I found was. As per above, I'm not sure if this is when I read about it. Also I probably should mention my reading at the time was it was quite difficult to get a balanced assessment of precisely what happened between the parties because at least some of them weren't interested in talking about it publicly in detail. While there could still be reasonable criticisms of various aspects of how the WMF handled the incident from a transparency, communication, investigation, appeals and rights of the offender stand point; coming to the conclusion that the WMF's actions were unjustified is difficult without knowing both sides of the story and even if I had looked in depth I don't think I could have known back then. It seems perhaps more has been said now that it's come up again although still probably not enough. Yet it seems people here are quite willing to do so. Funnily enough one of the reasonable concerns over the WMF's actions both in that case and in this case, is whether the WMF themselves made enough efforts to understand both sides of the story. Yet from what I see here, people here are quite willing to do the same. (I would note there is one particularly important aspect of this issue. This was established very early on in the email thread and even clearer now we have confirmation that the message was a private email and not sent on behalf of the Wikimedia Belgium. Yet I'm not sure whether all commentators here appreciate even though they probably should. I'm not going to say exactly what it is since I do agree that there is no need for more public discussion of the issue. I'm hesitant to even post this, but feel it's perhaps the best balance of appealing to those here to investigate if they are going to comment.) I do praise those who have withdrawn their comments when realising perhaps there is more here than meets the eye, although note any investigation probably should have happened before commenting. Of course by no means is this unique to one side, in fact my vague memory of the specific case is there appeared to be examples of it on both sides in the email and discussions over the case back then. But given the current feelings against the WMF, the discussion here does seem to have been mostly in one direction. Nil Einne (talk) 01:10, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
@Nil Einne: Thanks for posting this: it needed to be said, and a few trivial quibbles aside, I agree with all that you write here. However, let me also add that this exemplifies perfectly why "Framgate" is so egregious: it has destroyed so much of the community's trust in T&S (and by extension the WMF as a whole), and that trust is critical for the long term health of the project (and, quite possibly, the movement as a whole).
The mailinglist messages also demonstrate aptly that—completely regardless of what the intent was—T&S's handling of issues in effect pits different vulnerable groups up against one another, and making the community take sides: which vulnerable group is most deserving of our support and protection? Which group gets to have unconditional respect for their experience of a situation, and which group has their views dismissed as simply self-serving? We need to find ways of handling such issues with individuals that supports and protects all vulnerable groups equally. And that includes preserving some dignity and possibility of redemption even for those individuals who have ojectively and demonstrably acted in a way that hurt others (which may or may not have been the case here). Whatever else is the truth of what happened, T&S have not managed to achieve that here.
Perhaps that was always impossible in this specific situation, but the observable results are in themselves grounds for introspection and looking for lessons to learn. The sentiment expressed (by someone who shall remain nameless: several people have expressed similar sentiments) that How can we feel safe … if the decisions of T&S are questionned … is precisely the worst possible response. When there are negative effects of T&S's actions (and losing a long term prolific volunteer that was clearly seen as a positive force by many is a negative effect) the first people to question the decision should be T&S; and the community should absolutely question their actions and hold them to account. The conclusion may well be that there was no better way to handle that particular situation, and that it was necessary to prevent even greater negative effects, but there is no entity in this entire movement that should not be exempt from having their acts and decisions questioned! Politely and constructively, preferably, but definitely questioned.--Xover (talk) 07:17, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
  • T&S seems to operate under a presumption of guilt until innocence is proven beyond even a slightly unreasonable doubt, using their own undisclosed criteria for the determination thereof. At best, this would seem to indicate carelessness on their part; at worst, it's a willful abuse of power. Either way, it's going to do a lot of damage to the WMF's credibility for a long time to come.Kurtis (talk) 10:20, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Agree that there is an oppressive stench that is originating from the conduct of WMF's T&S team that needs to be answered for by way of a complete review of process and audit of adherence to process. What can be safely said is that the T&S teams' processes appear to be highly prejudicial to the subject of complaints, such that the entire ‘Trust and Safety’ mechanism is vulnerable to abuse by vexatious complainants, internal or otherwise. Dariusz’s assertion that it is the job of the T&S’ team to ‘react’ to reports is absent-minded logic that I fear best describes WMF’s overall attitude to the T&S team. Obviously, it is the job of the T&S team to INVESTIGATE reports it receives with the aim of determining the truth prior to taking any action. The investigation part appears to be lacking, as does the community consultation, and the 'reacting' part is overzealous at best.   «l|Promethean|l»  (talk) 17:00, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

On lying

Above, there are several suggestions that either Fram (who has claimed not to have taken any off-wiki actions) or Jan/the WMF (whose actions seem to reference private evidence) must be lying, since either all Fram's actions are public and on-wiki (in edit histories and logs) or they're not.

However, that overlooks the fact that "private evidence" may not refer to anything Fram did, but rather to the private statements of people with whom Fram interacted, and specifically private statements about how those people felt about those interactions.

m:Trust and Safety/Resources/What is a conduct warning is vital reading regarding this seeming discrepancy:

Because of privacy concerns and due to our obligation to protect the identity of a reporting party, however, we may not always be able to tell the person who receives the warning exactly what situation(s) or behavior led to the warning. As a result, the experience of being given one of these conduct warnings can be confusing and frightening for a person who may not be able to identify for themselves what they are supposed to have done wrong.

Bolding mine. I am not at all happy with the approach the WMF has taken (and is taking) regarding this situation, but I think AGF requires us to consider that both Fram and Jan are telling us the truth, and understanding the role of "private evidence" as it refers to statements made privately about Fram would seem to square that circle. 28bytes (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

This is disturbing. "You'll be banned if you keep misbehaving, but we won't tell you what you are doing wrong, but if you keep doing it, you'll be banned". --Rschen7754 00:18, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
So... private evidence that is “I feel harassed by Fram”? That was what happened in the first conduct warning. Possibly the second warning too based on the two diffs. starship.paint (talk) 00:20, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
And those AGF assumptions lead inevitably (I think) to the conclusion that all of this was based on whatever was said in the complaints sent to T&S (as opposed to some bad conduct by Fram off-site), and those complaints seem to have been reviewed uncritically, or according to a different standard than community norms. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:24, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
This seems to be both the most realistic thing and par for the course for T&S given the WMBE situation. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 00:25, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

however, we may not always be able to tell the person who receives the warning exactly what situation(s) or behavior led to the warning.

Reminds me of a time at Wikipedia -- before some of you started -- when Mike Godwin was chief counsel for the Foundation. Occasionally he'd blank a biographical article. Wikipedians would ask him why he blanked it. "There was information in it that the subject complained about, which we found was derogatory, & so we acted per WP:OFFICE." They'd ask him what was the objectionable material so they could restore the article without it. "I can't tell you because I can't repeat derogatory information." This would continue with a game of 20 questions, sometimes ending with a hint of what needed to be removed, sometime the Wikpedians would just give up & move on. Some things never change around here.

I lost a good chunk of respect for Mike Godwin because of actions like that, fuck his wisdom about the Internet. -- llywrch (talk) 01:09, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

What would be the point of punishing someone without telling them what they have done to deserve it? Pure cruelty? Darwin Ahoy! 00:28, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 4) There is that, but that still gets back to this being a rather bizarre procedure unlikely to be helpful at all. (And apparently, they even know that, in their own note about it!) I mean, imagine a conversation like "You did something wrong and upset someone, and that's unacceptable. Please stop doing that." "Um, oh, well I'm sorry about that, and I don't want to upset anyone. What should I stop doing, and who did I upset?" "We can't tell you. That's private." "But then how can I stop doing it if I don't know what I did?" "Well, just don't do it any more, and try to avoid interacting with that person." "But I don't know what I did or who to avoid interacting with!" (Repeat as many times as you like.) Such a process could not have been better invented by Kafka himself. Seraphimblade Talk to me 00:30, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
No no no no no. Not "pure cruelty" but part of the "New Cruelty." (This short video explains for those who don't know - entirely safe for work, children, the perpetually offended, and delicate Wikimedia insiders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVEmlyqDgFk . Dan Murphy Talk 00:38, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Generally, in cases of harassment you would block the person as a means of protecting those being harassed, not as a means of punishment. It isn't about cruelty, but about stopping the problem from continuing. - Bilby (talk) 10:17, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The existence of off-Wiki evidence has not been confirmed. The WMF is stonewalling requests as to whether such evidence even exists. The "private evidence" angle is unconvincing, given that no one has suggested that there is any such evidence. Not to Fram, in explaining his ban. Not to the community, in very numerous statements. Not even in response to direct questioning. In fact, the WMF has yet to even state the fact that Fram breached the ToU clause that he was banned under, and will not do so, even in response to direct questioning. I suppose you can't be a liar if you never open your mouth. ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:03, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
In regard to the lying point, has there actually been some reason to think there was any off wiki conduct for a while now? My impression for a while has been that there is no clear suggestion from any party that there was. The WMF didn't say there was. The only thing they really said was that they received a complaint from one or more parties and they felt they couldn't reveal the details including the diffs because it may lead to the complainant being identified in violation of the privacy expectations the WMF offered and from that identification the risk of them being harassed whether on or off wiki by third parties. As I mentioned before IMO the way people have responded to this and brought the private lives of some in to it without any real evidence seems to justify their concerns if not their handling of the situation. In other words I'm not sure why your comment is anything new. Isn't it what we've all known about and one of the things we've been discussing for a while i.e. whether it's fair or right that the details should be kept secret if it's all on wiki and also whether any of the on wiki stuff that people have identified is justification for a ban. And whether we are able to make a fair assessment of Fram's edits especially given the large number, the difficulty correlating and looking for possible problems like following etc when we have absolutely no real idea what the concerns are and why the editor/s had them. (Other than the 2 or so specific concerns that were revealed to Fram.) And whether it was fair that Fram wasn't able to offer their explanation for the problems someone and the WMF personnel involved saw. Etc etc. Of course likewise the possibility that off wiki conduct is involved (by which I would include emails sent by Fram) also can't be ruled out from what the WMF have said since they're explicitly refused to provide enough details to know. If this is the case this would I believe mean Fram is lying unless the WMF been taken in by a joe JOB. Which would be one of the reasons people have concerns by the fact not even Fram was allowed to see precisely what concerns lead to the block. The possibility that the WMF is lying is there although as Swarm said the WMFs lack of info means there's a lot more room for what they've said to be true. Still it is possible there is no private complainant or they don't give a damn about the complainants privacy and are just using it as an excuse etc as others have suggested. Nil Einne (talk) 08:40, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm rather concerned that in the above discussion, and elsewhere, that there are implicit assumptions and outright accusations that the complainant(s) here are liars. Aside from being an unproductive avenue for discussion, there is a pretty high likelihood that this is actually victim blaming and I'd suggest that editors reflect on this. Nick-D (talk) 09:56, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Yeah. Accusing the victim of lying both does no good and is proving T&S' point for them. (FWIW, I firmly believe that the complainant acted in good faith unless and until hard evidence proves otherwise, and that evidence is not about to be forthcoming.) Bear in mind that Fram isn't exactly a saint, and has had editors calling for him to be blocked, banned, deopped, or all of the above at various points in time. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 10:03, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Agree it's most likely that both WMF & Fram are telling the truth – and that it's the WMF who are leaving things out. With Fram, I'm over 99% confident he's an honest person. Granted Fram can be hyper-critical. (E.g. see here for discussion of his habit of "subjecting an editor to levels of scrutiny nobody could withstand") Yet he's always came across as fair minded (e.g. See this 2012 comment )

