Talk:Office actions/Community consultation on partial and temporary office actions/09 2019

Hello all, and thank you so much for your input over the past month (and before that, as we designed the consultation). Let me open with the "big" question, and then we can talk about other points that emerged during the discussion: We hear your thoughts on this issue loud and clear, and we will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans. In line with the consultation’s feedback, these policy tools will not be reintroduced to the office action policy until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive. We originally implemented that change to policy believing that better-tailored Office Actions would be less disruptive to the communities. However, we understand that perception of these actions has been quite different. So, point taken: partial and temporary Office Action bans are off the table.

While the question of whether or not to use partial/temporary office action bans was the headline question of this consultation, we do know that many of you raised and discussed other important points. Here are our takes on some of the most common ones:

Foundation should support local community governance. If that governance is so broken that the Foundation feels it must step in, it should be working to help the community fix its governance rather than focusing on individual problem users. We agree that this is a very good way to look at the issue of making self-governance within the Terms of Use framework more fit for the future. We commit that staff will work later this fiscal year on identifying and making more transparent how well projects govern themselves in relation to requirements of the Terms of Use. These findings also will provide communities with insights into how well they and their peer communities thrive respectively. We will, however, need to retain a role in addressing individual problem users or specific content that rises to the levels of issues mentioned in the Board directive (e.g. the handling of legal issues, threats of violence, cross-wiki abuse, child protection issues).
Appealability of bans. We understand that many of you feel that Foundation office action bans - either temporary or permanent - ought to be appealable. Now that temporary bans are off the table, that leaves traditional Foundation global bans, and they will continue to be unappealable. The threshold for a Foundation global ban is much higher than the threshold for a partial or temporary ban and such a ban receives review from multiple people, including both members of the T&S and Legal teams before going into effect. This means that the issues that tend to lead to traditional Foundation global bans are not issues that would have resulted in a temporary or partial ban to begin with, and neither will they resolve with time.
The Foundation should be open about what behavioral standards it uses to make decisions. While we will continue to not discuss rationales that lead to decisions in individual cases with uninvolved individuals, improving our documentation of the office action policies is something we are going to do later this fiscal year alongside the upcoming work noted in bullet one. We will take further steps to address this by making more transparent the standards against which these cases are assessed.
The right of the accused to see the evidence and charges against them. As we've discussed at some length within the consultation discussion itself, this is a needle we try to thread but it’s not always possible. In many cases, telling the accused what the evidence or charges are is the same as identifying the complainant to the accused. That applies even if we anonymize the evidence or charges, as often the behavior or context is necessary for the accused to understand the accusations, and can be enough for them to identify the accuser(s). Sometimes that's ok because there are no safety concerns, but sometimes having the accused know who accused them is signing up the accuser for harassment, violence, or worse. If it comes down to choosing between privacy and safety of the accuser and the right of the accused to see all the evidence against them, we will and do prioritize the safety of the accuser. Protecting someone's physical or mental health must come first.
The Foundation should go through community processes if it wants to sanction someone in that community under office action policy. This is not something that could work for the Foundation in its legal role as the platform provider setting the Terms of Use, and the office action policy in extension thereof in pursuit of those terms. There are some cases where the constraints of the law obligate us to act directly in order to mitigate a legal risk, protect the rights or safety of a third party, or act on behalf of the general public. In those sorts of cases, we are not able to defer to volunteers to discuss an issue and take action as they deem appropriate. We will work on developing a framework to work with community self-governance bodies in cases where we feel local governance can handle an issue that is reported to us. For communities that have volunteer bodies whose members sign the basic volunteer NDAs, this might result in more clarity and transparency through mutual service-level agreements.

We want to thank you all again for taking the time to share your input and thoughts on this consultation. It has been incredibly valuable to us in understanding community thoughts on many aspects of Office Actions.

Samuel (WMF) (talk) 10:11, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

On behalf of Kbrown (WMF)

How should partial and temporary Foundation bans be used (if at all)? On all projects, or only on a subset?[edit]

Large ones with an elaborate conflict resolution body such as the ArbCom on the English language Wikipedia?
Medium-sized ones with a working process for conflict resolution but not elaborate or fully formal?
Small ones where neither follow up on all edits is done nor a proper conflict resolution mechanism exists within the community?

Wikimedia projects are unique in their community driven approaches. WMF is ill equipped to interfere with the communities. As long as there are established methods of dealing with community issues, WMF should abstain from interfering. If WMF is concerned, that the community methods are insufficient to deal with serious issues, WMF may discuss their concerns with the community at large and/or community based teams such as an arbcom. Only if WMF is convinced that the community in question is fundamentally unable to resolve continuing problems on its own, WMF may act directly. This statement does not cover legal obligations of WMF as site owner under DMCA and other law. --h-stt !? 13:32, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

T&S exists to supplement, not replace, local processes. The original intention was to deal with the cases that local processes cannot handle, not to usurp the authority of those processes. Partial and temporary bans should be made when requested by and done for the benefit of local functionaries, should follow a transparent process for the banee and community at large, and should be based on a more specific set of behavioural expectation (defined by the community, not unilaterally by the Foundation) than the incredibly vague ToU. – Ajraddatz (talk) 13:40, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
WMF has plenary authority to ban any user, at any time, for any cause or none. However, this should happen only when action cannot appropriately be delegated to local communities. If a project has a functional process for handling serious complaints which may include nonpublic data (such as the English Wikipedia's ArbCom) then that process must be used for any issues localised to that project. Foundation bans should be used for (a) cross-project abuse; (b) verified violations of the terms of use (e.g. paid editing); (c) complaints involving nonpublic data on smaller projects where local processes cannot handle nonpublic data; (d) complaints about projects too small to have any substantive process; (e) actions requested or advised by legal counsel. The Office ban was originally introduced, if I recall correctly, for egregious BLP violations. What would we do if a biography subject sent a legal complaint to the Foundation and they saw someone editing the biography with plainly malicious intent? I don't think we'd jump through hoops to allow a ban, even if it was Lord Gom himself. There's an element of writing a policy to prevent the stupid thing Bob did once, but there's also a good case for a clear set of rules that people can get behind. JzG (talk) 15:56, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think T&S has already gotten a fairly clear answer to this question from the largest project in the WMF: don't. I know, having been on the En.WP ArbCom in 2014, tha we practically begged the office to start handling some cases for us. What we wanted, then and now, was for the office to take on the worst of the worst types of cases. The kind of people who make death threats, who groom children for abuse, who make viscous off-wiki attacks and try to dox users, that sort of truly awful thing can be handled by the paid staff and they can assume the legal and other risks associated with it. That is entirely appropriate as the foundation should be supporting the projects, but it becomes a problem when they start supplanting them instead. So, what would have been strongly preferable in a case like the recent one, where there was nothing in evidence that wasn't viewable on-wiki and nothing that the local ArbCom couldn't deal with themselves, simply refer the complainant back down the the robust volunteer-driven dispute resolution systems we already have in place. I think we can understand that there are smaller wikis where they don't have such processes and the office may feel the need to intervene more often, but if and when they do, if it isn't a "worst of the worst" case as described above it should be a more transparent process. Beeblebrox (talk)
On one hand, we have w:en:WP:FRAM, which was a gross overreach and ultimately something the enwiki community and ArbCom should have been able to handle. On the other, we have broken wikis like Requests for comment/Administrator abuse on the Croatian Wikipedia, Requests for comment/Do something about azwiki, Requests for comment/Vote of confidence on sysops and unblock for user Deu on kawiki, Proposals for closing projects/Deletion of Bulgarian Wikinews, and a lot of other situations that both smaller communities and the Meta community struggles to handle. WMF should focus their efforts (read: donation dollars) on what the community actually cannot handle, rather than on what the community can. --Rs chen 7754 18:26, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- To add to this: yes, WMF can ban anyone from anywhere, but just because WMF can doesn't mean WMF should. --Rs chen 7754 05:06, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm not sure the lesson from FRAMBAN is quite what everyone is taking away from it. Everyone here seems quick to say "only on projects where local processes aren't working" but that was itself the basis for FRAMBAN. ArbCom had multiple opportunities to consider the issue and failed. After it was highlighted in no uncertain terms by the Foundation, they finally did, unanimously found conduct unbecoming, desysoped, and the decision was upheld by the community. That seems like pretty compelling evidence that there was a problem, the system wasn't working, and only began to work after the Foundation stepped in. I'm not entirely sure what other less there is to take away there. GMG^talk 05:19, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    - Not to relitigate WP:FRAM, but you're missing the whole part where WMF Board had to step in. WMF had more options than 1) do nothing or 2) do everything (in this case, the local ban). And in fairness to ArbCom, while I agree they should have taken up one of those cases, at the time, they were not presented with the evidence that WMF eventually received. --Rs chen 7754 05:50, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The correct answer to this can be summed up in a question: Does the community have adequate processes and a functional Arbitration Committee/arbitration policy in place? If the answer is yes, then WMF has no business interfering in their business outside of the usual necessary "these people need to go away now and forever" bans for child protection and other serious misuse. Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 18:52, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wenn es rechtlich zwingend ist; ja. Ansonsten ist die Frage was die WMF superior zu der Community macht? Ihr Wissen rund um die Wikipedia (& Co ) ist es Sicherlich nicht. ...Sicherlich ^Post 18:59, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Before anything else: It's not the appropriate process, to discuss this topic on a central meta-site, so that people from some projects give opinions, what you should do on others (e.g.: I'm fine, if you ban everyone in en-wp, not my problem, because I work on de-wp). If you want to support the local communities, you have to go to every one of them and discuss the topic on their local platforms. Only this will give you an impression, if the project and its community appreciate your help or if your actions seen as an unwelcome interference in the local processes. When you only talk on meta with meta-people, you are not talking to the communities. --Magiers (talk) 19:29, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- +1 ...Sicherlich ^Post 19:36, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- -1, this is one of the core purposes for Meta. People from local communities are able to go to a different subdomain within the same network to comment on something. – Ajraddatz (talk) 19:39, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

