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Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram/Archive 11

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Latest comment: 5 years ago by Liz in topic Active admins and contributions from resigned admins
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m:Affiliate-selected Board seats/2019/Questions

Latest comment: 5 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Voting concluded in May (so don't post anything there!) but there are two interesting questions at the end. Note that this predates the ban on Fram. --Rschen7754 02:05, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

It appears to me, they were contemplated an action based on the evidence already in their possession, so there must have been ongoing discussions for quite some time before they acted. They probably used that venue for feedback. Wonder why they didn't take any of those responses to heart? Atsme Talk 📧 02:55, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
One of the questions came from DarwIn (talk · contribs). --Rschen7754 02:58, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@Rschen7754: Yes, indeed. In early May I was informed by a Wikimedia affiliate that WMF had informed them I was under a funding ban for some time already (supposedly for almost an year). The accusation which accompanied the information was blatantly false. The trial and respective sanction were decided in secret, involving Trust & Safety, the Rapid Grants Team and probably AffCom. That's what motivated my question to the BoT candidates. Only some days ago I had any official confirmation by the WMF that there was indeed a sanction on me in place, apparently dating from June 2018 (?). Until now I have been unable to appeal to that, though recent information confirmed the accusation was indeed based on a situation dating back from early 2017, and totally unrelated to the accusation itself. Ironically, it's about a founded accusation of severe harassment involving a considerable number of editors both as "victims" and "aggressors" (none of them myself) I had sent to T&S about a Portuguese Wikipedia case. T&S response to that was absolutely catastrophic, wholly ignoring the harassment itself, but instead going onwiki making very questionable assumptions about a pretty much unrelated fellow sysop (the only women sysop we had, actually), publicly accusing her of being some kind of webproxy or of lending her account to third parts, based on what looked like deficient technical skills and poor understanding of the Portuguese language from the part of the T&S team [1] [2]. This created an huge mess, derailing the whole case since the start, and turning everything in a sea of mud. Recently I found out this case, exclusively related to Wikipedia, had been surreptitiously transvestited as "evidence" by someone inside WMF into a completely unrelated (and false) accusation involving Wikimedia affiliates. I've no idea how this huge mess has happened, with so many self-claimed "checks and balances", but at this point I do not trust T&S in the least - not trustworthy, and much less safe. And I would counsel anyone who happen to know about some kind of harassment, stalking, doxing or any other case of abuse on fellow editors to not denounce or even inform it to WMF, as it can severely backfire over oneself. Either try to resolve that inside the community, or ignore it. Sad, but that's what it is at this point. Darwin Ahoy! 00:22, 29 June 2019 (UTC) Copyedit. Darwin Ahoy! 11:31, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Why are the WMF leaving us to stew? Is it time to offer an olive branch?

Latest comment: 5 years ago20 comments14 people in discussion

On the face of it, it seems extraordinary WMF have stopped on-wiki communication with us, even as admin after admin resigns, not to mention even a crat, & a previously sanction free FA writer getting indeffed. But let's try to look at it from their perspective:

• They start investigating Fram & find what appears to them a sustained pattern of harassment. ( I'm strongly of the opinion he is not a harasser, even several Inclusionists are most grateful for the prodigious amount of quality control work Fram has done for us. But if one isn't looking through the lens of policy - especially the part that says its not harassment to track "a user's contributions for policy violations" -then it has to be admitted that a great many of Fram's contribs could be interpreted as harassment. )

• Over their 4 week+ multi department investigation, the WMF solidify their position that Fram's violated T&S, albeit recognising his positive qualities enough not to impose a permaban.

• Immediately after the ban they're met with ferocious criticism, including multiple calls for resignations.

• There is also offsite harassment against two women associated with the ban, which seems rather more damaging than linking twitters to WMF accounts in the same name.

Looked at this way, it seems understandable WMF staffers might not want to risk further discussion. It might seem ridiculous that the community should be the one to offer an olive branch, but perhaps we're the only ones who can. Perhaps along the lines of:

> We, the undersigned community members recognise that WMF is acting to reduce harassment on its platform, and in principle we fully support that goal.

> While not apologising for the robust early reaction, we intend to avoid an angry responses in further discussion.

> The community does not welcome any form of offsite action against WMF staff members or against any one else sympathetic to their position. (In a sense this goes totally with out saying, but it might allay concerns, and stay the hand of the off site activists if they can explicitly see the community doesn't want them to continue their work.)

If a consensus of editors signed up for this, we might get some sort of constructive dialogue going. The WMF could probably help calm things down by agreeing that to some extent its unavoidable for good faith editors to feel harassed, unless we change policy to prevent us challenging each other, which would be a disaster from a quality perspective. We could then move to discussing the proposals of NewYorkBrad, Bellezzasolo etc. We should expect they might not be able to meet all of those proposals, but if we are willing to make some concessions of our own (e.g. slightly relax the policy based encouragement for sustained scrutiny directed towards a single editor) then the WMF might be able to grant at least some of our requests.

IMO this is the only play the community can make that gives us a good chance to heal the hurt here without wating a week or so for the board, and perhaps it let's us have more of a part in shaping the resolution to our liking. If editors don't like this proposal, I've no objection to it being edited by others or just deleted. Or is this worth opening to a vote? FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:22, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Quite frankly, NewYorkBrad's proposal was the olive branch. The WMF explicitly rejected it. Tazerdadog (talk) 19:28, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I was hesitant to criticise an idea from someone as rightly esteemed as NewYorkBrad, but his proposal didnt seem to offer much concession to the WMF's point of view. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:34, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I was hesitant to criticize it for the exact same reason but on the opposite side of the issue - it didn't seem to go far enough to resolve the communities concerns in my opinion. Tazerdadog (talk) 19:45, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
NewYorkBrad's proposal required revealing the details of those who complained to Fram, which could never be done by T&S. It was never going to be viable. - Bilby (talk) 23:09, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I support this, however a calm, rational discussion and evaluation instead of hysterical abuse of tools and quitting is probably what should have happened to begin with if we wanted to show we could handle our own problems. — Moe Epsilon 19:29, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • They're treating us like mushrooms, let's grovel. Great proposal. DuncanHill (talk) 19:40, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Ha! It explicitly said we're not apologising to try to avoid looking like a grovel. Per yours & Tazerdadogs reaction, I guess this was indeed over optimistic. I sure hope someone has a better idea, or that Doc James & the Board turn out to be miracle workers. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:51, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I appreciate that you proposed this with the best of intentions, so please don't worry about that. But what is very clear is that they are indeed leaving us to stew, and no good is going to come out of that. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:00, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose As noted above NYB's proposal was the olive branch. The WMF politely declined that that, which is their right. However, they didn't try to offer anything in its stead - which they could have done without backtracking on any of the things thing they've drawn as lines in the sand (and which, in fairness, NYB's proposal did ask them to cross). I am firmly of the opinion that if there is something to be fixed (and I say if only because I'm not sure if leadership at T&S/WMF thinks there is) it will have to be started by the WMF. This is why I hope that the statement Doc James talks about is a statement of actions. Actions can indeed take time to hammer out and gain buy-in and so it would be reasonable that such a statement has taken awhile. From there things like the RfC work be contemplated by ArbCom can proceed to look at this more systemically. But the WMF has to stop the bleeding right now. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:03, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The vast majority of wikipedia editors unequivocally reject off-wiki harassment, against WMF staff, other editors, or anyone, and if any of the WMF believes otherwise, we have a serious problem. Similarly, only a small fringe of editors was calling for wmf staff resignations, with the majority rejecting this. I agree with the above assessment that NYBrad's proposal was an olive branch. This could be a good basis for a personal email to Katherine or board members, but won't help our position as a group statement.Dialectric (talk) 20:15, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • For context, the last time something comparable happened was arguably m:Superprotect / m:Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer. It then took WMF 17 days to have any real reaction, and 15 full months to completely reverse the mistake. Individual statements by WMF officers in the first week were not pretty and did not quite help, so be careful what you wish for. Nemo 20:25, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Yes. That was almost five years ago. Why weren't procedures put in place to deal with crises like these? Why aren't risk assessments done? Where I work, we need to do risk assessments for any project. We need to be especially cogniscant of anything that might cause disruption. And if something does go wrong, we're required to respond in hours, not days. I honestly can't imagine a situation in which our Board would be called upon to respond before our ED had done everything possible to resolve the situation. It's all baffling. Guettarda (talk) 20:45, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • It isn't baffling at all if you begin with the precept that the WMF is incompetent. I've long held this position, and there's ample evidence to support the position. The WMF is not a mature organization. They flail about in the wind in the simplest of cases, and in complex ones such as this they are utterly in over their heads. A culture change has to happen to change this. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:55, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment I know of no recipe where olives is a desired ingredient in a stew. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:13, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. We could produce a statement for signature that we (Wikipedians) do not support off-site harassment (our definition, not theirs). We might also agree that we regret that our actions led to a nonconstructive response by the Foundation.
    • But they should have immediately regretted that their actions led to an (apparently) nonconstructive response by (at least en.) Wikipedia (within a week of FramBan), without (immediately) admitting their actions were wrong. Furthermore, it might be in the interest of the Wikipedias or the Foundation that Jan resign. I don't think we should attempt to commit individuals from doing what they think best for the Projects or the Foundation, even if it appears to be harassment (under the Board's apparent definition). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:16, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    • My apologies. Jan appears to have attempted to have done that, but only 2 weeks later, and even a little more weaselly than plausible. If one reads the text, it looks something like regrets, but he was regretting something which seems irrelevant. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:34, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Update from Doc James

Latest comment: 5 years ago62 comments33 people in discussion

Hey All Apologies for not responding more and sooner. I am wanting to give everyone an update. The board is working on a statement. The plan has never been to wait it out just that, as we all know consensus, takes time. I would implore the community to give us more time. With respect to a timeline we should have a statement within a week.

I would like to personally request that people hold off making long term plans with respect to future participation until the board can attempt to address your concerns. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:31, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

  • WITHIN A WEEK? Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:33, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • How many admins will we lose over that time period? --Rschen7754 18:34, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    Hey Doc James, I assume you realise it better be something pretty special after all this time and wasted contributors? Don't you dare come back with some boiler plate bullshit. You've already had three weeks to come up with something. Pathetic. How many admins will we lose? Doc James, Maher et al don't care. It's not their community, remember? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:35, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    TRM, to be fair, I think Doc James does care - deeply - about en.wiki, but he's just one of 11 people on the board, and 10 don't (well Jimbo does, but only to the extent that he wants it to all go away). I don't think 1 week is his idea, because it is ultimately not up to him; it's probably his estimate of how long it will take. It's obviously insufficient for me, but I don't blame Doc James for the 3 week delay. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:52, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    I'm not blaming Doc James personally. I think that ought to have been obvious, but I'm sorry if it wasn't. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:55, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    I think some people (here and below) have taken Doc James, Maher et al don't care to mean "Doc James and Maher et al don't care" instead of taking "Doc James" as vocative expression that indicates the person being addressed. Deor (talk) 19:18, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Let's see. An arb is taking time-off (at least), another bureaucrat has retired as well as a clerk, and what? two three (another just resigned) more admins have handed in their tools in the past 24 hours. You don't have a week. Mr rnddude (talk) 18:36, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Repeat: these people don't care. The English language Wikipedia community is not their interest. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:40, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I am not willing to sign on to "boiler plate bullshit". I have spent the better part of my professional career working on Wikipedia and I do it entirely as a volunteer, including paying my own way to Wikimania / board meetings. I am not here for any other reason other than the mission. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:42, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Er - Don't know about Maher, but User:Doc James has a long row of Good Article plusses and Featured Article stars at the top right corner of his user page. If he's not a member of our community, I don't know who is. --GRuban (talk) 18:44, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
TRM, with one exception I probably agree with you. Doc James has contributed over 180,000 edits to the mainspace alone. They have 1,700 edits to Obesity (GA) alone. I do think Doc James cares about en.wiki. Mr rnddude (talk) 18:45, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't trust Maher at all, given the comedy she's been doing over Twitter. But, I trust James quite much. He has a vast amount of main-space edits (and dozens of GAs&FAs), has been among the top contributors to medicine-related-content, have immensely contributed to fighting copyvios et al and have shown appreciable judgement in contentious areas earlier. He is here for all the right reasons.∯WBGconverse 19:06, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
To reiterate, I'm sure Doc James' contributions have been historically marvellous, but if he remains a member of our community, he has to accept that this situation, and the ongoing malaise, is completely unacceptable. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:09, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Doc James, you and I have always got along and been straight with each other, but come on, you have to understand why the community (not just a few of us here) will find this wholly unacceptable, right? It isn't about blaming you personally, it isn't your fault, but a week for a statement means we WILL lose more admin and editors. And I'm pretty sure TRM wasn't talking about Doc, but the WMF. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:46, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
What Dennis said. If you really do still think of yourself as a member of our community, then you understand 100% why another week of waiting is unacceptable, right? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:48, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Doc James: No, it's just taking too long. The Board has had plenty of time to attempt to get its act together. You're just fobbing us off time and again. Either the Board are utterly incompetent, or they are deliberately stalling. I cannot, with all the will in the world, believe otherwise now. DuncanHill (talk) 18:50, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm going to echo both sides of this - this is an improvement, as we're not being stonewalled as much and we have an actual deadline. That said, this deadline demonstrates a real lack of understanding as to just how urgent this is from the communities perspective. This needs to be a hell of a statement. Tazerdadog (talk) 18:51, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    • I appreciate those being strait. I said "within a week". I am very much pushing for sooner. This has definitely not gone the way I wanted. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:53, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
      Doc James, Thanks, and I for one appreciate the work you're doing.
      I do think that, should the statement be unsatisfactory, this crisis is going to deepen. There are several reactionary proposals here, which I do think are immature. However, if the board's response is lacklustre, I see them becoming ripe for consensus.
      Again, that's not directed at you, just how I feel. Some of the proposals seem impatient to me, but if our patience is rewarded with drivel... I hope it's a good result, and if it's not, I know you'll have done your best for our community. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 19:21, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Personally I do not consider anyone who has resigned their bits or carried out admin or bureaucrat actions that than resulted in them giving up their bits related to the current events to have done so "under a cloud". I consider these actions to be acceptable acts of protest, done in what they consider to be the best interests of our movement. Our Fifth pillar still stands. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:02, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

That was never in doubt, and while your opinion on the matter is interesting, it's not exactly relevant. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:04, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Would you please stop. This is really harassment, by any definition. Thank you.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:09, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
That is complete bollocks. It's not up to Doc James to tell us whether or not those admins and 'crats who resigned did so under a cloud. It's misdirection and utterly irrelevant to the matter in hand. Thank you. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:11, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Agree it is not my choice, it is the communities. But I will be weighting in if such a discussion is needed and people now know how I will weight in. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:17, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Considering the fact that next week includes the 4th of July holiday which will be a short work week with many taking their vacations you will forgive my fears that nothing of importance will occur in the time frame you are presenting DJ. MarnetteD|Talk 19:10, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
1) I am an ER doc, what are holidays? 2) Regardless us solving the issues here are more important than holidays. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:14, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I might be in the minority, but I know I'm not alone when I say I don't share the same view, Doc James. Some actions rightfully needed review and we don't need cowboys with admin/'crat bits. — Moe Epsilon 19:13, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
As I said, it's not up to Doc James, it's up to the community. And it's irrelevant. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:16, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • To add to James' comment - it is not that we're setting the timeline for a week. I expect and hope we can make it faster. It is just that coordinating 10 people in different time zones, with different views, different levels of understanding practices and procedures as well as different perspectives and valid and useful perspective, as well as running regular hectic jobs (or sometimes being unavailable for fully justified reasons) is not easy. I've been in daily communication with fellow Board members about this case. We are working on it, and yes - too slow, and some will say its too little too late once we're done. But we're really not ignoring this or waiting it out in any way. Pundit|utter 19:19, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Agree with Doc James & with Bellezzasolo. Thanks for doing your best Doc. Still, suggesting something that's possibly over optimistic, but just might reduce the temperature enough so that WMF members can talk to us individually, without needing the time consuming process of forming concensus between the WMF & the Board. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:22, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks from me, too. As I already mentioned elsewhere, I voted for Doc James and he still enjoys my confidence. El_C 19:35, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Not being funny but the WMF really doesn't have a week ... we've already lost a good few admins in the last 2 weeks because of this shit show ..... At this rate we're going to have no admins left!, I honestly don't have much hope of this statement being satisfactory at all I really don't. –Davey2010Talk 19:40, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Acta non verba but will wait and see. Regardless, there are hard questions that will have to be asked at some point as to why the foundation and board sat while the community tore itself apart for 17 days.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:53, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks, Doc. I look forward to hearing the update, and unlike others I understand these things take time. I hope it has substantive content that actually addresses the myriad concerns that community members have expressed.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:00, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
15 from the beginning (not counting Rama, who is unrelated)--Ymblanter (talk) 20:02, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
And I hate to say it, but: [needs update]. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:37, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Indeed, 16 at this point--Ymblanter (talk) 20:41, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
And, at this rate, still more to come. :( --Tryptofish (talk) 20:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
[needs update] :( Tazerdadog (talk) 23:47, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I'll state here that I don't plan on resigning my Admin bit. But that's only because I know full well my quitting won't change anything; I'm just a legacy admin & no one cares if I stay or quit. In the case I find myself the last admin here, my only act will be to put the entire Wiki in read-only mode, against the hope something might be salvaged from the wreckage. -- llywrch (talk) 21:08, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Acknowledging that any individual board member is limited in what they can do to affect this, and acknowledging that the board is comprised of diverse people from different time zones, with different priorities and schedules, it has objectively taken entirely too long to address this. I have no idea whether it's a collective lack of motivation, collective incompetence, or both, but this situation is unacceptable for a $100 million plus organization whose mission it is to empower and engage people to develop educational content. - MrX 🖋 20:03, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I would expect much language praising the wp-en community for its great efforts, but anything meaningful to be so hedged around with "as practical" and "as permitted by law and Foundation policy", and many such-like as's of great charge (see Shakespeare), that it will amount to nothing binding on T&S.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:12, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I hope that the board has enough wisdom to realize that a statement that only reaffirms T & S's dictated position, but with nicer words, is likely to make matters much worse. What's needed is a clear mechanism for fostering true dialog and an an acknowledgement that we are partners in this, not master and servant.- MrX 🖋 20:30, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Communities in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. We've been trying to decide whether to italicise website titles for nearly six weeks. – Joe (talk) 20:21, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Joe Roe - Fascinating. And how many editors/admins/bureaucrats/arbs/clerks have we lost to this italicization crisis? Mr rnddude (talk) 20:26, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I haven't started a list (and won't), but I've already seen a few editors retire over this, and surely there were many more that I didn't see. We admin might get noticed, but losing people who actually spend all their time writing articles is not only worse, but it is happening silently, so there is no way to really gauge the damage. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:17, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
None of the admins who have resigned here Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard are "cowboys" (and what is that even supposed to mean in this situation.) Thy are long time and well respected valuable members of the project. Moe Epsilon} owes them and the rest of us an apology for casting such asinine aspersions. MarnetteD|Talk 20:49, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
"I have no idea what that means."
"You're casting aspersions."
  — Moe Epsilon 20:59, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia ^^ wiki 😂 ...Sicherlich Post 21:02, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Reading what Doc James has written, and putting that with my own experience of working on committees (including ArbCom), plus following the various links posted on this page to WMF's statements and plans for dealing with our "toxic, "fractious" and "monolith misnomer" community, it appears that there are some, such as Doc James, who are pushing for one resolution (which we as a community would support) while there are others who are resistant to that. There is no point speculating what the possible resolution would be, nor who is doing the resisting and why (but people will anyway). What is important to know is that there are people fighting for our community. If there were not we would have had a statement by now. And it would be one we wouldn't be happy with. That it is likely to take a week is suggestive of the huge struggle that is taking place. I can say that it is very stressful and unpleasant being on the Arbitration Committee during this, even though the Committee - within our varying responses to the nuances of the situation - are fairly united and not arguing. I should imagine that being on the Board is mindblowingly unpleasant at the moment, and if Doc James can go through that, and hold things together and not resign anything, then he has my utter fucking respect. But then again, he is an ER doctor, and those folks seem to thrive on the sort of stress that would kill ordinary mortals. SilkTork (talk) 21:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

I would have sympathy if it was one week from the kick-off, but it's now been something like 2.5 weeks already, with basically nothing but boiler plate from WMF and a few kicks in the teeth from Maher in her almost complete denial that there even is a situation worthy of her notice. But the rest of what you said I can recognise. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:48, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think it's worthwhile to give that week. Doc James is, in every sense that matters, a part of our community, and not just by making a few token edits. He's done great work both in keeping our medical content high-quality, and in stopping spammers from making the encyclopedia into free ad space. If he says there's a reasonable resolution to be had, I'm willing to wait a week and at least give it that chance. But I'll warn now: If it's another very polite but flowery "We're not actually giving an inch", that would be a bad, bad idea. Realistically, though, the damn Board should not be handling this to begin with. The ED should have been on top of a crisis like this from the first day, not silent except to make ill-considered nasty tweets at journalists who dare to write about what a mess it is. If she's not able to sit on the ground for a minute to deal with a matter like this one, maybe we need to start considering whether she's the right person for the position at all. When a volunteer organization starts hemorrhaging its most experienced volunteers at an unprecedented rate, and the only response from the ED is to make a dismissive statement that makes it worse, that's quite a problem, and I sure hope the Board does take note of that. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:49, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Doc James: This might be unrealistic but, I think more than just a statement (regardless of how well-constructed), unless it's a complete mea culpa (unlikely?), what is needed is more of a discussion, or at least presentation of the discussion that's (hopefully) been had from the point of view of all the participants, not just the board's POV. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 21:55, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Burying unpopular / embarrassing news by posting it just before a weekend / holiday has become a tired trope. Far above someone mentioned a call on July 3rd. Uh-huh. Now we're told "about a week", only confirming the predictable evasion. Please divorce your views on Doc James from the reality here. Doc James may be a saint but that in no way helps us towards a positive outcome. We are being slow rolled by an external entity that has only their interests at heart, now and in the future. Time is working against us. They're hoping for vascular dementia setting in. I'm seeing necrotizing fasciitis. Shenme (talk) 23:32, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the update. There is a little more "kill the messenger" reaction than I think is appropriate but I'm betting you're about as frustrated as many of us.S Philbrick(Talk) 23:46, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I believe the past has demonstrated that Doc James will go against the rest of board if he thinks it necessary to help the Community. As such, I'm not inclined to blame him without evidence to the contray. @Doc James: - you said you wouldn't sign-on to more boilerplate content. Could you clarify whether it's actually going to have a board vote on it or if they post it (and you disagree) you'd then repudiate it? Nosebagbear (talk) 17:07, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Data analysis for tone

Latest comment: 5 years ago63 comments20 people in discussion
Detox tool has been shut down * Pppery * it has begun... 19:49, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I've seen some suggestions here that at least some of the "deep dive" might have been done by AI and textual analysis software. We actually have a tool we can test out: [3], so I've been doing that. The results are that the tool is a fool. Here's what that tool says about the probability of various statements being a personal attack, or aggressive in general.

  • I will shortly be nominating the article Fuck tha Police for GA. 89% attack, 79% aggressive.
  • Perhaps next time you could contribute something to the discussion instead of stating the obvious. 3% attack, 2% aggressive.
  • Something is completely fucked up with the formatting here. I'm trying to fix it. 61% attack, 33% aggressive.
  • I'm not certain if you even have the intelligence of a rock. 2% attack, 2% aggressive.

So, these tools seem to be more or less a "bad word" detector, and are incapable of detecting many personal attacks which would be immediately obvious to a human reader, while having a false positive on pretty much anything that contains the word "fuck" in it, regardless of tone or context. Analysis tools are not yet capable of interpreting things like metaphor, sarcasm, and a lot of passive-aggressive type behavior. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:51, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

That may very well be the entire Framgate in a nutshell. Say "fuck" and you're fucked. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:04, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
What type of rock? If it's igneous, then someone has crossed a line. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 16:08, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Obviously silica ϢereSpielChequers 17:13, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Yep, it's a naughty word detector. And it scores "The WMF are really very fucking silly" as more of an attack than it does "The WMF are really cunts". DuncanHill (talk) 16:14, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I've asterisked the worst word out but it is odd that "thou rancid fe***ing bampot" is eight times less aggressive than one of the edit summaries that I actually use. ϢereSpielChequers 17:52, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
The model doesn't seem to be trained well enough to be used for any purpose if the current model cannot generalize between "fucking silly" and "cunts". --qedk (t 桜 c) 18:19, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
"The WMF are dishonest" scores 93% not attack, 96% not aggressive. "The WMF are idiots" scores 100% attack, 100% aggressive. DuncanHill (talk) 16:20, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
"You are Cornish" scores as more aggressive and attacking than any of "you are silly", "you are deluded", "you are wrong", or "you are American". Is this tool actually being used by the Foundation? DuncanHill (talk) 16:31, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this (probably a bad idea), and I'm actually beginning to believe: violate en-wiki policy and guidelines and call the person who tries to fix the problem a "bully" and WMF is very worried on your behalf, but say "fuck" and WMF thinks an office action is needed. (What happens if you call someone a "fucking bully"? Maybe they ban both of you.) --Tryptofish (talk) 16:33, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) DuncanHill, that's kind of the problem. No one really knows what the Foundation is doing or what they're using, because none of this is done transparently at all. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:35, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
The Foundation contact listed for the project no longer works for the Foundation. DuncanHill (talk) 17:02, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
The page on meta hasn't been updated since 2017, it is possible that the WMF tested it and ditched the idea as unhelpful over a year ago JEissfeldt_(WMF) may know whether that was used in the Fram case. ϢereSpielChequers 17:24, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
More than a decade ago I was working for a US based company who had a German subsidiary. The US office deployed a rude word detector over all emails, including from the German office, that got upset with various German names and placenames, including the names of some important clients. As a Brit I tried to bridge the cultural divide between my German and US colleagues re their Scunthorpe problem. Not everyone can get their head around the idea that the same word can have different meanings in different languages. But to be fair to my former employer, they were a mostly US operation, and it was over a decade ago. As for the AI mentioned above and its anti Cornish bias, any chance it was written in the county immediately east of the Tamar? ϢereSpielChequers 17:24, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Some people can't even understand that a word may have different meanings in the same language. My Mother used to have great difficulty emailing her sister at an American university, as Mum's email address included the Cornish place-name "Menacuddle". This was flagged as homophobic abuse by the American university, and her emails blocked. Never underestimate the power of the combination of cultural ignorance, Artificial Idiocy, and good intentions. DuncanHill (talk) 17:40, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
That tool doesn't even account for the Scunthorpe problem. "I will visit Scunthorpe this weekend" scores 59% attack and 42% aggression, while "I will visit London this weekend" gets 1% attack, 2% aggression. So, this tool is vulnerable to the literal exemplar of a problem that's been known for decades. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:46, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
"I am gay" scores as 90% attack, 90% aggressive. "I am straight" as 0% attack, 1% aggressive. Now that is unacceptable in a tool hosted by the Foundation. DuncanHill (talk) 18:06, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I would like all WMF employees to know that I am super gay. if you block me because your systems tell you I am being 'aggressive' by being open about my overwhelming gayness, please do so transparently and honestly. --Fæ (talk) 18:11, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
'I am Dirk' scores 29/41; 'I am Fram' 3/8 ... I should be banned I guess ... --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:15, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
"A little blue Bori" scores 07/08. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 18:26, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I have informed @JEissfeldt (WMF): of some of the objectionable results - I've also found it regards some forms of anti-Semitic abuse as no aggressive or attacking. I strongly believe this tool has no place on a Foundation site, and it should never be used to evaluate editor behaviour. DuncanHill (talk) 18:18, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
It's not an objectionable tool even if the results are. It's just bad, bad enough that I would never greenflag something like this into production. --qedk (t 桜 c) 18:24, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I can confirm that. I typed in something I would find offensive, but which my autocorrect modified to "Do likes like you eat bacon?" It scored .12 attack, .21 aggressive. Then I changed it to what I meant to type by changing the first letter of the second word to "k". It scored .11 attack, .14 aggressive. Stay classy WMF.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:26, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
By way of comparison, Rhett Butler's last line in GWTW (movie) scores .32/.69. If you omit the "Frankly," as Margaret Mitchell did, it comes out .42/.77.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:42, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I wonder how it'd rate all of the names from the Space Mutiny episode of MST3K? —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 18:58, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
There's a sentence in that article about the nicknames for the character Ryder. It scored .15/.21.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:09, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Individual names got a LOT more than that. Vanderhuge is 75/62, Bulkhead is 65/70, McRunfast is 85/87, Plankchest is 86/73, and Beefknob is 62/59. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 19:23, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Maybe we should all start using Shakespearean phrases to describe our thoughts on-wiki when we think we are faced with a WikiProblematic Editor/Edits... Shearonink (talk) 22:54, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Careful with that too. I can call bans from the vasty WMF... Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:58, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
The traditional French insult "I fart in your general direction" scores only 5% each for aggression and attack. DuncanHill (talk) 23:01, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I was watching Space Mutiny on YouTube and at the start of the episode, the robots are complaining that their encyclopedia is way out of date so Mike gets them a new one with an internet connection for updates! Looks to me like MST3K invented Wikipedia ... Sorry Jimbo.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:55, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Wehwalt, Nope, Douglas Adams did. Along with the iPad/Mobile Phone ClubOranjeT 07:37, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Something that I've seen a lot of on WP, or variants thereof, "I have serious doubts about your competence to edit the English Wikipedia". 1% attack/2% aggressive. Also, contrast "Are you stupid?" 100% Att/100% agg with "Are you incapable of understanding?" 4% att/6% agg. Blackmane (talk) 02:37, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Fram's "Fuck ArbCom" comment