There's at least six scenarios consistent with both sides telling the truth. But most are unsatisfactory, especially when considered in light of the fact the WMF elected to give a 1 year term instead of a perma-ban. It might be helpful if I lay out the most likely scenario, which is that the WMF's deep dive was augmented by AI. And so from their PoV they may feel it can't be argued with. Because science. I'll also share some insight on the wider context & what the WMF might be trying to achieve. Warning – it may get a little TLDR. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:55, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Data Science, Framgate, and the optimal balance between scrutiny & casualness

For years now, the Wikipedia DB has been the most well studied source of data for scientists working on understanding & solving the problem of online harassment & toxicity. All the big SM platform owners have teams working on Wikipedia data, partly for their own internal use, partly to benefit the wider internet. They also pay for various independent teams to work on it via Kaggle competitions and the like. Thanks to the work of activists like editor E.3 and others, folk like Zuckerberg are well aware of the dark side of the online word they have created. They seek to bring about a new and kinder, more inclusive cyber universe, variously called Web 3.0 , Web 4.0, the Age of the Inclusionist machine, etc.

For our purposes, two key properties of the forthcomming paradigm are:
• AI powered edit filters that fire in real time before a post is committed. These will tell the user if their post could be perceived as hostile, sarcastic, dismissive, condescending, overly generalist, etc, and then suggest various ways to re-factor. Thus they hope to vastly improve the quality & friendliness of online discourse.
• Comparative reports letting platform owners identify their most abrasive users, so they can manually intervene, if the AI alone is not causing problematic users to become less abrasive.
To help folks visualise, currently available reports look something like this:

Editor Admin Edits ToxicEdits %Toxic
user1 Yes 200,000 12,000 6.00
user2 No 250,000 12,500 5.00
user3 No 120,000 7,000 5.83

The data above is for illustrative purposes and is made up. It's the convention on the DS scene that one never publicly posts anything that identifies specific editors and their place in the rankings. The actual reports tend to more detailed, for example, showing how many of the "toxic" edits were reverts, tagging, hostile talk page posts, hostile edit summaries, etc etc.

Once you've identified a particular hostile editor, you can then drill down into their contributions, creating a report that shows the top 10 "victims" ,which can then verify an allegation of harassment.

These reports are made with tools many orders of magnitude beyond anything commonly used by the more technical community members. Comparing Xtools or quarry to Data science tech is like comparing a stone age club to a modern assault rifle. We're talking Machine Learning , AI, algorithms that have been trained and verified by hundreds of data scientists. A powerful enough data science cluster could analyse Fram's ~175k contributions in seconds, and then in a few hours compare them to the contributions of every other editor across the entire history of English Wikipedia.

This may sound extortionary, but there are ways the community could verify this, as almost all the data & much of the code is public domain. Anyone with a credit card can get access to a Data science platform within minutes by signing up for services on the public clouds - e.g. Azure Databricks or Google Datalab. The difficulty would be, to produce the reports mentioned above, you're likely going to need to spend upwards of 30k, even with an academic discount, per the shear volume of data involved. The solution might be for someone like admin Stephan Schulz to help out. He is a reputable computer scientist, and has weighed in powerfully against the WMF on this page, so hopefully would be trusted by all. At his university, the good professor would most likely have access to a powerful cluster suitable to run demanding Jupyter loads, which he could use for free. To get started, he could run through some of the publicly available gear the Foundation kindly made available over on Github. That's quite outdated now but it's a good starting point, there's now all sorts of more advanced Wikipedia harassment related code if you look about on Kaggle, FigShare etc.

Ok, lets turn now to a look at what might be the wider context for Framgate - the Foundations long running desire to encourage more inclusion friendly editing. I possibly have some insight worth sharing due to a few hours talking about these things with Executive Director Sue Gardener back in 2010.

So the situation back then was that the years long Inc/ Del wars were finally drawing to a close. Where as once Wikipedia has been an Inclusionist paradise, even by 2008, high profile tech commentators were already declaring that "Deletionists rule Wikipedia". Still, in early 2010, Inclusionist legends like ANobody & Ikip had yet to be perma-banned, so some of us still had hope. In a desperate attempt to forestall an irreversible deletionist victory, the Colonel & I attended a London meetup to seek the WMF's aid. I want to stress we'd never had even dreamed of asking for sanctions against deletionist editors. We merely hoped for things like the WMF's aid in demoting deletionist policies to essays, elevating folk like Dream & Milowent to Stewards, and other reasonable things like that. In one sense Sue couldn't have been more sympathetic to our cause. She spent more than an hour explaining how we were more right than we knew. She outlined huge internal research projects the WMF had conducted into the Inc/Del conflict, and how it plays out in the Lifecycle for Wikipedias in every single language. In the beginning there's always an Inclusionist golden age where everyone is friendly and accepting of new content. Then cynicism and hyper-critical attitudes set in, with deletionists making it increasingly harder for editors to add new content. Sue went on to talk about how the Foundation's research had repeatedly found that key reasons for editors being driven way included deletions, reverts, tagging, and overly critical negative feedback for their efforts.

On recent evidence, it looks like similar thinking still prevails inside the WMF, and among the academics who advise them, now backed by a 9 years of further research & far more sophisticated data science than was available in the WMF's first decade. E.g. in the youtube that advertised the forthcoming universal code of conduct posted a day after the Framban, a professor sates If you're constantly getting negative feedback for doing something, how often you are going to do it?

Or looking at an extract from a warning email the WMF sent to Fram: If even if your concerns have been valid, their raising has been done with a degree of abruptness, repetition, scrutiny and persistence that feels like hounding to the person on the receiving end, and causes them to abandon the project or limit their contributions

If the above analyses is correct, it raised the questions as to why the WMF doesn't intervene more directly against excessive scrutiny? The answer is likely the same reason Sue gave to the Colonel & me on why the WMF couldn't help Inclusionists back in 2010. The reason being that the WMF had to leave editorial control to the community, as if they interfered even in a minor way, it would leave then liable to all sorts of legal prosecution. So as they're now becoming ever more convinced that something needs to be done, per the ever growing body of objective evidence showing how damaging excessive scrutiny is, they are desperately trialling the radical tactic of issuing bans to the foremost critical editors, starting with Fram.

(Of course, this can only happen in cases when they get a legitimate cause bello in the form of a credible complaint, but as they further advertise the ability for regular editors to report to T&S, it's likely they'll have no shortage of complaints against the highly active critical editors.)

This seems undesirable even from an Inclusionist perspective. Its almost as though the WMF don't realise that when Christians created the Dawkin's rap , it was intended as a parody & warning against excess rationalism, not as a literal blueprint for introducing the machine age. They've already kicked off with a star chamber dispatching a grab team to disappear an editor, just like the beginning of the rap. They seem to think their 'deep dive' analyses was infallible, I'm half expecting the next post from the WMF to be a verbose way of saying "Data science is the only way to know y'all, you stand with science y'all, or you can fall y'all."

What the WMF don't seem to appreciate is that regardless of what data science tells them, Fram's on-wiki actions cannot be harassment in the eyes of any editor who recognises the primacy of policy. As policy essentially tells us that even repeated negative scrutiny cannot be harassment when it involves ["tracking a user's contributions for policy violations"]

Moving forwards, per Jimbo's recently confirmed vision for the community to "be self-sustaining and self-governing" without needing these sort of interventions from the WMF, it might be functional to make the new DS tools & "toxicity" user rankings available to the community. This would need some finesse – it would be important to ensure only slight relaxation of quality control standards in favour of Inclusionism, causualness & acceptance. The last thing that's needed would be for such rankings to be used as an excuse to witch hunt the most active scrutiny-minded admins & their enforcement minded non admin helpers. It can take a long time to understand, but Deletionists are actually essential to the health of the encyclopaedia, there's a kind of necessary opposition between Deletionists & Inclusionists, kind of like what we have between finger & thumb. As long as we're taling about historical data, it could even be seen as a badge of honour to be high in the toxicity rankings, as that would mean you were doing lots of work upholding quality standards. That would have to change moving forward.

On the community side, a meaningful concession might involve a little softening of the wording in WP: Harassment which (from a non-Wikipedian perspective) offers a 'policy based licence to Harass' to those prone to excessive focus on scrutinising individual editors. Of course, it would be good if the WMF would reverse their ban & desysop of Fram before we make that sort of change.