and speak in your native language of course. --Magiers (talk) 20:02, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is a multilingual project, and you can speak your native language here.--Piramidion 17:36, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

- -1. Meta is the right place to discuss this as the central community coordination wiki. Fragmenting discussions do not help. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 20:00, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- @Magiers: Did you know that there are over 900 Wikimedia wikis and that you are basically asking WMF to conduct 900 separate discussions? --Rs chen 7754 00:19, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, if they want to affect the workflow in over 900 Wikimedia wikis, they have to go there and discuss. Of course I know, they will not do, they don't have the capacity or the knowledge of the local languages. But to not interact with all the projects seems to lead to the thinking "We in the WMF know best, what the projects need. We make rules without discussing them locally or even communicate them. We ban without knowing the local processes or even the language, to understand the subtleties. Wo google translate, make a quick decision, what is harrassment and defend our actions against anyone without giving any further insights, when people question them (what I did to the ban in de.wp). Instead we calm them down like misbehaving children: Trust us. We know best." This is not a communication on equal terms. And it starts, when they invite everyone to their platforms, to discuss, instead of using the platforms, where people discuss in the local projects. It's a monarch holding audiences, not an organization caring for the local needs in the local projects, for their support it was founded. --Magiers (talk) 07:21, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think you misunderstand Meta: it is a community wiki and run by the Wikimedia community. We elect our own admins and set our own policies. --Rs chen 7754 18:17, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

- -1 Meta exists exactly for this purpose. Besides we on local projects are being told that this consultation exists, claiming that it's "to not interact with all the projects seems to lead to the thinking "We in the WMF know best, what the projects need. We make rules without discussing them locally or even communicate them" seems pretty wrong to me. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:37, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I can see a case for bans based on conduct on a single project, but not single project bans. A community should be able to refer an already community banned user to the WMF for banning if they continue to engage in harassment, paid advocacy or any other contravention of the Terms of Use. The WMF should then take all means available (including abuse reports to ISPs, legal action, etc.) to remove that user from the community. If they engage in this conduct on one project, they are unfit for all projects. I also agree with the above commentators that Arbcom exists and has the confidence of the local community => no WMF involvement. To T&S: there are plenty of long term abusers, spammers and broken communities for you to deal with. Fix those problems, then we can talk. MER-C (talk) 19:41, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Iff partial/temporary bans are to be used at all (and the Foundation has discretionary authority to ban with or without cause as per the current Terms of Use fwiw) I see no point on allowing them on a set of projects and exclude some others. That being said, yes, I think partial and/or temporary Foundation bans should exist and apply only to cases where blatant violation of policies exists and where the local community is not able to address the issue or is unwilling to do so and knowingly allows such behaviour against policies or terms of use. That should narrow the scope pretty well to avoid dramatic outcomes such as the recent one. Given that stewards are not a global disciplinary or arbitration committee, and RfC is broken and useless for most cases, something should exist. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 20:00, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Concurring with H-stt and Ajraddatz, while Beeblebrox puts it best above so there is no need for me to repeat it. It's up to the individual projects to decide on the extent and level of intervention by the WMF. For the large and mature projects, the WMF should strictly confine itself to core function such as corporate, legal, and financial matters, and software development and server maintenance. Other policies should be the prerogative and mandate of the individual projects through whatever mechanisms they have in place such as community discussion (RfC) and Arbitration Committee (or similar). Under en:SUL, users blocked and/or banned or desysoped on one project have demonstrated their unsuitability for collaboration on all projects (MER-C) and should therefore be globally blocked and/or banned on all projects. This includes for WMF staff and contractors and all of their accounts (volunteer and WMF). Kudpung (talk) 21:43, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Under SUL, users blocked and/or banned or desysoped on one project have demonstrated their unsuitability for collaboration on all projects and should therefore be globally blocked and/or banned

Wut. That's not how this works at all. GMG ^talk 04:46, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's very dangerous. That means that I can show up on some wiki that only the spambots edit, gain temporary adminship (no votes are required for temporary adminship), and then indefinitely block you on that wiki, and then boom, you're globally banned. Or if not me, then some other editor nobody has ever heard of. --Rs chen 7754 05:04, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@GreenMeansGo and Rschen7754: how can you show up if you're already globally blocked/banned? Kudpung (talk) 08:34, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I understand the question. But no, being blocked or banned on one project does not equate to a global block or ban. It's not uncommon for a gblock to be controversial for a user who has been blocked on two or three projects, but who contributes to other projects where they are in good standing. GMG ^talk 09:58, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your question makes zero sense. Literally, anyone can get temporary adminship on any WMF content wiki as long as they make enough edits that look constructive enough to fool stewards who might not know the language (and with 250+ languages nobody can know every language) - and as long as they don't get any oppose votes after 1 week, which is quite likely if you are the only active editor. --Rs chen 7754 18:16, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My comment was that the WMF should play a bigger role in dealing with LTAs - a community can refer a LTA to the WMF if and only if there is a significant, lengthy track record of abuse. MER-C (talk) 14:27, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think that is not really a question of big, middle or small but rather a question how the wiki is dealing with such issues. I don't have an overview which wikis do have ArbComs or equivalent solutions but believe that alos small wikis can react

