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WiR Twitter comments on Fram and the community

The following is a statement I made at ArbCom regarding comments made on the Twitter account of WP:WPWIR regarding WP:FRAM. The statement was removed due to not being relevant to the case of reversal of office actions. starship.paint (talk) 00:37, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Statement by starship.paint

The Committee needs to read the inflammatory statements by @WikiWomenInRed on Twitter. 07:31, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Statements on Fram:

  • [1] The admin who is banned is called Fram. Fram is well known for being warned about incivility, bullying and stalking
  • [2] In a list of toxic uncivil admins, Fram was always a contender - and was warned about this several times.
  • [3] ... an admin who was so toxic that the foundation made an exception and banned them for a year
  • [4] ... this admin has been foul for some time
  • [5] The admin involved is well known for breaking Wiki rules. The Foundation are unable to talk about the real crimes because of privacy but the admins supporters on wiki are not letting that stop them. Ashamed of them. - since deleted - might I say that if there were indeed real crimes committed by Fram, that the WMF refer the matter over to police. 06:19, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Statements on the community

  • [6] ... its the wet gremlins of our community having a WTFfest, swearing to each other about how they have consensus cos everyone there agrees with them. I'm ashamed of them. updated on 03:45, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • [7] ... the lynch mob
  • [8] ... the mob outside the jail demanding the release of an accused.

Ownership of account by WP:WPWIR

Potentially problematic past behaviour

  • [10] I'm sure there are editors with ridiculous agendas who are trying to avoid #genderequity ... Their efforts are annoying, time consuming & pointless 07:31, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia principles for operating social media accounts

May I highlight the best practices, and the strategies and tactics for social media accounts, as written on Wikimedia. I don't know if this account is actually an official Wikimedia one, but it does list #Wikimedia in its profile [11], definitely represents a Wikiproject and has strayed far from the below principles. 06:42, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Best practice: Do not engage in any dispute with other accounts
  • Best practice: Do not post “snarky” or unfriendly tones
  • Best practice: Remember, for Wikipedia, the “five pillars” of Wikipedia’s fundamental principles, especially neutrality and civility.
  • Best practice: Do not post anything on our branded accounts that is personally motivated, for instance a shout-out to an organization you like.
  • Strategies and tactics: We are never sarcastic or combative.
  • Strategies and tactics: Our voice is smart, crisp, energized, factual, principled — with a pinch of nerdery. We don’t do sarcasm or snark, profanity or slang, flame wars or gushing compliments. We are a fact-based platform and our messaging should have similar focus. Wikipedia and social media are fraught with partisan debate; on our accounts, we don’t get involved.

starship.paint (talk) 06:28, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Note that the most inflammatory comment was deleted by Rosiestep [12], who apologized on-wiki on behalf of WP:WPWIR for that comment as the wording lacked precision.

I have two questions I hope the community can answer.

1. Is the the Twitter account of WP:WPWIR considered a Wikimedia projects branded account? If no, what is it then?

2. What is the appropriate venue for taking the account to task for straying far from the best practices for social media accounts? starship.paint (talk) 00:37, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

I don't know anything about "Wikimedia projects branded accounts", but I think the best way to "taking the account" regarding social media accounts on external websites, is to contact whoever is in charge of those external websites. MPS1992 (talk) 00:43, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't think this is as big a deal as it's getting made out to be. "REAL CRIMES" was undoubtedly a very poor choice of words indeed, but I do not believe they were intended to be interpreted literally. When brought to their attention, they immediately took action and removed it. So, I think we should consider this to be taken care of; I don't see any need to bang further on it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:27, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Starship.paint has been on a rampage about this one comment, forum-shopping it here, ANI, the WIR talk page, and the Arbcom case. There must by now be thousands of comments of varying levels of inaccuracy and inflammatoriness posted on this issue here and elsewhere. What is it about posting it on twitter, or posting by people associated with a group devoted to women's biographies, that makes this one deleted comment worthy of so much attention? What is the purpose of turning one deleted comment among thousands of responses to the Fram ban into an issue on a level with issues such as the ban itself, WMF's interpretation of and actions against abusive editing, or the ensuing wheel-warring? —David Eppstein (talk) 01:40, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
@David Eppstein: - I haven't been forum shopping. I only took it to ArbCom. The rest of the places were notifications of the ArbCom statement. ArbCom said no, I brought it here. starship.paint (talk) 01:52, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
It is false that the ANI discussion was a notification of the ArbCom statement. And you brought it here, a second time, after a previous discussion here that you participated in was moved to the talk page as being too tangential. And you are avoiding answering my questions about why this one comment among thousands should become such an urgent issue. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:56, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, it's time to let this go. El_C 01:58, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
This is what I wrote at ANI. [13] As a notification, I have filed a statement regarding the tweets at the ArbCom case regarding the Fram incident. How can you say that It is false that the ANI discussion was a notification of the ArbCom statement.? starship.paint (talk) 01:59, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
The red font is hurting my eyes a little bit! El_C 02:02, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Purple? starship.paint (talk) 02:04, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I have f.lux on, so it actually is more a brown to me, but yes, better. El_C 02:09, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
@David Eppstein: And you are avoiding answering my questions about why this one comment among thousands should become such an urgent issue. - it violates the Wikimedia principles for operating social media accounts. Those are in my statement. starship.paint (talk) 02:06, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
@Starship.paint: are you perhaps confusing "Wikimedia projects" (like, for example, Wikipedia and Wikiquote are both Wikimedia projects in the sense that the pages you link talk about) with WikiProjects on the English Wikipedia? They are not the same thing. MPS1992 (talk) 02:15, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I really don't know MPS1992, so I am asking. starship.paint (talk) 02:20, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Okay? Even if it does, as soon as it was brought to the attention of the account admins, they corrected the problem. What more exactly do you want? Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:07, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
What El_C and Seraphimblade said. There's nothing more to be done here. Lepricavark (talk) 02:11, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

The worst tweet was deleted, but people may have already read it. At the very least, a new tweet should be sent: "CORRECTION: A deleted tweet by this account may have implied that real crimes were committed by Wikipedia user Fram. The wording in this tweet lacked precision. We apologize, and do not indicate that real crimes were committed." starship.paint (talk) 02:15, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

No, the least is that you could drop the stick.
Drop the stick. --Fæ (talk) 02:17, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Rosiestep did the right thing in acknowledging the mistake and apologizing on-wiki. Now it's time for the Wikiproject Twitter account to do the same off-wiki, for actions conducted off-wiki to an audience of 6,000. starship.paint (talk) 02:22, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
@Starship.paint: Hi, I opened the AN/I on this, which has since been closed. Are you letting this go? cygnis insignis 02:40, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
@Cygnis insignis: - I've said my piece, you can read it above. starship.paint (talk) 02:41, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Reading this Twitter feed, I'm not feeling the love. Matthew Long said that the post had been mentioned on enwiki and the response from the WIR account was "we get mentioned in important places too." [14] Honestly, the dismissive tone, the general sense that people here are deluded and toxic -- reading this Twitter thread feels exactly like reading a Wikipediocracy forum, only it's women being contemptuous instead of men. And if they know some reason why Fram is so "toxic" that we should not be defending him, then by all means, speak up here where we are reading, instead of subtly hinting on Twitter feeds that we are not. But WO wouldn't do that either, for the same reasons. Wnt (talk) 02:19, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
The best bit was the phrase wet gremlins. It applies very neatly to those who do not understand making a legitimate observation or complaint, can turn into nasty trolling and obsessive behaviour, as quickly and spectacularly as a mogwai turns into a gremlin. --Fæ (talk) 02:50, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
One wonders how long it will be before the existence of a "This user is a wet gremlin" userbox. I'm awfully tempted myself... Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:01, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Where are you quoting from? I'm now curious because I've never heard of wet gremlins. Enigmamsg 03:24, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
@Enigmaman: See Gremlins#Plot. Deor (talk) 03:37, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, but what is the relationship to this discussion? Was it mentioned by someone elsewhere or just introduced now? Enigmamsg 04:14, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I assume it is ... somewhere... on Twitter? In any case note that it's wrong -- it's feeding them after midnight that turns them mean; the only problem with water is it gets them pregnant. Wnt (talk) 04:46, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I found it. The quote: "I wouldn't bother, its the wet gremlins of our community having a WTFfest, swearing to each other about how they have consensus cos everyone there agrees with them." Yeah, I mean why would you assume you have consensus just because everyone agrees with you? You should obviously always assume there's a "silent majority" out there that thinks you're completely wrong and is afraid to post their opinion... Enigmamsg 14:33, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I love you, Gizmo! Now time for a bath. El_C 03:29, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I will humbly submit that the reason why no one "speaks up here" is contained within your comment.--Jorm (talk) 03:33, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

The internet is a big place. If reading something on it distresses you then read something else. People are allowed to think what they want and you need not feel showered in love by their thoughts. Of all the things that matter here, this is emphatically not one of them. nableezy - 03:52, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Good book

The Trial, by Franz Kafka. About a guy who is convicted and sentenced without ever being told what the crime was or allowed to see the evidence. Highly recommended and seems on-topic for here.

67.164.113.165 (talk) 05:53, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Has Fram said they do not know, we do not which is not the same thing.Slatersteven (talk) 08:49, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Fram said he was told what the offense was, but the edits he said he was banned for consisted of (a) proper edits for which no action should have been taken against him and (b) rude language directed against ArbCom, for which, at worst, he should have received a warning, not a one-year ban. Perhaps a better analogy would be Milan Kundera's The Joke, in which a man is expelled from college for sending a postcard that says, "Optimism is the opium of mankind! A healthy spirit stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky!" The character knew what he was being punished for, but under a more normal government regime, no action would have been taken against him at all. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 16:29, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Assuming good faith

Given that making unfounded assumptions seems to be quite trendy these days, maybe some more would be in order. Assuming that T&S acted in good faith, were not deliberately seeking to undermine the project and believed that they had valid grounds to ban Fram (I don't know if these assumptions are correct but I would hope that they are):

  • If they didn't expect Fram to publish the emails they sent him, they wouldn't necessarily have tried to build as strong a case against him, since no one else would have been able to see the email anyway. They weren't planning to publicize any specific reasons that they made the ban, so it makes sense that they wouldn't deliberately trawl through all of his contributions to make a list of diffs that no one other than Fram would see.
  • A majority of T&S members were Wikipedia editors before they were WMF employees. It's possible that they assumed that no matter what they did there would be a controversy (e.g. because they'd expect Fram's on-wiki friends to stick up for him no matter the circumstances, or because they'd expect some opposition to anything the WMF does), so they simply asserted themselves by making the ban (which they were well within their right to do). Even a local announcement that they were now going to start doing this could in itself have generated controversy, so it would make sense for them to want one controversy instead of two. The first few WMFOffice responses seem to indicate that the amount of controversy generated was unexpected, though.
  • I'm sure some users would want to name editors who have had similar problems with civility which have been tolerated, but it's possible that no one reported them to WMF so T&S weren't aware of those users' conduct issues, or they felt it was easier to build a case against Fram first (out of the editors who they considered banning).
  • It's possible that T&S deliberately made the ban in this way, knowing that there would be a controversy, to establish a precedent that bans like this one would have to be considered more carefully in the future (it's entirely plausible that the Board was pressuring them to take action but of course no one is going to confirm that).