There's a fair bit of speculation in much of the above analyses. I don't know for sure if the WMF used data science in their 'deep dive' on Fram, or if I've correctly judged their wider motivations. But I do know for a fact other large platforms have started to use DS in deciding who to ban, and the above does seem a good fit with available evidence. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:55, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

That is scary if true (I would encourage others to read the above, even though it is long). It may be worth directly asking if any machine learning or AI or machine analyses were used here. Surely that would not be 'private'? On lying and possible scenarios, I asked a direct question of Fram about emails over on his meta talk page (he has moved to there instead of Commons, as there were worries about disputes being imported). Fram's reply is here. Carcharoth (talk) 13:38, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

About the accusation(s) of lying by one or both parties; I am one of those who has made the charge, and this comes from reading through the history to this point in a couple of hours. Either Fram is lying about the reason given to him by the WMF at the time of the enactment of his ban, the "Fuck the Arbcom..." post, which has not been challenged that I am aware of, or the WMF have lied or are lying because it is now commented that the ban is about issues that arose from a "deep dive" investigation of Fram. The only way that neither party is lying is that the WMF has taken the view that a lot of invective at WP assets - that is both individuals or groups volunteer and paid - is bannable without reference to Arbcom or explanation outside of the diff previously given. That is frankly ridiculous (and therefore not outside the realms of possibility). However, it is more likely that it is something else and for reasons of privacy and safety, and trust, this cannot be disclosed. That said, then the diff that Fram claimed was given as the reason is 'knowingly not accurate' and misleading; it was a lie. Whatever the Safety side of the groups designation, I am not sure that anyone can claim T&S have a remit for the T in the title. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:14, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Yet another admin resigns

Just making a note here that yet another admin, Gadfium, a user with 127k edits from 2004, has resigned over this incident, specifically citing WMF "refusal to explain their action in any meaningful way, to provide any mechanism for an appeal, or to negotiate on a compromise". ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:12, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

  • To put this into perspective, I've lived on Wikipedia since 2004. I'm obsessed with Wikipedia. Like, to the point of it being unhealthy. I've given Wikipedia hours, days, months, years. I have 26k edits. Gadfium has given this project an incomprehensible part of their life, over the past decade-and-a-half. And yet this is crossing a line for them, and they'll forfeit their tools over this. Anyone who thinks that this is just a big overreaction needs to let this sink in. ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:32, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
And the WMF doesn't care two hoots. I've been around for 14 years and close on 100K edits. I'd dearly like to relinquish my admin tools over this, but the WMF would rejoice. I can probably do more harm (figuratively speaking) to the WMF's hypocrisy by keeping them. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:29, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
@Kudpung:, why do you think the WMF would rejoice? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 08:40, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
PaleCloudedWhite, You'd need to be familiar with my work all these years on Wikipedia. I've had several tough, important battles with the WMF - on-Wiki, off-Wiki, and at conferences. I (we) won them all. The WMF doesn't like losing face to us unpaid skivvies. Swarm knows what I mean. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:12, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Indeed. If we're going down the route of assuming that this is a conspiracy rather than a cock-up, then one of the more plausible conspiracy theories is that the WMF are intentionally trying to provoke a mass resignation, to allow them to repopulate the editor base with people less likely to challenge their pet projects. I think it's unlikely, and that it's far more likely that T&S received a handful of spurious complaints on the basis of a coordinated campaign by people with grudges, took the complaints at face value and acted without investigating, and are now too proud to admit they fucked up and are trying to invent post hoc justifications, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility. ‑ Iridescent 09:24, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
How on earth would they go about repopulating the editor base? It's not like it's easy to get new people on board. Those willing to give the necessary time and commitment to this project are for the most part already on board. And I don't really think it's the supposed "toxic atmosphere", if indeed such a thing exists, that is holding back the swarms of people waiting to come and edit.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:34, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Amakuru, they think it's the supposed "toxic atmosphere" that is holding back the swarms of people waiting to come and edit. From their point of view the existing community is holding back a huge swarm of people who are just waiting to pour in and make things better; the WMF has a dedicated staff of ten people devoted to "detoxifying" us. This is the official party line on the matter. ‑ Iridescent 09:49, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
They do not care if the swarms come edit or not. After all, to them, the project is done and we have successfully built the world's largest fundraising machine for them.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:04, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I think it's just a big cock-up. Eissfeld himself has admitted he is in charge but doesn't have a clue what his department is doing, and the people or person in charge of Eissfeld probably don't know what he is doing - or supposed to be doing. Iridescent's conspiracy theory is an interesting one, but I don't believe the WMF have enough collective intelligence to mount such a conspiracy. All they believe is that because they get paid they are more intelligent than the 1,000s of graduates who are building this encyclopedia for free. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:32, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
@Kudpung: - source for in charge but doesn't have a clue what his department is doing? I missed that. starship.paint (talk) 11:36, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
@Kudpung: The answer is here:
the whole story of wiki as a principle is nothing else than fixing social stuff by software (as a form of techne as well as episteme).however, that there would be a lot of drama ahead was clear at the very day we rushed to adopt the "movement rhetoric" and there will be more on a far wider range of topics. marid has left the teapot, regards -- --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 03:18, 2 October 2011 (UTC) Nishidani (talk) 12:52, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I assume that's a paraphrase of "while I oversee Operations, among other teams, I do not participate in the day-to-day tasks of Operations". ‑ Iridescent 12:38, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
AFAICS, that band of ten people, with only one exception, are all software engineers. What qualifies them for a job in T&S or the Community health initiative? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:39, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, that team is responsible for developing new tools to handle reporting, evaluation, and detecting of harassment, and better tools for blocking. Hence the software engineering focus. The T&S team only shares two people from the Community health initiative, - Bilby (talk) 10:56, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
  • all admins that resign will get their permissions back at the drop of a hat, they know that, a minor protest, nothing to worry about even if a hundred protest. If you're an admin and you really want to protest, resign and lock your account so you can't come back. Govindaharihari (talk) 17:21, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The problem is, resigning doesn't help. The remaining editors will do the job, and in the worst case, when backlogs rise (they shouldn't, we are not to harass editors who create crappy articles anyway, just leave it be) they will use some algorithm to automagically promote everyone with more than 5000 edits and who have used the word 'fuck' less than 2 times outside of mainspace. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:42, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

In before the Peace Prize

I'm glad this situation has occurred before Wikipedia gets its future Nobel Peace Prize, so it at least will be wrestled over pre-Prize. Shifts towards openness should occur on both sides, and both side should stand down and give Fram a trial by their peers, not their betters (a bit of an Upstairs-Downstairs vibe seems to have gotten everybody on edge). If a ban is to be given, fellow Wikipedians should be the ones to do it, and be it a year, a month, or time served, time to start respecting the help again (and maybe think of upping the full travel and housing scholarships for the yearly conference by several hundred or so regulars, who've never been, can mix their strategies and bar tabs with their fellow workers - which would be doable with a topic-specific yearly corporate donation drive...esp. post-Prize). Randy Kryn (talk) 19:34, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

That is what everyone here against the ban has been arguing this whole time. Most of the furore is because the WMF quite explicitly bypassed ArbCom to levy a limited ban, with no good explanation for either the bypass or the limits. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 19:38, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I know. The Foundation is being given a wake up call, and they should hurry and wake up (although continued commotion serves a purpose too, as Groundhog Day has its fans and its morals). Randy Kryn (talk) 19:42, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
They don't show any particular signs of waking up -- certainly T&S is still snoozing merrily behind its stone wall. If the WMF Board intends to do something about this, they need to shake their tails and do it. Unfortunately, what it appears they are doing is waiting for it to blow over so they can do nothing, and then continue to usurp rights which have been historically that of the community. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:47, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Well put. Carrite (talk) 04:20, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

A compilation of what WMF and Fram have told us

As some of you may know, I've been maintaining a summary of events at WP:FRAMSUM. However, as more events occurred, I thought it would be pertinent to compile a specific list of what WMF has effectively told us, and what has Fram told us. I thought it would be pertinent to reflect the state of events 10 days on. starship.paint (talk) 06:02, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

WMF: Click [show] -->
  • Fram was banned by the Wikimedia Foundation from editing the English Wikipedia for a period of 1 year, consistent with the Terms of Use
  • The ban does not offer an opportunity to appeal.
  • WMF acted on complaints from the community to ban Fram.
  • WMF said regarding Fram, the issues reported to us fell under section 4 of the terms of use, as noted above, specifically under the first provision entitled "harassing and abusing others."
  • WMF did send more than one of those warnings/reminders before the most recent step of banning Fram
  • Regarding the length of the ban, a one-year local ban was placed because there was reason to think time might change behavior, or where disruption is limited to a single project
  • WMF felt it would have been improper to ask the Arbcom to adjudicate a case in which it was one primary target of the person in question, Fram.
  • WMF feels criticism of ArbCom should also remain strictly respectful in tone towards others.
  • WMF will not release details about Trust & Safety investigations due to privacy concerns. They will not name or disclose the identities of the individuals involved in reporting incidents related to this Office Action, and cannot tell you what specific behaviors by Fram brought about this action, cannot publicly disclose details of this or any particular case
  • the community does not and cannot have all the facts of this case


Fram: Click [show] -->

(1) In April 2018, WMF emailed him a "conduct warning".

I have taken a look at several conflicts you’ve had over the years with other community members as well as Foundation staff, and I have noticed increasing levels of hostility, aggressive expression—some of which, to the point of incivility—and counterproductive escalations [...] Indeed, I have not seen you literally threatening other contributors. But, I have observed the sum of your activity in certain areas of interest (like copyvios, for example, or automated editing) having a similar effect to that of a threat: causing contributors to be scared to continue to contribute in fear of being constantly monitored and later attacked through community process, and eventually driving them away. From what I've seen, you are very good at spotting problematic edits and editing patterns; the issue is with the way and the perseverance with which you appear to approach the editors responsible for them. In many cases, even if your concerns have been valid, their raising has been done with a degree of abruptness, repetition, scrutiny and persistence that feels like hounding to the person on the receiving end, and causes them to abandon the project or limit their contributions. Now, I don't think this is your intention, but this does seem to be the result in several cases, hence the warning. So, I'm not saying you should stop trying to improve En.WP., only that in doing so you also consider how your activity and approach impacts the users you address and other readers of your comments, and how it contributes to an unfriendly volunteering environment that discourages them from returning to it.

(2) In March 2019, WMF emailed him a "reminder" based on two October 2018 edits [2] [3]

We remain convinced that the activity on Laura’s articles listed above was not intended to intimidate or make her feel uncomfortable [...] However, in the hopes of avoiding any future issues and in the spirit of Laura’s own request on her talk page, we would like to ask that you refrain from making changes to content that she produces, in any way (directly or indirectly), from this point on. This includes but is not limited to direct editing of it, tagging, nominating for deletion, etc. If you happen to find issues with Laura’s content, we suggest that you instead leave it for others to review and handle as they see fit. This approach will allow you to continue to do good work while reducing the potential for conflict between you and Laura. We hope for your cooperation with the above request, so as to avoid any sanctions from our end in the future. To be clear, we are not placing an interaction ban between you and Laura at this time. We ask that her request to stay away from her and the content she creates be respected, so that there is no need for any form of intervention or punitive actions from our end."