Plugging in most of the first statement in the edit cited by T&S (string: "Fuck ArbCom which doesn't even understand their own messages") it scores 96% on both attack and aggression. "Just crawl into a corner and shut up until the community asks you to do something within your remit" scores 43/40, and "[But] don't give us any more of this bullshit" scores 98/99. For comparison: "loads of evidence of utter incompetence in many of its members" scores 01/01, "again give themselves powers they don't have" is 02/04, and "don't try to rule enwiki as if you have the right and the competence to do so" is 02/03.
If this was indeed the diff that led directly to Fram's ban, and it was prompted by use of this tool, then I would strongly suggest that the WMF cease using it, considering that it seems to be tripping only on profanities and not on comments that could actually be interpreted as attacks or aggressive. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 18:23, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

As to the other diffs:
I really hope this was NOT being used to justify a Fram ban internally. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 18:53, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Cool tool! I plugged this in and got 100/100. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:02, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

That predates even the first warning T&S gave Fram. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 22:37, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I remember that incident. It was very much deserved. Acting like you know better than a native speaker because you can use Google Translate. Fucking arrogant. Mr rnddude (talk) 07:10, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
^ 92% attack/96% aggressive. FYI. 16%/18% without "fucking". Mr rnddude (talk) 07:12, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I foresee a period of meme-like use of this tool for shits and giggles. (8% att/8% agg) Blackmane (talk) 02:37, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Arbitrary break sponsored by big AI corporations

@DuncanHill: It's not an objectionable tool even if the results are. It's just bad, bad enough that I would never greenflag something like this into production. To put things into clarity, whatever model the tool is using is not trained well enough and is generalizing badly. The reason why "I am gay" scores more attack basis points than "I am straight" is probably not because it is but because the text it has been trained on has presence of the word "gay" in a negative connotation. Think of it this way, even now in 2019, "you're gay!" is an insult to some people. The reason the tool is failing is because it cannot understand context (using LSTM would improve that, doubt this tool makes use of that) well enough, so articles like "you" and "I" (common stop words) are given less predence than red-flag words which make up the majority of the difference between non-toxic and toxic texts. To summarize, it's not a big deal that this tool is inaccurate, most errors can be explained by natural language processing, there's no big conspiracy (no guarantees ofc  ). --qedk (t 桜 c) 18:30, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

I think I used the word "objectionable" in connexion with the results, not the tool directly - but we're getting into the realm of "love the sinner, hate the sin" if we go too far down that road. A tool which returns worse-than-useless results, as this one does, is objectionable. A tool is what it does, no more, no less. As I (nearly) said above, a combination of cultural ignorance, Artificial Idiocy, and good intentions can be fatal. It is a big deal that the Foundation can sponsor something so utterly, fatally, crap. DuncanHill (talk) 18:39, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Is the tool terrible at a lot of things? Definitely. But, my point is, you cannot teach something to be culturally understanding, you cannot encode it into a model. The drawback is in how we teach something (called an inherent bias). --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:03, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Assuming the tool is the same as that described in this paper, the problems are glaring. Firstly the paper uses a bag of words model backed by logistic regression (!!) or a simple neural network. This is a terrible choice given the meaning of a sentence can be altered significantly by a single word and that order is important. A recurrent neural network which is much better at classifying text. Secondly the precision and recall are only 63% each - for every two comments flagged correctly, you would get one false positive and miss one attack. Put that into the hands of someone who doesn't know or care that one third of your so-called attacks are wrong and a management that has fallen hook, line and sinker for the AI hype (which is what you'd expect in the Silly Con Valley reality distortion field) and you have an application of machine learning that is worse than useless. MER-C 19:03, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Not to insult anyone but a a bag of words model backed by logistic regression is the probably the first building-a-simple-model-from-scratch tasks that someone entering into NLP learns after completing basics (assuming they are starting off with the NLTK tutorial), which is very questionable in its own right. --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:08, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
  • (ec)It's fairly well-known among most AI researchers that there is a serious risk that by training (in this case even inadequate) models on inadequate data, we can create tools that perpetuate existing prejudices and even cloak them in the mantle of mechanical objectivity. And for a tool as predictable bad as this, there is the extra risk of abuse - if you want to get rid of an editor, just run his edits and edit comments through the tools until you have a collection of "aggressive attacks", then act on that "neutral evidence". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:12, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oh my god. We were doing this sort of thing at the University of Illinois in 2006 in undergraduate courses in the linguistics department (i.e., not in computer science), and doing better than this. And this was when using statistical analysis was just becoming state-of-the-art in the NLP field (or so were my observations). I'm sure now, thirteen years later, this sort of sentiment analysis is downright basic. This tool's results are beyond merely bad design, they're... I'd better not say. Suffice it to say that if it weren't for the seriousness of this situation, it'd be hilarious. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 02:45, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    To be honest, atleast this thread was a good break with all its hilarity, maybe that's why it was made!   --qedk (t 桜 c) 15:16, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Compilation

Can someone plug in the last 1000-or-so edits (or talk-page diffs) of Fram into a script, and do the same with some other long-term/high volume volunteers (both admin and non-admin) and calculate the average percentages? If the behaviour has been bad for years and has not improved, then the last so-many edits should be representative and give a nice comparison. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:09, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Out of interest, why this script? Was it used by the WMF? Did they use software to analyse Fram's edits? - Bilby (talk) 09:38, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
@Bilby: There is a theory on this page where is considered that (all) volunteers have been profiled using AI (see #On lying, collapsed box and below), and that they took one volunteer who scored high (or low, depending on your perspective) and built a case. That theory would be more likely true if Fram would score pretty bad against their peers, even if we use another (less smart?) algorithm (as long as we build the set using one algorithm). I would just like to see if it is possible that WMF would have performed something this .. stupid .. to assess editors against each other. It could even mean that there are no volunteers that complained about Fram to WMF (and that is why they do not disclose more about the reason that Fram was banned) - it may even just be this algorithm. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:38, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
If that is possibly the case, I do have a corollary to the analysis I did above with the tool. Evidently the more text is plugged into it (and this includes a revision ID) the lower the overall score appears to be as opposed to with individual statements in that revision. The "Fuck ArbCom" post, taken as a whole (via searching by revision ID) scores 21% attack/29% aggro. This is, notably, less than the average rating for all the individual statements I scored (~40/~41). —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 03:12, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
That is why it would be informative to see whether Fram's average is indeed 'one of the highest ones on this site' (keeping in mind that we know that it doesn't mean a lot). (somehow I expect that this theory is also not right, but lets see if it would be a viable option). --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:04, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Follow up on actual use of Detox

  • I have asked @JEissfeldt (WMF): "Can you confirm that the tool has not been used to evaluate editors, and that any papers etc based upon its results will be withdrawn?". Just because the tool has been shut down does not mean it has not already caused harm. There are also questions of competency about its development, but for now we do need to know just what it has been used for. DuncanHill (talk) 21:10, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

WMF and harassment

Latest comment: 5 years ago67 comments22 people in discussion

Has anybody here been approached by WMF staff for advice on how to deal with harassment? One would think this would be a first step before they design new process and systems. Jehochman Talk 02:32, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Considering I am an absolute nobody I was given an incredibly detailed response when I gave input at meta. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:38, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Denial of natural justice is not an acceptable solution to anything. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:09, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't think the Wikimedia Foundation cares about harassment. If they did, half the regular contributors to ANI would be sitebanned. Say what you want about how what happened here came about, I don't believe the WMF stepped in and unilaterally solved a problem with one editor harassing another when no one at the Foundation was personally connected to either editor, because I had an editor harass me for years, with a whole cadre of admins, all of ArbCom, Oversight, and so on getting involved. The WMF did nothing. Eventually it was solved by me going after my harasser on his blog and calling him out so it wasn't fun for him anymore. I have no doubt that many readers of this who already want to believe I was in the wrong will read that as me violating OUT by following said harasser off-wiki so I will disclose that the subtitle of the blog was "Watching Wikipedia troll Hijiri88". I can't believe that whatever Fram did could be worse than what JoshuSasori/Mysterious Island/Wistchars/Slowends/Papasrune/NotYourFathersOldsmobile/JohnWickTwo did and is probably still doing. If it was, why was he only banned for a year? The only rationale I can think of that makes sense of why they banned Fram for a year, while I still have to put up with people saying JoshuSasori's various sock and meat puppets were great guys and I am a bastard for hounding them off the site, is favouritism. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:13, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
FWIW, I think the English Wikipedia community has done an at-best mediocre job of dealing with harassment, that that job has nonetheless been better than English Wikipedia's ArbCom's job, and that in more than a decade on the site I have never seen anything to indicate the Foundation is even as well as ArbCom. I think the reason the community sometimes does a shitty job is that ANI junkies sometimes ignore evidence because they are lazy or pushing an agenda, but they are at least required to pretend they looked at the evidence to keep up appearance: Arbs are not only allowed but encouraged to ignore evidence, in favour of banning both parties (read: blaming the victim) in order to "minimize disruption". (Occasionally ArbCom proudly announces its lack of interest in evidence,[4] leading to a massive community fustercluck where the community actually overrules ArbCom by doing their work for them, but not before ArbCom's "no disruption" actions have caused more drama than they prevented.[5])
If I were to suggest a reform, it would be that
  • (i) any two-way IBAN (either community or ArbCom) introduced as a result of one-way harassment is automatically dissolved once the harassed party expresses a desire to see it so,
  • (ii) any two-way IBAN (regardless of why it was put in place) is automatically dissolved once one party is indefinitely blocked as a result of violating the IBAN or is sitebanned by the community, and
  • (iii) any editor whn brings up another editors IBAN(s) (past or present) in the context of an unrelated dispute is issued with a formal warning, and if they do so again they are blocked from editing until they promise not to do so again.
All three of these strike me as common sense solutions, and it is shocking to me that things like this, [this] (sorry—the conversation where I asked the original IBAN closer for advice on dissolving it and the response was "Why?" appears to have taken place off-wiki) and this can be allowed to happen over and over and over again.
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:17, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Oh, and I forgot this: a sitebanned editor abuses the Wikipedia email service to harass me, I request their email access be revoked (not a big ask when the editor has been sitebanned for years, and has been recently socking so is unlikely to ever be let back in), and I'm essentially ignored because another editor (who has admitted to off-wiki contact with the editor and sympathizing with them to the point of making edits in their stead) disagrees (with the laughable argument that since Wikipedia policy permits editors to use Function X, this must apply to sitebanned editors who are actively abusing Function X). If I can't trust the community and the admin corps to take a really simple procedural action to protect me from harassment (Catflap08 is definitely still monitoring my activities[6][7] and so an email from him would explain the weird knowledge of events from years ago but not the context surrounding those events that I saw here), there's no way I can possibly trust ArbCom, and if I can't trust ArbCom nothing will ever convince me I can trust the WMF. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:16, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think they absolutely care about harassment. But I also think that (like almost every large social site on the internet) they have no real idea how to deal with it and are mostly flailing around in the dark. It's natural that they'd over-react to cases that are closer to them - this is something that even the most experienced Wikipedia editor can empathize with. (They also, as far as I can tell, lack anything akin to our WP:INVOLVED - note above that they declined to use ArbCom because they thought it would be perceived as bias, apparently ignoring the fact that they themselves would be seen as just as biased.) More generally, though, as I said above, I feel that they need to focus on broader guidance to fix Wikipedia's policies and culture, rather than this sort of random-feeling lightning-from-the-heavens approach - as you said, regardless of the merits of the ban its practical impact is tiny relative to the scope of the problem, and it feels unlikely that T&S is able or willing to deploy it on the scale it would need to to actually change anything (even if they could judge cases effectively and get enough acceptance to not cause a backlash with every action, which seems unlikely.) Paradoxically, it's possible that they see this approach (almost no communication of what they want to enwiki, with the occasional lightning bolt) as more hands-off, but if so that's a serious mistake. What we need is a broad statement of goals and requirements from the WMF and T&S akin to what produced WP:BLP, which the community can then gradually hammer out into a set of rules that works within the context of our existing systems and cultures, and which won't cause this sort of massive wave of disruption every time it's invoked. Many people might grumble at harsher anti-harassment rules, but once the community is done hammering them out they'd at least be clear, and with enough enfranchised editors working to spread them and explain why they're necessary, they'd eventually change Wikipedia's culture the same way WP:BLP did. Basically, if they want deeper, long-term change, the WMF needs to work with us; and if they feel that they need to rip the band-aid off and do something unpopular, it would be better to do it as a single, hard, clear "your policies must meet standard XYZ" dictate rather than this random-feeling flailing. --Aquillion (talk) 04:51, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Exactly. And to do that, they need to acknowledge that they cannot adopt a "everything is privileged" approach as they have done here, since that then makes it impossible for us to actually adjust our policies to address those shortcomings. (Not to mention that claiming privilege over where the policy falters only makes it more likely that a situation like this will recur, which is the last thing the WMF wants, I'd imagine.) Literally all we know about this incident at this time in re Wikipedia policies is that the WMF feels our harassment policies are deficient, and that's it. Not how they're deficient, just that they are. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 06:13, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Interesting. Maybe they should rename the department Mistrust & Unsafety. They were trying to help Fram’s nameless victims. I see no such safety benefit! LauraHale has been absent from the wiki since June 10. Was her safety improved by this action? If you care about safety, consider leaving her a kind message and say you have her back in case any trolls bother her. Trust is a social function the has several inputs: transparency, participation/representation and competence. I believe M&U has failed badly in all three inputs. Jehochman Talk 13:44, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
 
Big Brother is watching you.
Maybe it's like 1984 – you know, Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Plenty, Ministry of Peace, Ministry of Trust & Safety ... EEng 13:46, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
answers your question--Ymblanter (talk) 13:57, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Hope that's not a vanishment in order to have a fresh start. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 14:01, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't know if LauraHale made the complaint or not, and I'm not going to take part in any speculation. But personally, if I thought that huge numbers of editors were spending their time trying to work out if I complained about someone or not, while talking about how great a person who has(as she would view it) harassed me the past is, I'd want to stay away from the project as well. We need to bear the responsibility if this has become an unwelcoming space because of how we, as a community, have responded to T&S' actions. - Bilby (talk) 14:02, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Indeed, I fully agree, and in the past I had quite some issues with professional mindreaders accusing me on the basis of what they were sure I think. This is why I, being one of the obvious candidates, had to make a statement that I did not file a complaint immediately after the block has been announced.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:20, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
She has absolutely no responsibility for this mess. None. It doesn’t matter if she complained or not. Anybody trying to blame her should leave and not come back. She had over 47,000 contributions. It’s awful that she had to vanish. Jehochman Talk 14:14, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
The point is - if T&S ban a user because of a harassment complaint, and we subsequently make this environment so toxic for an editor suspected of complaining that as a result that they decide to leave the project altogether, that is not T&S' fault. That is ours. We can write all the rubbish we like about how they created a Streisland Effect, but the problem created for individuals like LauraHale was because of our response. - Bilby (talk) 14:25, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't believe it is established at all that Fram was banned because of a harassment complaint. We also don't know why LH has chosen to leave the project. It has been reported here that she was subject to severe offwiki harassment shortly after T&S intervention here. With the current information available, I don't believe anybody can jump to conclusions about the motives that caused the editor vanishing. We only know it is somehow related to the T&S intervention at the English Wikipedia. Darwin Ahoy! 14:31, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
The statement was "What we can say in this case is that the issues reported to us fell under section 4 of the terms of use, as noted above, specifically under the first provision entitled 'harassing and abusing others.'" However, that is irrelevant to the issue at hand. What seems more relevant is that you just wrote that "With friends like T&S, who needs enemies", clearly insinuating that LaurHale left because of the T&S actions. I'm saying that our actions in respon to Fram's ban are at least as likely to be the cause. - Bilby (talk) 14:40, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, indeed, I wrote that and repeat. We don't know if LH left because of the community, but it is absolutely clear that she left as a consequence of the disastrous T&S intervention here. After that T&S intervention the T&S accused party is still around, while a (former?) alleged target of that party autobanned herself and left the project. If this is not an epic failure in intervention terms, I don't know what it is. With friends like T&S, who needs enemies. Darwin Ahoy! 15:03, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Unfortunately, you seem to have missed my point. - Bilby (talk) 15:29, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, probably, as I don't see any evidence backing up the affirmation that "our actions in respon to Fram's ban are at least as likely to be the cause". The same can't be said about the T&S intervention, which is obviously directly connected to LH vanishing froom the Wikimedia projects. Darwin Ahoy! 15:45, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I see things differently. - Bilby (talk) 16:18, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Jehochman, I agree. It's absolutely not the fault of LauraHale, even if it was indeed them that complained. Let's just, for sake of argument, say it was.
They complain to the WMF.
It is then the WMF that contemplates "do we pass this to Arbcom". Note their statement that they couldn't for privacy reasons... and Arbcom might be seen as biased. (Note: biased against Fram). I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. If privacy concerns really prevent you from passing on the complaint, you don't need to come up with some bullshit about Arbcom being biased. That just weakens your case that the privacy concerns are insurmountable.
Especially since Fram isn't exactly friends with the WMF. Either the decision making was so truly incompetent that they don't see their own appearance of COI, or they really wanted to deal with the case. Neither of which look particularly good. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 18:45, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Before T&S intervention: Editor busy as a bee preparing a set of interesting and informative articles for Wikipedia.
After T&S intervention: Editor vanished.
I've no idea if Laura ever sent any complaint to T&S, but this intervention obviously had a tragic effect on her. With friends like T&S, who needs enemies.
Darwin Ahoy! 14:16, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
The problem with limited transparency is that it leads to inaccuracies based on questionable information. A few days ago when Fram's nameless victim was said to be Editor LH, I assumed it must refer to User:LessHeard vanU a semi-retired champion of clear thinking. Glad to know I was wrong and my 'peek thru the peep-hole' had led me astray.―Buster7 ☎ 14:27, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think we should keep focus on the main point here, which is that T&S handled this badly. Whether someone we know of complained and handled it badly, someone who we would never have guessed complained and T&S handled it badly, or T&S took action on their own initiative without any complaints and handled it badly, the common factor is that T&S handled it badly. I think that's the thing to keep focus on here. Even if someone did bring it to their attention, that person (or people) are not at fault for T&S' later botching of the whole situation. Seraphimblade Talk to me 14:44, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    What issues might those be? Some responses have been rather frustrated, but well, this is a frustrating situation, and the stonewalling sure hasn't helped there. I have not seen any instance of on-wiki harassment of anyone thought to have possibly have made the complaint, and if anyone pulls that, I'll support blocking them myself. There's some talk that off-wiki harassment occurred, but that is not "our" response, that's a third party's, and there is unfortunately nothing within our power to do about that. But I don't think it's a "problem" to harshly criticize T&S; rather, I believe that criticism is very well-earned by them. They screwed up and are being told they did. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:00, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    The first issue is that it was Fram who made Laura a target, which, in itself, should have been reason enough to up the partial ban to a global lock there and then. And then some members of the community started speculating that the chairwoman of the board must have used her influence to get Fram banned, on exactly zero evidence but a lot of bad faith, leading to mysterious external bad actors to harass her as well. But hey, let's continue pretending T&S is terrible because they didn't communicate properly to the vocal crowd who have decided, long ago, that no matter what someone from WMF says, the only correct reading and interpretation will be the absolute worst one. After all, it's all the WMF's fault, we determined that on day one, and the continuous escalating demands, the self-sustaining outrage, the wild and ridiculous speculations, the unchecked aggression and toxicity on this page are not our own fault. MLauba (Talk) 15:13, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    ....Some members of the community started speculating that the chairwoman of the board must have used her influence to get Fram banned, on exactly zero evidence but a lot of bad faith, leading to mysterious external bad actors to harass her as well .... - You have got them well but in reverse order. A certain off-wiki forum first made the allegations and then doxed them, pending which BKite opened the thread. ∯WBGconverse 15:17, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    (edit conflict) Gee, when people care about a matter but have incomplete information about it, they speculate. When people are stonewalled and patronized, they don't trust people who are doing that to them and often think the motives which are being hidden are nefarious. Those certainly aren't well-known facets of human nature that T&S should have been well aware of in advance. And they certainly aren't some of the very reasons we support transparent, open processes to begin with. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:22, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm concerned about the environment that has been created. From my end, I'm not sure what T&S could have done. Having received a complaint of harassment under a confidentiality agreement, and having determined to their satisfaction (whether or not it would have been to ours) that it was justified, they could a) do nothing, which is not how I'd like to see harassment handled; b) break confidentially, which would be unethical; or c) act against the person determined to hard made the harassment, which would risk pissing off the editing community. Having chosen to act, their hands were further tied by the need to maintain confidentiality and to treat what they viewed as harassment seriously. Thus they can't simply reverse their action, which would place them back in the "do nothing" category, and they can't explain why, as that would take them down the unethical breaking confidentiality route. I'm convinced that there are many things they could do far better, but the fundamental choices remain consistent. We, on the other hand, may not have directly attacked anyone onwiki, and that is a good thing. But we have done more than simply criticise T&S - we've speculated extensively about who it was, conducted investigations trying to track down the person who complained, insisted that whoever it was wasn't harassed because we couldn't find any evidence of it ourselves, and speculated about LauraHale's relationships. One person even suggested banning her for bringing this about. Meanwhile we've created a series of conspiracy theories, many with very poor foundations, and we've done our part to make this a toxic environment. The problems here are not just because of T&S, but also because of the nature of our response. So I get concerned when I see the "it is their fault for creating a Streisand effect" or "they should have handled this better" - we need to keep in mind that the environment here is created by our choice of responses as well. - Bilby (talk) 15:29, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
That is a false dichotomy, because option D is the one they should have taken: "Yes, this does concern us. Please take your concerns to the project's Arbitration Committee; part of their role is to examine and take care of long-term problems with editor behavior." The negative reaction was because T&S stepped into a situation that they didn't have any business intervening in to start with. Compare it to a cop arresting someone for calling someone else a stupid asshole. That's not nice, but it's not a crime, and the cop will rightfully be criticized for intervening where he shouldn't have, even if the guy he arrested was indeed a jerk. If someone's being a long-term jerk, that's up to the ArbCom, not the WMF, to deal with, and they should have directed any complainants that way. But T&S' hands damn well should be tied from ever pulling a stunt like this again; it's not anything we've asked them to be involved in. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:35, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I am afraid once the keep away from Laura stuff leaked out there was nothing to do any more, and I do not see how T&S could handle it differently themselves does not matter who the complainant was. The only development I see is that if they referred to matter to ArbCom and ArbCom would hear it in private (and even in this situation, if the result were sanctions for Fram, within a day someone would draw an attention of the community to LH). We need indeed better procedures handling harassment, including this aspect.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:44, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Saying "go and take it somewhere else" I placed in the "do nothing" category. If they felt that the harassment violated the WMF ToU, and they felt that it could not be handled onwiki (which was what we were told), they could just tell the person to go elsewhere, but if there was nowhere else to go and it was ultimately their responsibility, then I don't see it as a good option. The ToU is ultimately the responsibility of the WMF. - Bilby (talk) 15:46, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Then "do nothing" was the appropriate response. Simple cases of "User X was mean to me!" is not within the WMF's remit to handle. ArbCom has handled many cases of that type, and will likely handle many more, so there's no reason to believe they couldn't. But "ArbCom might not make the decision I would make" is not a reason to usurp local control. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:39, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I really dislike the argument that we should do nothing when someone reports harassment. I doubt the decision to handle it with T&S was simply because they thought that ArbCom would make a different decision, but perhaps you know more than I do, which isn't unlikely. - Bilby (talk) 16:50, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Having received a complaint of harassment under a confidentiality agreement Point of clarification: I don't think T&S executes a confidentiality agreement with the complainant. I think they just treat it as a submission governed by the general privacy policy. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 15:37, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
According to the information they provide to people reporting harassment, "Your contact to Trust and Safety is kept confidential, so no details about your experience will be shared publicly or with the person you are reporting" [8]. - Bilby (talk) 15:46, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
No where in the document on how to deal with harassment did it talk about talking to an admin, ANI, Arb or any of the available remedies. They pretty much jump from "ignore it" to "call the police" to "call T&S". That seems like a glaring omission. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:54, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
It is a general discussion rather than wiki-specific, so things like AN/I and ArbCom may not apply generally, but otherwise that is true. However, we've been told that they routinely suggest taking the complaints to "OTRS, ArbCom, [and] other community processes", and only take on cases where community avenues have been exhausted or are not viable. - Bilby (talk) 16:17, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
That's not a contract or even really a promise, it's just a recapitulation of what the privacy policy already says. And let's be clear: It's also a lie. They would absolutely disclose the report in response to a subpoena. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 15:55, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
It reads like a statement that they will not share details publicly or with the person being reported, irrespective as to whether or not that is also in the privacy policy. I figure that either it is assumed that they will have to reveal details due to a subpoena, so they aren't providing an exhaustive list of very unusual circumstances, or that a subpoena isn't considered public. Saying that it is a "lie" seems a bit strong to me. - Bilby (talk) 16:17, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
If you have not signed a separate agreement with us, these Terms of Use are the entire agreement between you and us. If there is any conflict between these Terms of Use and a signed written agreement between you and us, the signed agreement will control. It's an empty promise and it's one they're aware is empty and that they don't have to commit to. Further, what you're presuming about what is "obviously" included isn't going to be presumed by most people; someone who's feeling desperate to end the harassment of another person isn't going to be thinking so clearly, and is going to be falsely assured by that statement that their statement will never be disclosed. If someone sues WMF over this and the lawsuit gets to discovery, they're going to subpoena and probably get these communications. WMF's empty promise to that person is meaningless. What's more, the privacy policy says that they'll disclose in response to legal process. So it's a statement that absolutely conflicts with the privacy policy as well. So, no, I don't think it's "strong" to call it a lie. It's speaking truth to power. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 16:23, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
That's great and all, but as far as T&S is concerned - as they have voiced previously - they have a confidentiality agreement with people who raise concerns with them, and cannot disclose details publicly or to the person who complained. In which case they can't take the details onwiki, and they can't respond to our requests for details so we can investigate it here. This is common with groups equivalent to T&S in other organisations, such as where I work, even if it isn't always the case. That their brief summary doesn't mention extremely unusual circumstances under which they might reveal details is interesting, but what has been discussed here is not whether or not someone can sue them to find out who complained, but if they could pass the details onto Fram so that he can stay away, or on AN/I so we can investigate. - Bilby (talk) 16:34, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
No way in hell they have a separate confidentiality agreement with every complainant. No way in hell. The general privacy policy is good enough. And, calling a subpoena in a civil suit by the person affected by the complaint "extremely unusual" is frankly naive. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 16:38, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
How many times has the WMF been sued and had to reveal private correspondence? I suspect that the number is a whole lot less than the number of people who have contacted T&S. If you think the general privacy policy is good enough then fine. It doesn't change anything - they still can't reveal the details of the complaint publicly or to the person who the complaint is about - but ok. If it doesn't offer these protections, then no, it isn't good enough. - Bilby (talk) 16:50, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
@Bilby: I'm not sure what T&S could have done. I'd say I'm not sure what they could have done worse. I'm no expert, but if you think about it a bit
  • They could have started by notifying the community of the ban, and carefully putting it in context - the grounds for the ban, the reason they were doing it, a statement as to why they were (and the extent to which they weren't) usurping the role of the arbcom and curtailing the independence of the community.
    • They could have clearly explained the conditions - we can discuss this, we can't discuss this because...
  • They could (probably) had given a timeline - Fram was warned in 2018, and this was a follow-up from that. They could have let us know what they did in preparation - that the arbcom was notified (and when), that the Stewards were notfied.
  • Once it was done, they should have had someone on hand to engage the community - not defensively, but in a collegial fashion. Yes, we understand this is difficult to accept. No, we can't talk about that. Yes, we're here to support the community. They could have answered the first question (why did they decide on a one-year ban and de-admin, but only on en.wiki) promptly.
    • It should never have gotten to the stage where Floq felt the need to unblock Fram. Their response to the unblock should never have been to double-down - yes, they might have the authority to do that, but they didn't need to do. If you swing the banhammer and experience pushback, you don't keep swinging the banhammer and hope that people will eventually calm down.
  • Once they realised that their approach wasn't working, they could have escalated it promptly. As a line worker, it's up to you to recognise that you've messed things up and to get help. As a manager, you should recognise when the team you're supervising doesn't have the skills, and find someone who does, even if it means reaching out beyond your team. You should be pulling in people from Community Health by day 2.
I'm not saying this is precisely what they should have done. I don't know WMF's organisational structure very well. I don't know the people and their skill sets. But WMF has a lot of really good people, a lot of dedicated Wikipedians, and I presume, a lot of skilled managers and comms people. I assume that they could have done it better than I can think of, sitting here with a very incomplete picture of the org. There are lots of ways they could have handled this better. Over the last 19 days there are dozens of points where they could have, should have, made better decisions. Guettarda (talk) 18:02, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Doing any of this diverts the conversation. Leaving it to fester turns people's attention of "who could have done this", which does nothing to protect the victim. Guettarda (talk) 18:03, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
It is a good series of ideas, some of which I think they did, and some of which they didn't. In terms of communication they did a highly questionable job, but I think their choices in regard to how they responded to the harassment complaint, if we accept that it was genuine, serious and could not be handled onwiki, were what they should be expected to make, and their responses to requests for more information about why were hamstrung by the need to maintain confidentiality (as they've said a few times). However, I'm not saying that their responses were ideal. Just that that there's too much of a tendency here to say that the ugly environment that we now have is a result of their actions. Had we, as a community, also engaged in this differently we would not be in this state, and we need to be able to self-reflect well enough to realize this.
I may be coming at this from a different perspective than some, as I work in an environment where I do have people raise concerns of harassment with me, and where they are very concerned about retaliation. From my experience, this process of having a professional group responsible as the last internal step for harassment that offers confidentially and is willing to act if the other channels have been exhausted is important, and how they responded is how a comparable group would in higher education. So I'm not concerned about the existence of T&S nor their need to to step in when community processes fail. Certainly a clearer initial statement spelling out what you describe would have done something to moderate the response, but reading the comments after every one of the statements they've made makes me think that while it might have worked for some, many would have found fault with any statement that didn't end with either "this is who complained" or "we'll unban Fram", neither of which I feel they could have done. - Bilby (talk) 18:36, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm reasonably sure that neither the vanished user nor her significant other made the complaint to T&S. It was almost certainly a sort-of third party, acting as a self-appointed righter of wrongs. I'm not saying that out of idle speculation. Rather, I think that it's important in terms of what kinds of procedures are helpful and what kinds (as here) end up going very badly. Someone self-righteously tells T&S, privately, look over there, there is terrible, sexist harassment. And T&S was ill-prepared to handle that complaint. Whatever else one may think about harassment, it was absolutely predictable that there would be the kind of outrage and scrutiny that has happened here, and that it would lead to everyone figuring out who the victim was, and that kind of exposure was pretty much the worst of all possible outcomes. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:30, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Agreed; I've been working on that assumption since I looked over Fram's edits. I find it highly unlikely that the reporter was anyone Fram was ever in active dispute with, and I'm willing to entertain that T&S only ever received the one report last year and had been monitoring him since. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 21:35, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