I would certainly have preferred that they didn't do it in this way, but the WMF's actions shouldn't be exempt from WP:AGF just because. (Or put another way, Hanlon's razor is likely applicable.) Jc86035 (talk) 06:50, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Jc86035, A majority of T&S members were Wikipedia editors. Citation please. ∯WBGconverse 06:54, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
@Winged Blades of Godric: m:Trust and Safety/Team. I count seven out of nine (The Interior, FloNight, Kritzolina, Fluffernutter, African Hope, Fox and Jan eissfeldt), so assuming that the list is accurate, then my statement is correct. Jc86035 (talk) 06:56, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
There's 7 (not six) out of 9 who are (or were) editors, with one remaining out of two specialising in emergencies, probably making this mostly out of their remit (no comment on actual involvement). --qedk (t 桜 c) 07:00, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I would note that WP:AGF is not a suicide pact, and we're rapidly approaching the point where hanlon's razor is inadequate because the WMF's actions can't be adequately explained by stupidity. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:59, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
@Tazerdadog: I would note that the essay actually seems to strengthen the position of the WMF, because it's clearly written in defense of those who are blocking or banning editors in service of the encyclopedia, and the WMF's initial action would probably fall into this category (at least from their point of view). Jc86035 (talk) 07:03, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Jc86035, hmm. It appears that I missed Joe and Samuel:-( On a side-note, Jan was de-sysopped for using Super Protect against community consensus and has since made 3 edits in last 5 years. Kritzolina got de-sysopped in a similar fashion, too. Samuel's track-records are not very impressive either but mileage may vary. ∯WBGconverse 07:11, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    Informational: JE wasn't desysopped through dispute resolution like we do it here from what I can tell, though maybe he would have been. DE.WP has an admin recall procedure where if 25 people request it, the admin has 30 days to start a new RFA. It looks pretty common for admins in that situation to decline the new RFA and turn in the bit (see DE list of former admins: "nach Wiederwahlaufforderung nicht kandidiert" means the person didn't run again after the recall). JE was already on WMF staff and in fact the recall was because of his COI between being staff and being a community member. There is some discussion (partly in english if you scroll down) on his user talk page here. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 07:45, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    Of course being able to ban anyone through T&S seems even better than being a local wiki admin. I guess we don't do memes here, or else I'd post the clip of Obi-wan Kenobi saying "if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine", with "strike down" replaced by "desysop". 67.164.113.165 (talk) 08:02, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    I know the policies of de-wiki and both Dan and Kritzolina were de-sysopped because they did not run for re-confirmation within a month of 25 editors supporting for a reconfirmation. Having read the relevant threads around Jan's desysop (can read German:-)), I don't believe that he would have succeeded in a reconfirmation, at any case.
    FWIW, I (personally) dislike their rules and certain parts of the outcomes in the above two cases. But, I guess the overall stuff works well enough for them:-) And, agree with your last point! ∯WBGconverse 08:11, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    @Winged Blades of Godric: For what it's worth, I mentioned this mainly to imply that they probably do have a decent understanding of how Wikipedia works – so we probably wouldn't expect them to be completely oblivious (although it's definitely possible that they didn't think this through regardless) – and not to focus on who those seven people are. Jc86035 (talk) 08:18, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I tend to agree, and think this may also be part of the reason they did what they did. That is not one incident but a series of incidents (all in and of themselves minor, but creating an overall atmosphere and project image) that the foundation felt (if allowed to continue) would bring the project into disrepute. I can think of many corporate entities that act in this way towards staff, what you do reflects on the company, even outside of work.Slatersteven (talk) 08:57, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm very inclined to AGF. Look at this from a business or corporate perspective. If someone comes to me and complains that they have been harassed by another person in the organization, there are rules that I need to follow. Number one is that it is confidential. Number two is that I must take it seriously. Number three is that I have to investigate it fairly, and number four is that I need to act, rather than just pass it on and pretend it is someone else's problem, and do so in a way that was proposrtional. So what did the WMF do? Kept it confidential, took it seriously, handled it themselves instead of handballing it to ArbCom, only banned Fram from one wiki were (presumably) they were most likely to come into contact with the editor(s) concerned, and presumably did a proper investigation into the accusations. The thing is, asking people to openly take instances of harassment to AN/I or ArbCom as their only path is not reasonable. Personally, I've experienced (as many of us have) serious harassment as a result of editing WP, and given that the person concerned knows who I am and where I work, any public complaint (such as AN/I) will come back and bite me. If they knew I was complaining about them, I would (yet again) be pulled up by my boss to explain why my someone is ringing to make a series of allegations about me and threatening the reputation of my employer (this happened at least twice). I had to wear the behavior here, because I was unsure about ArbCom and knew that AN/I would not be confidential, and therefore could not make a complaint as the retaliation would be worse than the on-wiki issues. What the WMF are saying - if we AGF - is that they will treat such complaints seriously, they will act if need be, and they will maintain confidentiality even when half of Wikipedia seems to be crying for their blood. I prefer to believe that there is a misunderstanding, and there wasn't a major issue with Fram, and I'd love to see that worked out. But if I AGF I am very happy that there is an avenue that can be taken that will treat complaints confidentially and will act on them, irrespective of the possible consequences to the WMF. - Bilby (talk) 14:17, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    • I fully get that and it's a good point. However, if all the harassment in question by Fram was on-wiki (and it appears to be the case that it has been), it seems that it doesn't exceed the community's tolerance for such things. (It has exceeded mine btw.) So T&S is trying to set a civility bar above that of the community without consulting the community. Even though, in this instance my feelings on the matter match T&S more closely than the general community, I do think at the least there needed to be a discussion with the community first. Hobit (talk) 15:18, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
      • If I AGF, then I need to keep in mind that T&S isn't an ugly corporate body, but a bunch of well meaning and respected people, some of whom I have a lot of time for, blocking another respected editor. They might be wrong, Fram might be in the wrong, but it is a difficult call. Mostly because in many cases of harassment there's no smoking gun - just a long term pattern of behaviour, any one instance of which doesn't warrant an action. Some harassment is blatant and simple, but when it isn't it can be hard to realize what you are looking at unless you're told what to look for. (I can think of three editors who were doing this - no one edit was a problem, but the pattern across many edits, and multiple editors, showed a major issue - but every time an individual editor raised it on AN/I they were told that those particular comments were ok, that they were in the wrong, and that no policy was being breached). The problem I have here is that I can't expect T&S to tell me what the reason was, because it is essential that they maintain confidentially, but without understanding the overall picture I can't judge for myself. It could be a bad call by T&S, but I'm too ignorant of the issues to make a judgement. Ideally, what is needed is an independent arbitrator who would be responsible for looking at their decisions in these cases without revealing what they found - a bit like how CU is meant to be monitored by ArbCom, although I guess that would just move the blame to T&S and the monitoring body, rather than T&S on their own.- Bilby (talk) 16:00, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
  • There are two aspects to all this: were T&S right to act as exceptionally as they did?, and did they communicate adequately to the rest of the community?
As to the first, then all the explanations which have circulated so far point to a significantly non-GF basis to all this, and undue influence on account of who felt aggrieved, rather than why (plenty of us get outings or threats of physical violence and nothing happens, so this is certainly exceptional). Not to say that T&S were the ones who acted in bad faith here, but with the obviously poor handling of the second aspect, the rest of the community outside WMF is in the dark. Trust will not be re-established when the only explanation in circulation is the rumour.
T&S should re-evaluate what happened here (in as much secrecy as they need) and then review what their actions ought to have been, correcting as best they can. Then release some statement which is transparent enough to start defusing this. Some of that might include either realising that Fram wasn't the problem here, or explaining to the rest of us why Fram merits a year's ban, or even pointing out to others where they shouldn't be either using or being swayed by undue influence. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:53, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
  • "As to the first, then all the explanations which have circulated so far point to a significantly non-GF basis to all this, and undue influence on account of who felt aggrieved, rather than why" All of these are speculations spun of whole cloth. Fram mentioned his first two warnings, people seized a user name, saw she had previous ties to the chairwoman of the board, assumed she was the complainant, and that the chair exerted influence on T&S. There's absolutely no evidence to support, or disprove, that theory, so the whole notion that T&S' sanction is problematic because it was somehow unduly influenced is quite ABF in itself. The only things we know for sure is that Fram was on his 2nd warning, someone raised a complaint, and upon further review, a limited ban was implemented as an intermediary step before the full SanFran Ban, and a single diff was pointed out to him as an example of conduct they deem unacceptable for an admin on his 2nd warning. Those are the only facts we know of, and most likely the only the community at large will ever see. And BTW, that's perfectly normal. MLauba (Talk) 16:30, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think it's entirely possible that they acted in good faith, but made a series of very bad mistakes. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:36, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
  • It's irrelevant whether it was in good faith. Competence is required. They either show monstrous arrogance in presuming their judgment to be so much better than ours as to support an action like this with no prior consultation, or else they are indifferent to anything but raw power so they don't care whose judgment is better. Which is bad faith of course. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 01:13, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Just why didn't they predict this?

Putting aside the rightness and wrongness of actions, i have to ask

Given the involvement of multiple WMF teams - why did no-one have the nous to predict how the Community would react (both to the ban but also to the "en-wiki is failing to enforce standards, but we can't say how")?

Is it the serious dearth of individuals with Wikipedia experience? They say they have employees with community management experience, but we really don't imitate any other web community (both in the form of the Community and the supposed form of the executive).

Is it "we don't care, we believe there are issues and we "know" how to solve them"?

I know several teams were given, but I'm not sure Community Relations were - did they just not get the right internal voices?