in appropriate time
appropriately using a hoc procedures

so I rather would ask wether those communities are willing and capable to react and solve complaints. Which wikis with an ArbCom equivalent certainly do. I also thoroughly believe that the WMF proposal indeed contains a risk. I ANAL, so can't elaborate further, but there's an EU regulation and some court findings saying basically, that Internet providers cannot be held responsible for what their users write and do as long as the provider does not fulfill the function of an editor-in-chief. I believe that with the new policy under circumstances the WMF could be seen as such an editor-in-chief. The WMF should doublecheck with some EU internet right experts and possibly resonsider to not doing harm on itself. --Matthiasb (talk) 21:26, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with H-stt. Temporary bans or project-specific bans should have no place at all because if an issue is not serious enough to justify a permanent site-wide ban, the WMF shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place. Most communities have been essentially self-governing for >15 years, and as a result of that they consist mostly of the type of people who will never accept a community engagement team of WMF employees such as T&S as an authority. This is a fundamental difference to managed communities as they exist, for example, in online gaming. --Tinz (talk) 22:53, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Foundation bans should be applied to all wikis (or none at all). Making differences at this level is insulting and demotivating for smaller communities, which feel like second-class wikimedians. If they are applied, they should only happen if the person who complained can present evidence that the local process has been followed and enough time has been given to local functionaries to react without any action from their part. Different wikis might have different understandings on what "enough time" means, so clarifying what the expectations of the T&S are here would help both the communities and the victims, but we're generally talking weeks, not days or hours.— The preceding unsigned comment was added by Strainu (talk) (diff)
Definitely option #1: there shouldn't be a difference in principle between en.wp and zh.wv. Ultimately, someone has to be the person who can pull the plug or who owns the trademarks, and we trust in the stewardship of the WMF. Maybe they aren't perfect, but no system is: any attempt to say that a certain editing community is somehow beyond reproach is just nonsense. I see a lot of complaining about the WMF and it's almost always hot air from my perspective. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:50, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Against partial bans. Especially for an entire namespace like our ArbCom did to me for namespace Wikipedia on nlwiki. I can imagine a ban on certain (groups of) articles and/categories e.g. to avoid editwars when possible conflicts of interest happen so only application(s) in namespaces category, main and/or template. One always should keep the right to defend actions on pages starting with talk. Klaas `Z4␟` V: 10:07, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Against partial bans too. I had to ask help to Trust and safety, and was recognized as a victim of severe harassment. Others victims too was recognized in the review by T&S. At my opinion, the (french) community did not want to see or solve the problem, because the abusive VIP contributors are protected by the local administration ... He had caused numbers of victims, on a long time period... Why How ?? because local community let him act like a "bouncer" ..They don't seem able to correct this issue. When we are asked the WMF to act, it is because the situation is really serious. I believe that Global Ban remains the best option to solve the problem and show to the victims that it is serious. No partial or temporary ban. --Idéalités (talk) 10:23, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Under no circumstances should WMF again attempt to micromanage day-to-day user behavior on English-WP. True criminal or actually real-life threatening or potentially suicidal actions are within their purview, attempting to adjudicate interrelationships during the editing process is not. We've already got a tool for that. Carrite (talk) 11:59, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think this is a good idea for any large/medium projects that have functioning community managed controls that could address this. For small projects, I'm divided - individuals disrupting a project can usually be dealt with by global sysops or stewards already - is this process failing? I'm not opposed to the use of "full WMF bans" when warranted, but if the WMF staff has to get involved with someone for example disrupting chywiki today, and fowikisource tomorrow for example - chasing them around with "partial" bans is a bit of a time sink isn't it? — xaosflux ^Talk 13:35, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- @Xaosflux: Global sysops and stewards are not a global ArbCom and are bound by local community consensus. Moreover, they don't have the full powers that a regular admin would on a regular wiki - for example, they can't do much about POV-pushing. Finally, if administrators are the ones misbehaving, but not enough to get emergency desysopped (i.e. no wheel warring), stewards are even more limited in what they can do since they have to delegate to administrators when they exist. --Rs chen 7754 18:22, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Rschen7754: thanks for the note, agree dealing with the very small projects can be challenging and why my examples were some of the extremes; just think that If I was the sort of person that would go disrupting mostly empty communities like chywiki or fowikisource getting having staffers manage project-specific partial bans for me on those isn't a good use of staff time and that our volunteers should be able to deal with it. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:51, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Rschen7754: 'stewards are even more limited in what they can do since they have to delegate to administrators when they exist' I wouldn't be too sure about that. In my experience some stewards consider themselves to be at the top of the tree and throw around with threats of blocking without even doing any proper research into the issues. 118.173.111.136 03:02, 16 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As an active global sysop and author of a small language Wikipedia I would like to state that I do not consider conflicts and conflict resolution strategies in small projects to be a central problem. I think it is highly questionable that in recent years in more and more cases people decide on small projects who have no knowledge of the local language and culture und who discuss on small communities but not with them. Here at meta, only those who speak English well can assert themselves in discussions and those who don’t speak English can’t defend their projects against unjustified accusations. To believe that the WMF can resolve conflicts in small language communities without knowledge of the respective languages is, in my opinion, a big fallacy. --Holder (talk) 14:04, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Against partial bans: As someone else has written, if the WMF is micromanaging to the point of issuing partial bans, with all probability they shouldn't be there in first place. About temporary bans, I believe the WMF should remove that arrogant practice of saying that Office bans are not appealable, as if they had the divine gift of infallibility. If enough evidence arises that would justify an appeal, of course the ban should be revised, and eventually removed.--- Darwin ^Ahoy! 15:30, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree on the point of They are final and non-negotiable. Experience has already proved that to be a false claim. It is also arrogant and inflammatory. There must always be a route of appeal (possibly through the local Arbcom or an equivalent, otherwise through some other neutral body empowered for this purpose) as we have already seen that T&S are able to handle a case really poorly. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:01, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
My opinion is mostly per Xaosflux. If the community is large enough or has a recognized ArbCom (or similar dispute resolution process), I’d be against partial bans. I could see the value in having the ability for smaller and medium wikis, but I would think that such an issue would warrant a full ban, right? OhKayeSierra (talk) 16:18, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Against All: Bottom line if we're not talking about a genuine legal or safety issue worthy of a full ban, then the WMF is the wrong group to address it. Keep the servers running. Leave the blocks to the communities.--Cube lurker (talk) 17:15, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
My take concurs in part with a lot that has been said above. As a general rule, WMF should not issue partial & temporary office actions in any project with a working self-governing structure, with these 4 exceptions (the last two require some detailed justification if/when they are invoked):
- The community explicitly delegates certain matters to be handled by WMF;
- Where legal issues arise, especially if it involves an action that is legal in one or more countries but not in others (This overlaps the first point I mentioned; I'm simply admitting that there are some cases where a paid employee with access to professional legal advice is better equipped to handle some issues);
- As a temporary action until the local governance group can act (I've seen occasionally where WP:AN/I & Arbcom simply couldn't act fast enough);
- They believe that the local governance mechanism is broken & must step in to save the project.