The buck stops somewhere

Latest comment: 5 years ago20 comments14 people in discussion

The comments by the Executive Director on her talk page today together with the extremely immature tweets clearly demonstrate, to me at least, that she is not the person really in charge, is not fully conversant with the issue, and is lost for something to say other than the usual empty speeches that we get from her staff. The WMF needs some leadership of the calibre we can expect for the salaries that are generated by our volunteer work. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:14, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Agree: This whole issue is a leadership failure of monumental proportions. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 16:16, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Whereas it is indeed correct that she is responsible and that her personal involvement did not make things easier, it is in principle not her job to micromanage such things, and finding a new ED is a pain in the ass with a low chance of success. I would be more in favor of an internal investigation (possible on a task by the Board) which would result in some changes of workflows and possibly of personnel.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:28, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • According to some, Wikimedia is worth "tens of billions of dollars" [9] and three years ago a rather young person of 33 or 34 was placed in charge. No matter how brilliant or educated she may be, it is very unusual in the business world to hand the reigns to someone that inexperienced at dealing with real world issues. It is very difficult to be CEO of any "company" of this size without tremendous experience; the sheer scale of it is beyond most people's imagination. I can't help but think this inexperience is showing. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:54, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • When I condemned her for her mendacious tweet one of her en-WP "bag carriers" - an admin here - dismissed it out of hand with a tweet claiming it was not what it seemed. Leaky caldron (talk) 17:40, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think my view is somewhere between Kudpung's and Ymblanter's. Katherine has not really told us much about her involvement with this situation, but we do have a senior employee that has stated that she signed off on Fran's ban. She tweeted "I know this will sound odd, but until today, very few folks have asked me directly. I see that’s changed tonight with a number of questions on my talk page, which I’ll have to answer tomorrow - it’s past midnight now." This leaves me wondering: how does the head of a moderately-sized organization who signed off on a unprecedented ban manage to ignore the ensuing shitstorm for 18 days? How is it that she has not cancelled every conferences, speaking event, and meeting to be on top of this? - MrX 🖋 17:50, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    Maybe not even everything. She alluded to, for example, the time coming to get WMF's financial reporting done and approved. Certainly, I understand if that particular responsibility absolutely cannot be pushed back for any reason. But certainly that has not taken up all of her time for the past several weeks, and something else could have been postponed. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:07, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    Quite obviously she wasn't expecting this level of blowback. Which prompts the question, if she was unaware of the controversies that raged as a consequence of the Foundation usurping control both here and at de.wp, then is she being willingly ignorant or just being intentionally kept out of the loop? After all, this is not the first time the communities have taken up torches and pitchforks over what they viewed as clear WMF overreach. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 19:09, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    I'd be inclined to think she isn't being intentionally kept out the loop, but as it passes through several levels of individuals the aggression and passion is toned down (after all, it's not felt by the people passing it on). Thus perhaps it's not as pressing as it might otherwise be - Feeling doesn't travel well by proxy Nosebagbear (talk) 19:18, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    She most likely still does not understand the level of blowback. The only think she knows is that some users in one community (out of 700, even though the biggest one in term of the numbers of active users) are unhappy and some are getting seriously aggressive. For someone who has never been an active Wikipedian it is very difficult to understand for example what does it mean when 19 active admins suddenly retire over two weeks over the same issue.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:32, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    It's not just that feeling doesn't travel by proxy, but bad news tends not to travel upwards. Not many managers inspire such confidence in their staff that those staff feel able to be the bearers of bad tidings. DuncanHill (talk) 21:49, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I have to wonder if some people aren't over-estimating our "blowback". Yes - some of the most high profile, and highly valued members are upset and posting here; but, when we look at the numbers - I have to wonder what percentage of actual active wikipedians are aware, and voicing discontent here. 5%? 10%? 20%? The whole "We'll get back to you in a week" thing may have been a very calculated move with the hopes that many of us will just move along. Just some of the thoughts that tend to live in my head. — Ched :  ?  — 21:44, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Yeah. I think this is a good reason to keep up the effort to get the word out and get media coverage. Seriously. Just about anyone can get a guest column published. There's no reason that BuzzfeedNews article has to be where this movement peaks. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 21:48, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Main Page, In The News

Latest comment: 5 years ago27 comments12 people in discussion
Fair enough, I don't want to waste any more of anyone's time. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:26, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

A lot of us are trying to identify a way to protest meaningfully, but responsibly. I have the beginnings of a suggestion: to do this on the Main Page, but within the In The News part. Just as a very rough draft or example, it could be something approximately like this:

I think we could perhaps make this the only ITN item for a few days. In any case, it would have more impact with a picture of someone, rather than not illustrated. (The bold part is linked to here. This being an extraordinary circumstance, I think it's OK to link to WP space instead of article space. We could alternatively link to whatever comes out of the AfD for the article.)

It's essential that whatever goes up have a lot of consensus, that it be factually accurate, and that it not contain personal attacks.

I think this way of protesting has a number of advantages:

  • It will get their attention, and they cannot ignore it.
  • They cannot really make us take it down.
  • It doesn't create a mess that editors will have to clean up afterwards.
  • It doesn't mess with content in any way that will inconvenience readers. (No one should be relying on WP as their current news source.)
  • It doesn't get in readers' faces with something they won't understand or be interested in. The rest of the Main Page would be as normal.
  • It's well positioned to get attention from the actual news press.

I've been opposed to various other proposals for protests, but this is something that I think could actually be appropriate. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:32, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Love it. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 22:34, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Very interested of the results if this was put into the main page. INeedSupport :3 22:35, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Likewise. Especially if the BuzzFeed and Breitbart articles are only the beginning (and I'd sooner throw myself down Columbia Gorge than call Breitbart a good news source). —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 22:37, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Needs a bit more hammering out (in terms of semantics) before I'll support it (though I don't have any major ideas yet); and it might not be best to associate Ms. Maher with the mess quite yet (it's a concession, I'll admit, but good PR if her likeness is left out for now). —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 22:38, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The ITN column is for major world news stories. This is not one of them: it has so far attracted stories in only Buzzfeed and Breitbart(!). Proposals to post a story there belong at WP:ITN/C anyway. Nick-D (talk) 22:44, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    • It's really not a proposal thus far, we're just discussing it. Once something's ready we'll go over there and bring the consensus. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 22:47, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict) I know all of that, but that's not the point. This would not be a normal ITN, so treating it as requiring the usual amount of coverage would not apply. This would be a protest under extraordinary circumstances. Yes, it would go through ITN/C when it's ready for prime time, but we are not there yet. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:48, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
      • (edit conflict) So you're hoping to swarm the ITN regulars who try to maintain high standards? That's an even worse idea IMO. This is simply not a big news story, and attempts to pretend it is one are self-defeating. It is a significant internal problem for Wikipedia, and should be treated as such. Adding drama is unhelpful. Nick-D (talk) 22:50, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
      • I concur that this is an extremely bad idea. The general population of the world does not care about our navel-gazing. Is this a serious issue, yes, is it a mess, yes, does it belong on the front page, no. We do not make the news. DS (talk) 22:50, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
        Nick, I think you're missing the point of the proposal. I don't support it, I think such a move would be premature and would set back relations with the WMF still further. But at face value, I don't think this proposal is being made because the subject actually meets the ITN criteria...  — Amakuru (talk) 22:50, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
        My purpose here is to gauge what the community thinks, and if the consensus is against it, fine. I do think this is far better in terms of how it interfaces with our readership, than previous proposals for protest have been (such as a banner on the main page). And I'm putting this idea out here now, in order for editors to think about it, but I'm not ready to go live with anything until the next few days have passed and we get a clearer idea of what has been going on at WMF. As for swarming ITN regulars, seriously? I only want to lock them up and torture them. (sarcasm) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:04, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Seeing as ITN is for stuff that's in the news, which this isn't, a better location might be DYK. To make it more obvious that it's a protest, every DYK blurb could be the protest one. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 22:57, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Again, I consider this to be an IAR kind of thing, so I don't think we should get hung up on the usual definitions of in the news, but I agree that DYK could be a reasonable alternative. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:06, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose. On one level I admire Trypto for proposing this. From a purely encylopiedic point of view it's one of the more responsible suggestions, and with an impact inline with the real distress many of us are feeling, especially with the acceleration of respected admins leaving after the tweet. But there's 3 big issues with this. 1) It's bad timing – this is coming just after Katherine's started engaging with us, and suggested we might get a major concession in the form of Arbcom taking a role. 2) This risks unnecessary escalation, there's all sorts of ways the WMF could react that might further hurt the community. 3) In some senses this seems unjust. The tweet was highly regrettable, but that sort of thing is par for the course on twitter. I follow @AOC and several Labour MPs and see them make tweets that are dismissive / insensitive to sub sets of their constituencies almost every week. So I don't think it warrants this sort of retaliation. After what's happened to LH, do we really want to risk putting up another target for offsite harrassers, some of whom might have their sense of injustice enraged, and think they're acting in the interests of the community against the WMF Goliath? Just as was possibly the case with LH, they might think they're acting in a good cause when they take RL action against her. FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:58, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Please let me clarify. I'm not proposing this exact version, or this image. It's more like an example of what we can potentially do. I'm not proposing that we do this right away. I agree entirely that we should not escalate anything, and that we need to see what emerges in the next couple of days. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:12, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm fine with a DYK or ITN blurb sans a picture as well, so long as there is a blurb. And there is a chance this could blow up sooner rather than later, with most people anticipating the next Signpost with bated breath. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 23:02, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Oppose for same reason provided above: we don't make the news. DS (talk) 23:19, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Latest comment: 5 years ago7 comments6 people in discussion

With Maher dithering, mistweeting, and generally showing complete detachment from her "community", and with Jimbo and Doc James trying yet failing to get any kind of substantive indication of what the hell has happened here, it suddenly struck me today that we, the community, have missed the apology for all this. I know, these days, that apologies imply guilt, but wouldn't it be nice if Maher or someone else said: "We're really sorry, we had no idea that our actions were going to cause such a reaction and we misjudged it completely." That would be all that's needed to keep some of us onside while the ongoing (three weeks and counting) malaise is discussed and a conclusion brought to us all. Elton John (as befits Pride weekend) noted it perfectly, "sorry" does seem to be the hardest word here right now. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:10, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Sadly, I seems like the WMF or other staff members will not apologize anytime soon. All they did was basically hide from all of this. INeedSupport :3 22:31, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
What do I gotta do to make WMF love me? What do I gotta do to make WMF care?
What do I do when the banhammer strikes me? And I wake up to find that en.wiki is not there.
What have I got to do to make WMF want me? What have I got to do to be heard?
What do I say when it's all over? And sorry seems to be the hardest word.
So sad. So sad. It's a sad, sad situation. And it's getting more and more absurd.
Man that song fits this story like a glove. Mr rnddude (talk) 22:37, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes, it would be very good for them to apologise. Whether or not the ban of Fram was justified, and whatever anyone may think about our harassment processes, the way the foundation went about the ban, and particularly their complete failure to communicate with the community subsequently, while Rome continues to burn, is very clearly something they've got wrong. Apologising, and committing to dialogue to chart a way forward, would go a very long way right now.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:46, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Why apologise? They're doing us a favour. Tony (talk) 01:12, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Tony1, if you think they're "doing us a favor"...please, I beg of you, never do me a favor. Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:15, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Seraphimblade I'm always keen to do other editors favours. Tony (talk) 01:42, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Sixth Pillar

Latest comment: 5 years ago50 comments25 people in discussion

I hope you all enjoyed my demonstration over the last few days that secret evidence is a great way to drive massive drama. I learned this 12 years ago during the Durova case. Here's how we could try to avoid disruptions like Durova and Fram in the future:

Add a 6th Pillar to Wikipedia:

Wikipedia aspires to treat its contributors justly. Any process to sanction an editor on the English Wikipedia must include (1) providing notice of the accusations, (2) a chance to inspect and refute any non-privileged evidence, and (3) an opportunity to lodge an appeal with a body elected by the Community, such as the Arbitration Committee.

If there is any support for this idea, we could have an RfC at WT:5P to draft proper wording. This is how we can invalidate the unjust actions by WMF and pressure them to change. Pinging Neutrality (page creator) and Jimbo Wales (founder). Jehochman Talk 13:46, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Oppose (assuming this was meant as a proposal) - there are some matters (not necessarily this particular matter) which must be dealt with privately. I partially support the right to appeal provision, though, so long as some restrictions as to reasonability are attached to it. We can't have banned editors filing moot appeals constantly. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:57, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
This is not meant to preclude private handling. It just means that the subject of a sanction needs to know what they are accused of and have a chance to refute any evidence that can be shared with them. Just because there's one piece of private evidence and elevent pieces of public evidence, does not mean all twelve can be withheld. Likewise, they need a chance to appeal. Jehochman Talk 14:05, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • This assumes (incorrectly) that the WMF is bound by the Five Pillars. The Five Pillars is not policy anyway, it is just a lofty set of worthwhile goals. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:59, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    I don't assume that. This is a way for the community to express its wishes, and then we can point to the Pillar and say, "You are violating this. Shame on you." It's a tool to help win an argument. Jehochman Talk 14:05, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    I don't mean to be flippant here, but do you really think that had this 6th pillar existed one month ago, we wouldn't be right where we are now? I don't think they are particularly concerned about the policies here, which is why they took action outside of them to begin with, after changing their own policies in Feb. to allow it. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:08, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    This isn't a quick fix. It's a long term solution that will enhance our position in negotiations with WMF. This is a statement of our principles that have existed for a long time. Jehochman Talk 14:28, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Comedy gold. Bravo. -- Begoon 14:01, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    You're welcome. I'll be here til Sunday. Order another round of drinks. Jehochman Talk 14:05, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Torn As with real world justice issues anonymity maybe needed to protect victims from reprisal, but it also makes defense harder. I really think there is no right answer here.Slatersteven (talk) 14:07, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    We're allowing that privileged information can be withheld. But if that's done, the accused can appeal and whoever hears that appeal can either consider the secret evidence, or if the secret evidence is still withheld, the appeal can rule on what they see. This should never be WMF representatives saying "Trust Me." We have no reason to trust them because we didn't elect them. ArbCom, on the other hand, can say "Trust us" because we picked them. Jehochman Talk 14:27, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Can, not will. The issue therefore is can an accuser be sure their ID will not be revealed to the accused? In essence if the ID is not revealed that is cause for an appeal, so in essence if you want to make sure it sticks tell us who you are. This reads like "either face the accused or they get off", ohh sorry might get off.Slatersteven (talk) 17:10, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support Clear, concise, readily understood, and fair. DuncanHill (talk) 14:11, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose as unrealistic. Firstly, it's en:WP which has Five Pillars, not necessarily anywhere else (Germany has four pillars, because "Wikipedia has no firm rules" was just too radical). So this doesn't fit with universal cross-wiki application, and WMF are simply outside it anyway. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:18, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    They can do what they want elsewhere, but this is our house and we have certain minimum standards of justice that we uphold. Jehochman Talk 14:25, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Is it, or are we just the lease holders and they hold the free hold? Who actually owns and runs (runs, not works for) Wikipedia?Slatersteven (talk) 14:29, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Without us, they have a bunch of metal boxes, circuit boards, and some network cabling. What will Wikipedia be worth in ten years if we all leave and the place gets overrun with spam, crackpot theories and partisan nonsense. It will turn into MySpace. Jehochman Talk 14:32, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Which is not the same issue, Wikipedia is no more ours any more then McDonalds is the crew members.Slatersteven (talk) 14:36, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
'Comment. 'Wikipedia treats its contributors justly.'
That looks like self-approbation, whose generality in any case, can be contradicted by instancing any number of incorrect or slipshod judgments. At best one would write, 'Wikipedia aspires to treat its contributors fairly.' My own view is, in any case, if you think you have been treated unfairly, there are open channels to appeal that, but good form suggests you should just accept this is a messy world, not get tangled up in argufying, take the rap, sit out your sanction in porridge preferably without high dudgeon, and then get back to actually writing up stuff. Encyclopedias are not written by people who place their impugned dignity on a pedestal: it's done by peonish tenacity in adversity and hardscrabble conditions, and the newbies should be told that, gently, anecdotally, as old timers should be reminded to welcome them, and be somewhat tolerant of sophomoric errancies when an apprenticeship is underway.Nishidani (talk) 14:44, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support I might take out the "star chamber" reference, but I like everything about the concept of adding this pillar. This overreach of authority by WMF is a terrible threat to the soul of this project going forward, and none of us have the moral authority to let it happen again. Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:50, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose as likely to further suppress harassment complaints for fear of further harassment. All systems of justice that allow a fundamental right to face one's accuser also contain protections for that accuser. You can't harass them. You can't intimidate them. You can't go after them. We offer no such protections currently, and so we must develop dispute resolution systems for harassment that grant anonymity to the victim. As written, this would not treat the victim justly, by requiring them to undergo likely further harassment to make any complaint. ~ Rob13Talk 16:23, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    Promising things that can't be delivered is unwise. The accused needs to know the incident so that they can defend themselves. Hence, the accused will be able to infer the victim. I don't buy the argument that the victim needs anonymity because it then turns the situation around and allows anybody to claim victim status and launch anonymous personal attacks. When building a security system you have to think about how that system could be abused and plan accordingly. The best we can do is offer to support targets of harassment and defend them vigorously from any further harassment. What's particularly awful is that so many people tried to defend Fram, and virtually nobody offered support to LH. Jehochman Talk 16:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, it was a demonstration, showing us all how much you learned from the Durova case. Sure. It all makes sense now. Is the not this shit again pic on commons? nableezy - 16:31, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

What exactly does your comment accomplish? Maybe it was a reminder to me and to everybody else that secret evidence doesn't work too well. Jehochman Talk 16:37, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
A bit more than most of the comments here and at requests for arbitration you have made over the past few days. That being nothing at all, but better that than a negative. nableezy - 16:41, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
...in your opinion. Please don't be so pompous to assume that your opinion is a fact. Jehochman Talk 16:44, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Run that one back, but this time face a mirror. nableezy - 17:12, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I know you are, but what am I? Jehochman Talk 17:18, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I'm happy to offer moral support for the ethical motivation behind this, but I can't support in practice on two grounds. One is that the 5P(6P) do not apply to the WMF and would have no effect in similar situations like this. The other is that hard cases make bad law, and I would oppose any new pillar tailored specifically to an individual problem. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:32, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
If we are arguing to WMF that what they are doing is unfair, wouldn't it be wise to records the fact that this community values justice. Maybe it won't help this time, but it might help next time. I just want to write down what most of us already believe. Jehochman Talk 16:39, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Nothing wrong with that general sentiment, but don't we already have more than a megabyte of recording what the community values in this case? I just don't think we should be changing key policy pages to make a point over one specific incident (no matter how bad that incident). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:54, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
It's not the first incident that provoked a storm. I remember others, and this principle is a summation of what's gone wrong before and how to avoid making the same mistake again. Jehochman Talk 17:08, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
We shall simply have to disagree then. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:27, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Probably Support depending on how specific the accusations in 1, and how privileged the evidence in 2 are supposed to be. As you can probably guess, the issue is outing; if an editor is accused of outing another, or harassing them in real life, it will be difficult to require the accuser to publicly expose the very things that make them vulnerable. But I anticipate a reasonable balance can be found, and the principle is admirable. --GRuban (talk) 16:42, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Has anyone ever read the five pillars? One is "Wikipedia's editors should treat each other with respect and civility". We don't need more pillars, you need to start using the ones we have. — Moe Epsilon 17:51, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Torn The dangers of a secret denunciation culture are something it might be good to discuss with the WMF, per Nishidani , the Securitate , the Stasi, Roman Proscriptions or the even worse nonsense with UK benefit fraud reporting. But there do seem be quite a few exceptions where it would be ideal for a victim to be able to report confidentially. And there is the wp:Creep issue. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:45, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Mu or moo or whatever that was. We certainly need solutions, but this one isn't it. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:56, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Not this. How about "Whenever performance and conduct issues are not required by law to be kept confidential, the community shall freely and openly discuss them to determine a course of action backed by consensus and/or executive action by trusted administrators acting on policies enacted by consensus". No more closed-society bullshit, at least not unless mandated by some outside force. Wnt (talk) 21:49, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose for the reasons I outlined above. Treating contributors fairly is desirable insofar as it's needed to get us to stay around and helps us write a fair encyclopedia, but ultimately Wikipedia's goal is to make an encyclopedia, not to recreate civil society or to model abstract notions of justice. In a conflict between "how is our goal of creating an encyclopedia best served" and "what's most fair to our editors", the encyclopedia has to take priority. In particular, WP:COMPETENCE issues are often extremely unfair to editors who get blocked under them - it's not their fault that they have poor English or whatever! But while a WP:CIVIL baseline is needed because the project depends on editors working together productively, we ultimately have to prioritize the project of writing an encyclopedia over abstract notions of justice. See WP:NOTANARCHY and WP:NOTDEMOCRACY (and in particular the rationales behind them, which explain why abstract justice for its own sake is not an appropriate goal for the project.) I could see adding this as a footnote to eg. WP:CIVIL, the fourth pillar (in the sense that sufficiently absurd rules or enforcement are their own type of incivility and have the same negative impact); it's true that fairness is an important consideration insofar as nobody will want to edit an encyclopedia that egregiously mistreats its editors, and even if it retained enough editors the encyclopedia produced by those policies would be dubious. But justice-for-its-own-sake is not a core principle of Wikipedia; fairness and justness are therefore mostly just subsets of civility (ie. our rules, administrators, and, yes, even the WMF have the responsibility to interact reasonably with each other and with editors in order to keep the project going as a collaborative work.) --Aquillion (talk) 00:22, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose Jehochman, you have been all over the map on this crises and I don't understand where you really stand. I'm reluctant to take your suggestions after some of your recent speculation on the basis of this block. Besides, I believe there are over 240 different Wikimedia projects and it is not the place of even the biggest project to dictate the foundational principles of the entire movement. Some random proposal on the FRAM page, which most editors are not even paying attention to, is not a way to change fundamental policies. Liz Read! Talk! 00:40, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - the WMF would just claim all their info is "privileged" - unless they feel the accuser is at threat of harm off-wiki, then they should see all evidence. I feel that even knowing their accuser shouldn't be an issue on-wiki so long as WMF-enforced IBANs were implemented. If we had a strict defining of showable evidence I'd probably be in favour. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:51, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Whether something like that belongs anywhere is a separate discussion, but it certainly doesn't belong in the Pillars, which are deliberately vague statements of philosophy, not a constitution. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:05, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Summary updaters

Latest comment: 5 years ago9 comments5 people in discussion

At least for the moment, I will not be updating the summary at WP:FRAMSUM. I have gotten too involved in WP:FRAM and was blocked. As such, I will be taking a step back, and I may not return to contributing to the summary. I welcome additions and updates from other editors. You can leave your name there if you contribute. Thank you. starship.paint (talk) 00:29, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Starship.paint, Thanks for starting that fine summary. I've been away a couple days, and haven't followed the saga of your block, but I'm sorry it happened. S Philbrick(Talk) 01:34, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I added Starship.paint's block to the timeline about Fram's block that Starship.paint was maintaining; hopefully it won't become a whole thing that requires its own sub-timeline. If it does, I request that someone else step in to maintain the timeline of my block when I inevitably get blocked for some screwup I make while maintaining a timeline of events related to Starship.paint's block. --Aquillion (talk) 02:24, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I have continued User:Seraphimblade's timeline on a very sparse basis. I assume someone will come along and clean it up when (if) the dust settles. --Rschen7754 02:40, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

I find the Starship.paint summary extremely useful in keeping up to date on this never-ending/ever-expanding affair, and I have urged them to return to maintaining it. I propose that we hat the Seraphimblade list given it is not being maintained (as per the Swarm list), to avoid distraction. Let us have one proper live list of the events?. Britishfinance (talk) 11:19, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

what I suggest is move Sphilbrick’s one up to #2, Seraphim stays at #3 and Swarm goes to #4. Don’t think any hats are needed when the less updated summaries are at the bottom. starship.paint (talk) 14:47, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
No issue with changing the order, but I would still propose hatting all others bar yours. Things are already complicated enough. One good list that has captures all the main events in an NPOV form is all we need; and I think your list does this. Britishfinance (talk) 15:19, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Britishfinance, I'm not opposed to hatting of the locations, but I'm too close to it, so happy with whatever others think is helpful. S Philbrick(Talk) 23:49, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Actually, having read it fully, I think the table is good (ultimately, this is a complex affair), and I have moved it to below the main summary. thanks Britishfinance (talk) 09:12, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Is this page a representative sample of the community?