(3) In June 2019, WMF banned Fram and emailed him this, citing this May 2019 edit [4].

This decision has come following extensive review of your conduct on that project and is an escalation to the Foundation’s past efforts to encourage course correction, including a conduct warning issued to you on April 2018 and a conduct warning reminder issued to you on March 2019. With those actions in mind, this ban has been triggered following your recent abusive communications on the project, as seen here. This action is effective immediately and it is non-appealable.


Thanks. For me as an "outsider" it helps a lot, and my understanding after reading this is
  • Several (many?) editors at enwp has taken offense in the tone and wording Fram has been using (like Laura express)
  • Probably individuals at WMF has taken offense in the tone and wording Fram has been using
  • Possibly individuals in ArbCom has taken offense in the tone and wording Fram has been using
  • Many of you do not agree Fram has gone over the border of what can be seen as acceptable. Or any way not bad enough to deserve a ban.
Would it not be better instead of "being angry with the messenger" to start reflect of what should be tolerated as acceptable tone and wording at enwp? (and implementations of processes at enwp that this type of situation will be handled within enwp, and not escalated to T&S) Yger (talk) 08:51, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
From my reading of the pages it is very little to do with Fram upsetting people but the case of an entity outside of WP:EN taking action against Fram, via a process that is only accountable to itself. There are indeed processes within WP:EN to address any issue regarding Fram's interactions either generally or specifically to individuals - and none of these have been enacted via referral by WMF. This what has created this community response; the imposition of an judge, jury, and jailer without the communities knowledge let alone agreement. To answer your point, it was the complainant(s) who decided that they would take it outside of WP:EN - sidestepping other processes including one which could have afforded anonymity. Perhaps it is possible for WP:EN to have its own T&S style recourse for people who are vulnerable, but it needs to be grown out of the WP:EN community and its values of transparency where possible (and staffed by people on terms which mean that their decisions are accountable). The issue being discussed here is about the relationship between WP:EN and WMF/T&S, via the medium of the ban of Fram. LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:12, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
@Yger: - what tone and wording can be seen from the Laura diffs? [5] [6]. We can't reflect what really went wrong unless we are told exactly, this is wrong, that is wrong. starship.paint (talk) 16:17, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I read her statement on Fram at the start on User talk:LauraHale. And I actually think a "T&S style recourse" on enwp, could be a constructive solution to stop something similar happening in the future (WMF clamping in om enwp internal affairs) , when it is "only" related to perceived harassment.Yger (talk) 17:03, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Precedent

Some thoughts in response to the statement by Jimbo, #14 above:

We on the board are in active conversations. I think you will receive a comprehensive, cogent reply, but we are looking to be thoughtful, reflective, to examine every aspect of this, and neither allow invalid precedent to be set, nor to set invalid precedent. The best way to avoid a bad outcome is to look to first principles, look at what has gone wrong, and to propose a process for healing but also for building a process that works better in the future.

  • By creating a process which can levy an unappealable sanction, the WMF created this situation. If a system has no built-in appeal, egregious errors cannot be rectified by the system itself, because there is no automatic safety valve. The pressure created by the error still exists, so the system breaks in response to the unusual amount of pressure. That's where we are right now: the T&S system, which apparently has worked sufficiently well in the past, generated an egregiously bad sanction, and the community pressure that was provoked by it had nowhere to go. That system is now broken, and needs to be fixed.
  • The most obvious fix for the future is the creation of a specialized Appeals Board, consisting of a small number (probably 5 would be optimal) of trusted people not connected to T&S, all of whom have already signed NDAs - maybe Stewards and community-based Arbs, CUs and Oversighters, to be appointed or elected by a process to be determined, but probably similar to current ArbCom and Steward elections. The Board's mandate would not be to oversee every T&S sanction, but only those which provoke considerable community reaction. This is the safety valve in the system.
  • In regard to setting precedent, it's very unclear to me what the WMF is worried about. I think that the vast majority of editors would agree with Tony Ballioni's feeling that we don't want the community to get involved with sanctioning pedophiles, for instance, we have (or have had) sufficient trust in T&S's handling of those situations that they do not cause community outrage. It is only because the current sanction was a usurpation of traditional community power to police itself, and that it was handled in an atrocious manner, that there has been this tremendous outpouring of discontent. That's in part because if you create an unappealable sanction you have to be extremely careful that your decisions are absolutely unimpeachable.
  • So, if the WMF was to do what I suggested above, rollback the clock to before the T&S sanction against Fram, and turn that matter over to the community via ArbCom, what precedent would be set? Only this one: if T&S makes a really, really, really bad decision that triggers hundreds of thousands of words of dismay, discussion and protest, civil disobedience, and admins giving up the bit in protest, then it's reasonable to start over from square one. That's hardly a precedent that's "invalid", unacceptable, or unlivable. How many times does the WMF expect that kind of error to be made? If it's more than once every 5-7 years or so, then it's clearly the wrong people who are making the decisions, and they should be changed. In short, this is a highly unusual situation which is unlikely to re-occur as long as the people making the decisions do their job well and correctly, so any precedent set is unlikely to be called on in the future.
  • It is especially unlikely to be called on if there is an appeals process, and the entire concept of an "unappealable sanction" is deep-sixed, as it should be. Find a name for a sanction which is unappealable unless massive numbers of editors of all types and beliefs protest against the sanction.

Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:15, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

  • @Jimbo Wales: In all fairness, bringing Jimbo's attention to the comment above this, as it was in response to a comment of his. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:27, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Strong agreement with point 1, but point 2 is where it gets awry. T&S have made it clear they will not accept anyone above them (note that they didn't share anything with ArbCom which is elected by the community and is the top-most community-level body of enwiki), so this Appeals Board idea would be outright rejected. --qedk (t 桜 c) 21:39, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes, I am essentially addressing here Jimbo and the WMF Board, which would have to overrule T&S's apparent intransigence, adjust the Office Actions policy, and set up any appeals process. It's not T&S which is ultimately legally and morally responsible for its actions, it's the WMF Board.
    If "discussions are ongoing" is just cover for waiting for the dust to settle, that's obviously a big problem, but if it means that they are, indeed, looking hard at the situation and attempting to craft a solution which will both appease the community and allow themselves to save face and not completely throw T&S under the bus, so it can go about doing the things it has done well in the past, I wanted to express these ideas just in case they hadn't already come up. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:05, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Considering the WMF has done a sum total of nothing till now and the fact that statements from reps of T&S are literally just "IDGAF in a nutshell". Idk man. --qedk (t 桜 c) 21:57, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • My feeling is that the people in T&S and the WMF who are most dead-set on grabbing the reins and hard-stonewalling any hint of anything that could allow WMF bans to be appealed are probably the ones who have been the loudest in this case, since by definition the people who wanted Fram banned are going to be the ones who were paying attention to his case and have the most emotional investment in avoiding having it overturned. But I think it's reasonable to assume that there are cooler heads on the board, too, who are willing to listen to proposals to find a way out of this crisis that isn't just "the WMF does not make mistakes and its actions therefore cannot be appealed, no further information is available, goodbye." --Aquillion (talk) 22:21, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • T&S specifically stated that they considered going through ArbCom in this case and rejected at the time over concerns that "the best we could have given Arbcom in this case would have been a distillation of the case, severely limiting their ability to handle it" and because they feared Fram's criticism of ArbCom "could put volunteers into a very difficult position and create the appearance of a conflict of interest regardless of the actual handling of the case". Those two points seem to be the crux of this crisis (since they led to the WMF screwing up and trying to handle, themselves, something that should have gone to ArbCom); and we can address both, both to convince the WMF to hand Fram's fate to ArbCom and to avoid mistakes like this in the future. The conflict-of-interest concern is one the community can address by making it clear that they prefer ArbCom to handle these things even when there is an (apparent) conflict of interest - though of course in this case, the WMF was just as much a target of Fram's ire as ArbCom, so it's unclear what was gained; but at the very least we can make it clear that we trust ArbCom to navigate and recuse as necessary in the face of conflicts of interests and don't want or need the WMF making that decision for them. And the privileged-information concern can mostly be addressed by making it clear that even a "limited" ArbCom involvement with partial information would be preferable to WMF handling things of this nature entirely on its own. There's some things about this case T&S has declined to share for various reasons, but they've gone into detail on why they didn't want ArbCom to handle this, which means we can reasonably make an argument for why bypassing ArbCom was a mistake and how conduct issues (outside of a few narrowly-defined specific types) should always first go to ArbCom by default in the future. T&S wouldn't even be giving up the option to override ArbCom if they feel they reached the "wrong" decision; but it would lead to far less fireworks to have these decisions deferred to people who have the community's trust, even if they have to make decisions based on limited, anonymized information. At a bare minimum, it would be nice to have an option to request that the WMF deliver the anonymized version of the complaints against a user in contested cases like this to ArbCom for review - they have specifically indicated they could create such an anonymized report, and did consider creating and using for this purpose. --Aquillion (talk) 22:13, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Beyond My Ken, I fully understand the reaction of many editors to the notion that the decisions cannot be appealed. I also think I can imagine a set of decisions that should not have an appeal option, so if we want to push for an appeals mechanism I think it's worth making the distinction. In the expectation that someone will my suggestion that they can be legitimate situations without an appeal let me try to give a realistic example (hypothetical). Imagine that an editor has been committing serial copyright violations over a long period of time. The copyright holder realizes that their copyrights have been violated, and contacts our legal department. They request the real name of the editor in question and indicate that they plan to prosecute and push for jail time. Imagine that our legal department offers a counter proposal. The WMF will arrange to have all copyright violations reverted and oversighted, and the editor in question will be banned from Wikimedia projects for life. The copyright holder accepts this counteroffer and agrees to drop plans for prosecution. Suppose after making this agreement, the community becomes aware that this editor has received a lifetime ban as a result of an office action, and decides to avail themselves of the approval process being proposed. I hope you can all agree that this should be a nonstarter. If the legal department agrees to abandon exchange for saving the editor from prosecution, the back and say oopswe forgot to tell you about our appeal process and the community has decided that the editor should not be banned. In other words, we should identify a set of office actions that are subject to appeal, and a set of actions that are not subject to appeal. S Philbrick(Talk) 22:24, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
The issue is that any process can, inevitably, make mistakes. The idea that there are bans that cannot be appealed is therefore either axiomatically wrong (there's always some proof and some sufficiently-bad ban that would lead to it being overturned) or a sign of completely boneheaded policy (ie. an insistence that even a ban based on a flat, unequivocal error would not be overturned.) It's corporate-speak, the kind of thing you expect to see from some sort of massive SAS vendor to its users when it wants to avoid paying for a communication channel or a review process. Hearing it from T&S obviously erodes trust in them every time it's repeated. They might not like the idea of having to overturn a ban, but we do need some sort of policies for it, because it's not something they can avoid in the long term (especially if they intend to be more aggressive with bans, like this one, that would previously have been handled by the community.) Otherwise, while it may or may not be the case here, they're setting themselves up for exactly the kind of humiliating walkback they're desperately trying to avoid in this case when (not if, when) they make a clear-cut error that can't just be stonewalled away. --Aquillion (talk) 22:32, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

