User talk:Steven (WMF)

I edit as a volunteer under my full name, and this account is only for actions I take as part of my work.

Question

Just out of curiosity, how is it that you are editing on behalf of Robert Harris? Is he not being compensated enough to bother to learn wikitext conventions? I must say this is a little odd, especially given the fact that the ideas presented seem to conform more closely to your statements than his. 71.198.176.22 03:43, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Robert isn't being paid to learn MediaWiki markup. He's being paid to conduct a study of controversial content and make recommendations based on his experience in the media world. I'm helping Robert and Dory out with converting the documents they wrote to WikiText, simply because it's more efficient to have me do it. As for the ideas presented, I am editing using my work account precisely because any actions I take are part of my job and not necessarily personal opinions of mine as a Wikimedian. Steven (WMF) 16:28, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining that. 71.198.176.22 20:17, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

IRC Office Hours

Could you please update the "Upcoming Office Hours" chart on IRC Office Hours? Please and thank you! Killiondude 21:15, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the good work on community related issues

It is showing that there are many open venues to pursue interesting research in this area.--GlimmerPhoenix 14:35, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Felipe, that means a lot. :) Steven Walling at work 18:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

+1 to Felipe's comment~ –SJ talk | translate   04:24, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

blocks and bans

Moved to Global blocks and bans. For great justice! Time to test it out on the poetlister case. –SJ talk | translate   04:24, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Re: Thanks!

I think that's my perfectionist side ;) —Fitoschido ^[shout_{track] \\ 19 July, 2011 [10:18]}

Re: Thanks

You're welcome! The results are fascinating ... especially the fact that there seem to be many new editors working on articles relating to WikiProject India and WikiProject Indonesia, but they aren't the most active WikiProjects. Graham87 00:53, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Date mismatch

"day=17" seems wrong on [1]. Please delete this message after this issue has been addressed, unless you see some reason to keep it. Dualus 21:51, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note! Should be fixed now. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:54, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

2 Global Bans?

You mentioned here that there were 2 global bans. Isn't Abigor still globally banned? His attempt to be unbanned on Meta wasn't successful. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:24, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:47, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Please clarify...

Here. Thanks. --SB_Johnny ^talk 17:48, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Should I assume from your lack of reply (now that we see you're otherwise interested) that the foundation's position is that reasonable people will be held accountable for not wanting to engage with the creepy types?

I did, in fact, block Mr. Poetlister's latest declared sock on WV a couple days ago, and there's a big hooplah going on about that (or at least one very vocal and upset person). I left a note there reporting that I had asked for clarification, from you.

Please do bear in mind that I don't think PL is a dangerous person, or at least not dangerous to me. My concern is that your statement seems to imply that volunteers must toe the line or be held accountable, when historically the WMF has not been very supportive of volunteers who have come up against crazy people (e.g., that certain guy who seems to be in-and-out of prison a lot lately in California... 'nuff said). I can imagine some of these people that end up being "globally banned" might be more like that guy in CA than that guy in the UK. I hope you're following that ;-).

So, again, please clarify. --SB_Johnny ^talk 01:02, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the wait. As you can see I've been pretty busy with some other work. I'll get a detailed response to you and dark lama tonight, since it does need clarification. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 01:08, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Understood, it's just causing a bit of a ruckus elsewhere at the moment (here, there, everywhere, etc.), and some clarification of what the actual options are would at least allow the logjam to break. --SB_Johnny ^talk 10:37, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

 Done. Let me know if you'd like further comment. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I think it's fairly clear on the "PL question", but I'm still concerned about putting local admins "in a bind" between potentially mentally unstable people (who would generally be the ones being banned), "anti-authoritarian types" who will probably end up hounding the local sysops for blocking, and the WMF itself making demands on the sysops. IOW, if an actor is bad enough that they need to be kept off the projects, it's probably better if somebody at the office does the actual hunting and blocking. --SB_Johnny ^talk 22:37, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, to be honest, it's not really practically possible for the WMF to start some kind of campaign to do banning/blocking itself. It's not just the Wikimedia values of "community first" that discourages us. When a company like Facebook sets out to block accounts under its terms, it hires a team of dozen or half-dozen people full time just to fulfill this kind of request. Ultimately I don't see many of these global ban cases cropping up anyway; the amount of people who really legitimately have met the criteria described in the policy (multiple local bans, more than just a spammer/vandal) can be counted on one hand. Increasing the annual number of these bans is not desirable from a WMF perspective either. Even if we could hire a team to do that, we wouldn't want to. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:45, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed: there's likely to be very few people this would apply to. However, that also means you wouldn't need a room full of staffers ;-). I think the point is that when there are people who make things so burdensome for the community that a ban like this becomes necessary, maybe having at least one "professional" to take care of such things would ease the burden. --SB_Johnny ^talk 23:01, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