Nosebagbear (talk) 15:18, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

On what basis do you come to the conclusion that this reaction (or something akin to it) was not expected or predicted? I've been working since Day One on the assumption that it was pretty much entirely predicted to shake out the way that it has. Even the timing is not surprising, occurring within a week of a long-scheduled board meeting. So far, none of this has surprised me. Maybe it's because I spend a lot more time operating at the "global" level. Risker (talk) 15:28, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
Risker, one would think if this reaction was expected, they would have been better prepared for it. Is there something in particular that leads you to believe that the WMF did this with the intent of causing this type of disruption? That's a pretty serious accusation. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:41, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm inclined to believe with Seraphimblade - if they did predict this blowback, then they didn't do a great job prepping for it. It also means they'd be at dire risk of deceiving the board, which seems a hell of a personal risk to take. The Community response was angry in a general sense, but the actual actions considered were all over the place. Some really unpleasant things (for both sides) could have occurred. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:47, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

There are two possibilities, both quite discouraging, but I can't think of a third one:

  • A, the "cluelessness theory": The WMF people responsible for these actions are genuinely so completely detached from the community and aloof that they didn't have a clue how mature, large Wikipedia communities work (such as the English or the German one), and really couldn't foresee the uproar caused by a well-intentioned intervention they thought would be in the interests of the "health" of the community.
  • B, the "conspiracy theory": They planned it all from the start, expected the uproar, are intentionally behaving that way, and this is part of a plan to gradually erode the independence of the Wikipedia communities through actions that are accompanied by nice words and apologies for handling it badly, but ultimately pushing through what they want.

I think - and hope - that A is more likely. It's also not good, but at least if it's A, then there is hope for improvement. Gestumblindi (talk) 15:54, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Responding to Seraphimblade and Nosebagbear: Change is, by design, disruptive. They may not have predicted this exact response to the disruption, but I am certain they anticipated that the action would cause disruption. There have been a lot of indications that changes in the management of user behaviour were coming. Keep in mind that T&S and the WMF aren't just dealing with English Wikipedia, and that our user behaviour problems, while minor compared to some other small projects, have a disproportionate impact on the perception of the global umbrella of projects. The fact that it is now out in the open that these changes have been in progress for over a year, and that various iterations of similar penalties have already been imposed on other projects, tells us that this is part of a larger plan. I do have the advantage of being personally acquainted with at least half of the people involved in T&S or in the chain of authorization for OFFICE actions, and none of them are fools; every one of the ones I know would have fully anticipated that Enwiki would go "nuts" when they made their first OFFICE local block here. The WMF - and the Board, just about every member of whom is actively involved in the work being done on the 2030 strategy development - has been moving toward a more global approach to just about everything for a long time, and here on this project we've generally been turning a blind eye to it and acting as though we're too important to mess with. We don't exist in a vacuum, much as some may want to think we do. Risker (talk) 16:11, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Risker, thanks for that. I have to say, sadly, that what you say makes a certain degree of sense. But the idea that WMF is deliberately undertaking actions that will be destructive to the projects that they were founded to support is troubling, to put it mildly, and is a lot to digest. If you are correct on this, what do you propose that we might do about it? Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:21, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I guess the question is whether or not disruption (which I'm sure they'd agree this is) is the same thing as destruction (which is a lot more questionable). In a lot of ways, our project is becoming increasingly self-destructive. How many people on this project know that the majority of sub-Saharan African Wikipedians edit either this project or French Wikipedia? How welcoming are we to them? Do we seek them out, treat them with respect, understand that they're probably better arbiters of what constitutes a reliable source about Kenya or Lesotho than those of us sitting in the Northern Hemisphere? Are we dealing effectively with edits coming out of the Indian subcontinent, another major global area contributing to our new editor cadre? We aren't talking about that stuff on this project, and I'll lay odds that most people are completely unaware of where the potential for new growth is coming from, and the support systems and mechanisms that oldies like us had when we first started editing just don't exist anymore.

    As a community, we've embraced globalization throughout the WMF when we've thought it to our advantage. We were happy with the introduction of SUL, a lot of people were genuinely excited with the introduction of global preferences and global user pages, we were pretty much thrilled to bits with the introduction of the "paid editing" clauses to the TOU, and we were proud to be the pilot projects of what became the global legal fees assistance program. The roots of the Trust & Safety program are right here on English Wikipedia, and many of the activities we are seeing now on a global level were first developed to address issues on this project; when you look at the list of OFFICE banned users, more than 2/3 of them primarily edited this project.

    This is wandering pretty far off-topic here, but I suppose my key point is that we're not doing a great job ourselves of resolving the low- and medium-level user behaviour problems, despite knowing for years that they've been adversely affecting new editorship, and there's good reason to believe they've affected editor retention, as well. These are really hard problems to solve - and they're problems in just about every type of online community. I don't think this was the best way to address things, but to be honest I suspect we would have wound up with almost the same discussion if the T&S team had come here and said "hey you've got some user behaviour problems that are adversely affecting your project, and we suggest doing XYZ" than if they just did XYZ. We wouldn't have wound up with the desysop/crat issues, but I'm pretty sure it would have been just as contentious otherwise. Risker (talk) 17:33, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

    All of the things you are saying the community was happy about, with the exception of SUL, are opt-in programs. SUL was only non-opt-in for the users who were forcibly renamed (who I presume were not happy). However, the WMF applying its own standards and banning users it feels have breached them is non-opt-in for the entire community. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:41, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The Terms of Use are not opt-in. The OFFICE global ban program is not opt-in and in fact was created and expanded because of pressure by English Wikipedia. SUL was never opt-in; it was all-or-nothing. Global preferences is a preference program that affects anyone who, while logged in, goes to another Wikimedia project; it has defaults that are largely benign but it's not really opt-in. The use of the LFAP is optional for editors to whom it applies, but it applies regardless of what project(s) the editor contributes to. I don't really think any of the programs I've pointed out are really optional. Risker (talk) 17:58, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • On the content/WikiProject level, I'd say that there are at least some efforts going on - for example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Highways/Countries which has a summary of the road articles enwiki has compared with what Commons and Wikidata has.
  • I would say though, that some things like SUL and global preferences/userpages were requested by many people for years. Some of the more controversial things like MediaViewer, Flow, or these WMF local bans don't fall into that category. --Rschen7754 18:17, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • You've hit on a very key point, Rschen7754 - the successful global programs tended to come from widespread (i.e., multiple-project) community requests and with significant community involvement; those that were not successful tended to be more top-down and either had little broad global/local community involvement and/or were resistant to such involvement. Risker (talk) 18:22, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) I think there's a lot to address in that earlier statement. How many people on this project know that the majority of sub-Saharan African Wikipedians edit either this project or French Wikipedia? Didn't know it, but I would've guessed it. How welcoming are we to them? Do we seek them out, treat them with respect, understand that they're probably better arbiters of what constitutes a reliable source about Kenya or Lesotho than those of us sitting in the Northern Hemisphere? I will agree we should treat any new editor well. I think projects like TWA have helped with that. I do not, however, agree that any editor is a better judge of source reliability based on their location. Now, certainly, those editors might know of some reliable sources that we generally aren't aware of, and that's great. But I would not, for example, say that I am a better judge of reliable sources about the US than someone in Kenya, and I wouldn't say the reverse between myself and them either. Are we dealing effectively with edits coming out of the Indian subcontinent, another major global area contributing to our new editor cadre? So far as I can see, we have quite a large amount of content about Indian subjects. Editors are not required to specify their nationality and many never do, so no one can say for sure how much of that was written by Indians, but I would say it's probably a fair bit. As a community, we've embraced globalization throughout the WMF when we've thought it to our advantage. Sure, like any community would, and we have also pushed back when we thought it not to be, resulting in the improvement of what was being attempted. You'll note that we do now have Visual Editor and MediaViewer on the project, but without the very real problems that indicated they should not have been deployed as they were. Similar with other initiatives. SUL has the ultimate opt-out—it only affects you at all if you choose to use it. If I would prefer, say, not to edit as Seraphimblade on Commons, and instead use an account named JimBobBoPeep, I could do that and SUL would do nothing to stand in my way. The opt-out mechanism, in that case, is organic and entirely built-in: If you don't want to use it, just don't. Same with the paid editor clause. Sure, we enthusiastically welcomed that, but Commons did not, so they opted out and were not stopped from doing so. It served our community's needs well, but not theirs. That's the way to do these things without being unduly disruptive. Put them up as an option, but always provide the option to say no. Telling WMF "We would like you to handle situations such as child protection and threats where reports to law enforcement may be required" was not equivalent to telling them "We would like you to come along and ban whoever you just don't like." And if they had come along and said "Hey, we've found indications of some problems, can we discuss them?" would almost certainly have been better received than what essentially amounts to a power grab. Really, any approach other than that would have been better received. Unilaterally banning one of their most vocal critics was about the most disruptive choice they could have conceivably made, and I would say that deliberately upsetting many senior members of our community, and causing a rift that has caused many to leave, is indeed very appropriately classified as "destructive". Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:26, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
    Seraphimblade, I am from India and have some idea about editors from this belt. There are multiple sysops and highly decorated content writers, from India. Obviously, the more, the better but there's fair many. And, I see multiple new editors, who have become experienced enough, at a regular rate. I though note that this is about India alone; I have an idea about Pakistan, too. But, no clue about the entire subcontinent i.e. Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan et al.∯WBGconverse 18:43, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
(ec) I'll also take a crack at addressing, Are we dealing effectively with edits coming out of the Indian subcontinent, another major global area contributing to our new editor cadre?
Wikipedia certainly has a lot of problems in this topic area as the existence of, and steady need to use, WP:ARBIPA amply demonstrates. But we also have a lot of informed editors, and institutionalized knowledge and memory to deal with the content and conduct issues in this area; more than what WMF can ever hope to develop even if it expands its paid staff by 10x (just take a look at the recent discussions here and here, or take a gander through the WT:INB archives, to get an idea of the breadth of knowledge we can call upon). And even if one is narrowly focused on civility and editor-retention issue, I don't see T&S having, or developing the capacity, to handle those either. For example: can anyone in the T&S staff take a look at this current "discussion", decipher the insults being thrown around, understand what real-world identity-disputes they reflect, and then act to balance the civility and edit-retention concerns? Frankly, I doubt regular wikipedians, including me, will be too successful either but I do think that we are better equipped to try.
(TL;DR)  Yes, there are problems and opportunities in the Indian subcontinent 'growth area', but not ones that will be solved or even helped by 'globalization', using the blunt tool of TOU enforcement, or intervention by paid-staff. Abecedare (talk) 19:07, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
(+1) to what Abecedare said. Damn true; the situation can be improved but not by random lightning strikes, from up above. ∯WBGconverse 19:15, 15 June 2019 (UTC)