−

I don't think they the copyvio / jail time scenario outlined above would have to be ipso facto unappealable. Simply that, when presented with all the available evidence (as outlined in BMK's proposal), the appeals board would know fill well that it could not grant the appeal. And would itself independently inform the candidate of that. Of course, because WMF ultimately holds the risk and the responsibility for the whole project, from a legal point of view, they would have to retain a final veto in the situation gnat the appeals board unexpectedly reversed a decision that could not be reversed for legal reasons. But the point of the appeal board is to provide checks and balances, and I would think it could be deployed in all scenarios, with the above provisos.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:40, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
In the above scenario, what if the editor did not, in fact, commit the copyright violations? There have been plenty of cases where companies have claimed copyright (e.g. from AT&T to SCO with respect to UNIX/Linux, or several stock photo companies with respect to public domain images) where none exists. Again, it's an "assumed guilty" case, where the party has no chance of defence. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:57, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Stephan Schulz, I'm not assuming that our legal department can make a deal without the input and concurrence of the editor. If the editor is convinced they didn't violate copyright, then the response to such a deal would be "Hell no". Obviously, our legal team might mis-assess the situation, and offer too much or too little, but if the editor in question agrees to the deal, I suggest it's absurd that this community could say "sorry, no we're going to override the deal. We want this editor not to have a ban and will take the chance that he or she might serve jail time." S Philbrick(Talk) 00:16, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't think there's necessarily a problem then. For this example, the deal could include an agreement that the editor will waive their appeal. The community would then be informed of this, which I think even on its own would be enough for most reasonable people. Hopefully the WMF would be willing to reveal other non-private information, plus oversighters would be able to confirm that oversighted materials were involved, and so on. Sunrise (talk) 11:09, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Amakuru, I'm not opposed to a board. I call it a "Review Board" rather than an "Appeal Board". The review board, probably populated by a subset of Arbcom, plus a couple of others like NewYorkBrad, would be empowered to hear all of the relevant information, and in the case of appeal-able actions would act as an appeal board, in the case of nonappeal-able actions, would act as a review board to provide confidential oversight. S Philbrick(Talk) 00:24, 24 June 2019 (UTC)


An alternative to Beyond My Ken's Proposal

As my suggestion is so closely aligned to BYK's excellent proposal, I would place it here rather than a separate section. It can be forked without advising me if it is felt necessary.

Why can't WP:EN form its own Trust & Safety entity, by which people with vulnerability can anonymously seek relief? This could be created and staffed in the same way as ArbCom, CU, Oversight, and 'Crats. These would be volunteers from the community, and would need the guidance of the WMF and only be able to sanction within the EN community. While necessarily working without community oversight in its deliberations, functionaries would be open to re-election and deselection as per agreed terms. Any egregious behaviour considered beyond the EN's remit can be referred to the WMF T&S dept. and of course complainers will still be able to go directly to WMF T&S. That body would be able to refer cases to the local/EN wiki, if they can be convinced that EN is capable of handling its own affairs... If this is done in such a way that most users would feel that EN:T&S is a competent avenue of recourse, then we worry as much as WP:T&S' opinion as they seem to do with ours. Oh, and actions would be appealable to Arbcom, under NDA protocols. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:47, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

How is this proposal different from the Arbitration Committee? * Pppery * it has begun... 23:13, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
@Pppery: The case cannot be refused, and the request and investigation is done in camera - and rather than the entire arbcom it is done by as few as one person to ensure privacy is paramount. Only on appeal would other persons be required to review the data. LessHeard vanU (talk) 09:49, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
You see, the same issue can still arise though. A prominent editor/admin is reported anonymously and investigated by this new committee. They spend three-four weeks investigating the allegations and determine they're ban-worthy. What then? The masses have the ability to appeal to ArbCom and continue to not get details because that's what T&S requires? You now have two committees who are deliberating in private to protect the privacy of a victim for a couple weeks? They may determine to take it to the actual T&S team who will then deliberate even longer? It's just the Fram ban with extra steps. T&S is a necessary evil. — Moe Epsilon 23:29, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I would just say we should use ArbCom for such things, as mentioned above. But either way the difference is that such a committee is answerable to the community, enjoys more of their trust, was selected by them, and often has more experience with community procedures. They'll feel more pressure to talk to us insofar as they're allowed and can do so safely without endangering the people who made the reports or revealing hidden information. I think it's extremely obvious from the tone of the T&S responses to date that T&S feels no such pressure - for instance, they've openly said that they are capable of producing an anonymous summery of events that they could share and yet declined to do so, and have declined to even indicate whether eg. there are any potential legal issues involved or whether the case involved off-wiki evidence (extremely basic checklist-style statements that wouldn't put anyone at risk and which could make it more clear-cut what sort of situations call for this sort of step - it could even be boilerplate chosen from a list of explanations, to avoid giving away more information than is necessary.) Additionally, ArbCom members can be more easily removed or replaced at the next ArbCom election, which means that even though the community won't always know all the details, if they're dissatisfied with the overall outcome of ArbCom results they would have at least some recourse. ArbCom has handled cases with privileged / secret information in the past and they were always far better at it than this; there was some grumbling, but nothing compared to the massive backlash we're seeing here. If ArbCom had said "we're talking a case against Fram based on privileged information" and then later said "all right, based on that, we're banning Fram for [off-wiki/on-wiki] harassment based on privileged evidence that we can't share", sure, many people would have been upset, but it wouldn't have created nearly this level of blowback, because the ArbCom (despite some of the back-and-forth) enjoys way more trust from the community as a whole than T&S on account of being composed of experienced editors who were selected by (and who are ultimately accountable to) the community. --Aquillion (talk) 00:37, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
@Moe Epsilon: The EN T&S would be confined to issues originating within WP:EN only - if there is evidence or claims of issues exceeding that remit (off wiki harassment, or over several projects) then that can be passed to WMF:T&S. This would not preclude the EN investigation being held and sanctions applied if found necessary. What happens outside of WP:EN is not our concern. What this builds is trust that people familiar with the environment will review the complaint, people generally trusted by the community, and anyone unhappy with the results - including the complainant - can ask ArbCom to review the decision to ensure competent handling. LessHeard vanU (talk) 11:57, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Both of these proposals remind me of General Buck Turgidson: "Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines..." Oh, to be sure, it is what I was expecting -- indeed, if you go by the hypothesis that Fram was purged for being a 'trouble-maker', specifically to ArbCom, as per what better way than to fob the dirty work off on someone else, then bring it right back to a question of more power for the exact people he was criticizing! Or, in the second case, some other -- people who want power rarely oppose more job openings for themselves. But the answer to any harassment that does not require secrecy for legal reasons beyond our control is to say that we are a community that requires transparency for reasons of being open, participative, and democratic. NO to any proposals for new powers. The only thing worse than two Star Chambers is three! Wnt (talk) 23:56, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I do believe it would be worthwhile to look further into this suggestion, in order that cases of harassment in the future would be handled better. The process for T/S cases is that the recommendation from T/S is to be approved by the manger inside WMF, and finally by the CEO of WMF. This could be seen as OK for severe cases of misconduct but is really questionable when it comes to harassment. What it the approval in cases of harassment within enp was instead to be approved by ArbCom? Yger (talk) 05:51, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Plan D

Maybe a bit of discussion about plan D would shake the ivory tower up enough to get some progress on Plan A or Plan B. Plan D would be if it if it turns out that WMF is too arrogant, incompetent, un-transparent and too much of an ivory tower to lord over enwiki, for enwiki to leave. The content is public, the main people could all leave for the new separate enwiki. North8000 (talk) 16:06, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