I have thought hard about any exceptions to the rule that WMF must not intervene in project management, & these are the only exceptions I could think of that rule. We are not employees, but partners; there is no basic right of the Foundation to tell us what to do or not do. -- Llywrch (talk) 17:53, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Foundation bans should never be used Sargoth (talk) 19:16, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Foundation bans should be available to be used when the community or ARBCOM (if the community has an ARBCOM, I don't know what each Wikipedia has) has failed. We should not write a rule that prevents the Foundation from exercising the right to deal with issues or users when the community can't or fails, or does the wrong thing. Sir Joseph (talk) 01:02, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Do not use them unless the community has been informed in advance they will be used due to failings in the community's governance. In other words, for most major Wikipedias, never.--Wehwalt (talk) 05:08, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Only use them if you can show that local processes have been exhausted to the highest level. If the highest level of dispute resolution has not been used, refer it to them. Do not use it at all if there is an ArbCom or similar available on the wiki. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 07:57, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand for what purpose these bans would be used. If only for traditional WMF ban purposes (really awful, often illegal actions), then mostly a full ban is appropriate, although I can see partial bans could be occasionally used under the same policy. If they are to move beyond that into more normal behaviour problems, then this should only be done on small (in my view not medium or large) projects where the local process has clearly failed and the WMF has publicly warned the project in advance. If the WMF really wants to get involved in micromanaging user behaviour, perhaps they should consider a community-elected individual or panel to give oversight to their actions. They should certainly make clear the difference between (hopefully) appealable blocks that on other wikis arbcom or admins would make, and then on the other hand absolute traditional unappealable WMF bans for really awful things. Failing to do so would undermine trust in traditional T&S WMF bans. Thanks, GreyGreenWhy (talk) 12:21, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have an issue with the Foundation issuing temporary bans (more on that in question 3). It should be something with-in their traditional remit (see questions 2 and 3) the idea of a temporary ban across all projects feels fine. This means I see partial bans as inappropriate for large wikis - I think the Foundation needs to find other ways of raising the concerns in general or about specific editors and for some, or perhaps all, medium wikis. I would trust editors of medium sized wikis to be better judges of that. I think for the reasons laid out above, there could be a need for the foundation to step in on small wikis in a way that is expanded from their historical role. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:27, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Per JzG and Beeblebrox. Shoy (talk) 20:05, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of this comes down to working with, rather than at odds with, the various local communities. Before implementing this anywhere, you need to find out whether it would be wanted. At most larger projects, there are already community-based processes in place, and the WMF should only get involved in problems that are egregious, such as child endangerment, credible death threats, and similar situations where there are serious problems that require professional intervention. And normally, those very serious problems should require global and indefinite bans, not partial or temporary ones. If WMF is concerned about something more day-to-day, such as civility for example, it is fine to engage in collegial discussion with the local community and communicate any concerns that WMF may have about the culture at that project, but never acceptable to take over control of enforcement from a local community. It's particularly important that WMF not be exploited by users who are forum-shopping, those who realize that the local community will rule against them and hope that they can privately persuade WMF to take an action that the community would reject. On the other hand, for other smaller projects where there simply isn't enough social infrastructure within the volunteer community, then partial or temporary bans could be a good thing. It's less a question of project size than of project need. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:44, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to partially repeat what others have said, but this is my take on the issue:
1. The purpose of blocks is to protect the projects, not to punish offenders. (I, personally, don't think the purpose should be to protect the Foundation, but I can see the Foundation feeling that way.)
2. Unless the victim (person to be blocked) can be informed what he did wrong, a time-limited block is almost certainly foolish. (Possible exception: If the person's actions would stop after a certain time, because an event would happen then, a block until that time might be reasonable.)
3. I cannot see the point of a global time-limited block, except under the circumstances above. An indefinite block, appeal-able only after a certain time might be appropriate.
4. - If a project has a working review committee, such as en.Wikipedia's Arbcom, then in regard to a block only on that project, the Foundation should defer to that committee except in egregious cases such as child pornography or credible threats. (I cannot really imagine a legitimate case in which either a partial or time-limited block is appropriate in such cases, but I could be wrong, there.) In some extreme, but not egregious cases, the Foundation might block until the committee has a chance to consider the issue.
  - If the project does not have a working review committee, the Foundation might need to act as if it were that committee, so blocks on that project, including time-limited blocks, seem possible. (I understand the concern presented elsewhere on this page that the Foundation might not have anyone who understands the offense; for example, the offensive text might be nominally offensive, but legitimate slang for something which would not be an offense. I'm going to risk being blocked here, but the use of the word "niggardly" in the English language might be a reverse example. Some people might consider it's slang usage to be derogatory, but the accepted definition is still, well, accepted and not derogatory. See en:Controversies about the word niggardly.) As I'm not active in any such projects, I don't really have much idea what should be done, except the Foundation should attempt to do what the users would want (except in cases where the Project is in danger.)
5. All blocks must be appeal-able (perhaps, after some time), to a different group. Perhaps a ombudsman, if the Foundation really had such an office. (According to what I've read, the Foundation officer with that title does not fit the definition.) — Arthur Rubin ^{T C} (en: U, T) 02:01, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse Beeblebrox's position. Starship.paint (talk) 11:10, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
My feelings align with Beeblebrox and JzG - only for situations not covered by the administrative corps of a given wiki - child-grooming, off-wiki harassment, crosswiki issues etc. Casliber (talk) 11:19, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Agree with the above editors. WMF should focus on the horrible, situations where a global lock is necessary and not very debatable. We often get a response from WMF to the effect of, "Sorry about this horrible thing. We can't stop it." Instead of intruding into issues that are already addressed by local process, WMF should focus on developing better tools to stop the horrible, and better cooperation with law enforcement. Jehochman (talk) 14:18, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Levich. I understand this was a tricky issue appearing to fly below the radar on en:wiki, but in the end a resolution of sorts was reached, effectively by the WMF raising an arb case. Of course this means that WMF has done the research, and provided a level of redaction. It's not clear that either of these things are always good or always bad, but I am aware that diligent arb members are already doing a full-time plus job as arbs, as well as their "real life" responsibilities. Rich Farmbrough 23:16 4 October 2019 (GMT).
Those which want it - there should be a 4th category which cuts across these: those that want it. I'd be surprised if any large ones (with ARBCOMs) wanted it, though it's not impossible, but some of both medium and small could see the utility and go for it. Others would find it insulting and counterproductive and be against it. This avoids a lot of the unhappiness I'd advise requiring minimum criteria for any RfC or RfC equivalent: discussion runs for 30 days and has at least the lower of 15 editors/10% of active registered editors. Critically, this is only if they are introduced at all Nosebagbear (talk) 11:37, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There's a missing option: Communities that want the WMF's assistance, where they want it. For example, we asked for quite some time on the English Wikipedia for WMF to take over handling of cases where law enforcement contact may be needed, such as child protection and threats. But for garden-variety editing disputes and misbehavior, the local community should generally be permitted to decide how to handle that (and one option for such handling will always be to take no action at all). WMF should leave those decisions to local communities, not overrule them. Seraphimblade (talk) 23:10, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think WMF should abstain from interfering, unless there is an acute need. On at least one language wiki, banning has been used several times as a threat against users, who did not abuse the rules, but simply because of different opinions, political views, and accusing admins of not follow the NPOV rule. With WMF interfering more, the risk of a "politically correct" Wikipedia, contrary to a NPOV Wikipedia, may increase. I would welcome WMF checking more into this, and defending the NPOV, instead of becoming a meta level power group. Dan Koehl (talk) 05:42, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Seulement sur les projets où le contributeur a posé problème et non ailleurs, surtout quand la communauté locale ne fait rien. En l'occurrence, il serait aussi intéressant parfois de bannir des contributeur des espaces communautaires pour une certaine durée pour les recentrer sur la contributions dans les articles uniquement, afin qu'ils soient réellement productifs et non enlisés dans des conflits sans fin. J'avais regardé l'historique du contributeur Fram, et j'avais trouvé qu'il était un peu trop axé sur les pages communautaires et pas assez sur l'écriture/amélioration des articles, alors que c'est un type de contribution à privilégier et qui très généralement fait peu de débats. Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick (talk) 09:32, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Partial and temporary Office bans should never be used. Ordinary user conduct issues are none of the WMF's business. --Yair rand (talk) 17:17, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This question should be discussed and decided by each community individually (per their internal decision making process like :RfC, MB, etc.). Few theoretical examples: Some communities may not wish to discuss bans in public and might welcome the foundation's ban of disruptive users. Other communities may feel that they have well-functioning processes to resolve conflict and to handle disruptive users. They even may have processes in place that allow the handling of sensitive topics privately by trusted community members. Some communities might agree that a global ban on one of their members is reasonable if that user has already been banned on other projects. Other communities may feel that a global ban is taking away a valued member from them for actions that had no effect on their own community. The focus of any global policy should be to keep the intervention in local communities to an absolute minimum. The foundation should respect and honor cultural differences of their communities. Those differences also result in a variety of norms and tolerances in regard to "disruptive behavior". Last but not least: Self-organization was key in making Wikimedia projects successful. Overruling community consensus and culture, and micro-managing communities' conflict resolution processes would lead to a decline in motivation and contributions. --Martina Nolte (talk) 03:51, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Für eine Office Action müssen sehr harte, extreme Gründe vorliegen, die einen projektweiten Bann über alle Wikis der Foundation betreffen. Einzelprojekte verwalten sich selbst, da hat die Foundation sich heraus zu halten. Die Office Action ist für die Extremfälle da, bei denen Personen mit einem genz besonderen Schädigungslevel oder durch kriminelle Energie eingebremst werden müssen. -- Marcus Cyron (talk) 08:51, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not at all. Office actions should exclusively be used in serious emergency cases where instant action is necessitated by law or imminent danger. "Partial and temporary" office bans are never necessary in this sense. I see this as an attempt to shift the power balance to the WMF "office" and to lower the threshold for unilateral intrusions into the sphere of the autonomous projects. This is inacceptable.Mautpreller (talk) 10:04, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Gar nicht. Es gibt bisweilen gute Gründe für einen sofortigen globalen Bann, aber der ist dann unbefristet. Für befristete Sperren kann ich mir keine projektübergreifenden Gründe vorstellen. --Geher (talk) 12:03, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

On projects of all sizes. Just cause you have many people, doesn't mean there is a functioning system. Neither the english nor the german Wikipedia, the two biggest projects by numbers of unique users, do have a very good system. The right thing do to isn't always the most comfortable, but the people in power usally go the way of least resistance. That isn't always a bad thing, but there should be a second, additionaly way, where outsiders should look in a situation. But please with more transparancy.--JTCEPB (talk) 15:11, 15 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

