Hi all, I'm torn on this issue.
I'm not a fan of Fram. Having been attacked by them in the past, I'm somewhat relieved to hear that they have been banned from enwp. I’m also dismayed by the poor response from the enwp community about this issue, particularly the inflammatory remarks and proposals that are intended to make the situation worse, rather than to work towards a solution. Fundamentally, though, I think the WMF has missed something very important in the process that has taken place here: community representation. If an outside group makes a decision that impacts a community, without involving that community in the decision, then of course the community will be upset, even if the decision ultimately improves the community. The WMF does a good job with involving the community in some of its processes - particularly in grantmaking, where elected community members are directly involved in the decision-making processes. In other cases, it uses ombudsmen quite effectively to investigate complaints, and to course-correct as necessary. In this case, though, the community has been deliberately excluded, and that’s not OK. And even worse, there is explicitly no appeals process, which is crazy. The next step here really needs to involve the community. Enwp’s ArbCom would be the obvious community-elected group to involve here if at all possible,* but there are other groups available if needed (e.g., Bureaucrats, Stewards, Ombudsman commission). That doesn’t scale across all languages, or for all complaints, but it might work for this situation, providing that there is a commitment from the WMF to developing something better in the future (at least a community-elected ombudsman for this process!). Thanks, Mike * Regardless of Fram’s opinions about ArbCom, which seem to have led to this block, it’s still enwp’s community-elected group that handles serious disputes. _______________________________________________ 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>