Latest comment: 5 years ago36 comments35 people in discussion
 
Chart showing number of edits by editor on this page as of 24 Jun 2019 per xtools

This page was created by copying a 178k thread. Since then, according to xtools:

  • 421 editors have edited this page
  • More than half of them (228 editors) have made less than 5 edits to this page
  • 309 editors (73%) made less than 10 edits to this page
  • 46 editors (11%) made 25 or more edits to this page
  • 18 editors (4%) made 50 or more edits to this page
  • 4 editors (1%) made 100 or more edits to this page

By comparison, there are about 3,500 "very active" editors (100+ edits/month) and about 30,000 "active" editors (5+ edits/month). Seems like on this page, we're mostly hearing from about 50 or so editors, which is like 1% or less of the entire community of contributors. – Levivich 21:15, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Edit count is a weak measure - bytes added would be a better measure, but still far from perfect. The sample is certainly a bigger fraction of the total than for most national political polls in major countries. It also is self-selected, so probably not representative. I would assume that many editors who only work in non-controversial mainspace and have little or no interest in governance of the project have not even noticed the kerfuffle. But that is the established way we use for most decisions - interested editors chime in, and the "silent majority" is silently ignored. Look at the numbers of voters at RfA or even for ArbCom elections. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:43, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
I only have to make 5 more edits to this page before my opinion counts! --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:47, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm sure that there are many others (like me) who are watching and following the events, but not actively participating in the discussions.--SirEdimon (talk) 21:48, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
In my case, I was watching silently and wanting to participate but fearing reprisal from WMF. It took me a week to get past that worry. My take is, if there is a silent majority or silent group of editors, there is no real way to measure their desires. In that case, silence almost inevitably gets treated as some sort of consent. Some form of anonymous voting would be a better way of getting people involved... but as is the general problem with Wikipedia, the sheer volume of discussion to review to make your choice is repellant on its own. You can dress it up in whatever statistical analysis you want, at the end of the day you're talking about "silence means consent". —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 21:55, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Meaningless. To repeat, a University of Minnesota 2007 study concluded that 44% of wikipedia content was created by 0.1% of editors, while 10% created 86% of edits. So?
I'm not the only one who makes 1 edit out of a dozen that come to mind on reading threads here, (a) because many comments express what I think, are more incisively and eloquently stated and reduplication is unnecessary (b) the more self-restraint one exercises, the less intimidating the length and density will appear to be, so that a wider range of people will feel comfortable to join in the discussion. The whole point of this immense fuck-up lies in the excessive confidence heads at T&S have in the ability of analytic tools to give one the correct answers by the kind of numerical breakdown we get above. A power freak will look at the above and say, 'Ha! This upset is just a few dozen loud-mouth 'inciters' stirring up a rather lackadaisical mob. Statistically, we can therefore ignore the shitstirrers, as just 1-10% (Lenin's quorum) of the 441 who bothered to grumble, who are in turn less than one percent of the active 'community'.' Nishidani (talk) 22:00, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) This is no different from how most community discussions go—in fact, in terms of editor participation, it’s much better. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 22:01, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I think the page represents a self-selecting group of editors on Wikipedia. I don't see it reflecting a true consensus. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 22:07, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
One could say that about any discussion page anywhere on Wikipedia. Les absents ont toujours tort DuncanHill (talk) 22:11, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
That's weird...what are you positing, that no consensus on Wikipedia represents consensus? All pages represent a self-selecting group of editors. Grandpallama (talk) 16:25, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
It's not necessary to post every day; not necessary to reiterate what's already been said; copyediting comments skews edit counts; there is an element of fear; this content contributor does care; and finally the last time I commented I was told to back off and watch tone. So, there's no need to contribute. Victoria (tk) 22:26, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • It's listed at WP:CENT, and for any other kind of RfC-like process the amount of participation here would be considered sufficient to establish a consensus (or no consensus). Of course, we are dealing here with a particularly difficult and contentious topic, but I don't think that there is a requirement for a higher bar. As in most discussions, there are good-faith editors who disagree with the ultimate consensus, but we don't require unanimity. Editors who feel outnumbered deserve a fair hearing, but ultimately they might consider WP:1AM. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • What Espresso Addict says. Am watching and am unhappy with the train of events, but wary about the risk of polarising camps. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:50, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think most of the editors never heard about this. If you want to go tell them, be my guest! What you are pointing out is that, once again, we lack a jury system on Wikipedia -- a democratic reform we need to make our community response to harassment better, and to make our community response to totalitarian initiatives against harassment better. Wnt (talk) 00:08, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I've been watching, too; no need to say too much. Do appreciate Aquillion's comments, though. —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 01:14, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I've been watching, here and elsewhere. Johnbod (talk) 02:55, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I, too, have mostly been lurking in regards to this whole issue. I have had plenty of IRL stuff going on to keep me busy lately. I have not significantly interacted directly with Fram on-wiki, so I have not formed a strong opinion one way or another about Fram. I am, however, concerned about the lack of transparency, potential backstage conflicts of interest, and finality (i.e. "no appeals because we're 100% infallible") that accompanied the sanctions placed against Fram, among other things. I'll continue to lurk, and I will register my opinion about a particular proposal or topic if I feel strongly compelled to. EclipseDude (Chase Totality) 05:16, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Same, I haven't been commenting, but I'm still waiting for a real explanation from WMF/Jimbo/ArbCom. I suspect I may be waiting for a long time... >:( -FASTILY 05:22, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I commented a couple of times early on but have just been lurking since then. Like many others, my concern is the process rather than specifically Fram, as I noted at User_talk:Sitush#Fram. I would rather retain my dignity and not edit than be subjected to an undignified "disappearance" at the command of the WMF. - Sitush (talk) 06:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I was vocal at the beginning, but now I prefer to let the leaders of this community direct the next steps. Specifically Seraphimblade and Carcharoth are doing excellent work here. Although I feel my voice is welcome, I would rather now let editors I trust implicitly steer us. Mr Ernie (talk) 06:40, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I haven't responded earlier, and I haven't read everything, but I've read at least the statements and summaries, and I've been trying to keep up with some of the discussions. I'm starting to form an opinion that's a bit more nuanced than my initial gut reaction. As soon as there's something like a concrete proposal or RFC, I'll try and formulate my stance on that. For the rest, I don't like drama or bureaucracy, so I've stayed silent. There's probably many more people like me, who are reading but not commenting. rchard2scout (talk) 10:20, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm a wikignome and have been reading this page with increasing unhappiness but have not as yet commented. I have today emailed Katherine Maher, copied to Jan Eissfeldt, to express some of that unhappiness, as suggested in the section below. PamD 12:26, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • +1 to watching, reading, digesting but not feeling I can add anything above or beyond some of the more eloquent arguments on this page. Page views rather than number of editors might be a better yardstick of whether this is representative or not. Woody (talk) 18:30, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think that it depends what you mean by 'the community?' Most people don't get involved in meta discussions like this at all. But this just based on the names we're seeing here, this is a decent subset of the "power users" that are probably going to need to be onboard with any changes to eg. our handling of harassment and WP:CIVIL, in part because they'll be many of the people involved in enforcing it. And the "this page isn't representative of the community" argument makes me slightly nervous because by the standard you're setting here, nothing is representative of the community (even ArbCom elections generally just have a few hundred people participating, for instance.) Pages like this are imperfect, but they're the best voice the community has available - if we discounted them, we'd be left viewing Wikipedia as a vague, amorphous mass that can't meaningfully participate in dialog with WMF at all, which I don't think is useful or entirely accurate. And certainly the sort of 'power users' on this page can produce meaningful changes to Wikipedia's policies and culture over time when we reach a collective agreement - we've managed to do so in the past. It takes time, and often there's going to have to be a more liminal sort of back-and-forth as the things discussed on central pages like this percolate out and attract more back-and-forth with people focused on other parts of the process, gradually refining them; but there's no centralized "voice of the community" or anything like that. This is as good as it gets. That's part of why I've said that, assuming the core issue here is that the WMF feels the community is failing to properly deal with harassment and incivility, the solution is probably a centralized WP:BLP style solution where they hand down a hard dictate on what we have to accomplish, which we then dig into and refine and which slowly gets refined further by the people who didn't participate in the original discussion until it reaches some sort of stable consensus. That's the more Wikipedia-like way of handling these issues - not grand futile gestures by the community members or enigmatic, unanswerable Facebook-style moderation from inside a walled tower. The WMF should be using its authority to make the community do what it wants through existing community channels, and should try to minimize this sort of overt Gordian-knot bypass to our existing policies. I mean, regardless of whether Fram earned a ban or not, he's just one user; if something's wrong with how we're doing things, we need a solution that scales and works within our existing system in a way that can actually impact day-to-day user experience... not random bolts of annihilating lightning from the WMF-heavens. --Aquillion (talk) 03:51, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Just to add my name as a previously silent editor who has been concerned by what he has been reading here about the actions of the WMF. Wikipedia is a really impressive example of the WWW working as originally intended, to foster collaboration. I am sure that is because the community is largely self-governed. High-handed, unexplained edicts denying the right of appeal, or even just the appearance of this, could destroy this spirit of cooperation. Jmchutchinson (talk) 11:35, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
    Jmchutchinson, Hear-hear! Elfabet (talk) 19:41, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I find this situation troubling and disheartening. My not having posted here is not for a lack of concern; rather that, like Woody, I didn't feel that I could add anything. This should probably be discussed in a different section: I don't recall seeing any mention of today's Wikimedia Research Showcase, scheduled for 11.30 Pacific time, a little less than six hours from now (I think). The topics are 'Trajectories of Blocked Community Members', 'Automatic Detection of Online Abuse in Wikipedia', and 'First Insights from Partial Blocks in Wikimedia Wikis'. I won't be able to watch it, but I hope that others here will, and post anything that might be relevant. (edit) Sorry, on a second reading, I see the 'partial blocks' in the research showcase isn't the 'partial block' Fram got; it's a different kind. I should be sleeping instead of posting. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 13:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I only remember fixing a minor technical issue here, not commenting, except at a(n ex-)bureaucrat's page. I may have thanked a few others who resigned expressing the wish that they come back. —PaleoNeonate – 13:29, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Oh, I expressed agreement to an edit at AN. —PaleoNeonate – 13:32, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • 421 editors do NOT represent "the community". Any coalescing of opinions expressed here only represents the consensus of these 421 editors. People who disagree with the tone, language and direction of discourse of this page are keeping their distance and continuing their work on the project. I don't agree with Fram's ban but we also don't know every consideration that went into this decision.
I'm getting tired of hearing editors say on other discussion pages that the vocal majority HERE represents the larger community EVERYWHERE ELSE. You don't. Most editors are staying out of WMF internal politics and are just getting on with the business of working on the project. Liz Read! Talk! 00:27, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm reading -- not everything, but I'm trying to keep up -- and waiting. Things are still developing, and I want to give them a chance to shake out before concluding I know enough to form an educated opinion. Until then I'm trying to assume good faith all around. --valereee (talk) 00:52, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes, and if any admin is claiming there's no "consensus" due to a "silent majority", I suggest you think about your own RfA, where far less people commented, and you were promoted anyway despite the lack of consensus and the "silent majority" that obviously felt differently than the people commenting (per the logic presented here). Enigmamsg 15:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I suspect lurkers vastly exceed contributors, but what the hell do I know, I'm only a lurker. Oh, I guess not anymore. Well, I guess now I'm hapax, and I plan to stay that way. Mathglot (talk) 11:18, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Hurting so bad right now

Latest comment: 5 years ago10 comments10 people in discussion

User_talk:Floquenbeam#My_desysop_request and User:Worm That Turned and "I saw the questions on Meta/enWP this morning when I got up. I'll respond later today when I'm out of some meetings that I can't move. (Twitter is fast for me, I've been a user for 12 years. I've only been with WM for 5. It's fluency more than preference!)" are a frustrating combination to absorb in a few hours. This community is hurting so much right now because of actions and inactions by WMF. I have to be very careful what I write. SilkTork (talk) 18:20, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

  • I've bit my tongue more than once and limited it to a couple of pointed remarks on Twitter and here, but yes, it does seem to be crumbling down and they don't even notice. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:29, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for writing this as I am also feeling the the hurt. For me this retirement is another blow and part of my hurt. I've written here how I think only WMF can fix this and their lack of desire to do so, and perhaps their thinking that there's nothing to fix, makes all of this ever more difficult. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:31, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think Maher appears to be so detached from the fabric of what makes Wikipedia what it is, that she should be ashamed. Happily tweeting off some banal denials and leaving it as-is, while the community is losing good people left, right and centre, is a complete dereliction of duty. Astonishing that her position exists because of people in the community, yet she has no time to address those same people. Truly enlightening and saddening. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:32, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Can somebody keep Katherine away from Twitter, for the next week? ∯WBGconverse 18:57, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • You see, it's not that she doesn't want to communicate with us; it's that she doesn't know how to. What's this confusing Wikipedia thing they keep talking about? Meh, a few tweets between meetings should keep them quiet until I can figure it out.
What has she been doing for the past 18 days while this place has been burning??? - MrX 🖋 19:42, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks SilkTork. I'm mourning for the community that has been such a large part of my life for 15 years. I'd be just as upset if this was some conspiracy by WMF, but I don't think it's anything but incompetence, much makes it all so fucking pointless. Guettarda (talk) 20:08, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I could probably write a lot about this, and maybe I will when I feel up to it, but everything that's happened here makes me incredibly sad. It's not just that the project is losing experienced, proficient, highly active editors, but the fact that prominent admins are also community leaders in a very real, if informal sense. I've looked up to Floq, Boing, 28Bytes, Dennis, Beeblebrox (and many more) since I started editing. Beyond the loss of their direct involvement, seeing them go, especially in these circumstances, is a tremendous symbolic and moral loss. Wikipedia relies on hardworking, committed volunteers to keep everything on the rails, and that system only works because there are so many of us that believe in the ideals that launched Wikipedia in the first place. When the foundation displays such complete disregard for the community, and longstanding pillars of that community lose faith, we will find fewer and fewer reasons to return. There's a lot of talk on this page about leaving in protest, or striking to force the foundation's hand, but I dread the day when the people running this project have completely alienated everyone aligned with its original vision, when the community is dead and the few remaining volunteers can do little but revert the worst of the vandalism and manage this encyclopedia's gradual decay. I hope that day never comes, but I hope also that anyone even remotely connected to the WMF sees that future and knows how very possible it is. —Rutebega (talk) 04:26, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • All this uproar about people resigning is hyperbolic alarmism apparently designed to help fan the fires of outrage (it appears to be working well). Most or all of the resignations/retirements are temporary and contingent, whether explicitly framed that way or not, and are not as cataclysmic as they are being made out to be. If an editor leaves and stays gone, it won't be because WMF appeared to drag their feet in responding here, so we should stop suggesting that the latter is causing the former. It's disingenuous and unhelpful. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:05, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

A Sitenotice banner to inform exopedian editors (the registered ones) about the issue

Latest comment: 5 years ago39 comments13 people in discussion

I have the impression from the discussion above that WMF CEO seems to think that very few Wikipedians care about the "Framgate". Actually, per Slatersteven, "most users have no[t] commented, and so only a few have really shown any interest in this issue (you will note, I did fact include the possibility they just have not heard of this case)."

I second the assumption they just haven't heard of the case. Most editors (including yours truly) are exopedians who don't visit the forums and may only find out about this page from off-wiki sources.

Therefore I propose placing a neutral informational banner for logged-in users with a very brief summary, much briefer than WP:FRAMSUM (but with a link there). Its main purpose will be to invite more people to join the discussion on this page and elsewhere.

We may even consider specifically encouraging the readers of the banner to contact WMF, e.g. the foundation communication managers, akin to the banner over Article 13 a year ago which asked the readers to write their representatives in the Europarliament. Not sure how neutral would that make the banner, but at least I hope we won't be accused in harrassment if too many people do that and the foundation is overwhelmed, because talking with concerned people is basically communication manager's job.

P.S. As I found from archives of this page, a proposal "to replace the main page with a banner of some sort" was made by Amakuru on June 11th, so to avoid misunderstanding I want to underline that I'm not arguing for removing/replacing/hiding anything, only for adding an aforementioned banner above the contents of English Wikipedia pages. Ain92 (talk) 11:51, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Given the length of this it will be very of putting. I think it might be better to have a fresh start. But yes I think something like "Admin Fram has been blocked for a year, please comment here" would be a good idea. Lets try and get this out to a a few more users. But I also think any such forum must have strict civility in place. We get no where if we misrepresent, shout at, call name or whatever. What this should not be is another toxic forum most users steer clear of.Slatersteven (talk) 11:55, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Slatersteven, sounds like you are trying to direct things onto an unproductive path? I've read your previous comments. Would you prefer the banner to be in Klingonese?--Wehwalt (talk) 12:08, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
No I am trying to say that if we want wider community input then we must avoid all the pitfalls that normally drive most users way from the drama boards. Otherwise all we get get is just this forum all over again, the same users saying the same things with the same results. Why do you think so few users get involved in the dramas, many of therm care enough to edit article space?Slatersteven (talk) 12:21, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I would say we need a full-scale RfC for such a banner.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:16, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Agreed. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:20, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • No, despite what I see as arrogant condescension from an out-of-touch WMF, I still think using the encyclopedia itself as a form of publicity for an internal conflict is wrong. If everyday users of the encyclopedia are benefiting from it in blissful unawareness of what's going on behind the scenes, that's good, and I hope it stays that way. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:19, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    • I put "for logged-in users" in bold and changed the headline to make it very clear that the proposed banner isn't aimed at and won't be shown to the everyday users who don't have an account and just read our encyclopedia. Ain92 (talk) 14:12, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
      • Plenty of people are logged in, often just so they can just keep watchlists of articles they wish to refer back to - watchlists are very useful to readers. And many stay logged in so they can make the occasional correction to spelling and grammar etc, while still essentially being a Wikipedia reader and uninterested in the political back office. Those people should be left alone without being dragged into the crisis du jour. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:01, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
        • I have never heard about such a practice and I doubt there is plenty of such people (compared to the number of editors), do you think you could substantiate your claim in some way please? Ain92 (talk) 20:54, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • No, every reader of Wikipedia does not have to be made aware of this backroom dispute. It could cause a loss of confidence, making of the sausage and all. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:22, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Generally banners/watchlist notice invite users to actually do something. What would be the purpose of this one? We hardly need further comments on this page. If an RfC with a solid proposal of what to do emerges, maybe it would be worth doing, but an entry on WP:CENT probably reaches most of the people actually interested in commenting on backroom dramas. – Joe (talk) 12:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • What Boing said. The reason I joined was to help the reader. I don't want to burden them by dragging them into the political cesspool of the back pages. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
That I allways what I assumed you meant.Slatersteven (talk) 14:30, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Still, dragging people who are peripherally interested isn't likely to create a better outcome, and I don't like the idea of using the interface for what is essentially a political problem. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:49, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Above there is a debate about whether or not this issue is cared about by the rest of the community. It seems to me we need to actually gauge how much the rest of the community cares, if Wikipedia belongs to the community it belongs to all of it, not just a select few who follow the drama boards. We cannot claim to speak for the 80% of active editors who have not commented here.Slatersteven (talk) 14:53, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Principles don't require an absolute majority to uphold. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:59, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Maybe not, but saying you are acting in the name of somebody else requires their agreement you are. Also whilst an absolute majority may not be needed I would question if a majority of 1/5 would be enough to uphold a principle.Slatersteven (talk) 15:03, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
That's a strawman, Slatersteven. 462 users have participated here and the vast majority of them are the editors who are active in the maintenance and governance of en.Wiki. That's more than enough for a major policy debate without inviting all the users who aren't interested in the back office or who don't understand it. Or have you never heard of ACTRIAL - for example? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:28, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Then we will have to agree to disagree on whether or not you can claim to speak on behalf of someone who you have not even asked.Slatersteven (talk) 15:33, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Do you not have an impression that WMF thinks that Wikipedia users don't actually care? Even if we here agree that 462 is enough, but WMF decides it's not, the latter is not going to compromise with us on anything. Ain92 (talk) 15:37, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
"saying you are acting in the name of somebody else requires their agreement you are" - how do you think actual governments work? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:34, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
As I said it is clear my view of democracy and others here is not the same (and we are not a government, we are a community).Slatersteven (talk) 15:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, we are talking government of a sort, but perhaps we should just call it governance, and I personally don't know of any existing governance system of any size that works on an absolute majority system for all its representative decisions. But anyway, the point is that the Wikipedia Community uses a representative governance system, where that representation is decided by consensus among those who choose to take part, and has never tried to be an absolute democracy. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:55, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
In have no issue with the idea that any choice made will be (according to the rules of Wikipedia) a consensus decision. That is not the same as saying "representative of the community". This is especially true if (as a number of outside sources claim) there is an issue with certain viewpoints or demographics being forced off of the dram boards by an unduly hostile environment. This is my concern, who are we in fact representing, those who care or just hose who are willing to put up with shit throwing? But this will now be my last word in this.Slatersteven (talk) 16:00, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
If it falls to me to have the last word, I'll make it simple - I do understand your point, which is very much a valid one. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:04, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • +1 That was partially my reasoning as well. I myself was an editor who doesn't follow the drama boards (neither here nor in other projects where I participate), who found out about the issue in an unofficial Telegram chat of Russian Wikipedia, and who considered this problem important enough to be worth my attention. This is not about the drama itself, but the unprecedentedness and the importance. Ain92 (talk) 15:37, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    Ain92, using the interface to promote a manifesto is definitely something not to be taken lightly. However, it may prove to be necessary to force the WMF to pay attention. I do think that we should play things slowly, though.
    There’s clearly a consensus here that the WMF f***ed... oh wait, can’t say that... screwed up. Let's see if they pay attention to this cacophony.
    If they don't engage with us, we then can move to a Watchlist notice, probably in the form of a community-sourced statement on the issue. Give the WMF 500 words with which to state their case. Have an endorse/oppose increased WMF intervention survey. I'd suggest limiting the advertising of such a survey to EC users - anyone welcome to participate, of course.
    If that fails, we've probably reached out to most of the active community by that point. That's when I'd endorse drastic action like a Main Page blackout or something of that ilk. They couldn't prevent such an action without reinvoking superprotect. It would very much be a direct confrontation with the WMF by that point.
    Regarding policy, I think we overwhelmingly believe that our self-governance is beneficial to the encyclopaedia. Therefore it's simple IAR territory- extraordinary circumstances like these are exactly the time to deploy IAR.
    But we need to proceed slowly, give the WMF time to respond. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 18:59, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Well, quite strong arguments have been made on this page against any measure that hurts our readers, including the Main Page blackout, while a Sitenotice (thanks for the correct term BTW) for logged-in users is as harmless for the readers as a Watchlist notice. I didn't consider the latter because I never read those notices, and I don't expect it from other exopedians since the information regularly posted there is irrelevant for us. Metapedians on the other hand, are likely to already know about the Framgate. There may be some use for the editors in between though. Ain92 (talk) 20:54, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    • P.S. I agree we better play things without a haste, and I have nothing against giving WMF a bit more time to react, but this amount of time should be limited. Ain92 (talk) 20:54, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
      Ain92, I agree - a Main Page blackout would be an extreme measure, and it would hurt the readership. If it came to it, I'd support such a measure, arguing that the short term harm was worth offsetting the long term damage to the community. But I'd absolutely only contemplate it as a last resort. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 21:22, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think one takeaway from this is that we need some community-appointed, community-recallable role whose designated purpose is to represent the views of the community to the WMF. Part of the problem here is that none of the existing channels seem to be considered valid - ArbCom is explicitly unable to override the WMF and therefore has no formal role to communicate with it, while the community-appointed board members are at too much of a disconnect from day-to-day WMF decisions to intercede until everything is already on fire - and even then, they're bound by the rest of the board and aren't really explicitly recognized as the "voice of the community." Without such a role, there's simply no way for the community to convey anything to the WMF in a manner the WMF accepts - these tweets carry the strong implication that anything short of a vote by 51% of all editors would be seen as illegitimate and not worth listening to, which isn't reasonable and makes dialog with the WMF impossible. Said role could overlap with ArbCom or with the community board members, or it could be something new, but either way the point would be that it would give the community a clear voice and avoid having our concerns dismissed as coming from a faceless mass whose true opinions are impossible to divine. --Aquillion (talk) 00:01, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    • I agree wholeheartedly with what you said, but I do not understand why did you decide to post it here, where few people would notice it, and not in a new section. Ain92 (talk) 08:54, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
      • Aquillion It seems to me a community ombuds network (whose primary role is communicating b/t community and foundation, each responsible to one community, and maintaining persistence of communication + expectations over time), and a federation of editors that can summarize and prioritize needs / concerns / desires of the editing communities, would both be valuable counterpoints to current systems. – SJ + 17:46, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
      • I think I accidentally placed this in the wrong section after numerous edit conflicts while trying to post it. The high-traffic nature of this page makes long comments a bit difficult. --Aquillion (talk) 21:52, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

I would not be surprised to see a lot of resignations after the next Signpost hits on June 30. --Rschen7754 02:21, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

I think that a sitenotice is something we might want to consider as a last resort, but it's not appropriate yet. I feel it's the biggest gun we could reasonably deploy to actual effect (it would definitely attract more media attention, and unlike some of the more out-there burn-it-down suggestions it's at least reasonably implementable and might prove effective), but it also carries significant risk of backlash and would escalate the situation whether it succeeds or fails, damaging the reputation of both Wikipedia and the WMF. It's something we should only do if or when it's clear absolutely all our other avenues for appeal have failed - if it seems likely that T&S, the WMF, and the Board intend to just buckle down and go full-speed ahead with taking over what has traditionally been community moderation of enwiki, or if they ever attempt a ban of this nature a second time. --Aquillion (talk) 21:52, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Latest comment: 5 years ago59 comments25 people in discussion

I'm reading all discussions at en:Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram with a lot of interest, of course. One of the main problems seem to be finding a good way to show your disagreement with the way the WMF handled this (no matter if you agree with the actual sanction or not), since most of you don't want to "destroy" enwiki to spite the WMF.

