There are some non-controversial facts that apply: * The WMF was created to operationally support the projects, by design it is not a police force for social conduct, even though it may have a duty to remove unlawful content * There is no consensus with the English Wikipedia community for WMF employees to use role accounts for social conduct issues that might be otherwise handled by other administrators, oversight or Arbcom requests * Policies developed away from the English Wikipedia community such as for Safe Spaces and the Technical Code of Conduct would require consensus on the English Wikipedia to become applicable on that project
The one year WMF Office English Wikipedia ban of Fram overturns these prior understandings of how our community works collegially with the WMF. It is hard to conceive of any eventuality where Fram's months in advance WMF warnings could not have been reviewed with Arbcom, and if WMF T&S then thought action was needed, that there was some new legal or confidential issue that stopped them choosing to escalate as a confidential request to Arbcom. Any Arbcom approved sanction against Fram based on the evidence would not be controversial for anyone. The fundamental difference between an Arbcom sanction and a WMF Office ban, is that: 1. Fram would have the opportunity to contribute to the review of evidence 2. Fram would be able to follow a well defined appeal procedure 3. The English Wikipedia community elected Arbcom for this specific role, and consequently actions taken via Arbcom motion have automatic community support 4. If the English Wikipedia's policies are inadequate or not being implemented correctly, including administrator conduct, Arbcom can and does recommend improvement to the community Peter's comments below are just factually correct. For sanctions to be considered "justice", there has to be governing processes that ensure all evidence which can be safely published is published and subject to public scrutiny and all sanctions must have a process for appeal. As the Wikipedia article on natural justice puts it "The right to a fair hearing requires that individuals should not be penalized by decisions affecting their rights or legitimate expectations unless they have been given prior notice of the case, a fair opportunity to answer it, and the opportunity to present their own case." The current and significantly extended use of the secretive WMF Office role account, fails to meet those basic expectations. After the dramah dies down, let's hope that meaningful lessons are learned and the WMF takes the opportunity to revisit whether they want to pay employees to act as social police officers with ban hammers, or instead solve these problems by working with the community to improve local policies to make the projects more welcoming and more civil places to volunteer our time. Links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_justice -- fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae On Wed, 12 Jun 2019 at 12:13, Peter Southwood <peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote: > > I don’t think that is the point at all. > For justice to be accepted as justice, it must be comprehensible. The process > was badly flawed, and instead of sending a message that T&S was looking > after our trust and safety, it sent a message that anyone could be blocked > without reference to our internal processes and without explanation of the > reasons. The notification supplied after the fact was by an unidentified > functionary and consisted of a boilerplate non-explanation. Not helping > either. > This could reasonably be described as a PR blunder. An exercise in opacity. A > failure to communicate of noteworthy proportions. Another brick in the wall > between the enwiki community and WMF. Maybe WMF just don’t care, and consider > us all expendable. It certainly looks like it. That is kind of worrying to > those of us actually trying to build an encyclopaedia. In spite of all his > alleged defects, I see Fram as one of those. > Anyone reasonably familiar with the dramaboards will recognise that not > everyone taking exception to this action are friends of Fram. Several would > probably have supported a desysopping and/or a block, but never without due > and visible process and not without talk page access or no right to appeal. > Your mileage may differ. I judge on what information is available to me. I do > not just accept what someone tells me, I try to check. One gets that way > after working on Wikipedia for a while. One gets to know what a reliable > source is likely to look like, and keeps a lookout for disinformation and > non-answers. Read what is available before passing judgement on those who > have taken that step. > Cheers, > Peter <><> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