All projects should be considered. Small projects with too few administrators require extra attention. They may be very vulnerable to abusive paid editing.--Jusjih (talk) 15:28, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with others that the community process should be respected in the utmost. I strongly oppose WMF overreach. Benjamin (talk) 17:07, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They should not be used at all. The draconian T&S procedures, with their secrecy and unappealability, are necessary for cases of severe abuse, where a permanent global ban would be expected. Extending them to behavioral management, as implied by partial and temporary sanctions, cannot be done is a way that appears just. Since only a few of the huge number of potential such cases can be handled by this body, there will also be an inevitable suspicion that well-connected complainants are more likely to be heard. This extension would weaken the necessary faith in the system for the cases where it is essential – a very harmful outcome. Smaller projects that lack functioning dispute resultion need help, but they too need an open, accountable process, not this. Kanguole (talk) 20:59, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
per MarcoAurelio --Piramidion 17:39, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Partial T&S bans should never be used. If someone is a real-life threat (i.e. pedophiles or people threatening violence), then and only then should the WMF ban, and it should be permanent and global. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:29, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that the best solution would be to make all Office Action bans for five years globally, subject to renewal. There is no need for partial or one year bans. For problems such as incivility, the local project should be left to handle those. Office actions should be reserved for child protection. On a project-by-project basis, a project could delegate to T&S the task of taking on more enforcement and monitoring, but that should require the approval of a vote of all editors on that project. Hlevy2 (talk) 18:11, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To quote the Board of Trustees statement of July 2nd:recommend T&S focus on the most severe cases, for instance: the handling of legal issues, threats of violence, cross-wiki abuse, and child protection issues until consultation and agreement between T&S and the community are achieved. During the drafting phase for this consultation, several editors (including but not necessarily limited to myself, Guy Macon, and EllenCT) attempted to inform staff that the the questions and approach here were defective. The response was either to tell us that our concerns were "out of scope" for discussion, or to fail to respond at all. As many editors have been trying to say, this is not about temporary or partial bans, and as such, even an agreement to completely terminate partial and temporary bans is unacceptable. T&S is currently under Board instructions to limit cases to issues such as "legal issues, threats of violence, cross-wiki abuse, and child protection issues". That no-agreement-status-quo is preferable to any agreement, unless and until T&S staff understand and constructively engage the community's actual concerns. If necessary I can organize an official community consensus to affirmatively rejecting establishment of any agreement, even one to terminate partial and temporary bans. On a more collaborative note, I am more than happy to aid staff in discussions to understand and resolve the community's concerns. Please, ping me if you want to discuss. I have a lot of experience dealing with issues between the Foundation and community, and I have a strong track record of accurate advice. Think of me as filling a similar role as one of your community liaisons, but from the other side. Alsee (talk) 11:22, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- As I wrote on 16 August[1] ~~(a comment that was not only ignored but actually deleted!)~~ (a comment that was archived with no reponse) "By carefully controlling what questions get asked and rejecting the questions that people want to ask, you offer us Hobson's choice. Might I suggest you simply save time and effort by simply writing the question and the answers with no participation by the community? The result (further protests) will be the same." Random WMF staffer, when you ~~delete~~ archive this comment, please try to at least pretend to feel guilty about suppressing all disagreement, OK? --Guy Macon (talk) 13:14, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - Guy Macon I investigated the comment you said was deleted... what actually happened was that twelve days later the entire section was archived. The topic of the section was whether Meta was a proper location for discussion, and I have to agree that Meta is a well established and necessary place to deal with global issues. Alsee (talk) 22:20, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    - My apologies for missing the archiving. My comment had nothing to do with whether Meta is the right place for the consultation. It had to do with the fact that the questions being asked are not the questions that most people want answers to. Again I say that by carefully controlling what questions get asked and strictly limiting the scope of the discussion, you offer us Hobson's choice. Again I sarcasticly suggest that you simply write the answers as well as the questions. Again I tell you that pretty much nobody wants to just talk about partial and temporary office actions. and that pretty much everyone wants to talk about the specific actions that T&S did using partial and temporary office actions as a stalking horse. (Stalking horse: A thing that is used to conceal someone's real intentions. Originally referred to a screen made in the shape of a horse behind which a stays concealed when stalking prey.) To my previous comments I would add this: if T&S competely stops all use of partial and temporary office actions but continues the objectionable behavior using the good old office actions that have been aroungd forever, the shit will hiit the fan again and the board will tell T&S to consult with the community again. The best answer that is most likely to satisfy everyone would be "T&S has decided to go back to doing things they way we did them before -- the way that nobody had a problem with" --Guy Macon (talk) 00:55, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Der Entscheidung zu einer temporären oder partiellen Sperre muss ein hohes Maß an Logik zugrunde liegen. "Wir haben uns das angesehen, so entschieden, schweigen aber über die Hintergründe" ist da sehr düftig. Es muss einen nachvollziehbaren Grund geben, weshalb eine temporäre Sperre einerseits notwendig, andererseits aber ausreichend ist, selbiges gilt für Sanktionen, die nur in Teilbereichen des Wikiversums gelten. Der Grund muss im Rahmen dessen sein, wofür die Office actions da sind. Um ehrlich zu sein fällt es mir schwer einen hypohtetischen Fall zu konstruieren, wo ich einen partiellen oder temporären Projektausschluss für das richtige Mittel halte. Nachdem Office Actions vom Prinzip her aber etwas sind, was unabhängig von Einzelprojekten auftreten kann, sehe ich aber keine Veranlassung, "große" Projekte von vornherein von solchen Sanktionen auszuschließen. → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 16:53, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with H-stt and Ajraddatz but would like to add that even some large projects (like Wikimedia Commons) have rejected the introduction of arbitration committees. This does not mean that these projects are unable to handle user problems. Hence, I strongly suggest to bury partial and temporary bans for all projects independently from the local approach of handling user problems. --AFBorchert (talk) 21:17, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Except for clear-cut legal cases, all office actions should be used only as a result of a transparent, fair, neutral arbitration case conducted by a mixed board of WMF employees (professional arbitrators), and community trustees, as detailed in the answer to the implementation question. That arbitration process involves elements to establish trust from the communities, while being able to handle long-term unresolved community issues, therefore it should be applied on all projects.

Without a transparent, fair, neutral arbitration case, bans should not be applied on any project. — Aron M (talk) 04:38, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Ajraddatz fully. To amend, I prefer number 3. There are some Wikipedia communities that cannot handle major incidents. T&S should, I'll reiterate, supplement processes in those communities. Abequinn14 (talk) 04:06, 27 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Don't use them at all. If an entire community has an open, public discussion and decides to invite the WMF to get involved in partial and temporary actions, then the WMF could. Otherwise, stay out of the way: keep to those areas, such as child protection, where no one argues with the WMF getting involved. And, to avoid doubt, this rejection of partial and temporary actions is a rejection of the WMF grabbing more power for itself and taking it away from communities, so don't propose or implement anything else that would expand WMF power over communities. EddieHugh (talk) 17:45, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Office bans should only be used for extreme cases of abuse and illegal content that is beyond what can be handled by local communities (even large communities such as En.Wiki). Awesome Aasim 18:27, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Can the Office Actions policy on partial and temporary bans, as written (circa June 2019), be used? If not, what changes need to be made to its text?[edit]

If complaints are evaluated privately, under what circumstances should contributors be allowed to learn the standards by which their behavior is being judged?
How can privately evaluated confidential complaints cause or prevent abusive or retaliatory accusations?