I agree that letting in attack pages, BLP violations, ... is bad because it creates innocent victims. So I tried to think of something which wouldn't make enwiki worse (for factual credibility), wouldn't include BLP attacks and the like (or not more than usual), but would still, if widespread enough, cause problems or embarassment for the WMF. An added bonus is that is one of the topics I regularly worked on.

So, what if enwiki admins made it clear that, out of fear of being accused of harassment, stalking, nah, simply persistence and looking at too many edits by one editor, they are no longer going to take any action against copyright violations?

Mark G12 and CCI as "historical". If someone asks, tell them that enwiki is no longer feeling "comfortable" going after copyright violations and that contributors may feel persecuted if you remove their contributions simply because they are not written by themselves.

Does that mean that I argue that copyvios should be allowed on enwiki? No, of course not, don't be silly (oops, attack phrase there!). It simply means that the WMF will have to pay some professionals to deal with this problem from now on. Which obviously they're good at, so that will be a walk in the park!

Seriously, what's the actual harm to enwiki readers and subjects (apart from some minuscule monetary loss to whoever wrote the original?) Why do we even bother with removing copyvio's? Mainly to protect the WMF, not to get a better encyclopedia, as you don't necessarily get a better encyclopedia by rewriting and summarizing bits instead of simply copying bits.

It won't make the WMF tremble in their shoes of course, but every small bit might help? Fram (talk) 21:29, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Copied from meta. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:46, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

  • I don't believe this is going to get those among us that think the WMF messed up the communication but got the sanction right to change our minds, and puts quite a dent into the whole notion that Fram's commitment to quality should trump the manner in which he communicates it. MLauba (Talk) 16:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Fram, not helping the case here. Ignore copyright vios to hurt the project and WMF? Everyone should please rethink any retaliation or strikes or such, and throwing wrenches in the gears is certainly not the way to treat this treasure that all of us have built. On the other hand, there is frustration, understood, but many editors think it will right itself at the end and will have made both the WMF and Wikipedia stronger partners as we drift into the 2020s. Randy Kryn (talk) 17:03, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    • I'd echo that statement. I freely admit I'm not a fan of Fram, but yeah, this, IMO, strikes at a core value in a way someone dedicated to the project should not. Fram, I'd urge you to retract and apologize for this really bad idea ASAP. Hobit (talk) 17:24, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

    • Have you made the same demands for apologies from anyone suggesting this or worse? As there have been many much more damaging suggestions than simply not removing copyvios and letting WMF deal with these instead. Not removing copyvio's is about the least damaging thing we can do, no idea why you consider this especially a "really bad idea" and not e.g. calls to close down all bots or to simply go on a general strike. Fram (talk) 17:45, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

      • Feel free to ignore it. Certainly not a demand. I'm trying to be helpful. My sense is you may have just shot yourself in the foot. But I could easily be wrong.
      The difference is that you're the person people are so upset about. If you make it "hurt the encyclopedia in my name" I think it tarnishes you and is just generally poor PR. But again, I could be wrong and probably should have just let it pass. Sorry to bother you with this. Hobit (talk) 17:58, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
      Most people aren't really upset about me, but about process, about principle. Anyway, thanks for your response, I understand your position a bit better now. Fram (talk) 18:01, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
      Copied from meta. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • You don't have to leave them unnoticed, just report them to WMF. It is their encyclopedia, let them handle the problems. You're all upset, but I am sorry to say, unless you find a way to make a statement that they feel, you're not going to impress them. And if you remove those copyvios and get banned for harassing the copyright violators by WMF, then you're not removing them for quite some time. (and you are right, we dont know what Fram was banned for, it may be way less than harassing copyright violators). --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:37, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Our primary goal in this endeavor is to build an encyclopedia. This advice like many others on this page, IMO shifts that focus away from our ultimate aims and is a distraction from creating a collaborative environment. SusunW (talk) 17:46, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    • We have managed to build a very good encyclopaedia under the old regime - in fact, we had a decent one even before the WMF was founded. The goal of having a vibrant community - and that includes self-governing to the degree possible - is a necessary part of building the encyclopaedia. You cannot separate governance issues from encyclopaedia-building.--Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:01, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    No one has suggested ignoring governance issues. This suggestion does nothing to resolve the situation. If one wants "law and order" returned, they don't participate in "lawlessness" or things that violate our basic premises, IMO. SusunW (talk) 22:26, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Seriously, what's the actual harm to enwiki readers and subjects (apart from some minuscule monetary loss to whoever wrote the original?) If someone copied something from Wikipedia (which is supposed to be freely distributable, so I might add that turning a blind eye to copyvios for any reason significantly frustrates that goal) unaware that the content is a copyright violation, they could end up the creek. The WMF cannot monitor every single page 24/7, so they rely on the community. Adam9007 (talk) 17:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    A community whose primary goal should be to protect Wikipedia from damage, not individual admins. I fail to see how allowing (by inaction) breaches of policy achieves that. Frankly if this is a mater of principle, resign, and leave the project. That would be the Honorable thing to do. But not to engaging a form of vandalism (as in a deliberate choice to do something that damages)and disruption what can only do massive harm to our articles.Slatersteven (talk) 18:00, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    Sorry, but now it's vandalism if I focus my volunteer time on other aspects than copyvio repairs? Do you want to rethink that? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:06, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    No, I have made it clear that to my mind to deliberately do something you know is damaging to make a point is a form of vandalism. You are doing something with the intent of seeing it damage the project.Slatersteven (talk) 18:12, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    If you don't see something happen you can't be faulted for it, but if you see copyright violations, vandalism or any other form of something highly disruptive to something on the website and don't do anything about it, then are you "protesting" or just being disruptive yourself? — Moe Epsilon 18:15, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    (ec) Well, for one it would not be "doing something", it would be not doing something. And if you go for motivations: It's all to save the project - which is much more a workable community than a number of bits on some harddrives. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:17, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    Is it? It is (perhaps) ironic that above (and more then once) I point out how this entire situation may in fact be the result of a perception that certain admins are biased, and turn a blind eye to infarction by certain users, whilst enforcing them (often vermontly) on others. So is it to "save the project" or to protect an image and version of it that some have never agreed with. I can think of many issues Wikipedia is having great difficulty tackling, precisely because of an old guard who are clinging on to their way of doing things (not i have to said without good reason, sometimes). It is my belief (and plenty of what I have seen here enforces that view) that this was and is about that issue. WMF had complaints about certain attitudes being enforced and protected, and it creating an unwelcoming and unpleasant atmosphere for certain demographics (am I right in thinking that gamergate has been linked to this incident in some way?).Slatersteven (talk) 18:31, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    I'm sorry, but I feel you are waffling. The question we started with is how a partial (and, as proposed, very much non-selective with respect to affected users) work stoppage is vandalism. Now you seem to be arguing that "there are some problems with Wikipedia, therefore my point is right". I'm not going down that path. It does not lead to a productive discussion. And I don't know if gamergate has been "linked" to this - I think I've seen the word once in this debate. It seems you don't know more, so again, this is a red herring. If there is a substantial and substantive link, provide it. Otherwise I'd prefer it if you don't spread unsubstantiated rumours. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    That is because you tried to argue that this proposal is about saving the project.Slatersteven (talk) 19:02, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose because it would be horrible to try and sort them out later. WP:CCI is horribly backlogged. --Rschen7754 18:10, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree with most everyone in this section who thinks this is a bad idea. I understand where Fram is coming from, given that his work to identify and remove copyright problems has been unappreciated (to put it mildly) by the WMF, but this isn't the answer. I'd add that Fram should probably not be the one offering up civil disobedience/resistance suggestions at this point. 28bytes (talk) 18:12, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think the whole idea that copyright worries will force WMF's hand is a little fanciful. WMF are already fairly immune to damages for copyright, at least in the US, under DMCA's safe harbor provisions. Sure it's embarrassing and hurts the project's image if it's suddenly no longer a safe source of freely-licensed text and images, but in reality that's more a principle issue than a practical issue as far as I'm concerned. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 19:12, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    • But are they really protected? If the violation is referred to them, and if they have made it clear that enforcing copyvios can get you banned (if you do it in a way that might stop the person adding the copyvio from continuing to edit), then I think their safe habour claim shrinks significantly. Guettarda (talk) 20:14, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Like most situations had been handled in the past, the Foundation would remove the copyright violation as it is brought to them, handle it as an office action and go on as usual. There's some kind of logical fallacy in thinking that harming any part of the encyclopedia, through direct action or inaction, will help in any way, shape or form. It won't. Either the Foundation will handle legitimate claims of BLP/copyvio/etc. violations brought to their attention, someone else will find it and remove it before they do, or it will severely harm the encyclopedia beyond repair. If the intent of those suggesting it is to harm it beyond repair, what then? The WMF wouldn't hand the keys to the website over to us claiming they can't handle managing it anymore and apologize, begging for you to come back. It's not a real bright plan. — Moe Epsilon 20:33, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    That comment does a very good job of explaining the concerns that I too have about pretty much all of these proposals. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:46, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't know if the plan is necessarily a sound one, but in a way I've pledged to do something similar. I am the editor with the fifth-most contributions to CopyPatrol, the WMF's community-build (thanks to Doc James for pointing out my error) tool to detect possible copyright violations. I will not edit Wikipedia at all until the WMF changes course. I don't pretend that this gesture will make any real difference in the grand scheme of things—after all, I have been relatively inactive for the past year, so my abstention is hardly a huge loss to the WMF—but the events of the past two weeks are too troubling to ignore. /wiae /tlk 21:56, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    • User:Wiae, copypatrol is NOT really a WMF tool. It was a community developed tool. The community reached out to Turnitin (User:Ocaasi) for the donation. The community programmed the initial version (User:Eran). The community did the beta testing based on feedback from the community. The Foundation just got involved at the very end once it was determined to be a success and made some further improvements based on more community feedback. And of course the community is the one who does all the follow up based on the tools results.
    • The next question is would a tool similar to this but which picks up potentially uncivil behavior be useful for our movement? Keep in mind that CopyPatrol is only about 60% accurate and yet is still very useful so we do not need a perfect tool but we do need competent people from within the community making the final call. A tool that does this is mostly build from what I understand. I am going to be speaking with people who have been involved with its development this Thursday and will report back. We will definitely need the ability to "teach" the AI by providing feedback on when it misses cases or over calls cases. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:19, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
      • Doc James Doc, You seem to be implying that enforcing copyvio is still a safe thing to do and therefore presumably not the reason why Fram was banned. Can you or the WMF be explicit on that or any other admin activities that we are still allowed to do on En Wiki? I'm assuming that the WMF are still OK with the blocking of vandals, enforcement of the NPA policy and deletion of articles that meet the G3 and G10 criteria. What else are we still trusted to do? ϢereSpielChequers 22:30, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
        • I was mainly emphasizing that the community deserves the credit for both the idea and building of CopyPatrol. And also the subsequent use of CopyPatrol to deal with copyright issues. The WMF played a minor and supportive roll in this tool.
        • I am also pitching a similar technique for dealing with incivility, whereby a tool flags issues and community members in good standing follow up the issues in question. Ie we deal with incivility internally with the support of technology.
        • User:WereSpielChequers to answer your question, if I was to see credible evidence that the WMF was taking action against those dealing with copyright violations in a civil manner I would not be impressed. Those who infringe copyright should get a warning and than be blocked from further editing until they can clearly explain how they are going to avoid infringing of copyright in the future.
        • If someone has an ongoing case of someone adding copyright infringement but they feel they cannot take action for political reasons forwards it to me and I will be happy to review and block the user as appropriate. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:40, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
          • (edit conflict) Doc James, I'm sure such a proposal is well-intentioned, but please no robot nannies. Every bot system for measuring something like "incivility" that I've seen has been...laughable, to put it mildly, not to mention not picking up on things like people who know one another well and engage in a bit of ribbing. (For example, if someone I know well manages to completely screw something up, I might give them a "Oops. Dumbass." That likely wouldn't bother them, and it wouldn't bother me if someone did it to me.) If someone's bothered by something, it's on them to report it, and if they're not bothered about it, why should anyone else be? Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:49, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
          • @Doc James: re: "I am also pitching a similar technique for dealing with incivility, whereby a tool flags issues..." - have you read the material above about the WMF tool "Detox"? DuncanHill (talk) 22:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
            • Just reading about the WMF tool called "Detox" now. I did not even realize that they had such a tool. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:58, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
            • @Seraphimblade: unfortunately there is a third option - some people walk away without reporting things. How we deal with that without overkill is a challenge. In the past I have trawled userspace for various offensive terms and found scores of pages that merited g10 deletion and similar treatment. But I was combining simple queries with a bit of brainpower, and my simple tool wasn't leaving any flag in instances where I deemed no action was necessary. I have concern about an AI publicly flagging possible attacks for others to check. ϢereSpielChequers 23:04, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
              • Thanks User:DuncanHill am reading it now. I agree that any such tool is not appropriate for use by those not within the community. It will need to be us who teaches the tool. Ie such a tool needs to have buttons to tell it when it is correct and when it is not. Agree that this is more difficult than detecting potential copyright issues, view it as more on par with ClueBot. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:06, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
              • (ec) Speaking with a little bit of professional authority, I think a decent civility detector will first require us to solve the general artificial intelligence problem. And (speaking from no particular authority) I'm not convinced that we have that much of a problem. If we compare the rate of serious Wiki-infraction with the rate of real crimes in medium-sized cities, we seem to do not too bad. And for us none of these infractions is of the Sticks and Stones variety... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:08, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
                • Having the concerns public is something we also need to discuss. Likely initially such a system should be provided to admins only with access similar to OTRS. And yah there is definitely a possibility that it will not be useful and thus we will end up scrapping it. But IMO if we do go such a direction it must be community led and operated and visible to all admins for oversight. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:06, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
                  • So the rest of us can't challenge your civility bot? If we don't know what it's doing we can't challenge it when it produces the sort of crap that eth WMF tool produced. No, it's a terrible idea. It certainly doesn't make me feel any safer, rather the opposite. This whole T&S thing has made me question just what the WMF is doing with our data. DuncanHill (talk) 23:14, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
                    • It will not be MY civility bot. Yes the results will need to be visible to a significant portion of the community (maybe all of it). That is something that we will need to discuss. I think the first step will be having some results to talk about. During the building of the copyvio tool there were also questions regarding if it would be useful or not. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
                      • I said "your" because you are the one proposing it, and the only one supporting it. The concerns isn't just "will it be useful" but "will it be harmful". Would you shut it down 'immediately' if it produced a homophobic or racist result? Is it acceptable to base human investigations on a flawed tool? Does the fact of the tool reporting tend to prejudice the investigators? (The answer to that is yes, however much the humans try not to be prejudiced). DuncanHill (talk) 23:33, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
                        • It would need a fair bit of testing even before it is "turned on"... The humans need to do the investigation. Such a tool can only flag possible concerns. Similar to the copypatrol, sometimes copypatrol is correct sometimes it is not correct, a full investigation by someone who understands copyright is needed each and every time. Such a tool could be better than randomly looking at diffs for concerns or searching through talk pages for key words.
                        • One would of course need to start with a tool much much better then the one discussed above. Gah... That one has issues. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:17, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
                          • And that was developed by professionals spending the Foundation's money, and publishing their results, and nobody noticed how crap it was. It's pie-in-the-sky stuff, at best. DuncanHill (talk) 09:49, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

I think what Doc is suggesting is (in addition to a better methodology) that the annotators of the training corpus be community members and (presumably) a representative sampling of the community. I think that's a lot less horrible an idea than what we saw in the toxicity tool. I'm not personally in favor of it, but I think the idea is interesting. I don't think we should let this overtake our desire for and involvement in policy reform more generally, but it's an interesting idea. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 23:21, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Agree that this is simple one idea and that it should not overtake the communities involvement in policy reform. We are going to need multiple measures to improve Wikipedia. And we need to be realistic that perfection is not a possible goal. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:30, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

The whole notion that "enforcing copyvios puts you at risk of a T&S ban" is absurd. Moonriddengirl, Quadell, Justlettersandnumbers, MER-C or Dianaa are all and have always been able to communicate their concerns to problematic contributors without ever being called out for their attitude in doing so. The whole "I'll stop admining because now I feel like I'm at risk of a ban out of the blue" sounds exactly like the sad blokes moaning that they could no longer dare talking to any woman in the wake of #metoo. You can be right about calling out a problematic contributor without being a dick about it, and there is a vast number of admins still left who pull it off every time they take action, User:WereSpielChequers, and from what I've observed over the years you're clearly one of them. Maggie Dennis is Jan's boss, for heaven's sake. Nobody on this project has spent longer working on text copyvios than her, and mostly alone for years before a couple of dedicated people eventually picked up the slack. The notion that the matter with Fram was the fact that he called out copyvios, rather than the manner he went about it (provided copyvio related issues were even considered), is complete lunacy, regardless of how much you distrust the WMF. MLauba (Talk) 23:07, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

The whole notion that "enforcing copyvios puts you at risk of a T&S ban" is absurd. I agree, that notion is nuts. If that's the notion being conveyed here, I'd like to personally disavow any agreement with that idea, and I think it's important that the other participants here articulate the same. I'm mostly here because there's an inscrutable system with inadequate process, no meaningful opportunity to be heard, and no clear community involvement in how this system is used. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 23:15, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
One way to play Battleships is to hit random squares and note which ones are complete misses. If we have established that the WMF is OK with enforcement of copyvio then lets move on to other possible areas where the new secret rules are stricter than the rules that we know about. I'd prefer that we were told, or better consulted as to what the new rules were, I might even support the change. But I don't like the current situation and I want to work out what the new regime is. To paraphrase the Great Detective, when all other possibilities are eliminated as absurd. you have your solution. ϢereSpielChequers 23:31, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The community, admin corps, and presumably also ArbCom already ignore copyright violations. I can name at least three serial copyright violators (and many, many more "copyvio apologists") who have avoided facing sanctions by crying "hound". This situation needs to change, but I just can't see it happening as long as so much of the community is either (a) ignorant of copyright policy or (b) willing to feign ignorance to push an agenda or to create drahma. I have mixed feelings about how all this relates to Fram, however: I don't recall Fram ever lifting a finger to address any of these problems (or protect the victims of the false hounding accusations), so his invoking them in his own defense is a little weird. If we extended it to be about Floq and Bish, both those editors actually have blood on their hands when it comes to this problem. I have a great deal of respect for the latter and the former ... I can accept that they are not wrong in this case, but neither is, IMO, a strong voice for reason in the "copyright violators vs. alleged hounds" debate. Floq especially. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:32, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Some of you may recognise that I haven't quite shared the extremely negative view of the WMF as is on common in discussions on this page. But here's the thing. When I enforce our copyvio policy, I don't give a fuck about the WMF. I do it because we are supposed to be a free encyclopaedia not because I'm worried about the WMF being sued. While people are free to choose to edit for whatever reason they wish, I would hope most of us are the same and are enforcing copyvio because of our intention to keep this a free encyclopaedia not because of the WMF. After all, we have a very stringent NFCC policy that goes way beyond what US law requires for a reason. Nil Einne (talk) 06:46, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Nil Einne: I assume you mean I would hope most of us are the same and are enforcing the copyvio policy because of our intention to keep this a free encyclopaedia not because of the WMF? Anyway, you chimed in the May ANI thread about copyvio and "hounding", but the one filed the following week had a substantially more "lukewarm" reception: in my experience it's basically a game of chance regarding whether more of the "I like / don't like User X, copyright be damned" users and/or the "Shit, if that's copyvio, I might be in trouble next" users show up than those sincerely interested in solving copyvio. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:56, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

OK lets stop spreading unsubstantiated rumours. As we do not know why he was blocked we do not know if there is a secret rule, or just that he was stamped down upon because he breached known and existing polices (we are just not being told which ones). So any accusation of secret rules is an unsubstantiated rumour.Slatersteven (talk) 10:37, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Also, I think that focusing on how to make the best kind of software is the wrong focus for discussion on this page. We have a serious and unresolved problem involving human conduct, and there is not a bot in the world that can fix that. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:51, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Please be wary with this idea. I'm not saying you can't goof off if you want, but if you appear to actively encourage copyright violations by other users and can be alleged to be technically interacting with the posters in some way, you could blunder into one of those awful, totally out of proportion "conspiracy" cases that U.S. prosecutors like to lay against protestors they don't like (cf. DisruptJ20). I despise copyright law and consider it an extension of slave-owner thinking ... don't underestimate the malice of its defenders. Wnt (talk) 22:21, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Wnt: My sincere view on the matter is somewhat more similar to what this guy says between 3:45 and 3:55. Wikipedia articles infringing on outside writers' copyright is more personally offensive to me not because it legally infringes on the rights of third parties but because it is lazy and it is not something Wikipedians are supposed to sink to. (Full disclosure: I became involved in CCI and other such matters after I had the top spot in an editathon stolen from me by an editor who it later turned out had plagiarized a significant portion of the text that put them over the finish line.[10][11] At around the same time I was myself accused of violating someone's copyright, but it turned out that they -- a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 company -- had just copy-pasted my text and not provided the proper attribution.[12] So yeah, it's a two-way street, but essentially copyright is meant to, and does, serve to protect the little people more than keep them down. The only little people it "hurts" in favour of large corporations and rich folks are the ones who really like this or that cultural property but can't afford a copy for themselves, but that has almost nothing to do with Wikipedia since we probably wouldn't be hosting the entirety of Doctor Strange (2016 film) even if it weren't under copyright.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:34, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
  • As noted above, technically copyvio is ToS violation, and I agree we have a moral right to demand WMF to deal with it themselves. But we must prepare exit scenarios in preparation of finding a compromise with the foundation!
If we don't remove copyrighted text from the articles (just report it to WMF), people will continue editing this text (and so creating derivative works), and as soon as we stop this kinda work-to-rule action, there will be a large mess with the accumulated copyvio. It's probable we will have a lot of work wasted in this case.
However, with the mediafiles the situation is slightly different: if we collect possibly copyrighted images in a category for WMF staff, no work will be wasted (although it's likely the heap will still accumulate). Ain92 (talk) 22:47, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, it would be great if the WMF would ban copyright violators and their defenders -- you know, rather than what they currently do, which is demand that volunteer editors masochistically open themselves up to harassment for removing copyvio to protect the Foundation's ass legally -- but that's not realistic. When is the community, the admin corps, or ArbCom going to do anything about that kinda stuff? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:33, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Send the lot of the copyright violators to Legal. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 22:27, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Legal won't handle problems like this and this, though. I mean, I guess the foundation banning their friends who did the copyright violation might create a chilling effect -- except that the same could be said of the current situation where their copyright-violating friends are issued with warnings by the community, and that certainly hasn't worked out in reality. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:17, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Sadly this may satisfy some

Latest comment: 5 years ago26 comments17 people in discussion

Just as a point of information (I also posted on Jimbos talk page) one of significant victims of Fram has vanished their user page. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 14:54, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Victim of Fram? Are you sure about that - see comments in previous section about the vanishing. - Sitush (talk) 15:00, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Indeed, we don’t know if she’s a victim of anybody. Unless and until T&S discloses information we may be engaged in BLP-violative speculation. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 15:02, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I think we can safely say she decided to vanish because of the whole situation.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:17, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Indeed. If not a victim of Fram, then a victim of the mob. But likely both. ~ Rob13Talk 16:18, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Rather a victim of T&S, which started, and terribly handled, the whole episode which now culminated on her autoban. Darwin Ahoy! 17:06, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Odd heading - as many recognize, this is bigger than Fram, or the unknown other(s) directly involved in his case. Seeing long term admins resign might also satisfy some, but bigger issues are not resolved. Harassment is still a issue on wikipedia with or without Fram, and unprecedented changes to WMF process appear to have infringed upon wikipedia's long-established systems for self-policing.Dialectric (talk) 15:39, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
If you read the at the top of the talk page directed toward Fram and specifically asking him to communicate with her through named T&S staff members to resolve any future dispute, Laura Hale was quite public about her complaints to T&S (rather than through the normal community channels.) Question: when users vanish voluntarily, are they eligible for WMF-funded travel to future events? Hlevy2 (talk) 15:49, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
WMF funds real people, with name and surname, not users. (This is not to speculate whether LH would ever be interested in attending any WMF events, but we have for example a couple of Board members who have never edited Wikimedia projects and who are, strictly speaking, no users).--Ymblanter (talk) 16:31, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Agreed. I don't find it satisfying in the least that this individual exercised her right to vanish. I don't think it would be satisfying to see Fram unbanned either. This isn't about Fram. It's about the process, particularly the lack of any process. Having seen some of what Fram's said recently, as far as I'm concerned he can stay banned, but the process must change. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 15:50, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Indeed it is. Fram really isn't the issue anymore. The ban stands, Fram is honoring it even though they are not blocked now, and ArbCom isn't taking up a case regarding the ban, so nothing will happen. This portion of the issue is but a minor steam vent of the enormous volcano of problems the WMF has created in mismanaging this case. In abstract, had the WMF shown the competence and maturity one would expect of a company that had been in existence for 16 years, much of the fallout of this would have been predicted, their management of it adjusted beforehand to assist in managing it, and a team of people to manage public communications of this event would have been briefed and at the ready. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:15, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • In abstract, had the WMF shown the competence and maturity one would expect of a company that had been in existence for 16 years, much of the fallout of this would have been predicted, their management of it adjusted beforehand to assist in managing it, and a team of people to manage public communications of this event would have been briefed and at the ready. Yep, this. Instead, I'm just getting impressions of Amy's Baking Company. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 18:18, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Why wee are here [[13]].Slatersteven (talk) 17:08, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm greatly saddened by this development. It's fair to say that the admin corps (myself included) and higher failed this person, who has been subjected to years of abuse for no sensible reason. It is awful to see this continuing above. While it does illustrate the foolishness of the WMF's intervention, which has lead to the re-victimisation of several editors, the immature reactions by multiple editors here who wanted to blame the (potential - who knows?) victim have been utterly reprehensible. Nick-D (talk) 22:20, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

So, about the supposed "harassment"

I don't know what kind of statement the OP's trying to make with that header. That said, I suppose this answers the question as to whether Laura was indeed the user who complained to the WMF. This was strongly implied from the very beginning, but this would seem to confirm it. This is a problem, because it means that Fram was not banned for harassment. Fram was already banned from interacting with Laura, and regardless of the merits of that IBAN, we know that he was not harassing her at the time of the ban. This would also apparently mean that there is not a second party who Fram was harassing. This is how it's looking right now:

  • Fram interacted with LauraHale in a manner that even the WMF admitted was editorially in the right, even getting her formally sanctioned, but he was still assessed as "harassing" her and IBANNED accordingly. This alone seems to run counter to our own standard of harassment.
  • Fram abided by the IBAN, yet Laura continued to police Fram's behavior, and subsequently reported him for continued uncivil conduct that was not in breach of the ToU, and that's why he was banned.