There is also a third possibility that this is not really something that was planned top-down by the WMF but a result of WMF-internal office politics. Maybe annual reviews are due, and the T&S team haven't done enough to justify their budget. Maybe T&S are bored because there is just not enough work for them, so they have to ban whomever they can (that would explain them banning an already banned user in the german Wikipedia). Maybe T&S wants to have more requests in the future to increase their size and importance within WMF, so they needed a high-profile case like this one to remind everyone that they exist and are ban-happy. --Tinz (talk) 18:45, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

This is sheer conspiracy theory, at-least to me. ∯WBGconverse 18:48, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
I have no idea whether this is case, but it is a third option to the scenarios A and B suggested by Gestumblindi. The WMF has grown to a size where I would be amazed if there was not a lot internal office politics going on. --Tinz (talk) 18:53, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

The ability of WMF to foresee this exists along a spectrum not a binary, ranging from "they expected no pushback" (100% wrong) to "they expected this level of pushback" (100% right). Speculations about motives and preparation for the fallout of their actions are two separate conversations which overlap with whether or not they saw it coming but are distinct topics in and of themselves. I have my guesses about all three of these things but think it's important to define this correctly first if we're to analyze it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:13, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm a little confused because the 100% wrong seems to be an opinion. Enigmamsg 19:33, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps I should have just stuck to "The ability of WMF to foresee this exists along a spectrum of 100% inaccurate to 100% accurate" and then proceeded with the remainder of my thought. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:39, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
At the very least they seem to have achieved a "dead cat" moment, to attract our attention to what they've been working on. Jheald (talk) 19:43, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
As a logical possibility, they could have expected more pushback. Lots of us here were supportive of that. I myself suggested that all the admins go on strike. Others made even more forceful suggestions. Fram made the explicit point that nobody should undertake actual violence. I'm sure nobody even considered that, but it tells us something that the topic had to even come up. Someone else said something about protesting with signs. Picketing the WMF office during the board meeting was certainly doable (for those of us in the region) and it could have been organized here. I dunno how much turnout there could have been though, or whether it would have affected anything. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 19:50, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Responding to Seraphimblade: Yeah, I was concerned that I was going too far off-topic in that particular post, though I'll note there's a difference between "you can create an alternate to the paid editing TOU but unless your community supports that, this TOU applies" and "you can opt in to this paid editing TOU". [Complete aside: I was the person who piloted the "alternate disclosure policy" for Mediawikiwiki and tech projects.] Coming back to the core issue that seems to be at the base of the WMF/T&S action here, we have long known that there are very serious difficulties in addressing behaviour issues amongst the group of editors who've been labeled "unblockable"; this group includes most administrators, and a lot of long-term prolific editors. In the latter case, they have in fact often been blocked, but the blocks don't tend to stick. There are probably only about 20-30 administrators who could successfully block an unblockable, and even then they'd be risking their bits to do so. I am certain that just about every administrator who carries out blocks has refrained from blocking one of those individuals at least in part because they know (even though the block has been more than earned) they'll spend days defending the block, and will likely burn up a good chunk of whatever social capital and sweat equity they have in doing so. We know as a community that this is a problem, we've known it for years, and we've avoided addressing it. Arbcom isn't the answer - it's not designed to address this sort of stuff, and we really haven't given it either the authority or responsibility of doing so. There have been complaints going back almost as long as I have been on this project (almost 15 years now) that our community can't or won't deal with this issue. So I'll go a bit further out on a limb than I have to this point: I don't think that T&S is the right answer here, either; it's not the process or the course of action I would have recommended (had I been consulted), nor the one that I think will achieve the best results. On the other hand, I don't think I or anyone else in this community has come up with any other, better courses of action.

    I think perhaps the issue here is that there isn't a consensus on how to interpret the core action here. Some see it as a wake-up call that our user behaviour problems are more serious than we have admitted, and we need to make "human resources" type changes in our project. Some see it as a flat-out usurpation of community independence. Some see it as a much-needed step because the project has, in fact, failed to enforce its existing policies and/or has not developed processes or systems to address problems we know we have, and attempts to resolve these problems have not only been unsuccessful but have been openly and actively blocked. My suspicion is that elements of each of these perceptions are correct; that this one action has a lot more aspects to it than simply one issue. Risker (talk) 19:41, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

  • The internal politics side is interesting (not the "did it to show existence", which I disagree with) but a legitimate 3rd choice - that would turn it into "Why didn't T&S expect this". Perhaps community relations did know, but T&S went ahead anyway. @Risker: is right in the sense that people have interpreted it in different ways. However I disagree with his (His? Apologies if wrong judgement that no-one has come up with better thoughts. There was quite a productive conversation kicked off going on WT:AC/N by this, with the first 2/3 discussing it in detail, before recent side-tracking. Several mitigating options as well as duplication a less extreme form under ARBCOM control were considered. This suggests that if the WMF had said "right, you need to do something, or we're going to have to start blocking people without you", but not gone ahead, something could have been done. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:05, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Hi Nosebagbear - I'm a woman, although I ticked off "gender neutral pronouns" in my preferences; she/her is just fine, but my focus is always on the conversation rather than the pronouns, so don't feel awkward about it. [Another complete aside, it seems that the software that estimates number/percentage of female editors uses this preference, and counts "gender neutral" as male.] Yes, there's another recent discussion. I've lost count of the number of times it's been discussed; I could probably come up with a list of 50 prior discussions, small and large, if I wanted to spend all weekend at it. At most, we've come up with genuinely tangential applications (e.g., not using external websites to attack people) but really haven't hit the core "low-intensity chronic aggression" issues. And now this recent discussion has lost its way, too. So...how do we get the discussion to stay on track, to come up with actionable positions and plans that address general comportment rather than fringe cases, and then bring it into force? That's the most important challenge we face. Risker (talk) 20:25, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm skeptical of the argument that ArbCom has been particularly ineffective at dealing with these kinds of things. ANI, yes, for sure. And maybe a few instances where ArbCom didn't do enough. And certainly situations where it's better to contact ArbCom privately than to post a request on-site. But I'm having trouble believing that there is a large and systematic population of trouble-makers who have been taken to ArbCom and given a pass, and who therefore need to be handed over to T&S. Although I can believe that there are some users who think that certain editors need to be reigned in, and who think that the rest of the community is getting it wrong. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:20, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
The en-wiki system works poorly in this area, but only a tiny fraction is Arbcom's fault. North8000 (talk) 03:28, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Risker, if this is entirely about Fram's on-wiki conduct, where one or more people think they were being wrong but aren't willing to deal with the hell of on-wiki dispute resolution, what about the possibility of having someone else "represent" them? I have to say I'm very creeped out about the secrecy, if all the evidence is on-wiki and public. If there's an allegation of off-wiki misconduct that's different of course. Can we get a straight answer from T&S about whether Fram's (alleged) misconduct was entirely on-wiki? Being able to short-circuit normal DR by sending a few diffs to T&S sounds like a great new feature of Wikipedia (that's sarcasm but it does almost sound like it was done that way). 67.164.113.165 (talk) 03:03, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your question. I understand entirely where you are coming from, and the answer isn't simple and is (once again) rooted in ancient Enwiki history. There was a point in time where there was a small group/one or two individuals who took it upon themselves to advocate on behalf of fellow Wikipedians; this would have been 8 or more years ago, and I'd have no idea where to look for the relevant pages, many of which were probably deleted. This was put to a stop for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was some pretty trolling behaviour on the part of one of the self-appointed advocates, and some real questions about whether their actions were really helping the purported "aggrieved person", or if they were acting with the agreement of that person. It's possible that one or more other "old-timers" may be able to fill in some of the gaps in my recollection; I can't even honestly say that I remember the usernames of the accounts that took on that campaign. Risker (talk) 04:08, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates? isaacl (talk) 06:31, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I kind of remember that, but it was more to help people navigate the DR process than pursue the dispute on their behalf, and its members weren't always all that clueful. I was imagine something where the advocate did more. But, I no longer think it's a good idea, even if it's workable. What the Committee of Public Trust & Safety is doing is insane though. It will lead to la Terreur. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 07:00, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia consultation on new user reporting system

Moved from Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram § Wikimedia consultation on new user reporting system

Moving OT notification to talk. This is already advertised in CENT as well. --qedk (t 桜 c) 09:03, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia is holding a consultation [15] on its plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. If you wish to offer input, click here. starship.paint (talk) 09:00, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Congratulations

Moved from Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram § Congratulations