The title "purpose and scope" claims that it applies only "where actions on local community governance level are either insufficient or not possible". The following terms are in contradiction to that, as particularly the "Secondary office actions" do not mention the restriction cited above. As long as there are community remedies, WMF should abstain from interfering. The terms are to reflect that in the directly relevant clauses, not just in the preamble. --h-stt !? 13:38, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No. There needs to be a clear link-in with existing community governance structures. Partial and temporary office actions are fine, but only if they are done with/on behalf of local functionaries and existing processes. – Ajraddatz (talk) 13:42, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, and I'm fairly certain the whole Fram situation was exacerbated by it, because the prevalence towards privacy of the complainint combined with conspiracy-mongering from external sites to create a massive Streisanding that anyone with half-a-brain would have seen coming from 20 kilometres away. At the very least, there needs to be an explanation to the target as to what exactly was wrong with their edits. If that is kept vague or secret (as it was with Fram) then how the hell do you expect them to challenge the ban or improve as an editor should the ban expire? Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 18:57, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, the policy was not discussed with the communities and communicated to the communities. So it became a surprise for everyone, when you first used it (and your first use was not in the en.wp on the Fram-case, it was in de.wp only days after you invented the local bans). Besides that use, the policy is still not communicated to the community in de.wp. --Magiers (talk) 19:38, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, per Jeske and Magiers. MER-C (talk) 19:43, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. There must be regulations that the policy does apply only when the local wiki is not willing and/or capable to solve an issue. In Wikis with ArbCom equivalents T+S and/or Meta has nothing to do because the local communities can solve their problems without involvement of T+S and/or Meta. --Matthiasb (talk) 21:41, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. See my comment above in #How should partial and temporary Foundation bans be used (if at all)? On all projects, or only on a subset?. Deprecate the policy entirely and devolve to the individual projects. Kudpung (talk) 21:48, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. See below.--Strainu (talk) 23:38, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. Please see my alternative proposal, #The Wikimedia Foundation Office and Trust and Safety team must follow the same process that ordinary editors use to request non site-ban sanctions on the English Wikipedia against any functionary or any editor accused of behavior issues other than threats and child endangerment. EllenCT (talk) 00:37, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. Only recently there was a poll on my homewiki and I'm afraid several know nothing yet... Klaas `Z4␟` V: 10:11, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. Community governance should be paramount. Establishment of a parallel channel for behavior complaints is a terrible idea that will only bring about disruption and chaos. If there is a problem, start a legitimate case: the foundation knows, or should darned well know, how to edit Wikipedia. Carrite (talk) 12:03, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. You didn't even read Requests for comment/WMF-community trust person. Why do I write all that crap if you're not reading it? Read it! Alexis Jazz (ping me) 13:56, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. The WMF should learn their lessons and actually consult Wikimedia communities on matters that directly affect us before attempting to make any policy.--- Darwin ^Ahoy! 15:39, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. I concur with everyone above. Nothing further to add. OhKayeSierra (talk) 16:17, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
NO no hidden cabinetts without any chance to get a fair trial. You have made enough bad feelings in the German and English wikipedia. I personally have met one "T&S" in Stockholm, who had no experience in Wikipedia as an author or contributor at all. I have no trust in this person and therefore I dont feel safe. My community has elected administrators, who can handle these matter without interference from the Big Brother. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bahnmoeller (talk)
Beyond my blanket oppose in Q1, No one ever ever ever should be judged without being able to clearly see the accusations against them and reply. No exceptions ever exist. This needs to be part of any policy ever on this subject. Private can never mean private from the accused. Never.--Cube lurker (talk) 17:25, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Office should never ban. Sargoth (talk) 19:17, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Trash the whole policy. It's not salvageable. Reaper Eternal (talk) 02:02, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, it is likely best to trash it. Beyond real legal concerns, all of that has to go through local processes with possible defenses. You may have an idea of how you would like things to be, but you have, in general, not enough experience (if any) on the local level of things. Your total disconnect from any local community makes you currently not suitable to set up such policies. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:04, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
My main problem with this is the way confidentiality is handled here. You may have a report on a person showing very clear handful of public diffs that someone is harassing someone else, but plainly because you vow confidentiality whatever the contents of the report, you will NOT disclose the information. That means you may just as well have an email stating that someone does not like someone else. And in either case, you do not have the capabilities to judge that against local policies.

Last year a user was globally banned by discussion here on meta because of their behaviour towards other people. There are sufficient mechanisms on-wiki to handle this. People did not show fear of retaliation (where there was reason to believe retaliation ..). All was publicly visible. Your processes are completely out of line, as usual. First set up processes with the community, then base a policy based on that. Trash this, start that process first. That you even started this proposal shows your utter disconnect with local communities. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 06:16, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. T&S are not trusted to be competent or fair. Available evidence is not in their favour. They do not appear to understand the way the English Wikipedia community works, which is probably the one they know best. What is the chance they will understand how other projects work? And to add insult to injury They are final and non-negotiable. One can not feel acceptably safe from perversions of process while working in such an environment. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:27, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. It should not be the case that the same problematic behaviour is being evaluated by both the WMF and community processes, applying different tests to reach different conclusions. The phrase "standards by which their behavior is being judged" suggests standards describing exactly what the WMF will block for. I see no reason why these could not be public. I do agree with the concerns about private complaints and retaliation, and in larger communities I hope these can be dealt with by empowering arbcoms to hear private complaints via community rfcs, which I would support. If partial blocks must be used, I would rather the policy was rewritten to make clear that that they can only be used in circumstances where previously the WMF would have issued a permanent global ban. I would completely support that. Failing that, you desperately need to set out really clearly what new behavioural tests you are imposing, or how you would define a community process as "failing" so you have to intervene. Thanks, GreyGreenWhy (talk) 14:04, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. I don't have a problem with "Constitutes a single, serious violation of the Terms of Use, and is not part of a pattern of otherwise abusive behaviour" as a reason for a temporary global ban. With-in the scope of support for question 1 partial bans. I think the idea of it being non-appealable is junk. Non-appealable bans are appropriate for the worse of the worst not for people who by their very definition can still be productive members of the movement. In general I think most of this draft, outside of the one line I quoted above, puts the emphasis in the wrong places and would need a fundamental rethink. As such I don't think this request for comment is going to be able to do that and it would be a little silly to try. Bet, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:32, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No per above. Shoy (talk) 20:06, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly no. There should never be such a thing as a temporary or partial ban that cannot be appealed somewhere. When a problem can be handled adequately by community processes (and someone complaining to you about the local process does not necessarily mean that there isn't another side to that argument), then WMF should not be inviting private evidence that could, instead, be handled locally. It will often be better for WMF to advise someone who complains privately to, instead, privately resubmit that evidence to the local ArbCom. When WMF is dealing with the kinds of severe problems, like child endangerment, that WMF should be dealing with, the privacy question answers itself: of course the victim should have privacy. But when WMF wrongly inserts itself into local disputes that could have been handled locally, issuing WMF sanctions based on private evidence creates impossible situations where the victim is at risk of harassment and the accused is unable to adequately understand the charges. So before you get into that kind of situation, you better be sure that it rises to the level of child endangerment and the like. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:57, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, per Tryptofish. Starship.paint (talk) 11:06, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No - these are unneeded if the WMF sticks to issues outlined above Casliber (talk) 11:21, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No - I hope you don't proceed after seeing all these objections. Jehochman (talk) 14:19, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Pile-on no because apparently this needs to be made explicit. --Rs chen 7754 18:55, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
A user accused of misconduct should always know exactly what they are accused of. This is not only in the interest of fairness and allowing them to defend themself (though that is important), but if the user is sanctioned only temporarily, they must know exactly what they did wrong and need to change. Seraphimblade (talk) 23:12, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. It must be eliminated. --Yair rand (talk) 17:18, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, feel free to start a discussion to update that. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:19, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No: Like Ajraddatz, I feel that a certain amount of accountability to the community should be included here. I do understand that there is sometimes confidential information at stake here, but I feel that an office action (especially one that might clearly be controversial it's face) should be undertaken in concert with the stewards and/or any affected ArbComs (if in existence) - these are people that are already trusted by the community to handle sensitive information. I also feel that the timeframes could probably use more flexibility, a minimum of 1 year may be too strong a measure for a particular situation. I also echo the concerns regarding the lack of any appeal - could not an office action be appealed to the Board of Trustees? I also agree with the concerns that office actions should be limited to clear and present dangers as noted above, I'd like to see a little more granularity about what might cause T&S to commit to an office action. Thank you for bringing this to us for review, as it does seem there are definite concerns with it as it stands. I appreciate all the work that T&S does behind the scenes, and I know it's a thankless job in many respects, so thank you. Waggie (talk) 02:35, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Each project has their own set of policies and sanctions in case of policy violations. These define the standards by which users' behaviors are being judged (besides applicable laws). Wikimedia should never apply additional standards that are not public and known to their users. Wikimedia should define a narrow corridor of legal circumstances that could require to evaluate complaints privately. In case the community (that is effected by the user's behavior and the respective complaint) does have a process to handle complaints privately by trusted community members, Office Actions Policy should acknowledge and respect those community processes. Therefore, Wikimedia should commit to identify a user's main project(s), to reach out to those communities, and give them a chance to handle the complaint themselves. The user who is subject of the complaint should always have a chance to defend him- or herself against the allegations. The appeal needs to be reviewed and adjudicated by an independent third party, not by the exact same team. --Martina Nolte (talk) 04:46, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ich möchte erste einmal eine deutsche Übersetzung, um diesen Text in Bürokratenenglisch korrekt zu verstehen. Es kann einfach nicht sein, daß es für die WMF bis heute trotz des Mega-Budgets bis heute nicht möglich erscheint, Übersetzungen für die 25 wichtigsten Projektsprachen bei derart wichtigen Texten in Auftrag zu geben. -- Marcus Cyron (talk) 08:53, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, see answer to question 1. It should be deleted altogether.Mautpreller (talk) 10:06, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
nein --Geher (talk) 12:05, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Point one: The only office action based on privately evaluated complaints should be conduct warning, such as candidates for adminship who abusively argue back to reasonable criticism.--Jusjih (talk) 20:46, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Point two: Privately evaluated confidential complaints resulting in conduct warning may much more easily cause or prevent abusive or retaliatory accusations, if warned user agrees to properly behave to get the warning sealed.--Jusjih (talk) 20:46, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, clearly not. –xeno 18:33, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, they should not be used, per answer to question 1. Kanguole (talk) 21:00, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, per others. Benjamin (talk) 21:31, 10 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No A bad idea that should be scrapped. 158.59.127.106 15:03, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely not. It blatantly disregards the community in favor of draconian measures. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:30, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes.--JTCEPB (talk) 15:10, 15 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, just absolutely 'No'. It may be ironic, but T&S are themselves neither competent, trustworthy, nor fair. Just because the staff are paid does not make them any more knowledgeable, reliable, and capable of making judgment calls than hundreds of editors among the volunteer communities who are professionally qualified in RL and some of whom are elected to adminship and/or an Arbitration Committee. Kudpung (talk) 03:27, 16 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, for many reasons, for the various whole host of reasons above. I specifically feel that anything not severe enough for a permaban should provide information to the accused to be able to defend themselves. This permission must be clarified in the TOS Nosebagbear (talk) 20:29, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Kill it with fire, pile the ashes, burn the ashes The community does not trust the WMF in this realm except when it comes to the very limited conditions in which the permanent bans were given. And if the community did, then the fact that the first time the new power was used, it was misused in blatant fashion, should end any such daydream. A fair "consultation" process would have started with a detailed rundown of the processes WMF and T&S have taken internally to ensure that a mess like this does not happen again. The WMF wants the community to trust them without showing any reasons why anyone should; where is the drastic overhaul of the employment status of T&S people who attacked the community? Where is the independent review of why the first actions using the new powers were gross misuse? Where is the full disclosure of conflict of interest of members of the board? If a tree in my yard falls on my neighbor's shed, I should be looking to fix his shed before I ask him if he would like to "consult" about whether we should get our trees checked every few years. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 01:41, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Per my answer to Question 1, the answer is effectively "No". While I am open to the possibility that partial or temporary bans might have some valid purpose, there has been a conspicuous failure to present any purpose where they would be appropriate. Thus far there appears to be a dichotomy, where cases are either severe and require global&permanent action, or where the Foundation shouldn't be getting involved. The more fundamental issue is that T&S needs to be willing to engage in constructive discussion about what sort of cases they shouldn't be touching at all. Alsee (talk) 11:22, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
“They are final and non-negotiable” is a no-go for partial and temporary bans. If there aren't compelling legal reasons to use a permanent WMF ban, they shouldn't be used at all. While the community processes are far from perfect, blocks are executed by elected admins and there usually exist opportunities for blocked users to ask for a review of their block by other admins. Without reviews we get a toxic Kafkaesque system. This would be much worse than the original problem. --AFBorchert (talk) 21:31, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No: you are a police force devised to stop vandals imposing an imminent threat on Wikimedia projects. You are not some kind of Vehmic court. Marcowy Człowiek (talk) 17:28, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest adding the following points (not exact wording), and giving it another chance to gain trust and acceptance from the community:

Foundation bans (any kind) are applied only, if that sanction is decided in a transparent, neutral arbitration case, by a mixed board of WMF employees (experienced in conflict resolution / professional arbitrators, mediators), and community trustees (arbitrators on projects with an ArbCom).
They are appealable at a mixed board of wmf employees and community trustees, in a private or public case as chosen by the appealant.
Temporary bans are applied in escalation, starting with the smallest necessary sanction, and escalating if the conduct issue reappears: 1) interaction-ban / article-ban / topic-ban -> 2) more IBANs / TBANs -> 3) site-ban -> 4) more site-bans -> 5) global ban.

And these changes to make it more practical:

Partial foundation bans are temporary (1-5 years, no indefinite partial bans).
Rename "Temporary Foundation bans" -> "Temporary global Foundation bans", "Partial Foundation bans" -> "Temporary partial Foundation bans".

— Aron M (talk) 05:32, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The case of Fram obviously showed that unappealable office actions are, at minimum, dubious, at most, a validation of the judicial paradigm that the WMF follows (or, if they follow this consultation, followed.) Therefore, the answer to the major question is no. For the other points, evidence should be revealed fully to contributors, with the exception of evidence that would harm an anonymous entity. Privately evaluated complaints can result in personal attacks and targeted harassment--however, since they're evaluated...you know, privately...this should not be a major concern unless WMF security is compromised. Abequinn14 (talk) 03:59, 27 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. The best thing to do is to discard it altogether. And then compel whoever wrote and implemented it to do no more WMF work for 1 month, during which they will do nothing except edit highly controversial articles and their associated talk pages, on a Wikipedia of their choice. Then they'll acquire a firmer understanding of what communities need and don't need. EddieHugh (talk) 17:55, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

How should partial and temporary Foundation bans ideally be implemented, if they should be?[edit]

For what types of behavior should the Foundation issue partial or temporary office actions?
Should partial and temporary office actions be appealable?
What duration(s) should be available for partial and temporary office actions?
What other considerations should be taken into account when using partial or temporary office actions?
To what extent should the community be allowed to participate in the discussion about temporary Office Actions? What if the temporary Office Actions were challenged by the local community?

ideally? Not at all. But as the world is a messy one, there may be issues, with no one else able to react to serious conflicts. WMF should not interfere with operational communities. WMF's action must always be secondary. The terms must be explicit in this. --h-stt !? 13:41, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If at all, the following conditions should be met in every case:

The editor under the ban must be given a clear and actionable description of the issues that led to the ban. Absent this, partial / temporary bans are useless, as the editor in question will not know what behaviour they should address, and further perpetuate the issues on projects they are not banned from
Contrary to perma-bans for cause, these bans should be appeal-able to local community processes even if these are set up after a such a ban was first enacted. MLauba (talk) 13:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sounding like a broken record at this point, but they should be implemented to help community governance structures and functionaries. Not "help" in the European imperial sense (the world can't govern itself, so we're gonna help!), but help as in being called in by local functionaries/governance structures to help them address explicitly-defined problems. This can involve letting local groups know about issues they might not be aware of, and can even include conducting investigations in cases of harassment/other situations that demand privacy. But the decision should rest with the community or elected functionaries. – Ajraddatz (talk) 13:44, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Consider the original rationale for WP:OFFICE. That is still valid. JzG (talk) 16:19, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It is unclear to me why the Foundation thought this was needed. The advent of global back-office ban was for sure a good thing and has helped remove some truly awful people from WMF websites. But banning a user from one specific project for a set amount of time has traditionally been handled by the local volunteers, through transparent (or at least significantly more transparent) on-wiki processes such admin noticeboards or ArbCom. I'm just not sure I see the need for this, but if there is a need, it should not continue to be a "black box" where neither the accused nor the community they are involved in is allowed to even know what the problem is or who the accuser is, and where there is no avenue of appeal. I get that this is a website and not a court of law but there should be some kind of due process for anything not meriting a global office ban. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:48, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As transparently as possible. I see no need for the secrecy that goes with a global ban. Plus, this will help other editors understand what conduct was inappropriate and avoid such behavior in the future. --Rs chen 7754 18:28, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I see a minimum of three requirements to justify a temp/partial ban: (1) The community's dispute resolution processes are moribund or toothless; (2) the editor in question is so badly in breach of his community's policies that he should have already been blocked, if not banned, under them; (3) no active admin on the wiki in question is willing or able to take action to sanction them. It goes without saying that if all three criterion are met, there's likely already some serious governance issues with the project in question, and issuing a partial ban may open up a rabbit hole that the WMF might wish it left alone. Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 19:03, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wenn es einen rechtlich zwingenden Grund gibt. Alles andere kann die Gemeinschaft IMO besser lösen. Nichtzuletzt, da das Vertrauen in WMF m.E. nach super schwach ist. Man erinnere sich an ein völlig überzogenes superprotect welches defacto bis heute schwebt, aber auch Doc James war wohl eher eine merkwürdige begebenheit. Auch habe ich nicht den Eindruck, dass WMF bzw. ihre Mitarbeiter wirklich noch wissen was "an der Basis" passiert. Ohne Vertrauen und ohne Ahnung aber irgendwelche Bans zu verteilen; ehm ja klar ...Sicherlich ^Post 18:57, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There are minimun requirements in every penal procedure in civilized countries: 1. the defendant has to be informed about the accusations. 2. the defendant has the right to defend himself or have a defender. 3. the judges are identifiable individuals and not a collective pseudonym. 4. they have to meet standards and can be refused (e.g. in case of conflict of interests) 5. the process is as open to the public as possible (of course, there can be matters of privacy and victim protection, but they are the exception, not the standard case). 6. the verdict has to have a reasoning. 7. there has to be a process of appeal. By the way, none of this was the case in the local ban 2/2019 in de.wp. So I expect this ban would also have to be revised. --Magiers (talk) 19:59, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If the WMF banned the long term abusers and spammers the community is sick of seeing and kept on top of their subsequent block evasion, T&S wouldn't have time to contemplate this question or impose partial/temporary bans. MER-C (talk) 19:45, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They should not be. Per H-stt: ideally? Not at all. But as the world is a messy one, there may be issues, with no one else able to react to serious conflicts. WMF should not interfere with operational communities. WMF's action must always be secondary. The terms must be explicit in this. Kudpung (talk) 21:52, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They should be implemented following some guidelines:
1. Never interrupt the local process unless required by law (but I suspect those cases fall under permanent ban) or if there is serious cause of concern with regard to the local process (for instance, if the aggressor claims to represent some kind of authority - policeman, politician etc. - even if that can't be proved). The reasoning behind overriding the local process should be made public. In all the other cases, wait (within reason - see my answer to Q1) until the local community has finished debating.
2. As long as they can be appealed, Foundation bans could override local decisions. If no solution for appeal is found following this consultation, then local decisions should be final. The idea here is to have functioning communities have the final say.
3. Have a statute of limitation. No more than a few months after the facts, but that might change depending on the local process.--Strainu (talk) 23:57, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