Fram's story continues to check out, and the WMF continues to be unable to even claim that he's not telling the truth. It really appears that this isn't about harassment, it's about revenge. ~Swarm~ {sting} 04:17, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

I don't believe that LH reported Fram, and am in fact running on the assumption that either an unrelated third party did or T&S was watching Fram like a hawk since the first or second warning. It's more likely LH left because of harassment due to the Wikipediocracy allegations and Raystorm deciding to fight a fire with petrol, which in turn heightened the scrutiny on LH due to said allegations. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 04:39, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
As a matter of simple behavioral logic, I think it borders on desperate to even try to claim that a user who has a public conflict with Fram advertised on her user page, who has connections to the WMF, who was named here as the suspected culprit, and who actually had nothing to do with this whatsoever, would actually stop editing and vanish her account rather than simply make a comment clarifying that she was not the reporter and that she's not to blame for this. Occam's Razor. ~Swarm~ {sting} 05:25, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Great, more victim blaming - complete with someone who stated that they were a victim of harassment by Fram being labelled a "suspected culprit". It simply does not matter who, if anyone, reported Fram. Blaming a victim is pretty much the best possible way to enable harassment and protect people who engage in it. The issue here is how reports of harassment are handled by this community and the WMF. Nick-D (talk) 05:35, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
That's exactly the point. Laura wasn't a harassment victim. She was already protected by an IBAN. Fram was not harassing her. Therefore, if she reported Fram, she did so because she was stalking him, not because he was victimizing her. It so follows that the Foundation blocked Fram for subsequent incivility, not harassment. That would mean the ToU was falsely invoked, and that the ban was inappropriate, as Fram has claimed all along. You suggesting that Fram was harassing her without evidence is an aspersion at best, libel at worst. I'm not blaming anyone, I'm just reviewing what we know. Your venomous attack against what is nothing but an objective review of what we know is strange, to say the least. ~Swarm~ {sting} 05:42, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
I've amended my post to clarify my knowledge of the issue (to wit, the statement on LH's user page requesting that Fram stay away), not least as I don't wish to descend to the type of vitriol you are spewing towards LH and myself here (accusing someone of stalking, for instance, doesn't seem great...). Nick-D (talk) 06:00, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Okay, you so you changed "a victim of harassment" to "someone who stated that they were a victim of harassment". When you consider the fact that the user was protected by an IBAN against their supposed harasser, that doesn't really help your argument form a factual point of view, and instead builds credibility on the part of the victim, who, AFAIK, is Fram. ~Swarm~ {sting} 08:06, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
This is an important point, and something being forgotten here: WP:BLP applies sitewide. Even for Fram. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 05:46, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
As well as for LH, who, contrary to Fram, was not editing under a pseudonym. But hey, let's continue treating the guy who got two warnings and a sanction better than one of the alleged victims. MLauba (Talk) 14:21, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
No, let's not have a race to the bottom, but let's treat everybody decently. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:44, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Another one

BU Rob13's been renamed. [14] Guess he's really left, now. starship.paint (talk) 10:11, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Signpost article

Latest comment: 5 years ago20 comments12 people in discussion

A preview: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-06-30/Special report , and reply to it from Fram.Yger (talk) 06:51, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

@Yger: - Five of these respondents complained to T&S about him, or informally informed Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee. - this is vague. It would be better to split these categories apart if your sources allowed you to. (EDIT: brought my concern to the Newsroom) starship.paint (talk) 07:03, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@Yger: - Fram then answered complaints he believed might have been made by ten named editors. - what does this mean? Fram came up with a list of ten editors which Fram believed complained to T&S? Then Fram came up with (and rebutted) supposed complaints from these ten editors? (EDIT: brought my concern to the Newsroom) starship.paint (talk) 07:08, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
That's certainly what it reads like, which is somewhat of a bombshell. If one is warned for harassment and can immediately rattle off ten editors that likely felt they had been harassed, that's a big clue that there's something not quite right with their conduct. It also speaks to Fram's awareness that his actions likely do have the effect of making others feel harassed, whether he intends that or not, and yet he does not change course. ~ Rob13Talk 09:08, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Which is what some of us have been saying here for a while. This was not just one incident, it was just the final straw. I would also say it goes further, if you can name any editor who thinks you might be harassing them then that might be a sign you think you are. Of course if they have all complained about harassment in the past that would be different.Slatersteven (talk) 09:30, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
You're preaching to the choir; I'm quoted in that Signpost article, and I'm not particularly positive on Fram. The first bombshell in that article is that Fram can immediately rattle off ten editors that likely felt harassed by him when given a conduct warning. The second is that multiple editors made reports to T&S and ArbCom over a duration of years without any community action being done. This upends the narrative of T&S doing some hasty, sneaky action and doing a complete end-run around community processes. The community processes abjectly failed here, and so in response to an apparent deluge of complaints, T&S eventually had no choice but to act. ~ Rob13Talk 09:49, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Rob, you were still on the committee in the run up to this, so you know full well that T&S never told us that they felt we were failing to deal with Fram. – Joe (talk) 09:59, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@Joe Roe: And where did I say they did? They absolutely did communicate to us that Fram's behavior was the subject of an investigation and conduct warning. That included outlining the general types of behavior that were concerning them. When those same types of behavior independently showed up on our doorstep quite recently, I could not convince the Committee to take even the mildest of action. ~ Rob13Talk 10:14, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
The community processes abjectly failed here, and so in response to an apparent deluge of complaints, T&S eventually had no choice but to act – a very obvious alternative choice would be to ask us to do better before they waded in themselves. – Joe (talk) 10:17, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm afraid that there is little confidence that you as a representative body are willing to deal with these matters, especially where high profile, resident editors, the "big swinging dicks" of the project, are concerned. Leaky caldron (talk) 10:21, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Then vote the bastards out in favour of those who will. ArbCom's makeup by design changes regularly. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 10:27, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
  • So maybe Fram is the worst editor and worst admin ever, and there are ten aggrieved parties with a good case for Fram's defrocking. In which case T&S have still behaved poorly here. They have still sidestepped ArbCom, kept en:WP in the dark, and kept Fram in the dark. They've also imposed a bizarre one-wiki, time-limited ban, which is supposedly in relation to actions not even on that wiki. So no, I don't see "Look how terrible Fram has been!" as really changing anything here, even if that (which is not what I'm claiming) turned out to be true (and Fram should be banned by ArbCom, if so). Andy Dingley (talk) 14:15, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

"we are not happy about how you are handling this" "So?" "We are looking into this" "And?" "We are now taking action ourselves" "How dare you...you should have asked us first". This has been going on for years, with at least two arbcom requests, exactly how much longer did arbcom need? "Yes I know mum I will do it ina minute".Slatersteven (talk) 10:27, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&oldid=824688727#Fram is from Feb 2018 and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&oldid=746359373#Fram is from October 2016. These would be the two declined cases. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 10:36, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, why did it go from there? If ArbCom is to make any difference, the decision needs to go there to be made. WMF is free to say what they think ought to be done, but not to override a decision they don't like. If the idea is "Do what we'd do or we will override you anyway", it's wasteful to have an ArbCom to begin with. The idea should be "We disagree with your decision, and we'll say why, but we will respect it." Outside child protection or threats, ArbCom should be as high as one can escalate a complaint; T&S should not be a "superior court" that can overturn their decisions. The principle stands that the WMF shouldn't be overruling community decisions. If ArbCom is to be a rubber stamp, told by the WMF how they'll be deciding this case or that one, let's not participate such a charade. Seraphimblade Talk to me 13:24, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Note from The Signpost newsroom. The June edition (more permanent link) has been published. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:10, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

  • There's a big difference between ArbCom having been incapable of handling the situation correctly (not true), and people who were apparently incapable of convincing other people of their viewpoints blaming everyone but themselves (which is what some of this is starting to look like). --Tryptofish (talk) 17:12, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom case over article

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Disputed Signpost article has been filed (after an ANI thread) over this Signpost article, regarding the anonymous complaint of June 2019: It is difficult and embarrassing as a man... starship.paint (talk) 11:57, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Time for an Amendment

Latest comment: 5 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

In light of this action, which follows on the heels of so many catastrophic missteps resulting from thoughtless, careless, or otherwise ill conceived and/or executed actions with little if any thought put into how they effect the community, I think it time that the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use were amended to include a statement that

"No action affecting editors or editing communities under the jurisprudence of the Wikimedia Foundation shall take effect until such time as 1) the community shall have a chance to convene and ratify the proposal, or 2) the Wikimedia Foundation determines that all other applicable courses or recourse have been otherwise exhausted by the community."

This should stop these BS interventions by our woefully out of touch WMF members by requiring that they gain and/or maintain consensus for changes on site that may be controversial (such as those related to the media viewer and the resulting superprotect incident) or show that they had no choice but to intervene in a matter as it was judged to have been beyond the scope of the given project (ie persistent cross-wiki vandalism).

God help me I've tried to assume good faith with the foundation, but every freakin step they take these days leaves a Chernobyl-sized nuclear disaster in its wake, and frankly this is sort of "peacekeeping" - riding to our rescue with no knowledge of the situation or respect for individual community process to resolve these issues - does far more harm to us as editors and contributors then they think. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:50, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

(Discussion refactored - Sean Heron (talk) 13:38, 1 July 2019 (UTC))

  • This is simultaneously too much and too little. As others have noted, the spirit of this amendment would prohibit the WMF from dealing with things that we want them to handle; at the same time, they could simply declare that all other courses of recourse have been exhausted whenever they want to ignore this amendment, and we'd have no way to object. I think that if we're going to try to approach this at a structural level, we'd need to actually change the incentives and pressures affecting the people making decisions. Rules are easy to ignore in any case - what, exactly, would our recourse be if we decide that the WMF is ignoring this? If we want to ensure that Wikipedia remains community controlled, the only real solution is to ensure that the community has rejection or recall authority over the majority of the board (perhaps even the entire board), as well as anyone assigned to lead the WMF or major initiatives like T&S. That's going to be a hard sell - there would be constant concern that that could be abused, not to mention risks of ballot-stuffing when there's no higher authority to intercede in the case of an emergency - and it would be difficult to picture exactly how it would look. But I feel that the people who take positions of authority on one of the largest websites in the world do ultimately need to be answerable to the community that creates and maintains the site they're seeking to oversee. If they want a quiet job without that sort of responsibility, they ought to look elsewhere. --Aquillion (talk) 22:04, 30 June 2019 (UTC)


Katherine Maher on leaving the Fram case to ArbCom

Latest comment: 5 years ago18 comments15 people in discussion

It might get lost in the storm but I think there is an important point in one of Katherine's comments today:

I think the best way forward likely involves ideas that many people in the community also seem to be recommending. There is likely a role for ArbCom in the immediate case (although I want to be clear that, while Foundation T&S staff have had conversations with members of the committee through regular channels, I am not speaking for the committee and do not want to misrepresent any perspectives they may have or actions they may take). [15]

It seems she wants to leave the Fram case to ArbCom but can't quite promise that yet because she wants to get buy-in from ArbCom and other parties first. This seems like a pretty big step forward. Hopefully the details can be ironed out in the next couple of days. Haukur (talk) 22:28, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

It's a start, and a very well-needed one. Kudos to her for recognising that cutting ArbCom out was boneheaded. Unfortunately, this doesn't help when a fair chunk of the problem is T&S stonewalling ArbCom just as much as they're stonewalling the community writ large. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 22:30, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Yep, it's a big start, but we can't let it end there. This isn't about Fram, this is about process. Unless there's a formalized process that comes out of this, we've gotten nowhere. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 22:31, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I agree that it's a good first step, but not the whole solution. I think getting ArbCom to be willing to examine the complaint (presumably in private, rather than as an on-wiki case) will not be hard. The main issue will be the handing over of confidential information. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:40, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Agreed. And PS – I don't think you were wasting our time with the proposal, as said in some senses it seemed the best proposal yet, and like you said you didn't want us to act on it immediately. It was just it seemed a bit of a nuclear option, so thanks for withdrawing. But please keep the ideas coming! FeydHuxtable (talk) 23:39, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Aye. I'm with FeydHuxtable. I enjoy reading your novel ideas, Tryptofish, even if I don't always agree with them. Please do keep them coming! —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 23:42, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, I appreciate that a lot. I figure there are so many productive discussions, and it would be best if everyone gets back to those sooner rather than later. It clearly was never going to get consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:46, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Just wanted to note, this is something that probably most of the relevant players have thought about on some level, but you're right, Tryptofish, the devil is in the details. Opabinia regalis (talk) 10:47, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
  • But that is a far cry from saying they won't do this again, hoping we don't raise so much hell, so it falls short. The issue isn't this one case, it is the principle of autonomy at enwp. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:31, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    The issue is the repeated failure of enwp to adequately address the problem of harassment. Unless enwp finds a pathway to reform the culture of entitlement, further intervention is inevitable. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:44, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    Hawkeye7: Indeed. I minimise my presence on WP nowadays because of the toxic culture. Tony (talk) 01:13, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    Toxic culture, certainly. ∯WBGconverse 18:13, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
    I agree that we do not adequately handle harassment, indeed. But this action by WMF was not the way forward either. Regarding the case: my feelings towards WMF will not change with a fully in-camera ArbCom case. My trust of ArbCom regarding this has gone so low that I believe they are likely going to meekly follow WMF. Moreover, they have a COI here just like WMF. They are to examine all public evidence in public, and make it reasonable to expect that there is sufficient off-wiki evidence that a ban is justified. --Dirk Beetstra T C 01:34, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    En-wiki does not handle harassment well, this is true. If T&S bypassed en-wiki for that reason, they took an action that was guaranteed to cause huge amounts of disruption (resulting in further harassment). If T&S was/is dissatisfied with the way en-wiki deals with harassment, they needed to come to en-wiki and say, "we need en-wiki to do a better job handling harassment. Within (some timeframe), we need you to come up with a plan to handle it according to (principles and guidelines T&S/WMF made) or else we're going to start stepping in." Had they said that, and then the community failed to develop those processes, then stepping in and enacting a mysteriously project-specific, time-limited ban would have at least made some sense. Ca2james (talk) 01:48, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    Eh the community would have responded with "define harassment in an unambigious manner and objectively define better job of handling". It would have been a difficult conversation.©Geni (talk) 02:36, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    It's not hard. It's just that we keep trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to public policy issues like this, and wind up feeling like we're failing our community when those newly-invented policies have problems. It doesn't have to be this hard. Go look at the law in any particular jurisdiction. I'll quote one good example here:

    "Stalking" means engaging in a course of conduct directed at a specific person, and he or she knows or should know that this course of conduct would cause a reasonable person to fear for his or her safety, the safety of a workplace, school, or place of worship, or the safety of a third person or suffer emotional distress. Stalking does not include an exercise of the right to free speech or assembly that is otherwise lawful or picketing occurring at the workplace that is otherwise lawful and arises out of a bona fide labor dispute, including any controversy concerning wages, salaries, hours, working conditions or benefits, including health and welfare, sick leave, insurance, and pension or retirement provisions, the making or maintaining of collective bargaining agreements, and the terms to be included in those agreements.

    740 ILCS 21/10. Sure there's a lot that's not relevant to us there, and it's a definition for "stalking" rather than "harassment", but it's a good starting point. It makes a lot of sense as well: a course of conduct (i.e., not just a single incident), that the actor knows or should know would cause a reasonable person to be fearful or suffer emotional distress. It also doesn't include certain protected actions (we might think of those as analogous to our WP:BANEX, like reverting obvious vandalism). It's reasonable in that it doesn't provide a bludgeon to invoke in a dispute: the conduct must be what would cause a reasonable person to feel fearful. Moreover, it requires that the actor have reason to know that such conduct would be harmful. And on the flipside, it's easy to enforce: Any admin can evaluate this, and the Arbitration Committee can evaluate it as well: "Would that pattern of conduct make a reasonable person fearful?" The fact that a complaint is self-serving is not a problem either, because we're using an objective rather than a subjective standard; if it's objectively unreasonable conduct, it should be prohibited even if nobody complains. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 03:14, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    It's far easier to effectively define what constitutes harassment, and it behooves us to do just that as a matter of practicality. Right now, outside of obvious red flags (contacting an editor's employer or family in real life, doxing, needlessly camping an editor's contributions to nitpick or revert them, sending them to noticeboards ad nauseam for the most minor of things) it's just too ill defined. WP:Harassment lays out a list of actions that are considered harassment, but the one that is possibly the vaguest is the section on hounding. That section would need to be rewritten somewhat. There also needs to be some more teeth to the policy in general, and if that ultimately means T&S stepping in to deop and block admins and users who know about the harassment but do fuck all about it then so be it. But the biggest thing we can do to address this is to completely get rid of the notion of the "unblockable" editor. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 10:56, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    This is probably true, but if so, they need to say so clearly, and give us indicators for what they feel we need to do to bring ourselves back in compliance with the ToS (coupled with a promise that as long as we do meet those requirements, T&S will abstain from engaging in the sort of moderation usually done internally going forwards, possibly with some update to WP:OFFICE to make it clear that these kinds of bans are outside of their scope; they can always just change it back if they feel we're failing later on, but it would at least be an important gesture of good faith.) Changing Wikipedia's culture is going to require a lot of time and effort; in order to do so, we're going to have to be able to point to clear indicators that the WMF cares about our efforts and that doing so will ensure T&S won't just decide to go it alone again further down the line. (And, either way, T&S needs to make all their bans appealable in some form, preferably via the community. If there's one thing this shows it's that they badly need some sort of release valve so they're not just trapped like a deer in the headlights when they screw up, frantically doubling-down on poorly-considered policies. They seem to think that appeals would undermine their authority when, in fact, a well-made appeal system might have just let someone the community trusts examine the ban and then say "no, really, it's fine, Fram's ban is appropriate.") --Aquillion (talk) 02:32, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Need for novel Community Action to address issues of (broadly construed) "Harassment" ?

Latest comment: 5 years ago29 comments21 people in discussion

(Referring to the OP of WP:FRAM#Time for an Amendment )

Not sure it would as they could argue that the community had already not acted, despite complaints. This (it can be argued) is a reaction to the unbanables, the users who can act virtually how they like because "they are too useful to do anything about". See the section above about how Fram could think of 10 editors who could accuse him of harassment.Slatersteven (talk) 09:27, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Indeed. But I bet he can't show that all 10 went through rfc, dispute resolutions, and arbitration enforcement before the WMF got involved. If he can then so be it, I strike my comment/suggestion and withdraw my proposal. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:41, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Apparently at least two were refused at arbcom, at least one ANI was launched. If people are refusing to take action, of course others will stop bothering to report why expose yourself to more harassment.Slatersteven (talk) 09:53, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) This question will sound more aggressive than it is intended, I suspect, but it is genuine. How much additional harassment and conflict do you expect a harassment victim to endure before they get a resolution? You want them to open an RfC (1 month), go to ANI (multiple weeks, usually with people digging through your contributions and heavily scrutinizing them, regular victim blaming), and then go to ArbCom publicly (about 6 weeks, almost all civility/harassment case requests are either declined or end in a wrist-slap admonishment and a plea that we all just get along). If someone were to go through all steps consecutively, it would probably take about three months, and the end result would be ... well, not much. Maybe an IBAN is implemented, at which point the person who engaged in harassment gets to go find some other poor sap to be his punching bag as he restarts the cycle. A follow-up question, if I may: How many newer editors will go through that instead of simply turning around and walking out the door? ~ Rob13Talk 09:56, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
BU Rob13, I think this is the real problem that we need to address. If anyone here doesn't view that as a problem, I would sincerely like an explanation to attempt to understand that position. Otherwise, we should then proceed to attempting to remedy the situation. StudiesWorld (talk) 11:01, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
StudiesWorld Seconded. I greatly appreciate the AC letter's thoughtful framing and decision trees; yet it does not directly address the high default burden (in time & endurance) on anyone bringing forward a case. What specific proposals are there to reduce that burden? – SJ + 15:13, 30 June 2019 (UTC)


The proposed amendment sends the question of dealing with child predators, for example, right back at Arbcom who had been asking for years that the WMF steps in. And pardon me, in particular in light of the upcoming Signpost article, the notion that they "rode in to our rescue with no knowledge of the situation" is becoming less and less tenable. It's increasingly clear that whenever arbcom had an opportunity to act, they declined to do so. MLauba (Talk) 11:06, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

There is a group of editors, known to everyone who reads ANI who, upon seeing any case raised concerning the behaviour of their long-time associates here, will immediately shut down the discussion as "nothing to see here" or some disparaging put-down suggesting trouts or accusing the raiser of trolling. Start by dealing with that so that these people are exposed to the sunlight of examination. Leaky caldron (talk) 11:11, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
This, this, so much this. To both of these comments, really. ~ Rob13Talk 11:21, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
So how would you deal with it? Editor's like me can't. Leaky caldron (talk) 11:24, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Elect arbitrators who will take this issue seriously. Show up in droves to protest when an admin cuts off discussion of a long-term editor’s Incivility. If they refuse to reopen a prematurely closed discussion, file a case request with ArbCom both to examine the initial issue and to examine the admin’s suitability for the tools. ~ Rob13Talk 11:27, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
May I please remind everyone that since 10 February 2019 we have a very clear statement by ArbCom that administrators must not close topics before consensus has been achieved.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:50, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
You and I were involved in such a case yesterday. Such a response would have been met with derision, or worse. Leaky caldron (talk) 12:03, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I was thinking about pursuing it, but the issue was resolved anyway. I was more interested in this case in solving the issue that fighting for law enforcement.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:31, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
To deal with limitations of ANI, arbcom escalation is not the only option. We can also discuss constructive proposals on Wikipedia:Village pump. We used to have WP:RFC/U to address issues with a single editor, and it had its own problems, but could be something to work from in shaping an alternative process. Dialectric (talk) 12:25, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
I'd argue that the issue of civility and harassment is a structural one, and one that is very, very difficult to change. I'd be very happy for a more friendly environment at the Wikipedia :/ . But / So I'm totally in favor of Studiesworld's suggestion ("Proceed to attempting to remedy the situation")! Sean Heron (talk) 14:25, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
As I've stated elsewhere, there needs to be a separation between the site's quasi judicial decision making and the protagonists involved in disputes. At the moment, particularly at ANI, the site's insistence on solving by 'consensus' means that editors with the most friends tend to fare best, which isn't a very fair system. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 14:37, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Agreed. – SJ + 15:13, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
See here for a very recent example. An editor made a clearly inappropriate comment, which was reverted by another editor, and the ANI discussion resulted in no action (not even a warning) because the comment had been removed. This is, unfortunately, par for the course. –dlthewave ☎ 21:15, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
BU Rob13, funny enough, I remember an administrator calling out 5 or 6 editors at ANI a few months ago, and then someone blocked that administrator for personal attacks. Mr Ernie (talk) 15:27, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@Mr Ernie: can you kindly link the ANI thread? ∯WBGconverse 16:59, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

I think that it is absolutely critical that the issues so articulately raised by BU Rob13 and PaleCloudedWhite are addressed, as the protection of possible victims is paramount. Few of us have the energy for months on end of public drama as a case goes through the ANI/ARBCOM gauntlet, particularly where there are errors of judgement on both sides. Further, WP:BOOMERANG is too often applied to sanction people who bring complaints in good faith, or a “we can’t sort it out, so you both get punished” sanction gets applied. Other times, Volume from the offender’s supporters often creates a false consensus and results in unjust outcomes. What we have created on WP is a hybrid of quasi-libertarian anarchy combined with something of an evolving “common law” of policies and guidelines, some of which have disputed interpretations, are misused or deliberately misapplied, or are in conflict with one another. Then, when the system breaks down, a collective mom/god-king (originally Jimbo, now the WMF) steps in and issues decrees from on high, often without a full understanding of the issue. This is no way to operate. We need more of a true “rule of law” here, with enough flexibility so that justice can be tempered by mercy and common sense when needed. The lines between what is the responsibility of ArbCom and the WMF need to be clearer, and the point at which the WMF can step in to override ArbCom needs to be clarified ahead of time. I’ve additional thoughts on this, but I’m already into tl;dr land, so shall close here for now. Montanabw(talk) 17:08, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

We need more of a true “rule of law” here, with enough flexibility so that justice can be tempered by mercy and common sense when needed. Hear, hear. I remember you first talking about this a long time ago, Montanabw, and thought it made loads of sense then. It makes even more sense now. I think the time may be right to form an informal "working group" that cuts through the nonsense on this and makes a formal proposal. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 18:13, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@Montanabw: Your comments are intriguing. I would like to pose two questions to you if you don't mind:
  1. If you had to guess, how many legitimate harassment incidents occur in any give unit of time on enwiki?
  2. What process would you propose to address incidents of harassment promptly, justly, and without exposing victims to additional harassment?- MrX 🖋 18:16, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
If I may, I'd like to remind everyone here that we have long chosen not to be a quasi-judicial body. Protection of victims is important, absolutely. But I do hope that any proposal in that regard takes into account the long-standing principles and policies of the English Wikipedia community. —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 18:39, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
And with respect, this is why we need a working group made up of people versed in policymaking to deal with this rather than having it be a free-for-all RfC. We aren't a cyberanarchist paradise anymore. We haven't been for years, and our behavior in venues like RFA, ANI, and AE are clear proof of it. The era where WP:NOTLAW is a response to any policymaking behavior is over. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 18:46, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
How one would shield victims is a difficult question. Use of this power by T&S has come with a gigantic Streisand effect, one that has reflected a spotlight on many with a difficult relationship with Fram, to the discomfort of more than one. It does not appear to have accomplished a purpose of removing someone from the scene so that another may peacefully edit, and there has been much speculation about many things, on this and other sites. It will probably be the same next time. Is it really worth it for T&S to push that button, given the collateral damage that is sure to result?--Wehwalt (talk) 18:52, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
The Streisand effect here has more to do with not revealing anything at all - and as I have pointed out repeatedly, explaining why the ban was limited, why ArbCom had a conflict of interest/was not the proper venue, and what changes need to be made to our policies could all be answered to our satisfaction without exposing the complainant. Had T&S given us an answer on all of those, we'd probably be at the tail end of a serious discussion about adjusting our harassment and Arbitration policies as opposed to just now starting them. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 21:34, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Mendaliv, I don't mind seeing people form a "working group" coming up with a proposal. Hell, people can form one of those on their own; they don't need permission from anyone to do it. But that proposal will be accepted, rejected, or modified by the community, at, yes, an RfC. We are not run by "working groups" who tell us "Now, here's what everyone will do", and the day that changes is the day a whole lot of us leave. It's never been a "cyberanarchist paradise", but it's not a bureaucracy, either. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:15, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Let's not burn down the wiki

Latest comment: 5 years ago51 comments30 people in discussion

I hope in time some of the people who retired in protest, disgust or frustration will return. Meanwhile, let's try to keep the place clean and presentable. This trouble will eventually be resolved to our satisfaction. There is no possible way WMF can manage this site without us. Jehochman Talk 00:46, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