This has been discussed at this page at some point. I personally think this is a complete non-starter. To maintain the project, one needs community of the size comparable with the current English Wikipedia community, which is totally unrealistic.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:07, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
More to the point, one would also need servers the size of a small city—as of a couple of months ago English Wikipedia came to 18,880,938,139,465 bytes, and an independent en-wiki would no longer be part of the WMF ecosystem so we'd need to mirror Commons as well which would be another 40TB or so. Since Equinix would presumably continue to host the remaining WMF wikis they wouldn't be able to host us due to the COI, which would leave us reliant on either Amazon Web Services, Microsoft or IBM; they in turn would either want substantial payment, or would demand a degree of editorial control, and good luck with your "give us your money so we can pass it straight on to Jeff Bezos" fundraising appeal. For better or worse, we're stuck with the WMF. ‑ Iridescent 16:33, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Indeed. And, well, we will need a legal team. And - surprise, surprise - a T&S team to deal with pedophiles.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:36, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Just to give a sense of the scale of what we're talking about, this is the server load Wikipedia puts on the eqiad server. While we're not quite at the scale of Netflix, we're still talking a huge data flow; IIRC the physical infrastructure of Wikipedia (i.e. excluding all the staff salaries, travel etc) costs $4/minute to run, and unless a fork can persuade some donors to defect, or is willing to run adverts, that adds up. ‑ Iridescent 17:42, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
That's about the same as Wikia/Fandom, because they serve far more media on each pageview. If Jimbo could get behind it, I'm sure Wikia would be glad to temporarily host while an alternative Foundation is established. EllenCT (talk) 18:37, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Not meaning to sound condescending, but how many of you have read Office actions? I just read it for the first time and it actually shed quite a bit of light on this situation. I was just wondering...would the reaction to Fram's block been different had we known about this policy beforehand? Would Fram have acted differently as an admin/editor? Atsme Talk 📧 16:31, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    We're well aware of it and it's been discussed at length here; one of the primary causes of this dispute is the WMF rewriting it a couple of months ago to grant themselves authority to do what they've done without any discussion. (This was what the policy looked like at the time of Fram's alleged offences.) ‑ Iridescent 16:35, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    They already had that authority; they don't need to re-write wiki pages to change that. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:02, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    In 2016 the Board gave the Foundation management the authority to change the Terms of Use, which still says to this day that only community processes can impose a project-specific ban. But they never bothered to change the ToU to allow for their undiscussed, unannounced February 2019 office actions policy change, so unless you believe their ability to change the ToU allows them to waive doing so, then they did not in fact have the necessary authority. EllenCT (talk) 18:37, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    Really? Where do they say "only community processes can impose a project-specific ban"? And What part of we reserve the right [...] to [...] Refuse, disable, or restrict access to the contribution of any user who violates these Terms of Use [...] [or to] Ban a user from editing or contributing or block a user's account or access for actions violating these Terms of Use" [or to] Manage otherwise the Project websites in a manner designed to facilitate their proper functioning and protect the rights, property, and safety of ourselves and our users (section: #10. Management of Websites ) do you think does not apply, and why? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:35, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
  • We could leave easily. There are already many mirrors. But where would we go? And would anyone notice?
    Server farms don't grow on trees. Also such an exodus would leave WMF with the upper hand and the strong brand, and they could continue in a way that the editor community couldn't. Just not viable. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:43, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Is it possible to do anything to make forking more viable in the future? It has been pointed out that it is more viable to fork smaller wikis (those in a different language). If enough publicity came of that, it might slowly start to make a difference. But the past examples don't inspire confidence that it could happen. The best route appears to be to establish strong checks and balances in the existing systems. Carcharoth (talk) 16:47, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Plan Y tho: If the server farm issue can be resolved, somebody just needs to make a bot that redirects every page on Wikipedia to the same page on the new mirror, with explanatory banners. That'll partially solve the issues of traffic and moving the community to a new domain. The WMF will try to stop it, but would that really be within their rights? They own the URL, the community owns the content. This is the content the community wants, and it still fulfills the mission of delivering a free encyclopedia, just not one the WMF can control. Attempting to stop it would be counter to their stated goals, the goals for which they accepted donations, which might even land them in legal hot water. This will also allow a nearly-seamless transition for our readers, which should be a top concern. Wikipedia isn't one of the most-trafficked websites for nothing!
As for staffing the mirror, we can start with long-term volunteers with lots of free time and who've served in trusted community positions. We've got hundreds of those, including people with formal training in law and business.
Remember, Wikipedia itself is the project that works in practice, but not in theory. It only stopped working because the WMF strayed from their roots. We did it once, we can do it again. Mysterious Whisper (talk) 15:54, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
  • A server farm "the size of a small city" is exactly right, and the key point when discussing forking the 5th-most-visited website on the internet. Websites run on computers; computers cost money; whoever is paying for the computers will always have the final say over who can and who cannot use the computers. Hence, there will always be "office actions" that cannot be overturned by "the community", and "the community" will always be subordinate to whoever pays for the computers that "the community" uses. Those editors who have expressed the opinion that the community is sovereign over the WMF are just ignoring the basic fact that we're all using computers that someone else is paying for. The only way around this is to set up something like a co-op where editors are owners of the legal entity that pays for the computers, and that would require the editor-owners to give up anonymity (at least to each other). Bottom line: whoever pays the bills makes the rules. Period, end of story. If editors want to make the rules, they need to pay the bills. – Levivich 17:20, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    Levivich, I don't think that means what you think it means. The WMF does not "pay the bills", any more than my bank pays my bills when I write a check for them. I paid the bill, the bank just acted as a repository for the money, just like the WMF acts as a repository for money donated. The donors paid the bills. But in a very real sense, our editors pay the bills. If you were to total up the value of volunteer labor put into Wikipedia by its editors, I suspect the sum would be staggering and probably substantially more than the WMF puts toward hosting it. WMF does not "pay the bills", even if it signs the checks. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:31, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    It's not at all like a bank. When a bank takes your money, it's still your money and they're holding it for you. They won't give it to anyone unless you tell them to. When a nonprofit takes a donation, it becomes the nonprofit's money. Neither the donors nor the editors get to tell the WMF how to spend the money, nor are they accountable for how it's spent. The editors and the donors don't pick the web host, or the office space, or set the salaries. If the money is mis-spent, for example if laws are broken, it's not the editors or the donors who are held accountable, it's the WMF–specifically, its trustees and officers. If the web host bill isn't paid, it's not the editors or the donors who will be sued by the web hosting company, it's the WMF. Because they are held accountable, they get to set the rules. If the community wants to set the rules, it will need to take over the functions of raising and spending the money directly, and it will need to also take on the accountability for it. – Levivich 18:34, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Just a minor quibble about branding / donor earmarking, but I keep running into Craig_Newmark#Philanthropy when reading about Wikipedia harassment. I'm not sure Alphabet has donated much towards policing the letterbox yet. I gather their subsidiary (google) donated at least a couple million, but that may have been more related to Project Tiger than harassment, I don't know. (The initiative seems unrelated to Rory (WMF) or to WP:TIGER, but rather towards the Indian market.) Amazon & wa Wapo should have to pay a tithe for all the free links to their products/paywall and use on Siri Alexa/Echo, but I've never heard exactly what their recent donation was earmarked for. Phonetics? Deck-chairs? a Randian data center straight outta' Boise? 🌿 SashiRolls t · c 21:31, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Uh the donors pay the bills. And the donors donate largely because of the English Wikipedia. We are the product that generates revenue. Now we dont have much of a say in this because that product has been freely given away under a CC license so even if we all up and leave they still have a decent sized "encyclopedia", but lets not pretend that the WMF is anything other than a body that exists to solicit and then spend donations off the efforts of a small army of volunteers. nableezy - 17:34, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    It's true, the WMF wouldn't have donations if it wasn't for the efforts of editors, but it's also true that the WMF wouldn't need to raise donations except to pay for the computers, etc., that editors use. Right now, editors provide the content, but they have no responsibility for the $2 million in web hosting fees (or anything else). We outsource raising and spending that $2 million (and the many other costs associated with it) to someone else. That someone else is legally accountable for raising and spending the money, and thus gets to make the decisions like which web host to pick and who does and doesn't get to edit. If the community wrote to the web hosting company and told them we want them to remove the WMF's access and turn it over to a new organization that "the community of editors" is establishing, do you think the web host would listen? What if the donors made the request, would the web host listen? Nope, they're going to take their orders from the WMF, their customer, the people who actually pay the bills. As long as we leave it to someone else to pay the $2 million, we are going to be subject to their rules. If the community wants to change that, it needs to raise and spend the money for web hosting itself, directly, instead of outsourcing it. – Levivich 18:34, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
    Nab. The outcome of arguments often depends on the metaphors employed. We had the owner-tenant trope, which automatically wins the discursive battle for the WMF. Here we have a charity metaphor. There are two donors here (a) Those with money to back the project, and (b) those who donate their unpaid time and write the 5,800,000 articles. (c)The intermediary between the two neither donates money nor is actively engaged in actual article drafting, since its bureaucratic work takes priority. (a) pays (b) is unpaid (c) is paid. The only practical beneficiary of the charity is (c), one gets a highly paid, high-flying job with powerful authority. A lot of things can be imagined or inferred from this. One last point, I don't know how things have changed since the University of Minnesota 2007 study, which concluded that 44% of wikipedia content was created by 0.1% of editors, while 10% created 86% of edits (Daniel Tammet, Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind, Simon and Schuster, 2009 p.205 ). (c) is selecting for recruitment and retention on the basis of emotional sensitivities. The percentages of (b) suggest this profile is marginal to actual encyclopedic production.Nishidani (talk) 19:50, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Or, we discuss starting a worldwide Wiki referendum to write a constitution, dissolve the current WMF (except for those maintaining the code and servers), and build a new top level Wikipedia according to the constitution. Even the mere prospect of one of these might be enough to start evolving towards a fix. North8000 (talk) 17:27, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm not seeing much wrong with the "constitution" we have. The problems lie below that level. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:30, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes - they pay the bills. But the only reason they have any money to pay the bills is thanks to the endless hours of volunteer time that has created the product they are making money from. Unfortunately, the absence of viable alternatives has created a monopolistic attitude by the WMF - they can essentially do what they want given the absence of competition. Forking is a weak option, but something live a 3-5 day work stoppage could be effective. We wouldn't be disrupting the encyclopedia to make a point, as we all have every right to leave are not participate as we see fit. However, it's only effective if enough editors do it at the same time. Of course, the down side is that if the effect is negligible, we simply confirm the WMF's view that we are all easily replaceable cogs.--Mojo Hand (talk) 17:32, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

IMHO the most likely path to a fork of Wikipedia would be as follows:

  • Due to the Foundation's incompetence, the stream of outgoing volunteers exceeds the number of incoming ones, resulting in a steady decline.
  • Eventually the number of volunteers on Wikipedia is so small that they cannot keep up with all of the maintenance tasks, as well as with updating articles let alone writing new ones. Wikpedia acquires an outdated status similar to the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, suffers from link rot, poorly-checked vandalism & is far more an embarrassment than an asset.
  • To halt this decay, the Foundation puts Wikipedia into read-only mode. Maybe articles are reviewed for obvious vandalism & other detrimental information, maybe not. (Or maybe it is decided to delete all Biographies of Living People to avoid possible lawsuits for defamation.) In short, Wikipedia stops growing.
  • Some time after this someone is dissatisfied with one or more articles on Wikipedia, writes his or her own version of these articles, & puts them up on the web. They are good enough &/or popular enough that others add their own revised articles.
  • What began as a collection of pages on the web grows into its own organized web encyclopedia. A new community-based project. And one of the sub-projects of this new encyclopedia is to adapt from the moribund Wikipedia all of the articles with useful content -- just as Wikipedia adapted articles from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.