--qedk (t 桜 c) 09:44, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

We have now topped the 1 million character mark for this page. Nice work engaging the community and increasing participation, WMF bureaucrats — well played! Carrite (talk) 03:26, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Is this including the archived threads? Either way, yes! WMF has gotten people out of the woodwork. It is really cool to see everyone together to rant about them. --Rockstonetalk to me! 05:44, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
  • And that doesn't even count the lengthy discussion on ARBCOM's board and the talk page here. The fact that we don't really have anything to !vote on does keep the ball rolling. And we've still got anything Doc James might tell us, too. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:31, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    What is most flabbergasting is that the WMF literally had clearly no clue what they were doing was going to cause this. Or if they did, they lack the leadership to do anything about it, which is clearly being demonstrated day on day here with an abject lack of anything substantive from anyone there. I think that, in a nutshell, demonstrates a clear disconnect with WMF and their community. If anyone had made this kind of error of judgement where I work, they'd be terminated. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:42, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    I actually agree with Risker above that WMF had a very good idea what the consequences would be.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:46, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    Definitely, yes. I'm sure they were fully expecting a shitstorm of some magnitude, at least. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:47, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    And yet were (a) happy to enable it and (b) unable to respond to it? Really? The Rambling Man (talk) 11:29, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    I think so. If you know that something you intend to do will be unpopular but are determined to do it anyway, just doing it and riding out the storm can be an effective strategy. How much of a storm they expected, I've really no idea, and it might be bigger than they thought. But the suggestion that they just didn't expect a big backlash assumes they're stupid, and the individuals involved are most certainly not that. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:42, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    Shock and awe, in other words. 28bytes (talk) 13:49, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
  • If @Risker: is right, it also meant that they were aware of the shitstorm they were bringing in reaction to the WMF...and still didn't think dropping an FYI to the board was worthwhile. Even with day to day autonomy, if a charity' employees failed to warn their trustees that they were going to take an action which would infuriate 20% of their volunteers[citation needed] , I can't imagine they'd be thrilled. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:05, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    In the normal logic of conflict, where there is an imbalance of power the outcome of any challenge is a foregone conclusion. Unless the weaker side can wield a significant threat to the dominant power, whatever the former does -protest, complain, argufy - has no weight or influence on the decision-making process. What we have here is therefore 'pro-forma', -in lieu of a general strike whose effectiveness would also be questionable since people don't readily sacrifice their pastimes and hobbies to a principle - a matter of waiting 'democratically' until people exhaust themselves and go back to work under the new rules. In Hong Kong, they won only by going into the streets on masse, and that is unlikely here. Nishidani (talk) 12:37, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    There certainly is truth to this, excepting there are some drastic steps that can be taken short of a full strike, that I agree would be unlikely. The question would be whether the community had the staying power to exercise them. These actions would also draw outside attention - some prior thought into, if not win, hold to a draw the secondary media battle. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:02, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    Doubt that can be won on those terms. WMF has the money and an internationally known figure, and probably the sympathy of the woke press once they paint it as historically disfavored communities struggling to be heard vs. Internet trolls/Gamergaters. That kinda thing anyway.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:18, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    A strike can take many forms. The classic one is simply laying down one's tools until further notice. No requests to be desysopped, no sacrifices: simply not doing some function critical to the daily operation of Wikipedia. It is not a measure that would have an effect were peons like me to adopt it - we're replaceable and our presence or absence here makes no difference (though I have suspended my contributions to article improvements from the moment I noticed this problem) - but were a small but significant minority of people doing things required for everyday management, Arbcom, arbitrators etc to take an indeterminate wiki break without drama all at the same time (if the proposed measure becomes practice) I think an imporftant message would get across.Nishidani (talk) 14:36, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I.e. if the problem is civility, there is a conflict of competence that is best resolved by arbitrators referring every single complaint covered by WP:Civil, such as WP:Hounding, WP:AGF from thereon in, to the T&S Community Health specialists, automatically, since the proposal has challenged the competence of Enwiki arbitrators in these regards. Let them take on that workload. They'll have to hire a lot of staff to handle the significant increase in work volume, and the unpaid men and women here who have had, out of sheer voluntaristic passions, handled these issues hitherto can feel some relief that their burden of unpaid servitude for a cause is lightened.Nishidani (talk) 15:33, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Nishidani, I completely agree. I suggested something similar at the WJBscribe arbcom case. Either we resolve our own user conduct cases or we don't. —Kusma (t·c) 06:17, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
Nishidani, "people don't readily sacrifice their pastimes and hobbies to a principle"−I did (somewhat). I was a moderator on a web forum owned by a company and another moderator blocked a spammer who was one of the company's customers. The company unblocked the spammer so several moderators including myself quit. I'm still there as a regular member interacting with other members, but moderating amounted to free labor for the company, so I stopped donating it. What I suggested earlier was that Wikipedia's admins stop adminning, though keeping on editing if they want. A few did quit, but not enough to create a real issue for the WMF. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 01:21, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Nishidani: - unfortunately, that method only works for an organisation that doesn't have the ability to step up to it (it's best on disputes to a micromanaging boss as an individual etc) - here, we could end up conceding everything rather than an effective method, despite the nuisance it would cause them Nosebagbear (talk) 15:46, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
In efficient business management, you don't reduplicate functions. The project is reduplicative which in turn creates a conflict of competence. When you have a turf dispute, precise lines of demarcation of competence are required, which isn't apparently in place. We don't 'concede' anything above. If the WMF asserts its right to adjudicate civility matters in Star Chamber protocols, there is nothing the 'community' can do about it, other than push that logic of quiet encroachment to its logical end. Rather than 'concede', one simply recognizes the de facto logic, and leaves the disputed ground under one legal system, rather than two. This means that Enwiki, rather than conceding on the principle, admits that its powers to regulate behavioural abuse have been usurped, that it will not be complicit in whatever decisions are made by the encroaching authority, and leave the occupying power to sort out the mess it created without quisling complicity.Nishidani (talk) 16:15, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
And yet for all our sturm und drang it still only has 68k views. Tons for a project page, but a drop in the bucket of our overall scope. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:49, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
Can't believe I wasn't in the top 20 - barely made into the top 40! Of course that 70k views is linked to the most disruptive issue in 3 years. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:52, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Editorial cartoon

The WMF respects the policies on each project. Here, for example, is how we apply WP:TNT to English Wikipedia.
The WMF respects the policies on each project. Here, for example, is how we apply WP:TNT to English Wikipedia.

I wonder if someone can make a cartoon of the Wikipedia globe with a firecracker stuck into it, and a hand from outside the frame lighting the fuse with a match. The hand would be labelled "WMF Trust & Safety Team". 67.164.113.165 (talk) 22:30, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Or, how about someone urinating on the Wikipedia globe? (Defecating would probably be an overreaction.) EEng 00:25, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
Or someone from the WMF shooting a gun at the Wikipedia globe and it deflating Abote2 (talk) 10:16, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost pays big bucks for their cartoons, right? Right? --Xover (talk) 14:53, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Afootpluto (talk) 17:05, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Afootpluto, this is great, now I have to figure out how to use it (or by all means, put it in the signpost article). I may have another request at some point if you're up for it. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 23:52, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Sydney Poore responds regarding the video

In case anyone missed it [16] Enigmamsg 02:28, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:TRUSA listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:TRUSA. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Abote2 (talk) 09:52, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Exiling to alternative outlets

Just my two cents; if any of you remain dissatisfied with the sudden ban of Fram then you might need to consider alternative outlets such as decentralised Everipedia to flee from the rising bureaucratic monster. Not to mention that the recent imposition of Articles 11 and 13 of the European new copyright law will have adverse effects on this project too in the coming 2 years. 192.228.210.201 (talk) 14:30, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't think so. And it's even more worrying when a free knowledge project is headed by a for-profit corporation. --qedk (t 桜 c) 14:59, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
I really can't help but to think of that XKCD cartoon after all; now it goes both ways.192.228.210.201 (talk) 15:33, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
[17] [18] [19] No thanks. (And Citizendium is no better...) —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 17:04, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
Alright but one day the hard choice will be inevitable if the trend stays the same. Everipedia seems to be lesser of all evils.192.228.210.201 (talk)
That logo for site, not a joke? Leaving themselves wide open a joke if it is not. cygnis insignis 19:27, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
Trololo... --Deskana (talk) 19:33, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
Pretty sure that European copyright laws won't have any affect on Wikipedia, since it is hosted in the US. Rockstonetalk to me! 09:51, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
No it's effects are worldwide per the Brussels effect. This boingboing article sums up pretty well. 192.228.210.201 (talk) 12:18, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Everipedia is not going to gain from what's occurring here because this entire episode will make Wikipedia stronger. The Foundation will have to make changes, and will become even more communicative with Wikipedia editors and admins, Jimbo will put things right in the end (sorry Larry, try again), and when the dust settles there will first be more dust, then that dust will settle, and soon...an even healthier topsoil. There has been nothing in history like this marriage of computer tech, information sharing, and belief that a user-based encyclopedia created by like-minded altruistic people would succeed. It's a miracle of trust and love. Editors and readers in every nation continue to sense the importance and historical value of this community-based project (thanks Larry and Jimbo!), so no, we ain't buyin' what you're selling (or to be more accurate, copying). When Wikipedians gets their rightfully deserved Nobel Peace Prize within a few years I hope both Jimbo and Larry are on the stage to be acknowledged and to acknowledge. And those who think that this blip-worthy recent incident harms Wikipedia are missing the big picture, as it's actually one of the healthiest things to happen to this project in awhile, on many levels. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:11, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

I would disagree. I don't have faith that all will be made right in the end. WMF has had ample opportunity to backtrack or provide an explanation and hasn't. It's been over a week since they did this, and they did this sort of thing previously on other Wikipedias. We just didn't notice. I think this will hurt Wikipedia. en.wiki has been around for 17 years and while there have been various scandals, we've never had a hostile takeover attempt. What amazes me is there are a handful of editors supporting the hostile takeover attempt. Enigmamsg 23:29, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
"Over a week"...well, Wikipedia has no time. Things happen at the pace here that lets everybody be heard and gives all points of view time to emerge and meld. Assuming good faith not only binds the project together, but is itself a well-designed life lesson that Wikipedians take to heart. So things will be fine, all will be put right, and the strength of the project will be upheld and increased by the use and command of the concepts it embodies. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:44, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Wow. I have to admit, I stayed away from Everipedia assuming that it was an aspidochelone, that a for-profit would just be spam and would fold like so many other mirrors. But they do seem active with a lot of edgy articles. The criticisms of them posted above are definitely swaying me in their direction -- I don't need an encyclopedia to be correct, I need it to summarize known sources and not throw data away. "Verifiability, not truth" - yup, that dated concept. Especially when "truth" mostly consists of not printing anything at all - we literally don't have a single thing about Geary Danley outside of the Signpost, so we have no way to dispel any misinformation on the web falsely identifying him as a criminal. If WMF is going to start imposing unknown standards by fiat, it may indeed be time to look at these alternatives seriously. Wnt (talk) 00:16, 18 June 2019 (UTC) Unfortunately, it looks like it is a scam after all -- go to actually sign up and you'll see what I mean, there's some kind of cryptocurrency rigamorale that amounts to spending money, apparently repeatedly as best as I can riddle out. I'm not sure who is editing what they do have or why. Wnt (talk) 08:50, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Larry Sanger, one of the co-founders of Wikipedia, defected to Everipedia well before this. 192.228.210.201 (talk) 12:15, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Of course nothing is fully perfect, but to paraphrase Thanos, "Dread it, run from it, destiny still arrives". 192.228.210.201 (talk) 05:29, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Last Meeting

Is it worth highlighting that on the meetings page the last meeting with minutes linked is mid 2018? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:12, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