New policy

Fyi, this was established as a new global policy without any consensus, following any procedures, and hosted only on an obscure forum that doesn't establish policy with little participation and no consensus for it. I think this shines really poorly on us and violates a lot of our standards. Ottava Rima (talk) 06:00, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

That seems pretty routine to me. All they're saying is that we created a group of people who have to do page moving duties for new wikis. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 06:17, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

That was normally a temporary set. Policies are also not routinely created without community consensus. This new group would have the delete ability. Global sysop took over 1,000 votes and many years before it would passed. This has all of the abilities of a global sysop besides blocking, and has not been vetted by the community, lacked community support, etc. Ottava Rima (talk) 06:19, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

By the way, Mr Walling, if you were correct - what would stop the Stewards from creating a group that is exactly like Global Sysops, creating a new "policy" page without the voting procedures, say that it was routine to have global sysops and people given temporary ops, and give people at their own discretion this permanent right? The Steward policy makes it clear that Stewards cannot create new policies nor are supposed to be involved in that. They can only enact consensus. Consensus requires processes to be followed. Why is this being circumvented after the community was ignored and still said no? Ottava Rima (talk) 06:29, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

"real name" vs. wikiname + "add topic" versus "new section"

...

1. Congrats under the real name editing. Doing the same, because while I support the idea of people being able to edit anonymously, especially on dangerous or controversial articles (where it might cost them their life, job etc), there seems to a significant sprinkling of nasty types *cough*freemasonry* who hide behind wikinames *hack*blueboar* to avoid their pet topics being made to conform with Wikipedia standards.

2. I note that some pages seem to have an "add topic" link while others refer to a "new section" ... indeed the "add topic" alt-text on this page refers to "new section" ... if new editors are used to seeing one phrase, is it needlessly confusing to have another, on some pages, but not others?

Avaiki 01:31, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

...

Previously locked users

I've been trying to get some discussion and it has been a little empty. This is an example. I think it would be good to define how we deal with the old locks that were either put forth by Jimbo or Stewards that were about users that didn't fit into the spam, outing user name, etc., category. It is hard for many of these past users to figure out how to go forward, and there are some like Mr. Kohs who have had local groups use renaming to break the lock, thus making them rather ineffective whereas a ban would show WMF wide community views towards an individual that would have more sway. There seem to be quite a few important problems. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:41, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Requesting follow ups

Requesting follow ups to these:

Talk:Badges: has the badge idea been abandoned?

Research talk:Wikimedia Summer of Research 2011/Summary of Findings: you said that you'd try to get the budget for this project. I'd still like to see it. Pine^talk 07:32, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Hey,

1. Badges was just a brainstorming page, not a plan. There was a last minute chance we would have participated in a project where we would get free badge designs, but it didn't pan out. I'm still interested in the badges idea, but it's not a priority ATM for any department.
2. I have the budget breakdown, but am waiting on approval from our finance department. I'm personally comfortable with sharing it, but to be frank I want to check with them first, if only because it might create an unreasonable expectation that everyother past program will have a detailed budget ready for publication on request. I poked again today, so there should be a conclusion this week.

Thanks, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:38, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Understood. Thanks. Pine^talk 09:40, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, it's up on the talk page for WSOR now. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:17, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Request for BOSS id

Hi, can you look at en:Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MadmanBot 11 and point him towards whomever on the staff did the deal with Yahoo for Coren and would have Coren's access id? Thanks. MBisanz ^talk 03:22, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I think Moonriddengirl is on the case, but just in case you still need movement, you can bug me again here or on my en talk page. She kept me in the loop, so we should have something to report soon. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:24, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Question on WMFellowship

Steve - I submitted my idea for fellowship but I am not able to link to the open project ideas. Can you help? http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Project_Ideas/Wikilive

Draft RfC

"sets a high bar that does not allow only English-speaking editors or only Wikipedians to dominate a discussion."

I'm not sure what's the best way to fix this - this sentence sounds clumsy and ambiguous (sets a high bar... in order to increase participation? what?). Is there a better way of phrasing this? Deryck C. 09:39, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I'll tinker with it. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:51, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Office hour date

Re [2] the 11th is a Friday. Do you mean the 10th or Friday? 71.215.84.127 15:01, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

From the Google Calendar that was temporarily created, I'm going to say this was meant to be Friday - updated. Thanks for noticing. The Helpful One 15:06, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

• It also might be good note on the IRC Office Hours page if the times in the calendars are in Pacific time or UTC. Killiondude (talk) 06:19, 7 May 2012 (UTC)