And hopefully this new encyclopedia learns from our mistakes, thus not only offering a better reference source for all, but also engendering a less dysfunctional community. I won't make any predictions when this new encyclopedia will come into existence & replace Wikipedia. Though I hope it is soon enough that some who helped with Wikipedia can participate in the creation of this new encyclopedia. -- llywrch (talk) 18:08, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

If we are into apocalyptic scenarios, I would rather bet on changing the platform and text encyclopedia becoming outdated. Search inside video formats will be implemented within a couple of years, and I do not see us responding to that in any wat. I discussed this a while ago on wikimedia-l mailing list.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:57, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Search inside videos sounds like hell. I hate videos. Rockstonetalk to me! 19:43, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
@Ymblanter:, I'm sorry you see this as an apocalyptic scenario; it is based on my observations during my lengthy tenure here. One dynamic that will be pushing to this result is that -- & I assume I am preaching to the choir here -- contributing substantially & positively to Wikipedia is hard work. One measure of this is that the labor required to write a reasonably useful article is roughly equivalent to writing a college undergraduate term paper; I say this, having done both. (By "reasonably useful article", I mean what would be graded as a solid "C" quality article; articles that deserve GA or FA ratings require far more work.) In other words, the days when someone could just stop by & spend an odd hour or two contributing with no preparation has long passed. Even constructive maintenance work -- reviewing new articles, participating in AfD, commenting at WP:AN, etc. -- can take hours in order to make one informed decision.

The other dynamic is that people at the Foundation haven't realized this. They still think some average person can drop by, spend that mythical hour or two typing (assuming this contributor types 65 wpm; twice as long if this person types only 35 wpm as I do), & has produced a Featured article in one draft. As the saying goes, work you don't understand always looks easier than it is; the WMF either doesn't understand how much work we spend here, or has forgotten how much it is. Their chronic acts that offend & alienate the various projects only prove they don't understand. The combination of these two dynamics -- the challenge of making positive & lasting contributions, & the lack of understanding of what we do by the Foundation -- results in a steady exodus of veteran editors. Since, as it has been noted, writing an encyclopedia is an unusual hobby to pursue, the potential pool of contributors is very small. Thus the likelihood that the Foundation will dry up this pool by alienating all potential contributors is very high, & the only question isn't will the Foundation destroy its resource of volunteers, but how soon. (And IMHO a successful fork will only happen once Wikipedia is no longer a viable outlet for us wannabe encyclopedia writers.) -- llywrch (talk) 17:15, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Levivich (and anyone else): May I ask the stupid question? How much of that humongous server load would we really need? If we copy article space, talk space, file space (which would expand because we couldn't hot link to Commons), template space (for stuff like As of, citation templates, and the infoboxes), and I guess file talk and template talk, but don't bother with Wikipedia space or Wikipedia talk, and start afresh with user space, user talk, and draft space, does it become manageable enough to be housed in a co-lo and appreciably reduce hosting costs? Or have you already mentally stripped out pages like AN/I and this one?? We'd all have to maintain the same user names to satisfy licensing on this site, I assume, and I was thinking things like old AfD's on talk pages would become external links (as would interwikis). But why would we need to host duoplicates of the back end archives at all? Yngvadottir (talk) 12:22, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    (You've pinged me rather than Levivich, but I'll answer): the English Wikipedia database as of April came to 18,880,938,139,465 bytes uncompressed. At minimum you'd need to fork mainspace and talkpages which will come to about a fifth of that, so let's say between 2 & 3 terabytes. You'd then need at minimum to import every image on Commons which is currently used anywhere on Wikipedia (very rough guess another 2 TB), and ideally the whole of Commons so the images are available for use on Secessopedia (≈40TB!!!). Then, for every article that draws on Wikidata you'll need to subst the data and take the hit of it going out of date from now on, unless you're also going to mirror Wikidata (550GB). For all of this, you'd need not only the current but every previous version. Remember you not only need a system that can store these volumes of data, you need a system that can server up this kind of data to (literally) millions of people at a time. (Remember the old days when the server kept crashing because too many people were trying to read it?) Then, there's the issue of who hosts it; Equinix presumably will refuse as their contract with the WMF will create a CoI, so that means Amazon, IBM or Microsoft are the only people who could realistically do the job, and few people are going to want to donate if the money is going to go straight into Jeff Bezos's or Bill Gates's pocket. I did post it somewhere when the talk of a fork first started, but this is the server load Wikipedia generates; being a top-five website is expensive. ‑ Iridescent 14:46, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    Yes, I was trying to ping both you and Levivich, but I am bad at templates, sorry, and thanks for answering. The second screen of data was one of the things that prompted me to ask. I tried to figure out what we would need; I know we would need complete histories for whatever we imported, and I know non-text files are huge, but there are so many articles with too many images, I thought starting with just those files hosted here and then copying over additional files from Commons on an as-needed basis, discouraging galleries more seriously than we currently do, would work out well (since Commons files are free to use). No way we would need all of Commons; we don't now. Nor would we need Wikidata; what on earth for, that's one of the insults the WMF has inflicted on us. Just the interwikis, which we previously did manually and which could appear as external links (same for the Commons categories). I imagine if we didn't copy the WP and WT namespaces, and put up only a simple main page, we could also trim template space quite a bit, but then I've demonstrated ignorance about templates right here :-) I'm still wondering how big it would have to be if we cut out all but mainspace and essential adjuncts (user space and talk space would be new starts, of course, but I can't imagine they're that huge.) I know hosting is an issue, but first, how unrealistic am I being thinking that the elephant can lose quite a bit of its fat while still remaining lovable? Yngvadottir (talk) 16:01, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    @Yngvadottir: It's good you pinged Iri instead of me, because they can give you a much better answer than I could have. A 50TB hard drive costs a few thousand dollars, and it would take less than a day to transfer that on a 1GB/s internet connection. I think it would be substantially more work/cost to go through 5 million articles and figure out which images to copy and which images not to copy. The more difficult/expensive part, technically, would be handling the 7 billion requests per month from readers to view the content. Imagine a 50TB haystack in which you're trying to find 3,000 different needles every second. (It would still be a monumental task even if the elephant lost half its weight and was only 25TB instead of 50.) And any changes to the haystack would have to "go live" instantly, or else collaborative editing wouldn't work. That requires a server architecture like this: lots of very fast computers, connected to each other with very fast connections, in multiple locations around the world, and to get the 99.99999% up-time we need, with redundancies of redundancies and backups of backups. The WMF is paying about two million dollars per year for that. Most importantly and most expensive is the team of human beings you'd need to hire to maintain all of that equipment, plus the infrastructure you need to support the human beings (like offices, benefits programs, etc.). WMF is paying like forty million a year for that. The reason forking would be expensive isn't so much the size of the encyclopedia but its popularity. One place I'll disagree with Iri here is that I don't think there would be any COI in using the same web host as the WMF, and I think despite the complication and cost of forking, if Secessopedia could raise the money, they'd have no problem finding a company to handle the technical aspects of setting up and hosting a mirrored site. Probably the current web hosting companies would be first in line to take the money (and best positioned to duplicate the existing architecture). – Levivich 17:58, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    "you need a system that can server up this kind of data to (literally) millions of people at a time. " Really? Where are these "millions of people" going to come from? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:34, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I've put a bit of thought into this and I don't think the organisational or technical hurdles are insurmountable. Yes, you would need to raise a significant amount of money and yes, you would need to hire some serious server iron. Yes, you would need to choose a jurisdiction and set up some sort of legal body to carry on operations. Yes, you could do it for a LOT less than the WMF does by defunding almost all the useless crap they fund and just run the website. Yes, you will need a largish segment of the community to come with you and a mechanism for those people to claim their existing usernames and rights. None of these is beyond the wit of man. But IMO the major problem is this question: What will be different about the new site that makes it worth doing? Any replacement site is going to have terms of use that will boil down to the same terms the WMF uses. Any replacement foundation is going to have something very similar to Trust & Safety, whose main mission revolves around issues such as child protection, account security, handling DMCA notices, responding to search warrants, handing suicide threats on to law enforcement and so on. These are all things that need to be done on a large, community-based website and whatever you replace T&S with is also inevitably going to be ultimately responsible for enforcing the ToU against editors. So: What will be different about your new, replacement wikipedia that means this specific situation can't happen again? Answers can vary from tinkering such as, "T&S can only do global, indefinite bans," to completely new systems of governance. But so far the impetus for forking doesn't seem to be to fix anything, but just to spite the WMF. If you can't identify anything that will be substantively different about the new site, then forking won't make anything better and, in my view, you are going to struggle to have anything to build a coherent new community around. If you can identify something that will be substantively different about the new site, then IMO it's worth at least trying to make that change on this site first, but you need to actually have some concrete proposals and I haven't seen any yet. If you think the existing governance structures are fine and the only problem is that completely the wrong people have found their way into positions of power and that a new, carbon-copy organisation with the right people would magically make everything better then, well, I think you're being naive. GoldenRing (talk) 12:10, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
    Absolutely. It makes sense to establish a working model of interaction between the WMF and communities (remember the English Wikipedia is the biggest project but by no means the only one, or the only big one). If we can not do it, the story will repeat itself after forking (even assuming the forking itself is feasible, which I seriously doubt about).--Ymblanter (talk) 12:39, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Demand for appealability