...well, that's disturbing. At best, unless there was some quiet change to the org rules that allowed for/required keeping the minutes secret (which, if unpublicized, would be concerning in and of itself), the best case interpretation would be incompetence. rdfox 76 (talk) 15:55, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
The first thing to do, in this situation, would be to ask the person who is apparently responsible for putting up the minutes to update the page. So I did that in this edit. Let's see if we receive a response. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 16:42, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
January 2019 meeting minutes here. Not sute they are terribly informative.There may be others lurking somewhere on foundation wiki.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:10, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
You guys are hilarious. They don't need to minute things any more, they just act and the rest of us can go "figure" as some of you might say. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:30, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
"'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'". 67.164.113.165 (talk) 21:41, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Geez...I thought "That's not the way the world really works anymore..." was a quote from Animal Farm at first... Shearonink (talk) 06:57, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
That was interesting. Especially the discussion in the slide deck (I won't ask why it isn't on Commons) starting around slide 39, where, among "tier 1 risks", they discuss community engagement. I suppose that concern just hasn't filtered down to operations level staff, like T&S? Guettarda (talk) 19:51, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
@Guettarda: Good catch! Let's look at that risk: "The risk that the Foundation fails to engage contributors and content creation decreases. Further, that the Foundation fails to reach new markets and developing communities." The way I read that, the risk is that a) Wikipedia fails to gain access to new wallets because it is seen as rude or banned by some Third World censor. For example, if WMF fails to suppress Flow threads that are sexist, or ban the people who post them, or fails to post threads insulting to Erdogan, or ban the people who post them, they lose access to some of their "market" and that is a risk. This is in the spirit of the world's oldest profession. Wnt (talk) 13:09, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
@Guettarda: The reason WMF slide decks aren't put on commons is because commons folk have a habit of deleting everything that staff upload to be point-y and contrarian. It got so bad that people just stopped trying because why bother? (Personal attack removed) --Jorm (talk) 15:17, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
@Jorm: Wow - I knew relations between WMF and the community were bad, but I had no idea they were that bad. I don't think we've ever had problems adding things like that to Commons. Guettarda (talk) 16:12, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
@Jorm:, Can you kindly provide the relevant diffs? I checked Fram's contributions and other logs but failed to locate anything, in the regard. Thanks, ∯WBGconverse 16:19, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
I really don't feel like doing any homework about this. It was easily five years ago or more, though, that these decisions were made. Why are you guys surprised at this? Staff are routinely treated like absolute shit by the various communities.--Jorm (talk) 16:24, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, but sans any evidence in the form of diffs, you are casting aspersions. Please provide the evidence or strike-through your accusations of mis-conduct about Fram. I am not inclined to find out about whether the community really behaved in the way that you described (which if true, is pathetic) and thus, don't have any problems with the first part. Regards, ∯WBGconverse 16:33, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) That content is licensed under CC-BY-SA, so any of us can upload one of those slide decks or the like to Commons, providing appropriate attribution under the CC license, and see what happens next. I'm rather inclined to do that myself. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:41, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
I would imagine if any of the WMF's stuff was deleted there was probably a credible argument its not in scope for a project designed to host educational resources. Slide-show minutes would require a fair bit of fast talking on the part of the WMF to justify, but given the WMF routinely gives the impression they are not interested in justifying anything (I have removed Jorm's unevidenced personal attack above) I can see commons deleting it quite easily. Minutes are minutes, and other as a lasting record, have very little educational value. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:15, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Part of Commons' scope is files being used on other Wikimedia projects, outside user and user talk pages, including for an "operational reason". It would seem to me that if a project used links to such WMF material to facilitate project discussions, that would put it well within that scoping. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:43, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
The keeping up of the Foundation Board's page is spotty at best. If you ever want to see what they're conveniently forgetting to link, PrefixIndex is your friend: List of all the Minutes subpages Hasteur (talk) 21:45, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Oppose votes in "A suggested resolution"

I find that about 1/3 of the opposing votes states the ban should be kept, as he "deserves it", while around 2/3 states the T/S team should be given a hard reprimand. For me it looks like opposite reasonsing. Would it be clearer to split the opposing votes into two categories? Yger (talk) 18:00, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Cold logic

I'm sure few would disagree that the kilometres of emotionally charged us-vs-them commentary on the page is supported by almost no factual information: we're in the dark.

Let's put aside my well-publicised poor opinion of en.WP's dispute-resolution procedures, and my belief that the site is now a risky environment for editors; here a narrower focus might be needed.

Rather, we could apply cold logic to the little we do know: indeed, I'm tempted to ask whether not knowing much is the whole point of the exercise. One of the problems in our system (I suppose it rests with ArbCom) is the failure to acknowledge that in a small minority of cases the complainant's and/or the defendant's privacy needs to be respected.

I hear you protest that secrecy risks descent into the unaccountable, and possibly a free hand for conflict of interest and corruption of due process. Openness, I hear you say, is a precious way for the community to scrutinise, to allow some form of control. Broadly, that's true. But experience of WP and the way the internet is evolving suggest that a blanket insistence on public hearings is itself a problem. This is especially pertinent because the lines between on- and off-wiki are becoming ever more blurred; harrassment is just one type of hurt editors can experience where privacy is often a big deal.

It's time for a modicum of flexibility, I say. We elect arbs and others expecting to trust them, and they already conduct much discourse behind closed doors, to which I hear no objection. Anglophone judicial processes out there allow the occasional closed hearing, used very selectively and for strong, explicit reasons (it's definitely not a normal expectation).

I know nothing about the case at issue, and I don't want to. Maybe we should view this incident not as a threat to the site's independence, but as an opportunity to tweak the settings to allow our elected judicial people just a little flexibility to at least keep things in house—an option used strictly in carefully framed, urgent circumstances. The use of closed hearings should be minimal, but should be available as an alternative.

It would be a practical approach to reducing harm—not just to the parties, but to the community at large. I invite you to consider.

Tony (talk) 04:02, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

The proposal itself isn't unreasonable, I think. We already do allow that in certain circumstances right now, and have for some time—if, for example, someone is being harassed or stalked off-wiki, that can be handled privately by ArbCom, since it is unreasonable to expect them to air that out in public when it isn't already, and possibly out themselves by revealing what accounts they use elsewhere. I think the devil's in the details, though. ArbCom is elected by the community, and ultimately accountable to it, and those occurrences are rare. If suddenly ArbCom starts making fifty "private evidence" bans per year, people are going to ask for some information at least in general terms what the hell is going on, and can vote out the current members if the answer is unacceptable or not forthcoming at all. Also, many people (including me) would question the need for private hearings when all the evidence is already on-wiki and public. So, I think such a proposal could be considered, but the range of things eligible for private hearing should remain narrow (as you said, it should be the exception, not the rule), clearly defined, and done by ArbCom (except in cases like child protection and threats, where the WMF already handles it since law enforcement interaction might be required). So, I think the thought is worth consideration, but we'd be looking at broadening what can be handled privately. Some things already are. I certainly would not want to see every garden-variety "X was rude" or "Y is misrepresenting sources" to be done privately. Do you have any thoughts on how the definition of privately handled matters would be changed or expanded? Seraphimblade Talk to me 05:21, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
(ec) @Tony1: The main problem here is that we have those existing exceptions to public processess—both for ArbCom and T&S—but in this instance T&S has provided no information that makes plausible the applicability of those exceptions; the information actually provided in fact suggests the opposite; and all observable evidence we can find ourselves contradicts the applicability of those exceptions. That is, the outrage here is because T&S appear to be applying exceptional procedures to a pedestrian issue.
There is also the crucial distinction between ArbCom and T&S that the former are elected by the community and thus have implicit trust, and they are accountable to the community in broad strokes: they can handle individual cases in secret where needed, but if they go overboard and the cases start smelling iffy they can be removed next election. T&S have exactly zero such accountability: in fact, their individual members are deliberately hidden behind the WMFOffice role account and get protections from the WMF as employees that we as volunteers (includiing ArbCom) are not entitled to.
Applying cold logic, either T&S is here accusing Fram of posting illegal material, serious treaths of physical violence, criminal harassment, or other serious outright criminal behaviour—but still only banning them for one year from one project—or they are stepping outside the circumstances where such exceptions to our community processes apply but still acting as if they do.
It's a matter of proportionality and who gets to decide to evade public scrutiny on what grounds. Should those exceptions allow me to complain, in secret, to T&S that my crappy prose got taken down hard at FAC and now I feel harassed? Should T&S be alowed to send a secret warning to the FAC reviewer in question? Should they be allowed to impose a secret interaction ban on that FAC reviewer? Should civility issues be judged to different standards based on whether you complain to ANI or to T&S? Why then would I not pick the channel most likely to give me the result I desire (taking that pesky FAC reviewer down a peg), or, even better, I start with T&S because that's secret, and if that doesn't work I try in public at ANI.
Our community processes and standards are not perfect by any means, and in some areas we have outright systemic problems with them. Those issues are worth discussing and finding better solutions to. But letting SEAL Team Six perform extraordinary rendition black ops on our shoplifters or public drunks solves none of these; creates new problems; undermines local law enforcement; and wastes precious Navy Seal resources we need to catch international terrorists. --Xover (talk) 05:48, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
No idea what you're talking about, Xover: SEALs, crappy prose, black ops, shop lifters? Seraphim, would it really mean 50 private hearings annually? I'd have thought ... several. "Do you have any thoughts on how the definition of privately handled matters would be changed or expanded?" No, I don't have that kind of experience or knowledge. But arbs (and former arbs) have the experience to write up a proposal that would keep numbers under control, and define how the data should be reported to the community. Clearly non-public hearings are hard to come by at the moment. Also: "the crucial distinction between ArbCom and T&S that the former are elected by the community". Yes, but the WMF owns the servers and much of the infrastructure, and bears the ultimate legal risk internationally, unlike ArbCom. There are two factors here—an awkward ambiguity that we've managed to live with for nearly two decades. Tony (talk) 10:15, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm tempted to ask whether not knowing much is the whole point of the exercise. So here's the problem - not knowing creates an environment of fear. That message about copyvios - OK, so we know there's some level of copyvio enforcement that can get you banned. And, presumably, there's some level that won't. But where's the line? After 15 years here, it's easy enough to know the general line of acceptable behaviour. Good enough or not (and I agree, we're too tolerant of people who create a hostile environment), it's knowable. Now? I literally have no clue.
There's another side to this as well, of course - if this was intentional, then T&S intentionally wasted thousands of hours of volunteer time and intentionally poisoned the relationship (further) between the community and WMF. The intentionally made the job of the harassment initiative much harder. I've been harassed here. I've had editors go to other WMF projects, create attack pages, and had the bureaucrats on that site refuse to even consider doing anything about it unless I publicly outed myself. So yeah, I get the value of trying to do something about harassment, I get the value of protecting the privacy of certain complainants. But this action doesn't promote community safety - it makes future anti-harassment efforts almost impossible. T&S has shown that they are incapable of managing comms and community relations - why should be trust that they are any better at handling harassment complaints? I have no desire to defend incivility, far less potential harassment, but it's either that, or say that I'm ok with zero semblance of transparency in community governance. Guettarda (talk) 19:23, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
@Tony1: - your initial point correctly sets out why the community as a whole should not be able to see all accusations/claims. The limits of that can certainly be debated. My issue is disputes have (very) roughly 4 groups of parties: Accuser(s), defendant(s), adjudicator(s) and bystander(s). On ANI et al (but not ARBCOM) the latter 2 can merge. A private dispute only has 3 groups. So: what about the defendant - even assuming no willful failures and issues with temporary absence of oversight...how does the defendant's right to defend themselves interact with your stated need for privacy? They will need to know all the accusations and specific evidence to be able to make a defence - which will generally yield their identity (at least on-wiki) to the accused. Even, say, an advocate "in the know" couldn't defend many accused without being able to query them. Consequences could be mitigated, but they're always going to post a significant disruption to the set-up - with a clear answer needed. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:54, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Tony1: T&S said explicitly that the ban was triggered by edit 895438118. I will take them at their word. We are not in the dark regarding the main point. It is also a very good thing that we're not in the dark, because the first local ban the we've become aware of was clearly completely unjustified, strongly indicating that, even if they were a legitimate authority in this area (which they're not, T&S's scope specifically excludes such things), they have no idea what they're doing. --Yair rand (talk) 00:59, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Belgium concerns about WMF