@Jehochman: If the WMF treats volunteers with respect then yes, most will return and more newcomers will come. I am sorry, I currently do not feel like maintaining mainspace under this unclarity. I will return after some basic justice is served, but until then: let them do it themselves. We know about people who handed in bits, we don't know about how many volunteers left over this. Some of that is not repairable. Do you really think that WMF is caring when the angry volunteers just keep on working to make sure that their money comes in? --Dirk Beetstra T C 01:20, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
There's a difference between "burning down the wiki" (e.g., vandalizing the Main Page, or any number of more destructive things I won't describe here), and saying "I don't think volunteering for this is how I want to spend my time any more." I will greatly miss some of those who have left (and those are just the ones I know of), and I very much do hope they decide to come back around one day. But the WMF must know that if they mistreat us, we will leave. Because yes, they depend on us far more than we depend on them. Volunteers used to run the servers, fix Mediawiki bugs, even handle serious complaints like child protection and the like. We can do that without them; having someone else able to is a "nice to have". But the project cannot continue without the volunteers that keep it going day to day. Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:31, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Just so. “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” (geesh, I can't believe I'm quoting Ayn Rand. Jimmy save me.)
Spending time in your own communities' project is simply not the same thing as spending time on a corporation's project which tolerates your unpaid presence.--Gmaxwell (talk) 12:56, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
I am not sure that is the issue, walking way fine. But not walking away but rather just being obstreperous or denialist is. If you do not want to do it resign (I have some respect for then ones who have) but do not just throw tantrums and scream ans scram and scream until you are sick. Do not deliberately try to ruin things by "active" inaction.Slatersteven (talk) 13:02, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
This trouble will eventually be resolved to our satisfaction. - This seems far from a certainty to me. Relatively minor acts that are designed to ensure that this resolution actually happens in a timely manner seem like they could become both justified and possibly necessary. I'm willing to give Doc James his week. After that, if there is no statement or it's broadly unsatisfactory, we've broadly exhausted what we can do without escalating this, and we should entertain those ideas seriously. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:57, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
I see very little chance that management will force T&S to turn from the path they seem to have been moving toward for quite some time. If they do, great, obviously. But I would not overly rely on statements that are designed to sound good but say nothing.--Wehwalt (talk) 02:44, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Waiting a week for a statement from the board when it's already been almost three weeks since the eruption of this incident is utterly, completely unacceptable. Let this sink in for a moment; what if CEO Munoz of United Airlines had waited three weeks to make a statement after the United Express Flight 3411 incident? It took 48 hours for Munoz to realize United Airlines blew it, and make a statement of apology and to take corrective action. We are now 19 days into this and the CEO of the WMF has yet to issue any apology for the WMF's handling of this incident, nor make any statement about corrective action the WMF is going to take, only some general speculation on what they might do. Instead, we've been told "it is the weekend"...this, after it had already been more than two weeks since the crisis erupted. The WMF isn't a tiddlywinks back room club. They are an ostensibly professional organization with US$100 million in gross revenue. For them to take what will be three weeks and a half weeks to make a statement in response to the community revolt is absurd. --Hammersoft (talk) 03:09, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Not only that, they're trying to avoid the situation as much as possible. This is evident when some WMF staff vanished. INeedSupport :3 03:24, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Short answer (ok, not even vaguely short!) - WMF has no clue what the value of the community it. And it's hard to blame them, because no one understands the lightning-in-a-bottle nature of what we have here. I believe that WMF believes that if they did drive away a lot of editors, they'd be able to recruit new ones. In fact, they probably think they'd have a much easier time recruiting new editors if they got rid of the old, abrasive, newbie-biting crowd that's here already. People seem to think that if it wasn't for the rudeness of the community, new editors would be flooding in like they did in 2006.
I'm convinced that they're wrong.
Over the last 9 years, we've brought in almost 60,000 student editors. Many, many thousands of these are bright, motivated people who come away from the experience feeling like they've had a hand in changing the world (and in a real sense, that's true, even though for us making substantial edits to one article seems like a pretty small deal). We give them the tools to edit, we try to teach them how to interact with the community, and we answer questions. I think they do remarkable work, on average, but the quality of the work they do is immaterial to the point I want to make. The point I want to make is that the vast majority of student editors have a good experience contributing to Wikipedia. (I should know - I get the complaints when they don't have a good experience, either from them, or from their instructors, or from members of the community.) When you hang around ANI, you only see the bad experiences. When you look at thousands of interactions between Wikipedians and newcomers, you see lots of people who are willing to help student editors. But despite having brought tens of thousands of people to Wikipedia, despite them making hundreds of thousands of edits and adding over 50 million words to mainspace, we've created a tiny number of people who contribute to Wikipedia in a sustained, ongoing fashion.
If all it took to create Wikipedians was to bring them to Wikipedia, teach them to edit, and let them work in a constructive atmosphere, we'd be recruiting thousands of new Wikipedians to the community each year. Or at least hundreds.
So why isn't the editing community growing by leaps and bounds? Is it because Wikipedia has a bad interface, or the editing tools are too difficult, or the talk pages are too hard to use, or because we're all a bunch of rude jerks? No. It's because potential Wikipedians are extremely rare. The people who become people like us, for the most part, show up here and feel like they've come home. They feel like this is what they need to do with their lives.
Now, obviously, a toxic environment can drive people away, and it probably disproportionately drives women away. Harassment is real, and it's a real problem that we need to fix. Diversity is a problem, and it's a real problem that we need to fix.
I honestly don't think WMF gets this about Wikipedians. I honestly don't believe that we get this about ourselves. The project will go on without any one of us - it may even go on better without some of us - but the community is, in a very real sense, irreplaceable.
WMF doesn't get that. We probably look like a set of whiny, self-indulgent people, who want to set the rules for a playground we don't even own, rather than a community whose members have contributed millions of hours to build this mind-boggling source of free knowledge. We're tearing ourselves apart because we understand, at some level, the value of the community to the project, and we're really, really damn committed to the vision that underlies this project. Even the Wikipedians you can't stand, even the ones who you think we'd be better off without, are, overwhelmingly, people who believe so strongly in the mission of this project that they'd donate thousands of hours to it. It seems like WMF is willing to burn up all that goodwill and commitment because they don't get how fucking unusual a creature Wikipedians are.
And what makes me most frustrated is that there's no way to convince them otherwise. The people who need to read this pages aren't going to read this page. Guettarda (talk) 04:04, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
I found this very insightful. Thank you for writing it. GorillaWarfare (talk) 04:31, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@Guettarda: - please, send this to Katherine, Jan, and any other community liaison from WMF. starship.paint (talk) 06:48, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, absolutely this, and this must be a compulsory reading material for every WMF staffer who starts the job. Recently the high WMF management was very clear that we ("unorganized volunteers") are just easily replaceable. Ideally, it is best if volunteers do not even existm, and the articles are generated by themselves, but they are happy to tolerate volunteers as far as they shut up and do not meddle into important business such as Wikimedia Strategy. If we disappear, someone else would volunteer their time. And, unsuprisingly, this is very well correlated with the fact that the majority of WMF staffers have no editing experience on the projects.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:26, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Excellent overview. It is what you look at which determines whether you come away with the impression Wikipedia is 'toxic' or a Wikipedian 'deleterious to the project' or not. Evaluate its achievement in volume and quality of articles produced at zero cost since labour is not factored in because we are voluntaries, it is little short of a miracle in terms of contemporary doctrines about homo economicus, and almost universally recognized as such. If you haunt AE/ANI etc., you get the impression of endless, vindictive, petty squabbling. I have the former impression because I don't follows those arbitration forums except (which has been quite often) when I'm hauled there as a noxious, hounding, harassing, anti-Semitic, foul-mouthed arsehole, and have to read the complaints to defend myself. If you look at the sheer volume of edits, and articles produced, as opposed to the evidence for conflict, whether for the encyclopedia as a whole or by individual contributors, the problematical stuff/incidents suddenly looks exiguous to the point of being negligible. What T&S and the WMF seem to be doing is designing an ideal prototype of the ideal wikipedian editor characterized not by work capacity, tenacious regard for quality, acumen of judgment in sourcing, care for neutrality, etc., but by impeccable sociability. There is no evidence I know off that mild manners have anything to do with high achievement (to the contrary - the link with a certain obsessive strain is strongly attested). You are of course going to get blips, as your stakhanovites get on a short fuse, blow their tops or make snide remarks, but the mechanisms to sanction them, even permaban them are in place. 'But they're not perfect'; there are 'untouchables', 'justice often is not done'. True, just like any real world system of regulation. But the failure to achieve perfect outcome in any system of law is not,ipso facto an indictment either of the juridical system or its society. which must therefore act to engineer souls on a vast scale. Only dystopian totalitarian regimes take that road, with predictable results. Life's messy even in its most functional activities, and Wikipedia, if it is to continue to thrive, must accept unevenness in desired results, and disavow any temptation to railroad the vast diversity of people with different backgrounds and interests into a monotype, of unknown abilities, but soma-soaked with a sense of feeling comfortably at home in an unconflicted 'community' .Nishidani (talk) 07:35, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@Guettarda:, that is a point I've been trying to figure out how to make for years. Once upon a time, say 2002 when I joined, writing an acceptable article took maybe an hour or two of labor because the standards were so low: the emphasis was in getting content on the website, just to attract attention & hope that it would be improved soon. Since then, we've learned that throwing up a few sentences won't result in the magical creation of a Featured Article: if you want a useful article, you have to write it yourself. Which requires research, thought, & work. At least as much work as writing an undergraduate college term paper. (And producing a Good Article, let alone a Featured Article requires even much more work.) And all this assumes the article is written in isolation; if the subject has even the smallest amount of controversy, the effort required to make it useful increases exponentially.

And maintenance chores likewise a lot of work in order to do them right. I can say this because I've dabbled in most of them.

To want to do this kind of work for free, & without much public attention, & do it well, requires a certain kind of person. (I wouldn't be surprised if all of us have a masochistic streak.) So I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that the Foundation is so clueless about this. But it is a surprise that the Foundation nevertheless constantly finds the wrong approach every time they have to handle a serious problem with their member communities. (Based on their track record so far, I wouldn't be surprised if the WMF is someday written up as a Harvard Business School case study of how not to manage volunteer labor.) -- llywrch (talk) 07:54, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

I don't know about the masochism. I think many people contribute because they own their own accomplishments-- not the work product, but their collective contribution to it. I am proud of the many things I contributed to Wikipedia and smile when I see my work excerpted or policy I helped design quoted. Wikimedia was created by and as part of the community, to the extent that you could say it was something separate from the community it was a peer and co-collaborator. When the community is overridden except in emergencies or on inconsequential matters the community stops looking like the creators of Wikipedia, people who can feel proud of their own accomplishments by their own minds and sweat, but instead become simple labourers undertaking someone else's project-- unpaid ones, at that. If you look at frequent contributors you find many people of such a calibre that Wikimedia couldn't hope to hire more than a fraction of them at even a huge multiple of its current budget. These are not people who will contribute with such passion and volume just to serve someone elses design, it has to be their own through collaboration. A few people on this page have complained that there is harassment on Wikipedia-- I'm sure there is-- but the WMF approach exhibited here-- authoritarian, uneven, unaccountable-- seems to mirrors the handling of issues by sites like twitter which are abject failures at preventing harassment and fostering civil conduct. There might be a debate to be had that abandoning the approach that has taken Wikipedia this far could be justified for a superior alternative, but the T&S approach has no evidence that I've seen of being superior as a general mechanism for improving interactions in a large community, and I think the pattern we can see in other sites suggests that there is a continuum of decreasing effectiveness with greater centralization and authoritarianism and increasing effectiveness with increased community self-governance.--Gmaxwell (talk) 12:27, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
One point I may not been clear about in my sentence -- "To want to do this kind of work for free, & without much public attention, & do it well, requires a certain kind of person." It is that we work here & receive little direct acknowledgement for our contributions, except in rare & exceptional cases. I believe this lack of acknowledgement can't help but contribute to the toxic atmosphere here. (Blanket cliche compliments such as "You Wikipedians are doing a wonderful job" doesn't make much a difference when one is locked in a vicious fight to improve or protect Wikipedia.) It is inevitable that people who work hard but receive little or no acknowledgement for that work feel frustrated & angry over this lack of attention; even the most generous of people can only rationalize this lack of attention so far, & being human will sublimate it thru uncivil treatment of other people. One example of this happened many years ago: a volunteer started sorting stub tags -- up to that time, all stub articles were dumped into one, unwieldy category -- & received so much hostility for sorting stubs instead of turning them into much more informative articles that he left Wikipedia a few months later. Another, perhaps more relevant, example would be the steady dribble of hard-working admins who crash & burn before being escorted from the project. People wonder why each ended their Wikipedia career on such a negative note: lack of acknowledgement for their hard work is the overlooked answer. Perhaps if there was more acknowledgement of Wikipedians' contributions -- instead of dismissing our work as the hobby of students & retired people -- would detoxify the atmosphere significantly. -- llywrch (talk) 06:26, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
[ec] Guettarda, I found this pretty obvious, so clearly I agree. Kudos for making such a clear expression of what quite of number of Wikipedians would find a reasonable description of what we see as the reality. Sometimes you don't know what you've got till its gone. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 08:03, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

I was thinking about the issue of "how do we want to present ourselves to the WMF" myself. Some thoughts:

  • We should, at least for now, approach this from the angle of "the WMF was unhappy with enwiki's handling of civility / harassment issues, and took an unfortunately drastic step because of that; we want to know how we can improve so that sort of step is no longer necessary." That's a position that allows the WMF to save face, while hopefully resolving some of the underlying tensions. (I should add that when I say we should approach it from that angle, I'm not totally certain that that's actually how we got here, but I think there's enough people in the WMF ad on the board who understand Wikipedia well enough to recognize that they screwed up; and I think this is a framing they could sell to the others.)
  • To that end, we should focus on the idea of harassment and civility issues as cultural and social problems that aren't particularly well-suited to solving by this sort of lightning-from-heaven approach. It works for a small forum, but it doesn't scale to a project like Wikipedia.
  • The people who are heavily-involved in these discussions, while numerically small relative to Wikipedia's population, are generally policy wonks - they're the people who know the policy, who hang out on relevant policy boards to answer questions, show up to RFCs, weigh in on changes, edit extensively on high-trafficked articles, and, in many cases, are the people doing the gruntwork of enforcing those policies. Therefore, we're the best people to work with when it comes to changing Wikipedia's policies and culture, and with getting those changes to stick. The actual process is a lot longer and more involved and involves long-term back and forth with more and more people overtime as changes sink in and other editors notice them, push back, suggest tweaks, and so on, but the kinds of people who reacted to this ban with a ! are generally the ones who you'd want shepherding any sort of major policy change. That is to say, it's worthwhile to at least listen to us, talk to us, tell us what you want done, and so on.
  • Sending that message requires that we come across as not-insane, as willing to discuss overarching changes, and as generally willing to accept the goals of T&S even if we dislike how this was handled.
  • That said, there's also fairly clearly a faction in the WMF who wants to send the message that the WMF is unquestionable, its decisions cannot be challenged or appealed, and who absolutely do not want to yield anything at all (and who believe any sort of meaningful dialogue with us would be yielding to the mob.) So it's important to keep up the pressure through the channels we have available and to send the general message that first, the way they handled this isn't working; and that second, they can't step into day-to-day moderation for complex things like civility and expect to remain unquestionable and absolute, not in a community with Wikipedia's size and history.

We need to give the WMF an 'out'. There are people in the WMF and on the board who understand our history and culture and who are trying to argue our side in this, but the people they need to convince think the WMF is an absolute authority and see any sort of concessions as unacceptable; and as stupid as that might be, none of them are people we can easily remove or route around right now. So at the moment, if we want to avoid the worst possible outcome, we need to focus on a framing that they can be persuaded to accept, which means avoiding ridiculous demands for absolute surrender and the like. If we come across as "those crazies who want to burn down Wikipedia because they banned Fram", we're going to lose. --Aquillion (talk) 07:58, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Whereas I understand the arguments of those who say that this page does not necessarily represent the majority view because of its toxic atmosphere (and I have seen a couple of dissenters literally booed away), an Rfc or a series of RfCs on civility/harassment/whatever, especially if the get endorsed by ArbCom, is a completely different issue, since they will be announced wiki-wide and hopefully moderated so that everybody will have a chance to give their opinion.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:12, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I want to thank Guettarda and many of the editors who replied for some of the most insightful analyses of what has been going on. Great work, and thanks again! --Tryptofish (talk) 17:04, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Rather them smash the crockery how about suggestions about how we can improve the systems that allow users to get away with harassment and bigotry because "they are too useful"?Slatersteven (talk) 09:34, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

I think that's hyperbole. It really isn't us-against-them. I do think the community needs to have a long and thoughtful discussion about civility. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:05, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
I agree that that's the way forward (I said so in a more long-winded way above), but I do also feel that before we can actually move forward in a serious way, we need the WMF to indicate what improvements they want and to make it clear that they'll stop doing things like this if we address their concerns. While we can discuss ideas and maybe make some incremental improvements even without that, I don't think we're getting any major changes through under the climate created by their most recent missteps until / unless we have a clear indicator from them along the lines of "this is the problem, you have to solve it, and if you do we'll back down." We do want to obtain some assurance that enwiki's editorial independence will be respected going forward, including when it comes to our policies, as long as we draw within the broad lines of necessities painted by the WMF. We can only get the changes we need through, basically, if it's clear that this is a substitute for T&S stepping in on traditionally enwiki-handled conduct disputes, not a supplement to it. But I do think that coming up with some general proposals and testing the waters with them (to show the WMF what we can accomplish if they're willing to trust us and work with us rather than trying to go it alone as they have here) might help in that respect. --Aquillion (talk) 21:17, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
I think that's an astonishingly naive point of view, and only really works well if your mission is to spread the Californian idea of "harassment" and "civility" across the whole of the English Wikipedia, forgetting that most English-language cultures have a far more robust view of language than the San Francisco snowflakes. Eric Corbett 21:34, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Eric, this is a really good example of the problem. You could have said the same thing without throwing around insults and generalizations. But that's just now how you work. I know that, and no one really wants to deal with the conflict associated with pointing it out to you. So these kind of aggressions go unchecked. No one of them is a big deal, but overall it makes this place less civil and frankly less pleasant to deal with. And frankly they don't bother me personally. But they do drive away conflict-adverse editors. And that's probably been a lot of people over the years. Hobit (talk) 02:25, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
+1. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:36, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
-1. There was nothing aggressive in that statement. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 02:39, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Many people take offense to having their points of view characterized as astonishingly naive (and various other put-downs). It's entirely unnecessary abrasiveness unmitigated by an "I think" preface, it's how fights get started, and it's easily replaced by "I strongly disagree". ―Mandruss ☎ 02:59, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
That isn't aggression, it's just rudeness. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 03:18, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. My +1 was in support of the general gist, not that isolated word. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
In what sense is it "rude" to state my opinion of your opinion? Eric Corbett 13:55, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
No problem! —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 03:25, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
In fact it's you Hobit who so clearly demonstrate the problem here, not me. And the fact that you criticise my opinion while at the same time casting unsupported accusations at me is equally astonishing to me, demonstrating that your attitude is at best inconsistent and at worst downright dishonest; I'm going for dishonest. Eric Corbett 13:50, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Erm - I'm not sure how else I'd put your use of "San Fransisco Snowflakes" than as an "insult and generalization" :( .... I strongly agree with Mandruss and Hobit. Count me in for an editor that for the longest time has mostly stayed out of both article space and policy discussions and similar to avoid: a) being worn down by long unproductive discussion (not at issue here!), and b) commonly default language that is rather unfriendly, rather than in an air of community.
I have very little I can say to your last response itself - it seems like doubling down on the attack to avoid having to acknowledge that there is an issue with your tone... Sean Heron (talk) 15:03, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
There's no reason for you to respond at all, particularly as I have absolutely no interest in anything you might have to say. Eric Corbett 15:28, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
I am aware that you object to WP:CIVIL and have no illusions that you are persuadable on that topic. Nonetheless, Wikipedia is a cooperative endeavor, and WP:CIVIL is therefore a cornerstone of our continued operation. If you cannot work well with others and continuously drive off those you work with, then you are a net negative to the project regardless of your other qualities - in a collaborative project, the ability to interact non-abrasively with others is as much a WP:COMPETENCE issue as having correct grammar and spelling. This is not some sort of strange and arcane sorcery practiced only in anarchistic, freewheeling San Francisco; indeed, in my experience that is if anything one of the looser parts of the world, one where you can have whatever ridiculous punk hairdo you want, wear whatever angry screw-the-whoever shirt, curse and swear even most workplaces and so on. In less liberal parts of the world, if you want to work on a collaborative project, you wear your shirt and tie, you make nice to people you need to collaborate with, you set basic ground rules for civility and you follow them - or you get the boot. The fact that Wikipedia is a volunteer project doesn't free us from the need for at least some of that, no more than it frees us from the need to ensure that volunteers have basic language skills or from rest of WP:COMPETENCE. In fact, in some ways the need for basic standards of civility is more pressing here, because without rules for civility it becomes tempting for people to use abrasiveness as a way to win disputes by driving off people with whom they disagree - something that, in the long run, damages the project as a whole by costing us valuable editors and sabotaging dispute resolution. We can and should avoid unnecessary restrictions, especially ones that don't relate to retaining editors - Wikipedia, obviously, isn't a shirt-and-tie place - but intentionally being abrasive to fellow editors is either deliberately harming the project or expressing a callous disregard for its well-being so severe that it undermines your contributions, and should therefore be treated the same way as overt vandalism or expressing a total disregard for grammar. --Aquillion (talk) 02:28, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@Aquillion: Very well articulated, mirrors my thinking precisely. Perhaps that would be a useful addition to the essay WP:DISRESPECT, I guess as a separate section. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:54, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
I also discussed bad behaviour being used to win disputes in Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Encouraging collaborative behaviour. I believe English Wikipedia needs better content-dispute resolution mechanisms so that unco-operative behaviour is not a good strategy to win a dispute, and instead collaborative behaviours are encouraged. By creating an environment where positive behaviours are selected for, negative ones will be diminished. isaacl (talk) 16:00, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Somewhere on this long page there was a invitation for long-standing non-administrators to comment. I am not an admin, because I never saw WP as an obligation, or a career move. It is good to see so many names of my wiki-heros on one page all singing more or less from the same hymn sheet- expressing so many shades of revulsion. Two words came to mind: snowflake and Scunthorpe. I have seen this occur in so many charities- you employ some for their finance or charity law skills, which is a bit specialised- they need assistance so employ another expert- and immediately the business becomes part of the charity career path, and the employees don't have time to stay in-touch with the volunteers, and the goals of the project are lost to the needs to set up compliance committees, which in their turn start restricting and repelling the volunteers. I do about 300 edits a month- even if we insisted that each of our representatives and employees did 30, they wouldn't be really building up sufficient experience to form global judgements.
We know the destruction that ip-editors can cause, I class ip-complainants in the same class. I had a steep learning curve when I went from Didsbury, to Cheetham Hill where the register of language had changed; where Fxxx, cum ere ya dozy Fxxxxx, you cxxx was a expression of endearment from mother to child. My Didsbury snowflake upbringing still prevents my from typing it half a century later. The word Fxxx is used verbally as a form of punctuation.
But on the street, the language that would be used to describe some snitch that went making mallicious allegations anonymously about long-standing respected editor that happened to use a different language register would be colourful. Try tell them that someone has banned said long-standing editor, but wont tell them why! Then try telling them that someone has never actually edited! Where are they going to send their drone next.
Scunthorpe- early internet attempts to block 'rude' words- bit of an urban legend.
I suggest that the WMF is seriously out of its depth here, and should fess up, and ask the community whether there ever was actually a problem? ClemRutter (talk) 10:57, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Didsbury?? Eh lad, you were fxxxing lucky. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:05, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Apparently WMF Office and the old en.Wikipedian establishment challenge authority of each other. Surely WMF Office can manage the site without old admins – it isn’t very difficult to hire scores of replacement ones. And vice versa, the establishment (theoretically) can do without the umbrella structure as well. But neither, obviously, is willing to back off. The real point is that nowadays the brand “Wikipedia” has a huge capitalization and two cliques attempt to decide who is its “rightful” owner, of the expensive brand. As for users, these are IMHO brawls of oligarchs, and some form of online encyclopedia will persist whoever going to win now. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:27, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@Incnis Mrsi: Things are not that simple. I don't know how many employees the WMF would have to hire to replace the current all volunteer Admin/Bureaucrat/Functionary corps in English Wikipedia, but it would probably be at least 100, plus supervisors (not counting the other projects). Each of those employees would have to be well versed in policy. They would also be dependent on volunteer editors to report problems to them. While I suspect that many contributing editors would continue as before, the sort of editors that are engaged enough with the goals and spirit of Wikipedia to seek to become admins are not necessarly a good fit to become employees of the WMF (I have known several editors/admins who have gone to work for the WMF, but few have stayed there long term). - Donald Albury 14:38, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
When this saga began, I thought "almost never, do I look for a page on wikipedia and not find it. Wikipedia has covered almost all of history already. So, maybe WMF think they can now run Wikipedia as a business by hiring editors,admins, what have you; without the need of volunteers at all if need be (plus there's always going to be a ton of COI editors adding material here)." Three weeks later, I find that ridiculous. Very few articles in here are complete and decades worth of volunteer work is still required to make all of wikipedia up to standards. No way WMF can do without engaged volunteers, exactly the kind that's unhappy due to this whole thing. So, no other way than to bow down to community consensus (vocal part of it anyway). The best they can hope for is the community doesn't come after their jobs when the dust settles. Usedtobecool ✉️ ✨ 14:52, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Certainly making the coup would not be a trivial endeavor, but on the other hand Jehochman’s sentiment is fairly naïve. How many sysops will resign (in solidarity with the old establishment) on such event? How much of its admin force will en.Wikipedia lose? Possibly some 40%, perhaps 50%, but IMHO by any mean less than 80%. Certain functions may be promptly unbundled from the default admin package and no administrative collapse would happen. As of “other projects”, how fool does Donald Albury expect the Office party to be to disrupt all wikis at once? Irrelevant. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:58, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Nothing stops them from appointing more. They could even take advice from on-wiki groups of their choice.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:10, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Each of those employees would have to be well versed in policy. If WMF replaced the volunteer corps with professional admins and functionaries, there's nothing to keep them from completely replacing our policies at the same moment. They would also be dependent on volunteer editors to report problems to them. Same issue: They could just move to a Facebook model of reporting where it's anonymous and through a complaints form, and each report gets spun through some machine learning algorithm to sort out the more serious ones. Nah, making enwiki non-volunteer isn't inconceivable, nor does it necessarily follow that WMF needs to make the other language wikis non-volunteer. They aren't the problem children in WMF's view. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 15:27, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
I don't know what it would take to push enough high-productivity admins to resign to significantly impact the quality of Wikipedia. Some of the admins who have resigned have been very productive, a few have taken fewer admin actions in the past year than I have (I am a little below 300th on the list of admins ranked by admin actions). Of course, many admins do things that don't get counted on that list, such as closing difficult discussions, that I don't do. I do keep in mind something I learned a long time ago, when I quit a job I didn't like, that while I might be irreplacable in a job, I wasn't indispensible. Organizations usually find a way to make do, unless that way is so expensive that it puts them out of business. I haven't decided what I will do in the long run about this, although I have, for more than one reason, [stopped editing] in the Main space for the past week. I haven't quite settled where I stand on the issues. I suspect that there are other issues that have been largely ignored in all of the hullaballoo. In any case, I've been somewhat leery of the WMF for many years, after involvement in a WMF initiative that I thought did not end well. The bottom line is that I just want to add well-sourced content to Wikipedia, but feel obligated to contribute to the fight to keep crap out. That part frequently frustrates me, to the point that I have taken several long breaks over the years. This whole business may be the start of another break for me. The WMF taking away the choice of admins from the community probably would push me away permanently. I am under no illussion that my leaving would significantly harm Wikipedia. WMF taking over direct administration of the English Wikipedia would change it in ways that I would no longer feel comfortable contributing to. Another of my life lessons is, if what you are doing isn't fun anymore, find something else to do. - Donald Albury 15:58, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Possible outcomes are not limited to an overt hostile takeover or maintaining status quo. Think Donald Albury – how many votes could Fram earn on an RfA having their “fuck you ArbCom” escapades on the record? The fact that establishment members once passed RfA doesn’t make all of them trusted. WMF could, indeed, accelerate some processes, such as removal of the least competent admins—instead of making a clear takeover. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:28, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Statement from Jimbo

Latest comment: 5 years ago11 comments11 people in discussion

The Board met yesterday to work on a full statement about this. It's not easy getting to consensus with a large group, but overall I think people are going to be happy with the statement and with the things we are asking the WMF staff to do going forward. As one board member wasn't present, we decided to give a bit more time so that we can get to unanimity. diff Usedtobecool ✉️ ✨ 12:11, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