Those of you here who are emphasizing the importance of appeal, how is this different to you than multiple levels of review before a sanction is announced in the first instance? (We have been told: "If the recommendation is something other than “take no action”, the suggestion is then also reviewed by the VP of Support & Services (Maggie Dennis), the Legal team, and the Executive Director.") Is the difference that you want an appellate body outside the WMF? Or that you believe there should be some transparency in an appeal? Or something else? I guess I'm not seeing the value of appeal for appeal's sake, given that someone has to be the final arbiter (and that there are already multiple levels of review built into the existing system)... unless something about the appeal makes it different from the original determination. What is that something that you all want? (Or am I wrong, and you would be happy with a non-transparent WMF appeal? Assuming the answer to that question is no....) Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:20, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Under the current system, the accused may never get the chance to speak in their own defense at all. Transparancy is a core value, but not the crucial point here. Most T&S bans will have to be discussed in camera anyway. Similarly, it's nice if the appellate body is outside the WMF, but this is not a strict requirement. However, usually when you have some sort of final arbiter, the decisions made are still appealable to that final arbiter. If nothing has changed, the appeal will be quickly denied, but it allows new arguments or developments to be weighed at any time. Historically, this body on Wikipedia has been Jimbo. In principle, and perhaps in practice, Jimbo can still serve that role. I'd obviously prefer a committee of, say, Jimbo plus a few community reps, a WMF legal rep and a WMF T&S rep, but that's an idealistic solution. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:51, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • At least as far as my own opinion goes, I'm less concerned with what any sort of appeals process would look like in particular (though definitely passing the anonymized case to ArbCom to get their feedback would be a good start) and more with the mindset that it shows, especially coupled with the fixation on "precedent" that seems to be behind a lot of the stonewalling we've encountered. Wikipedia is intended to be community-run; the purpose of the WMF, T&S, etc. is to handle things that cannot be managed in that fashion. I get that they're asserting that this is such a situation (although they've sort of vacillated on that point when conceding that ArbCom was an option), but the constant refrain that WMF and T&S are above question undermines trust in their commitment to community governance, which in turn makes people less likely to trust that the WMF and T&S are being forthright about how necessary it was to do this via an extra-community process. Furthermore, the constant claim that T&S actions cannot be appealed is simply not true - everything can be appealed to Jimbo and the board, without exception - and the fact that people know this further reduces trust in T&S every time that statement is repeated. By definition, T&S' mission requires deep, two-way trust with the community, and it's pretty clear that isn't present at the moment. (In fact, part of the reason we got in this mess is because it seems that T&S didn't trust ArbCom to handle this situation.) --Aquillion (talk) 01:04, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • There are two factors here: First, the lack of pre-ban notice of charges and an opportunity to be heard in any form, even to argue that the grounds for the ban are flat out incorrect, a case of mistaken identity, or god knows what else. Second, the lack of any independent review. My belief is that these both would be addressed best through commercial arbitration, such as through AAA. These can be kept confidential and no direct testimony need be taken. These would be professional arbitrators, not volunteers, not community members, and not WMF employees. Loser pays arbitration costs. This is the industry standard for a reason. If you're that attached to the community and genuinely believe you've been done wrong, you can make your case before an impartial body, and WMF has assurances that there's no BS being done to harass the victim by dragging him or her into court as a witness or party, or discovering that person's identity. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 01:17, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
    • The idea of using AAA to resolve these disputes is insane, by the way. Loser pays the costs? What Wikipedia editor is going to want to go through this process at the risk of paying literally thousands of dollars?[7] I'm an attorney and have handled professional arbitrations on a variety of occasions. They are less different from in-court litigation than you might think, and quite expensive. Calliopejen1 (talk) 12:19, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
      • That’s the point. WMF will never accede to external review unless the person seeking review has to risk something real. Someone convinced that they’re right and able to prove it will do it. It’s not supposed to be how every case or even many cases are handled. This is also a major incentive to WMF to get it right. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 16:54, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Something that very much concerns me about the layers of review in the current system is that it can give the appearance of serious review at every step, without that actually happening. It's entirely possible that the first T&S staffer to read the complaint makes an erroneous interpretation of what's going on, and then the subsequent people in the chain of command just say something like "it looks like [name] has checked all the boxes, so let's OK this and move on to the next agenda item". --Tryptofish (talk) 01:19, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Right, this: What's described is not review in any way, shape, or form. It's approval. The goal isn't to determine whether it's the right action, but whether there's a reason why the action shouldn't be taken, and if not, correcting the action so it's the action that should be taken. Review, or appeal, or anything even resembling process, has at its core audi alteram partem—Let the other side be heard. And a core requirement of being able to be heard is actually knowing what's happening, what you're accused of, and what might happen. The ability to write T&S and complain about being banned isn't an opportunity to be heard. There needs to be an actual review and the actual possibility of a changed outcome, no matter how small. What Mr. Eissfeldt has indicated is that they have decided to under no circumstances alter a T&S action once it's finalized. That is outrageous. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 01:27, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
      • I agree. Internal review is fine to help determine that the sanction is approved of internally by the sanctioning organization -- i.e. that the WMF approves of the decision made by T&S to sanction -- but that's not in any way the same as a review done by a, hopefully unbiased, external entity. Multiple bureaucratic levels of a federal agency, or even its internal Inspector General, may approve an action, but that's not the same thing as the action being appealed to a court. What the internal review can do is to cut down on bad decisions, but once a bad decision has passed the internal gantlet and been issued, there needs to be a review by an impartial external entity. This is basic "how to set up check and balances" stuff, and I'm disturbed that some people aren't seeing that. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:15, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I would tend to agree with Mendaliv and BMK. The problem is in that someone might be banned without even getting to tell their side. The truly unacceptable part to this, aside from it being a massive overreach to begin with, is that the person accused of wrongdoing isn't even told who accused them of what, to give them an opportunity to deny that, put it in context, tell their side of the story, whatever have you. That is absolutely antithetical to how we do things here. But yes, there also should be an external review process. Internal review in an organization can be subject to groupthink, where if the last twenty proposals Sally gave you were good ones, you may only give the twenty-first a cursory look since she always knows her stuff, and miss the same things she missed. Outside review would eliminate that issue. Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:13, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Based on what he said he has not responded to WMF. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 03:45, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Well, remember, in order to be able to respond to or tell your side to WMF, it has to be non-futile. That doesn't mean you need to have a realistic chance of success, and they can be utterly convinced they did the right thing. What we have here is, as Mr. Eissfeldt made clear (albeit obliquely), a categorical refusal to consider anything after the enactment of the ban. It doesn't matter if Fram sent them anything: It cannot affect the outcome and therefore will not be considered. That is not an opportunity to be heard. An opportunity to be heard is more than a hole in which to shout your grievances. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 04:30, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
I think this is a bit of a red herring. Yes, making WMF bans appealable via some process would be a step in the right direction. But the core understanding must be that the WMF runs the servers, not the project. The project has been, to the degree legally possible, self-governing, and that is how it should be. Yes, not everything is perfect and peachy. But the idea that it becomes better if a small, unelected group of people starts making decisions in a top-down process is naive. Yes, it might help in some situations. But it is not sustainable, it is not scalable, and it comes at a price that I, for one, are not willing to pay. Cries for "a strong man", someone who will "clean up", should ring a warning bell in anyone with marginal historical awareness. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:26, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
+1 Exactly, the community howevr also may need to do a better job in running things.--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:15, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, that’s the beauty in this project: Because it’s not a print encyclopedia, we can change. There is no deadline. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 18:08, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
The issue here is that T&S won't tell us where we need to change, despite alleging our policies are deficient in these matters. We can't make any meaningful change if we don't know where and what the issues are. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 19:44, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Irrespectively of what T&S wants and of what we think of T&S we clearly have issues in the community which need to be fixed ASAP.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:55, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
That I will not disagree with - no community is perfectly saintly - but this situation is specifically about certain policies, and odds are some of the problems here will get fixed if we can address those policies. Which is why T&S's silence here is self-defeating. We can't expect to course-correct if the map we've been given just says "Hc svnt dracones" and has nothing else of use. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 20:24, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
I will - at least in the abstract. Yes, we should always strive to improve how the community works. But we need to accept that at a certain level attempts to further improve the situation become counterproductive - either because we waste resources with no further improvement, but also because type 2 errors are at least as damaging (and probably more so) than type 1 errors - and statistically, by decreasing one, you increase the other. That said, in the concrete, I think there are things we can improve - e.g. more structured discussion forms that avoid the impression of overwhelming minority opinions. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:49, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
T&S has given us some hints, I think? We'd need some sort of community position capable of handling privileged evidence. That requires a degree of cooperation from their side (we'd need to eg. select people or designate ArbCom as that point of contact, then have them sign NDAs and whatever else is necessary), but it's a clear way forward to prevent this from happening again. An additional caveat is that, in addition to the privileged-information issue, the WMA has said that they decided not to use ArbCom here because they felt it would be precieved as biased due to previous criticism of it by Fram; I think in that case we need to make it clear that it is ArbCom, not the WMA, that should be making the decision of when to recuse itself, and that the community trusts ArbCom more in that regard than it trusts representatives of the WMA. --Aquillion (talk) 21:09, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
@Aquillion: - at a minimum, since the forced recusing was based because they might be biased against Fram...they should have let Fram decide if he wanted to recuse them. Nosebagbear (talk)
  • Let's keep in mind that the 'no appeal' thing is right on when it concerns things like actual legal or safety issues, like child porn, death threats, etc... The issue is when WMF issue behavioral bans based on nebulous concepts of 'harassment' which seem to be based on 'feelings' and perceived rudeness, rather than things that actually fall within the remit of T&S. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:45, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

The FA/NI community should expire all bans over a year

As explained at [8], the ban on Fram is part of supplementing what formerly was the "autonomous" Wikipedia community and now is the "informal" Wikipedia community. It stands to reason that the Formerly Autonomous/Now Informal community should not be making or enforcing long-term bans. The FA/NI community has long had a habit of making very long, punitive bans either by AN/I or ArbCom, and every once in a while people have noticed and complained about how crazy it is that 10% or more of the most prolific editors who built the encyclopedia are blocked. Let's recognize that one silver lining from the loss of power is that all this can be wound down. If the New Founder, Jan Eissfeldt, and his hired team want to block someone for multiple years, they can. We don't need to. Wnt (talk) 10:40, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Oh wait, this is a WMF plot to free Betacommand? --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:13, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Ha. That would actually be a bonus. Unblocking every long term abuse account, harassers, racists, homophobes, misogynists, legal threateners and vandalism-only accounts may not be the best idea, though. Black Kite (talk) 22:36, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
    Why not? When did we get this soulless bureaucratic notion that anyone who was rude or had a wrong political belief must be banned for ever and ever? I mean, I know we see this all over society, but it doesn't make any sense any one of the thousand times you see it. For most of a century people could bail out of jail for robbing a cabbie, walk out to the street and stick out their thumb to hail a cab. Now all of a sudden they have 'rideshare' services that tie into the internal passports we call "smart phones" and everybody believes, like a good NKVD officer, that if someone ever once used a racist term they should never again be able to hail a ride, because .... why exactly? Ditto Wikipedia. Wnt (talk) 00:04, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
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