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

--qedk (t 桜 c) 17:13, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Putting here for the record my objection to the change in title that took place here and was reverted here. Thanks OiD for doing that revert. QEDK, no objections to the move from the talk page to the main page, but it does look strange that 'Get back to what matters' was moved to the talk page (which gets less attention) as it arguably was related to the above. We need to be a bit more careful with moving things back and forth and changing section titles. @Winged Blades of Godric and Carabinieri: courtesy pings. Carcharoth (talk) 12:26, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Noted, but I did not move the other thread to TP, don't know who did. I changed the title to make it pertinent to the agenda of a community response. That's about all. --qedk (t 桜 c) 13:06, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
I linked above the diff where that other thread was moved: started by Carabinieri and moved by Winged Blades of Godric, hence the courtesy pings. Carcharoth (talk) 13:28, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Get back to what matters

This discussion is increasingly going off the deep end. First, it was sleazy speculations about board members' personal lives, then it was attacks and vitriol directed against WiR and anyone who agreed with WMF's actions or even just had a somewhat nuanced view on the issue. Now we're starting to compile completely unrelated incidents where someone had a negative interaction with T&S. If I was at WMF, I'd feel like this thread vindicates the decision to take decision-making power away from the community because it shows the community as being completely incapable of dealing with an issue.

I have no idea why this thread is so long and so much of it is completely irrelevant and repetitive. The questions at hand are so simple: Is the Wikipedia community doing a good enough job of dealing with incivility and harassment? If not, should we delegate some of that to WMF or do we need to improve the way we do it? If we decide we don't want WMF to take over these things, how do we force them to stay out of it, in other words what leverage do we have? Get back to the questions that matter, or this whole "protest" is doomed to fail.--Carabinieri (talk) 17:43, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

  • While we're at it, let's remind you of the stonewalling and not-answer answers, and the "real crimes" that Fram has committed. You do not have the right to absolve WMF of their mistakes. If you personally feel they're innocent, so be it, but do not speak on our behalf and say it like we are blowing it out of proportion when the very fundamentals of Wikipedia (I'm talking about the people of Wikipedia if you missed my drift) are under attack. With thanks, qedk (t 桜 c) 17:49, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
    • I didn't deny that the way WMF is acting with respect to "Framgate" is outrageous. What I'm saying is that our response is completely inadequate.--Carabinieri (talk) 17:53, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
      • Refuse to co-operate with T&S at all. Ban any staff members from from wikipedia (you cant technically keep out staff, but you can impose a ban on editing). Lobby the various WM groups to refuse T&S participation at events... I could go on. None of the above is likely however, as most editors tend to be nice and assume good faith of their opponents, so drastic action is unlikely to gain consensus. At best you will get a strongly worded protest statement from ENWP. The WMF does not appear to share the same values any more and so will just ignore it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:30, 19 June 2019 (UTC) ∯WBG
The WMBE thread is absolutely relevant, and speaks to whether T&S can handle harassment at all. Unlike ENWP, WMBE is a national organization for a national-language Wiki and so I think they could secede relatively easily, so they're not as powerless as you think you are. (I should note that I assumed they would ignore us from the start, and suggested another course of action that the freethinking dissidents on this thread promptly concealed and removed) Banning staff members, however, is something I oppose, because our goal is to oppose arbitrary political bans not based on principle, not join into the idea. And why give up that principle for a solely symbolic ban? All loss, no gain! Wnt (talk) 00:16, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Just out of curiosity, what do you think the "national language of Belgium" is? Belgish? ‑ Iridescent 06:17, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
People are exercising free speech while they can, there is too little time for fact-checking. cygnis insignis 07:11, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
@Iridescent and Cygnis insignis: This, I do believe. (West Flemish, though I will admit it isn't purely in Belgium upon examination). It is a tiny Wikipedia, but when speaking of forking, that's actually a good thing because the barrier to starting a fork doesn't seem so insurmountable. If WMBE starts a mirror and they get a room of 20 people to promise to translate 1 article per day or recruit others to do it for them, then in a year they have double the articles of the West Flemish Wikipedia and it's time for editors on vlswiki to start talking about shutting down. Wnt (talk) 12:29, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
I assume that the Belg language is still spoken in parts of the Congo, if not so much by the Belgisians and Hollandians, and willing to bet they are running that wiki to mine crypto-bucks. cygnis insignis 14:01, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
@Cygnis insignis: Waaaaaaat? How do you mine crypto-bucks with a small Wiki in a regional language??? And why do you think Congolese are doing it? (Yes, I know about the Belgian experiment in corporate-libertarian utopianism, but Flemish is not a major language of the Congo now) Wnt (talk) 02:30, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think what matters is this. Have you ever come back from a vacation, opened your refrigerator, and been hit with that brick wall of foul smell? You may not know exactly what in there is rotten—but it's crystal clear that something is. I think that's the situation we find ourselves in. We can only speculate on exactly what is rotten, but it is overwhelmingly clear that something's gone bad. And someone is going to have to find out what that is so it can be fixed. So, how do we ensure that the rot is found and corrected? Seraphimblade Talk to me 14:42, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Table of relevant locations

Moved from Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram § Table of relevant locations

I hope I'm not the only one to struggle to stay on top of all aspects of this issue. While thankfully, much of it is centralized on this page, some bits show up in other places. I put together a crude table to keep track of the main locations and fully aware that this isn't exhaustive — for example there are posts on individual editors talk pages including some of contributed to, that aren't listed but I think I have the major ones. I'd obviously be interested in knowing if I have any major omissions. Virtually everything in the table as it now exists is "current" information — I'm thinking of adding on historic section with information on, for example, Ani, and Arbcom cases involving Fram. My expectation is that it would remain on this page for some time, and then be copied over to the summary archives.--S Philbrick(Talk) 00:25, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

On wiki
Location Type Link Comments Size (24 June)[1]
Community response
En WP Community response... (WP:Fram) Main page (see also numbered archives

and named archives listed below)

687k
En WP Archive 1 ... There are a lot of archives, the link is to the first 152k, ...
En Talk CR...Talk Talk page 77k
En Talk Archive 1, Archive 2, Archive 3 Archives 144k,152k, 25k
En WP CR.../Summary (WP:FRAMSUM) Useful timelines 14k
En WP CR.../Proposals about WMF Proposals about WMF Office 34k
En WP CR.../General Proposals General Proposals 175k
En WP CR.../Fram's response Originally on Commons and copied over 22k
En WP CR...Jan Eissfeldt 10k
En WP CR.../Community Conduct An essay on civility[2] 11k
Location Type Link Comments Size
Administrator noticeboard
En WP:AN AN Several proposals, all closed without action
En WP:AN AN "Appropriate responses to FRAMBAN"
En WP:ANI ANI twitter Brief kerfuffle related to Twitter issue
Village pump
En WP:VP Proposed 'crat power Proposed, but quickly closed without action
Bureaucrat noticeboard
En WP:BN Fram Banned Original notice, subsequently moved to WP:Fram
En WP:BN Desysop BU Rob13, Desysop Nick, Desysop The DJ and more User request–granted[3], User request–granted... too many to list, see the BN generally
En WP:BN Desysop Floquenbeam Notice of action
En WP:BN Resysop Floquenbeam User request–granted by WJBscribe

(review by ArbCom requested)

User talk pages
Location Type Link Comments Size
En U Talk User talk:WMFOffice Several messages intended for WMFOffice 21k
En U Talk Fram Banned, Board meeting?

more WMF questions, Who put the WMF in charge?
no contact information for T&S,Ten days

Six threads on Jimbos talk page
En U Talk Notice to Fram Only the notice at the top of the page is relevant
En U Talk Questions for Katherine A few editors request some response about a tweet
En U Talk Katherine Mayer responds Comments about the tweet and other issues[4]
Arbitration
Location Type Link Comments Size
En WP:Arb Arbcom WJBscribe Self report regarding the resysop of Floquenbeam 218k
En WP [20] [21] Edits leading to second warning [5]
En WT:Arb Precipitating edit? Claimed to be the edit which led to the ban
En WT:Arb Request for a comment Request that Arbcom comment on the ban issue
En WT:Arb Can we handle harassment? Discussion of Arbcom role vis-a-vis T&S Whole page is 243k
En WP:Arb Case request regarding Signpost article[6] Case request invo;ing Signpost article about Fram
En WT:Arb Update from the Arbitration Committee The initial notification that ArbCom is to take on the case
En WP:Arb Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Fram Arbitration case regarding Fram's behavior
Meta & Commons
Location Type Link Comments Size
Meta Meta Office Actions[7] Office actions Policy (on Meta) 51k
Meta Meta User reporting system consultation 2019[8] User reporting system consultation 2019 21K since 13 June 2019
Meta Talk m:Talk:Trust and Safety#FYI Standards for a fair process [9]
Commons U Talk Fram's Talk page Most, but not all the material is relevant. Note: Commons asked that the discussion is taken somewhere more fitting. See below. 65k
Meta U Talk Fram's Talk page Communication with Fram continues here, as Meta is the better Wiki for talking about this issue. 19k
Miscellaneous post-incident pages
En WP Office actions[7] (WP:OA) Office actions Policy 46k
En WP:Afd Fram controversy Discussion of draft article, leaning toward merge
En WP June Signpost Several relevant articles
Location Type Link Comments Size
Off wiki
Location Type Link Comments Size
Email lists Wikipedia Mailing lists
Twitter Social media Pseudo thinkpiece (K Mayer), Monolith misnomer (K Mayer) Tweets from the Executive Director[10]
BuzzFeed Media coverage The Culture War Has Finally Come For Wikipedia Buzzfeed article by Joseph Bernstein
Breitbart Media coverage Wikipedia Editors Revolt over Site’s Ban of Veteran Administrator Breitbart article by T.D. Adler
Slate Media coverage Wikipedia’s “Constitutional Crisis” Pits Community Against Foundation Slate article by Stephen Harrison
Historical Links (on wiki)
Location Type Link Comments Size
En WP:Arb Fram Arbcom 2018 Case Declined
En WP:Arb Fram Arbcom 2016 Case Declined
En WP:Arb Crosswiki issues A case initiated by Fram, but declined
En WP:Arb Dr. Blofeld A case initiated by Fram, but declined
En WP:ANI Request for desysop of Fram Did not happen
En WP:ANI ANI Complaint about Fram 2016 Ended up as boomerang
En WP:AN AN complaint about insults 2013 See subsection Administrator Fram
En WP:ANI Request for TBAN 2017 Didn't happen
En WP:ANI Block review 2019 Block issued by Fram reviewed and accepted
  1. ^ I'm going to stop updating these numbers - you get the picture
  2. ^ Specifically mentions FramBan as motivation for this essay
  3. ^ Not caused by the WMF's actions here, but by the community's.
  4. ^ Note that some other threads on this talk page are also related to Fram issues
  5. ^ These were linked in Fram's response, but deserve separate mention
  6. ^ Link probably needs updating if case accepted
  7. ^ a b Although this page does not directly reference Fram, it the basis for the ban
  8. ^ No reference to Fram, but many editors have discussed how we ought to move forward and this page is very relevant to that discussion
  9. ^ No direct reference to Fram but arising out of this incident
  10. ^ See also followup tweets; notably, one where she explains why she did not delete the tweet
TheAustinMan,  Done--S Philbrick(Talk) 00:53, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
 Done I initially didn't include Fram's talk page on Commons when the only content was his response that had been copied over to the main page but there is substantial additional discussion, so I agree it should be added, which I have done. As for User talk:WMFOffice, This is a perfect example of why I posted this table here, on the chance that I was missing some important pieces.S Philbrick(Talk) 13:15, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