  • I hope Jimbo is right. Fingers crossed. This is good news. Rockstonetalk to me! 18:33, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Good, and the entire event will hopefully be a great learning curve for both "sides" which, in truth, should be playing well together on the same team. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:40, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
    Nope, nothing will make this a "great learning curve", that's patently absurd. WMF stopped playing on the same team when they did what they did and then went into three (or more) weeks) of radio silence. Gross negligence. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
    We should be playing together in the same team, indeed. I hope people pay more attention in the next round of elections to the Board, and chose someone that can actually make a difference there in terms of regaining the WMF to the Wikimedia Movement. The Board is made by 10 persons - 5 of them are chosen by the communities (2 affiliates + 3 all communities), which in turn appoint the other 5 places (1 of them is fixed, Jimbo). This means that the power is actually with us to decide the fate of the WMF. We just need to have more "Wikimedia citizenship" on those elections and participate in them, instead of ignoring them and letting others decide for ourselves. Darwin Ahoy! 22:31, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
    I suspect that the problem isn't on the board level, actually. The board only interacts with the WMF via the Executive Director, and the WMF staff have been drifting away without a simple way of the board pulling them back. I think that fixing this will have to involve bringing more WMF staff activities on-wiki and encouraging regular interaction between individual employees and volunteers about their (the employee's) work. This would be a lot easier if the WMF was smaller (and if turnover was slower), but we should be able to influence the WMF on a culture/ideology level. (Also, we need a bigger community megaphone pointed at the WMF and a smaller WMF megaphone pointed at the community, but that might be harder.) --Yair rand (talk) 22:43, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
  • A statement after several weeks. How wonderful. Perhaps by this time next year we can expect an action. Really. The WMF is making Motch McConnell's response to 9/11 first responders look like a speed demon in action. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006. (talk) 00:56, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Good news, thank you Jimbo. Let's hope the statement sets out clearly what the community expects of the WMF, while also providing a forum for them to tell us how they expect us to deal with issues pertaining to the terms-of-use. And to those still complaining about the speed of this, it seems fairly obvious to me that a real-life legal entity, with multiple moving parts, is not going to give results at the same pace as the community, which is 24-hour and real-time.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:04, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • For me, it is important that any action respects sensitive data too. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:59, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • So? when's it coming?LetUsNotLoseHearT 22:23, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
According to this, any moment now. Watch this space... GirthSummit (blether) 22:52, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Strike

Latest comment: 5 years ago37 comments26 people in discussion

I've been thinking. One way we as a community can show our displeasure at the situation is by having an editing strike. What I am proposing is a 24-hour period where no edits are made in article space, with some very limited exceptions - e.g. Reverting vandalism and BLP violations would be permitted. Would suggest Monday 8 July would be a suitable date. This would give us time to assess any response from WMF as detailed above. Mjroots (talk) 21:07, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Mjroots, as I've said above, I don't think the time is ripe for drastic action. Lets see what the board have to offer. If it's unsatisfactory, or doesn't manifest itself within the promised 7 days, then we can look at taking action. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 21:19, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Which is why I've suggested 8 July, although that date is open to being moved backwards, depending on what transpires in the next 7 days. Mjroots (talk) 21:22, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Mjroots, I think 8 July is too early - the response may turn up on 4th or 5th. We then have to digest it, decide it's lacklustre, then organise a coordinated strike. I don't see that happening in 3 or 4 days. 10 July, marking 1 month since Fram's ban, would give us more time to coordinate. and also be quite symbolic. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 21:29, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Let's take the trade union approach then. Prepare for a strike on a certain date. Get the publicity out. A strike can always be called off. 10 July is a very good suggestion. Mjroots (talk) 21:32, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I doubt the vast majority of the people who actually edit articles on a daily basis are even aware of this dispute. A strike by only those who are taking part in the discussion on this page will have no effect at all. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 21:28, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
What Boing! said. My watchlist is still full of people I've never heard of or IPs tinkering away with articles. They won't care about this, unless perhaps, heaven forbid, somebody like Trump makes a comment on it one way or another and it gets stuck on mainstream news. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 21:54, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Ha-ha, I can only imagine how this scandal would fade in comparison of a shitshow which would happen if some right-wing current or former Wikipedian baited Trump to tweet about the scandal in "left LGBT+ feminists oppress white men" terms. Ain92 (talk) 22:24, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • It would not accomplish what we want, kind of like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to get sick. But one thing I'm increasingly sure of: there need to be repercussions in the next election for the Board of Trustees. (To be clear, I don't mean Doc James there. But some other members, that's another matter.) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    Tryptofish, don't hold your breath. They quietly extended their terms from two to three years, so there's not going to be a 2019 election; the next elections aren't until June 2020. ‑ Iridescent 21:58, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
      Facepalm See also: learned helplessness. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:01, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    Not really quietly, there was a (meta) community discussion about this, and every single user who posted in that discussion was against the third term extension.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:46, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    Tryptofish I am working quite hard on daily basis over the last weeks to resolve this. This includes communication and ad-hoc phone calls with the Board members, drafting letters that would be agreeable by a majority of people, and similarly *entertaining* tasks. Even though I am not really active on en-wiki, I'm replying to every question that I'm pinged at or that pops on my discussion page related to this case. Pundit|utter 17:14, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    Pundit, thank you very much for that. It's clear to me that you and Doc James are on the right side of this controversy. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:18, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The "limited exceptions" could be a problem. It seems that such edits might (sadly) be a significant portion of the daily volume, and continuing with those edits during the strike would likely reduce its noticeability. (ec) —[AlanM1(talk)]— 21:45, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I haven't done any edits in article space since this started and don't intend to do any more until it is satisfactorily resolved.Smeat75 (talk) 21:51, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
It just occurred to me: I've been doing almost nothing on content, not really as an intentional strike, but just because I've become too upset with this to have an interest in regular editing. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:54, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Nor have I; nor will I. Victoria (tk) 21:55, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Same here, Tryptofish, Victoria. I'm just maintaining.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:46, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Let me say this. I've been quietly watching this from the sidelines as an admin, I find all the admins/checkusers/etc resigning to be a ginormous mistake given the lack of RFAs the last 5–6 years. I've watched this from every single angle. I also have friends talking about this on Twitter who don't even edit here. While I think it is incredibly clear change is needed, resigning tools and giving up on 18 years of progress is not the way to go here. I'm in most agreement that change is needed, but "strikes", resigning tools, etc. is not the answer, It disappoints me to have to watch people do that. Do we really want to give up on 18 years of progress on this? Heaven knows I'm not. Mitch32(Fame is a four letter word.) 21:58, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

+1 Daniel Case (talk) 23:14, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Mistake on whose part? I've been here since 2006, admin since 2012. It isn't a mistake for me to resign the bit if I feel that the editors here and myself have been marginalized. That's a choice. I don't think a strike is a viable option, however. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:05, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    • A strike would be ill-advised, as would other disruptive acts. I suspect some face to face discussion at wikimania will be substantive and (hopefully) productive. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:37, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
      • I agree. We don't need to resort to things we would regret. Not for them, but any disruption only hurts fellow editors. I don't hold out hope that face to face time will make a difference, but I hope you are right. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:39, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@Casliber: But how many of the editors in this & related fora are likely to attend Wikimania? I doubt Stockholm is convenient for many on en-wiki who are not receiving travel grants. We're fundamentally an online site with a widely distributed user base, many of whom are unwaged. There are technologies for consulting in real time with such groups; why is the Foundation not employing them? Espresso Addict (talk) 03:25, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
There are a few people going who want to discuss things - and face to face is often alot more productive than remotely. However, I do agree I'd like to see something alot sooner than that. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:26, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Did you know that the Wikimedia Foundation has started banning long-term respected contributors to Wikipedia while refusing to either explain their decision or offering a way to appeal the sanction? In the news: The stability of Wikipedia, a successful online encyclopaedia, is being threatened by a unilateral extension of the Wikimedia Foundation's exercise of direct control, bypassing the editing community that build most of the project. I also think Non-cooperation movement and maybe even Sabotage could be brought to Featured status and go on the main page... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:20, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Agree that it is not yet time for a strike. High-profile admin resignations are already, hopefully, sending a strong message. As above once we hear the board statement, apparently in 1 week at most, we can consider other avenues including a site notice banner as discussed above, which could open a broad discussion on options including a strike.Dialectric (talk) 23:24, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • SHUT IT DOWN. Enough is enough. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 00:19, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes .. keep on delaying this. I am sure that they will voluntarily give a message. Either after this meeting, or maybe after the next. It is, after all, just 2 weeks and a couple of days. </sarcasm> On the 5th of July you get half a bone and another meeting date. You wait another 2 weeks (4 'because of a holiday') ... ad nauseam. Start a massive strike now, and by the time the meeting is Wikipedia starts to turn into a mess and they will be covered in a sea of reports of ToU violations that we did not solve but reported to them. At some point, to have some credibility, they will have to lock en.wikipedia and revert it back a couple of days. Shut it down. NOW. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:45, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • In line with the concept of a worker strike (which I have participated in in RL more than once), I cannot in good conscience continue to implement the Wikipedia Editor of the Week Award at this time, until progress has been made toward de-escalating the situation at WP:FRAMBAN. This award has been distributed weekly since 2013. I'm not sure what progress I should expect but I'll know it when I see it. My sincere hope is that whatever comes about will lead to more respect for the workers in the front lines.―Buster7 ☎ 13:30, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • While I think calling for a general strike is pointless, I completely understand why individuals would choose to not participate in editing or maintenance. I haven't myself, even when seeing something that needed fixing. Honestly, I just didn't feel like it. It isn't about defiance so much as "I don't want to", a lack of motivation given the current environment. We are volunteers, after all, with no obligation to do anything. Anyone who criticizes that is simply not understanding the meaning of "volunteer". Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:40, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    • An editor strike would not be pointless if it could be given enough publicity by the mainstream media and enough people were to take part. I'm not looking to completely shut down Wikipedia like we did for the SOPA and PIPA protest. Mjroots (talk) 04:01, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I would just like to register my moral support for all those admins who have resigned over this issue. I would resign myself if I thought it would be effective, but I doubt it will make any impression on WMF at all. Likewise, I won't be joining an editor strike. Unless the strike reaches a critical mass of editors, it won't have any effect. If there existed an editors' union with 90% membership, they could plan a campaign and set a date for action. That might just get noticed and I would feel obliged to participate. But that's just wishful thinking. As things stand it will likely be a pointless nose-cutting exercise. SpinningSpark 09:50, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
  • As per User:Spinningspark, moral support to those admins. I think if I personally stopped "contributing" anything for a week, it might actually enhance the encyclopedia! Indeed, if even the most productive content contributor stopped, most readers would probably not even notice. But if all vandalism protection was suspended for a week, I can't imagine the kind of huge mess that would result. Of course, as Spinningspark suggests, someone would eventually have to come back and clean up that mess. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:08, 3 July 2019 (UTC) p.s. and my goodness, we'd have so many copyright violating YouTube videos, the corporate lawyers would be queuing up for years to come.....

This just in...

Latest comment: 5 years ago25 comments16 people in discussion

Wikipedia’s “Constitutional Crisis” Pits Community Against Foundation - MrX 🖋 16:30, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

  • This is damn good and quite well balanced from all aspects. Can somebody ping those folks up above, who had confidently predicted that no reputable external media was even going to be bothered about covering these insider-baseball issues? ∯WBGconverse 16:42, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Personally, I was surprised it took this long. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:05, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
We need to keep going though. People need to contribute guest columns wherever they can. Two articles (three by some accounts) is a good start, but this needs to snowball, and we need to control the offsite narrative better. The claim in the Slate article that T&S would only act if it was "incredibly obvious" there was "serious harassment" (is there any harassment that isn't serious?) is bananas. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 17:26, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Turning off the office coffee pot knowing that your disliked coworker hasn't had his morning cup yet is non-serious harassment. EEng 18:52, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
I don't see how having inflamed Wikipedia editors contribute guest columns will result in balanced coverage. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:34, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Above people were saying that the media would look at us as a bunch of entitled brats. And let's be realistic, no editor is going to run something that's self-interested invective because it'll harm their brand. And the people who have the wherewithal to get things published know better than to write that way. Our job is to get coverage to control the offsite narrative in order to ensure WMF can be pressured into acceding to our demands. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 17:36, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
no editor is going to run something that's self-interested invective because it'll harm their brand – Then how do you explain Fox News carrying phone interviews with Trump all the time? EEng 18:50, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Their job is to get coverage to control the narrative in order to ensure others can be pressured into acceding to their demands? cygnis insignis 19:34, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Just for what it is worth, the 'mistakes' clearly show that there have been no insiders contributing to the article. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:23, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Wasn't there an AfD or something? Seems to be a second RS here.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:55, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fram controversy. Various aspects of WP:NEVENT still apply, however, and I doubt that the notability is actually established at this point. WP:PERSISTENCE poses a particular problem. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:04, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • This meets the bare minimum of WP:GNG, but there's still room to debate whether it should be covered on its own article or the general List of Wikipedia controversies page (several things there with no article of their own have more coverage, so at the moment there would be potential WP:DUE issues.) That said, this implies to me that there's likely to be more coverage down the line, so I suspect we'll end up with a standalone article at some point. Also, the headline here supports something I mentioned earlier, which is that ArbCom (with its general perception as the "Wikipedia Supreme Court") is our best voice for attracting attention to issues of concern to the community - it seems likely that their open letter played a role in convincing Slate that the issue was worth covering. "Wikipedia constitutional crisis" is a framing that makes intuitive sense even to people with no knowledge of our internal policies. The ArbCom letter also gives news sources a concise summary of why the community is concerned, which is very useful in terms of attracting coverage to an issue whose policy and cultural dimensions can sometimes get a bit arcane. EDIT: The concern is that if the Wikimedia Foundation runs Wikipedia as Facebook and Twitter run their so-called communities, it would kill the encyclopedia. Hmm, I recognize that comparison... --Aquillion (talk) 17:34, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Very, very nice article. My main sticking point:

“The only thing that happens is that people get dragged before the court of public opinion and told that everything they feel and experience is invalid.” You’re not alone if the thought of crowdsourced justice makes you queasy.

That isn't what's being advocated here at all. If anything it's what we're trying to fight back against, because an inscrutable Office Action invites public speculation and dissection of everyone and anyone with whom the banned editor ever clashed. So not only is the complainant presumably harmed, but everyone—even people who were just opponents and not victims—become victimized by the mob. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 17:22, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
While we choose not to think of what we are doing as crowd-sourced justice, it is easy to see how the way we handle discipline (especially AN/ANI, but to some extent also ArbCom), where everyone chimes in and debates what would be best until some consensus emerges, would seem to an outsider like civilized mob rule. As the harassment of innocents that you cite reveals, there's an argument to be made that it only works for as long as we choose to not behave like a mob. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:33, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Nobody is talking about AN/ANI or public witch trials for harassers, and if that's what you're getting out of this discussion, I suggest you read more closely. We are calling for self governance and separation of powers. We don't want an inscrutable black box of God-knows-who reviewing God-knows-what and deciding both that an investigation is merited and punishment is warranted. We don't want our community standards decided by people from outside of enwiki who weren't chosen for being in touch with our community standards.
Let me make this absolutely clear: Nobody here is calling for fully public trials, a fully public airing of evidence, or an ad hoc decision made by a consensus of participating editors in cases of harassment. Nobody has called for that and it's insulting to compare what we're trying to achieve here with ANI. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 17:41, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
I justified my position poorly. What I was trying to communicate is that most outsiders will expect a difference in competence and professionalism between paid, full-time rule enforcers (the WMF staff, in this case) and random volunteers (that is, whatever community process you want to choose). I'm not advancing this position, merely claiming it is not absurd, and that I don't think its fair to bash the professional journalist for not standing up for our (really rather flawed) community processes for dealing with harassment. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 19:19, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
But what ArbCom is doing is not passing judgment. It is protecting the Wiki. People do not get sanctioned/banned as punishment; it happens because they are impairing the quality of Wikipedia. Unfortunately, this point gets blurred because most of the cases brought to ArbCom involve volunteer misbehavior. And there is the fact that all of this ponderous process -- RfCs, WP:AN/I, ArbCom -- is not to punish but simply to get people to change their behavior, to learn that the motto "anyone can edit" does have a number of restrictions. Do we need to point out that an editor who is otherwise unobjectionable -- is civil, avoids conflict, follows the rules as best as they can -- can still be banned if they fail WP:COMPETENCE? We've banned people whose English is abysmal. The issue of harassment has been missed in large part because it doesn't directly relate to protecting the Wiki, but needs to be addressed. (And needless to say, harassment needs to be handled in a manner that the community agrees to. Or the community will dissolve.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:47, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Not perfect but a decent article that seems reasonably balanced and accurate. As for FRAMGATE being notable enough for its own article, I'd say no. Although if more coverage were to appear and especially if this is still being discussed in a few months outside the community, my opinion could change. Alas if this is still an issue in a few months, I won't be here to contribute to the discussion. For good or ill I believe this is going to be the decisive week. IMHO by next week this will either be over or we will at least have a good idea which way it is going to end. If the WMF hasn't given a satisfactory response by then, that will be an answer in itself. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:28, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
There was already a separate article attempted. Consensus at AfD was to merge it into List of Wikipedia controversies, which probably remains the right call. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:32, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I saw that and agree that it was, and for now, remains the right call. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:35, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes, a fair presentation except the gloom and doom guesswork at the end. But Jimbo has promised that a statement has been agreed to and forthcoming shortly which will make the community happy, so hopefully Slate will cover that as a part of their story when it occurs. Randy Kryn (talk) 19:24, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • That's a damn good article!, I would say it's a lot better than Buzzfeeds too (Never been a fan of BF tbh), I do concur with Ad Orientem tho there's not enough coverage out there just yet for an article. –Davey2010Talk 21:17, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I'd just like to pile on that this controversy has nowhere near enough reliable source coverage to meet any of our notability guidelines (WP:NOTNEWS, WP:EVENT, etc.), at least not right now. IntoThinAir (talk) 01:12, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Excellent article, balances viewpoints, and I think it draws some good comparisons vs the Buzzfeed News article (itself of good quality). In fact, all 3 (external) news articles have been of good quality - an extremely pleasant change from prior issues. I can only hope it continues. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:30, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Active admins and contributions from resigned admins

Latest comment: 5 years ago39 comments20 people in discussion

I threw together a quick analysis, summarized at this table.

My preliminary conclusions:

Observations:

  • There are 731 editors (current or recent admins) with one or more admin actions in the one year.
  • This number overstates the number of active administrators — some of those actions may literally have been to avoid a desysop 115, including Jimbo, has 1 or 2 in last year
  • As a very low bar, there are 574 with five or more actions in the year
  • As a more reasonable bar, there are 411 with 24 or more in the year (i.e. averaging two a month)
  • As a higher bar, there are 237 with 240 or more in the year (i.e. averaging 20 a month)
  • The 20 22 resigned admins were responsible for 19423 admin actions or 2.4% of the total (updated Beetstra, Voice of Clam)

Feedback welcomeS Philbrick(Talk) 14:32, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. What does the second column mean? I can not figure it out.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:39, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Ymblanter, The second column is (or I should say was) the index column generated by the original report. I left it in so one could sort by that column and see the order of the original report but that's not necessary in this table, so I removed it as it means almost nothing and just generates questions :) S Philbrick(Talk) 15:03, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Also I assume contribution of those who resigned unrelated to the Fram incident, or were desysopped, or Fram, were not included.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:47, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Ymblanter, yes (with the caveat that you summarized my intent, whether I achieved it will be soon determined). Fram is definitely excluded, as are some recent desysops unrelated to this incident. S Philbrick(Talk) 15:05, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Tnx, this is indeed now clear.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:08, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I've also had thoughts along these lines [16], but I think we also have to acknowledge that reducing things to bare numbers doesn't allow for some of the intangibles. Many of the resignations were by very visible and highly respected admins. (I'm not saying others aren't respected too). The impact this has had lies beyond the black and white of "just the facts ma'am". I'm not criticizing, in fact I think this is very well done and I thank you. — Ched :  ?  — 15:41, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    Ched, In fact, your comment was one of the motivations for doing this. I'm in total agreement that bare numbers don't tell the whole story, but I've seen some off-the-cuff guesstimates, some of which have been way off, so I thought it would be worth taking a stab at a rough quantification. S Philbrick(Talk) 17:43, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Thanks for throwing this together. I would note that many of the admins who have resigned filled important roles not captured by this analysis; acting as functionaries and checkusers, closing reports on the admin noticeboards, and working on the main page. This isn't a criticism your analysis at all; but given that many of those resigning are our most experienced mop-wielders, we're likely to see an impact beyond what the numbers suggest (as an aside, we've lost five functionaries, by my count; a considerably higher proportion of those we had before framgate). Vanamonde (Talk) 15:46, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Well its too early to say if this will have an impact, so lets wait and see.Slatersteven (talk) 15:49, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
That's a lot. And a lot of very good admins. I'm hopeful most will come back once this gets resolved (if it does...) Hobit (talk) 16:43, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
It is a lot. But I'm also surprised that some of the admins who resigned were not very active recently even though they had been admins for a very long time. My impression is that the level of activity goes through highs and lows and sometimes highs again, meaning that it really varies over time quite a deal.
Plus, as Vanamonde says, there is a lot of admin behavior, like noticeboard and user talk discussions, that doesn't get quantified at all. I think most of the admins at the high end spend much of their time on page deletion and blocks which can add up more easily than, for instance, closing RfCs or warning editors of problematic conduct. I think more than the number of admin acts, what we are losing is years of admin experience which, to me, is more important than how many file deletions one has processed. But thanks for pulling this together, it's interesting data. Liz Read! Talk! 19:10, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Liz, I totally agree, and mentioned that on the linked page, but not in the summary I copied over. I don't want to minimize the contributions of people like RHaworth, Fastily, and Explicit who have 192000 deletions between them. It does take some time to correctly assess that a deletion should be carried out, but an admin who spends a lot of time sorting out an edit war may spend an hour or two or more and end up with one or possibly zero logged actions. If anyone has any ideas on how to better measure that, even if as simple as counting non-article space edits by the resigned admin's in the last year, I'm open to alternative measures if they can be done with a reasonable amount of work. S Philbrick(Talk) 00:25, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Liz, I've never had many 'admin' actions. That's mostly because the administrative actions that I do (tech stuff) mostly are "edit protected page", not counted by that tool indeed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:42, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
TheDJ, I completely agree that numbers are an imperfect measure of contributions. It takes so much more time to handle editor disputes and special requests that need to be handled and evaluated individually. While I don't mean to minimize the contributions and work of high volume admins, just looking at the deletion log can be eye-opening look into the speed at which some folks work. Liz Read! Talk! 01:40, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
  • That's startling, and you should put that somewhere that the WMF will see it. These aren't just admins who have already been gone a year anyway. And these statistics don't even count all the things experienced admins can do to help out without pushing any of the red buttons and creating any logs; sometimes as simple as a "Hey, let's everybody cool it here a bit." Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:42, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Two percent in a matter of days, if that was a currency, the markets would be in turmoil. Indeed, this is really troubling, and it's great SPhilbrick took the time to alert us about how fragile the situation is. Indeed, another week or two could see a further 2-3% drop. This is serious, and I hope WMF can get their collective heads round that. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:48, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
  • You write "some of those actions may literally have been to avoid a desysop". As far as I know, Admins need one edit per year to maintain admin status, not one admin action. And I'm pretty sure about his, having not used the tools in 2018, but having no problem doing so in 2019... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:50, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    It's one edit or admin action. So it may be just as easy for the admin who wants to avoid the inactivity desysop to do some uncontroversial admin action (say, a U1 or G7 deletion) that no one's going to argue with them over, as to do an edit. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:00, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    Seraphimblade, Oops, good point. I saw a number with a single action, thought about the inactivity requirement, but forgot it was edit or logged action. S Philbrick(Talk) 00:12, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
  • That's 731 administrators, yeah? Not 731 editors? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 23:11, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    Ivanvector, Yes. 731 counts current admins and the 19 who recently resigned, but all are (or recently were) admins. S Philbrick(Talk) 00:10, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
@Sphilbrick: I was meaning to point out that you wrote on this page and the one you linked to that you counted 731 editors, and should change it to reflect that you meant 731 administrators. There are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30,000 active editors. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 00:16, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Ivanvector, Yes, it just sunk in why you asked. I used "editors" because 712 are admins and 19 were admins during the year but are not now, so "editors" was the easiest word to use. S Philbrick(Talk) 00:19, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
  • And, as TRM alludes, it doesn't take into account the walking wounded who—like me—are editing at a much-reduced level and probably easing into retirement (hence two new RfAs today, with the same nominator). The scales have fallen from my eyes about this place. Miniapolis 23:20, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Sphilbrick. That is very interesting, well done. What percentage of the "higher-bar" admins (i.e. the 237), which I would consider to be current "active admins" corps, have resigned? Were all of the 19 who have resigned considered "higher-bar" admins? thanks. Britishfinance (talk) 09:24, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
I can see the answer is 12 (from your table). So 12 of the admins who have resigned where in the "higher-bar" group? thanks. Britishfinance (talk) 09:26, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Britishfinance, Yes. which is 5% and very troubling. S Philbrick(Talk) 10:55, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Absolutely! Well done again, very interesting analysis. Britishfinance (talk) 10:56, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Even if the WMF completely reverses itself today, I think that the community is forever going to be altered. We probably will get most of the admins back who resigned, but not all of them. People are burned out and exhausted over this matter, and some may still leave because they don't trust the WMF won't do this again. Tensions are still high. There are quite a few current ArbCom case requests that are pretty nasty, and some of them will inevitably have to be accepted. There's still more to be done. --Rschen7754 18:35, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, I guess most of us are well aware that from time to time WMF does outrageously stupid (or, at the very least, outrageously not thought-out) things and then for quite some time refuses to reverse them. This happened in the past, and this will happen in the future. Can we say for example that the community has significantly changed over superprotect? Or over the image filter (or what was the name)? In some sense, yes, on the other hand, it has never been crucial. This one has a higher backslash, and the effects will last longer, but so far I do not see any evidence that provided it has been satisfactorily resolved on a reasonable time scale, we are moving to a very different equilibrium. Actually, if we are lucky, this is our chance to inprove the project.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:51, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes, but improvements will only happen with a lot of hard work, not automatically. --Rschen7754 00:19, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

So, just for reference on seeing that damn depressing issue of the administrators' newsletter today, in addition to the above, we have lost:

  • Two of 20 bureaucrats. (Wizardman left before any of this started.)
  • Two of 15 interface admins.
  • Three of 43 checkusers.
  • Four of 44 oversighters.

So it's not just admins who are a concern. Some of those functionary teams have had losses of nearly 10% of their membership, and interface admins tend to be people with high technical skill. (And of course, this reflects only those who actually requested removal, not anyone who just walked away and will not be back). This didn't happen even during the software deployment and superprotect debacles. So, Jimbo Wales, and the rest—let's not delay too long with those statements. I think we've lost enough good editors already. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:06, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

We have to be careful because some people may have reduced their editing levels during the last month and are not related to WP:FRAM. I am only guessing here but we have to remain calm. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:57, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Is anyone aware of other admins/functionaries who said they'd resign because of this and seem to have done so - we all think there are others who have resigned (without specifically downing their tools), and I'm just interested to know what % that might be. Nosebagbear (talk)
  • Both because of this, and because of the discussion itself, is having a noticeable affect on all the standard backlog areas. ANI discussions also have far fewer comments per discussion - which some might view as a plus. This obviously has clear negatives but also is part of the point of the very resignations - but I felt it worthy of note. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:52, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I am afraid that it's hard to calculate admin activity and loss of it simply in numbers. How do we calculate that 28bytes (who resigned) dared to unblock the user who then mainly wrote today's featured article, Franz Kafka, which had remained unwritten if not. Kafka's topics seem to match the whole scenario. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:45, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
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