You reap what you sowed

[ removed hat|WP:DENY here - this IP is not blocked and has not been accused of wrongdoing. You don't "DENY" people solely because they are contemptuous of the current process and or lack the social standing of a better placed editor ... at least, not unless you work for WMF. Wnt (talk) 13:32, 19 June 2019 (UTC)]

For years now wiki admins have made sure to punish wrongthink and push out anybody outside the allowed thinking norms. The spreading of corruption to higher levels should not be surprising to any rational editor on this site. Millions of USD get donated to WMF with no accountability or possibility of tracking anything. You guys have made your bed and now have to lie in it. This comment will probably be removed by some overzealous clueless idiot eager to win favors with the corrupt system. 205.175.106.196 (talk) 22:26, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

@205.175.106.196: It's a good thing you clarified they were clueless idiots who'd do it - otherwise I could have done, damn! Nosebagbear (talk)
We didn't start the fire, and no matter what happens, it will keep burning, no matter what you, me, Wikipediocracy, Breitbart, the Wall Street Journal, YHVH, or that insane man ranting about the end times in front of the corner 7-Eleven is gonna say. Also, sociopaths tend to gravitate to positions where they can be as corrupt as they damn well pleaseregardless of the community - you, me, Breitbart, Wikipediocracy, the Wall Street Journal.... —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 22:51, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

@Headbomb: "Because reality being what it is, as an ally, when you get accused of being sexist / anti-trans / anti-whatever, or get dismissed simply for being a white man, it is one of the most infuriating things to happen to you, and a lot of goodwill gets burned." You should be careful, your opinions are approaching wrongthink, and sooner than you think an useful idiot might come to take you down for daring to not adhere to the social wave that must-not-be-stopped. 205.175.106.196 (talk) 18:49, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're getting at. The point is when you accuse allies of group X of being enemies of group X, support for group X will drop amongst allies, and will weaponized by enemies of group X. That doesn't mean supporting group X isn't worth doing just become some people in group X are wrong about one specific thing. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:35, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, how much of what this IP says is 1984 memes and how much is trying to justify a Judge-like approach? And how likely is it this IP is one of the usual policy-wonk long-term abusers who rant about justice and free speech while spouting stuff that, if they aren't just taking the piss, is just a sad display of paranoia? —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 09:11, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

[hab] removed

IP sounds right to me. This WMF banning is the intensification of contempt for the idea that people might say funny things. Wnt (talk) 13:32, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
Funny things? Enigmamsg 15:16, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
Fram's final Incriminating Post may not be Dante, but I think it falls closer to comedy than tragedy or drama. Wnt (talk) 00:22, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Poor white men, oppressed by all societies, no power, no money, no influence. Subject to being shot by police officers for no reason at all. Enslaved. Seriously, 205.175.106.196? Is this the hill you want to get blocked on? I think maybe you'd be more comfortable on Gab than Wikipedia. Liz Read! Talk! 00:30, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
@WNT and Liz: I've written more featured articles that have appeared on the front page than you have worked on your entire time here on Wikipedia. You veiled threats that fail to reference any policy violation shows how low the state of adminship has dropped. You should be ashamed of how you dignity your privileges as an admin. You don't care about the wellbeing of this project, and instead of caring about actual contributions to this volunteer-based project only look for victimhood points. If you think the privilege you have been entrusted with by others how have recommended you for adminship entitles you to veiled threats towards other editors, then you are nothing more than a representation of the cancer that has encompassed this project. A project that has been built over the last two decades NOT by people who think like you. 205.175.106.196 (talk) 01:52, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
"Dismissed simply for being a white man...." Hmmm. I award you 100 victimhood points. Carry on, everyone. Dumuzid (talk) 01:57, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
You must have misread, because I *removed* the "hat" around your post. I also know what you are talking about, having been taken to ANI recently [74] simply over trying to revert somebody's deletion of a link in a talk page item. There is something very sinister going on in this society, with an abrupt and inexplicable rejection of bedrock principles of scholarship: even at the height of the Cold War and McCarthyism, with ten thousand nukes pointed at the U.S., the works of Karl Marx were not stripped from the libraries, yet now there is an apparent panic over a handful of racists who are universally denounced! Now I did prevail in the case, but I fear I would not had they decided I actually believed in a racist ideology, i.e. a thought crime. Now to be sure, racism actually is wrong, but I feel like that is only happenstance -- the same process with the same intolerance could well be applied to expression of some other belief that I do believe in, and it would be hard to even guess when it would come about. Meanwhile, the ability of Wikipedia to provide education against beliefs when their proponents are not allowed to argue for them is badly compromised. Wnt (talk) 03:37, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
"These results confirms my impression of the AN discussion about blocking WMFOffice, too. I had a comment to make about this disparity but I don't think it would be welcome right now. But it would be interesting if it was noted in any coverage by the Signpost. It is like a blaring siren to some of us." These are the words of an admin, who is entrusted with the well-being of wikipedia as a whole. This person thinks that a controversy having the same M:F ratio as the entire wikipedia userbase is like a blaring siren to some of us. People like that will rather have 3/4 of the male userbase be straight up banned just so the M:F ratio is an equal outcome, and ignore the fact that the entire active userbase of this project has been declining ever since admins like this have started getting empowered. 205.175.106.196 (talk) 19:59, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Plans A-Z

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

Set a course to serve up a "next step" choice between all of the above plans (plus a "do nothing unusual" option) for instant-runoff voting starting 2-3 weeks from now. Between now and then do the homework. If WMF comes through before that quite reasonable time frame, call it off. North8000 (talk) 12:09, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

The problem with this is that the dialogue and compromise solutions (A&C I believe) are contingent on the WMF engaging - we can't make a unilateral decision to do it. Judging by the reaction to mine (F), that's out, so that leaves the current "action" plans of D&E: Forking and striking.
Both of them would require in excess of 75% compliance to be effective, and unlike, say, a policy, it requires 75% of every active editor - whether or not they engage in the discussion.
The point of this being that we'd need a discussion on what was to be accepted as sufficient support before a vote was held. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:18, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
I was thinking that the mere spectre of seeing that editors might select extreme measures (such as saying that want WMF dissolved and re-constituted, or departure of the real enwiki) would be the sledgehammer upside the head that they need if they still haven't come up with answers by 2-3 weeks from now. For example, imagin an organization that has branded as one that it's constituents want dissolved, even if it didn't happen.North8000 (talk) 14:59, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
Moved discussion. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 22:32, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

WMF Research Showcase - June 2019 - theme is user blocks

Every month the WMF hosts a research showcase at the office in San Francisco and live on YouTube. This month the theme is "user blocks". The Fram incident is a coincidence, but I thought that since that incident is block oriented and this showcase is about blocks then I would share the event.

This is Wednesday 26 June 2:30 EST (New York). I am presenting this round which is why this is on my mind.

Thanks Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:59, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

@The Rambling Man: Previously this event has used the standard YouTube live event format, which includes live text chatting for interactivity. You could try issuing questions in advance or you could post live in that one-hour block. Overall I think this event is informal. See April 2019 for the last event. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:10, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: Yes that is what I mean. I live in America and only know freedom units and not metric. You can join after your country leaves the EU. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:10, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
What the hell are "freedom units"? The Rambling Man (talk) 16:16, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
cf freedom fries —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 22:33, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
And liberty measles Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:39, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
I should note you probably meant EDT, which is one hour ahead of EST. Currently, the Eastern Time Zone is on DST. Enigmamsg 17:18, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Bluerasberry gave an excellent presentation of his current ongoing work at WikiConference North America October 2018 meta:University of Virginia/Automatic Detection of Online Abuse – looking forward to the update! wbm1058 (talk) 23:02, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks the update is that there are endless interesting research questions for people at all levels of ability. I will publish the summary in The Signpost and on meta as well as get the data, code, etc. available in the free and open. I am still organizing the publication of various parts. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:10, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

You should talk about the ban of Fram in the showcase and it might put pressure on the WMF to unban Fram if you mention the ban in the showcase Abote2 (talk) 09:48, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

@Abote2: I am thinking about it. Check out the April video above, where I think you will see how modest this event is. The relationship is complicated and this event is not quite a channel for the people to speak to the power brokers. A more general issue which does apply to this research and the Fram case is how the Wikimedia community should share its power with the WMF, particularly around issues which seem to require privacy to resolve. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:10, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
Bluerasberry, We already have a group to handle issues privately. There's no need for the WMF there at all. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:04, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Even if you can't mention the specific block, please do give more publicity to the WMF global and partial bans, and the changes in types of blocks (this is different from what happened here). There is something called 'partial blocks' which is covered at meta:Community health initiative/Partial blocks. Ah, having looked more closely, I see Morten Warncke-Wang will be talking about that. Carcharoth (talk) 12:44, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

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