All bans from any Wikimedia Project should be appealable to Jimmy Wales, a function which he can delegate to any project's Arbcom or equivalent should he so choose, until the Board of Trustees issues a resolution to the contrary. It was a betrayal of the trust of the community for the Foundation to attempt to usurp the right of appeal. EllenCT (talk) 00:42, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Jimmy has no clue about the conflicts @ (for example) Korean Wikipedia and he literally did nothing (or almost nothing) with regards to the development of almost all wikis outside English Wikipedia, as such it would be considered inappropriate for Jimmy to intervene on a business which he doesn't know the language and the culture of the project — it would just provoke more disputes as if WMF T&S did to Fram. Jimbo Wales might be a big deal on English Wikipedia, but he is merely a mascot on other wikis. — regards, Revi 00:53, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Also, only 11 out of 900+ wikimedia wikis have Arbcom or equivalent, 36 wikis have CU, and 18 wikis have OS. For the rest of about 800~900 wikis, there is No Such Thing (TM) that "Jimbo Can Delegate To". There're even wikis without sysops, let alone crats. It just can't work on the Pan-Wikimedia level. — regards, Revi 01:09, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In those cases, I predict Jimmy will want to delegate to the Trust and Safety team in the Foundation in accordance with the outcome of this consultation. EllenCT (talk) 07:43, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Outside of enwiki, Jimbo has no power of appeal. He cannot delegate that which he does not have. – Ajraddatz (talk) 13:58, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Does the Board of Trustees agree with your opinion? EllenCT (talk) 19:19, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't matter what the board thinks. Jimbo has no special userrights access outside some read-only permissions on wikis other than the English Wikipedia. There is no community or Foundation policy that gives Jimbo any power at the global level or outside the English Wikipedia. The Board of Trustees also has no on-wiki power, except what they exercise through their collective and corporate role by providing strategic direction to the WMF ED/CEO. – Ajraddatz (talk) 19:24, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Let's make it sound like a real example: if he intervened on the desysop matter of user "A" on Korean Wikipedia and decided "A" should be removed from the office, it would be interpreted as if "Jimbo issued a middle finger toward the Korean Wikipedia", just like what people have been shouting over Framcase to the T&S on English Wikipedia. Jimbo literally did nothing to create and improve Korean Wikipedia (evidenced by empty live and deleted contribs), and as such he holds no special authority on Korean Wikipedia, rendering him into a mere mascot. This is the same for almost all communities except English Wikipedia where he has a 'founder' flag with things like permission to change any and all permissions. — regards, Revi 07:35, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Please keep Jimbo out of this. Out of English Wikipedia he has no clue nor any special meaning, as far as I know - possibly not even as a mascot. In Commons he has even a negative impact since his 2010 puritan spree. Additionally, completely clueless comments like those on a subject he even recognizes he knows nothing about make more harm than good, and makes me wonder if it wasn't better not to have Jimbo in the BoT at all.--- Darwin ^Ahoy! 09:44, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As people said before, never interact when communities can handle the issue, they should only act by request or when there are not community figures. Of course, all decisions by wmf should be appeable--Barcelona (talk) 06:42, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The foundation model of partial bans for day-to-day behavior should not be used, period, at least on English-WP (and, by extension, on all Wikipedias with functioning systems of self-governance). The model fundamentally violates what should be a right of an accused individual to hear the charges made against them and to have the opportunity to present potentially exculpatory evidence in their defense. Well-connected Special Power Players will cry wolf in an attempt to settle scores on-Wiki; WMF is ill-equipped and frankly incompetent to deal with such things. Foundation fiat is not a valid means of righting great wrongs; community processes exist to handle complaints. Carrite (talk) 12:09, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I concur with MER-C and Carrite. OhKayeSierra (talk) 16:22, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As noted In 1 & 2 I oppose this concept. If you fail to listen then for sure on 2 & 5 you need to allow appeals and listen to the communities.--Cube lurker (talk) 17:31, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Foundation bans should ideally never be implemented Sargoth (talk) 19:18, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The only bans the foundation should be handing out are permanent, global bans for appalling behavior like p***philia. Reaper Eternal (talk) 02:02, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ideally: not at all, but especially not when there are local systems available. ALL bans that do not have legal concerns as their background (and possibly even some of those) should be appealable to WMF, both by the sanctioned editor as well as by members of the community. Where possible, and especially where there is no sufficient local dispute resolution system, community comment should be initiated on a major local noticeboard. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:11, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
All bans should be appealable — even global indefinite ones. Everyone makes mistakes, including the WMF, and there should be room to repair errors when appropriate. Even for the worst cases, let's say, someone being globally banned after making a death threat, should be allowed to appeal. Just think about the unlikely but possible event where the WMF banned someone for that reason, and it finds later that it was a translation mistake. The only reason I see for cancelling appeals is that someone uses the appeal process to continue with harmful behaviour, such as writing death threats in the appeal. In the case of temporary and partial bans, the case for non-appealability is even weaker. If a behaviour problem was not severe enough for a global indefinite ban, it is more likely that an appeal may be reasonable. --MarioGom (talk) 12:59, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I completely agree with User:Beeblebrox here. Office/WMF should ideally only issue bans if they have to be global and permanent. If these partial bans must be implemented then perhaps it is because you consider that there are some global bans you issued that could have been temporary or project-specific, which I don't understand but seems fair (per en:wp:AGF). I don't think you should expand your remit into new behaviours as appears to be the case under the June policy unless specifically requested by the community (as has been the case in the past). If you must implement partial bans, they should be able to be appealed to local communities. If you must implement partial bans, they should only be for very bad behaviour and therefore long (over a month) duration. If you must implement partial bans, the key consideration must be "could the community handle this." If you must implement partial bans, then I would suggest you find or recommend the creation of a community body to have oversight of them. If you must implement partial bans, they should be overturned when challenged unless genuinely private information or legal concerns are involved. Thanks, GreyGreenWhy (talk) 14:29, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In general I would agree that the Foundation is best served policing the roles it traditional has - namely complex issues such as child grooming or terrorism. There are impacts on anyone who deals with this, and as employees the foundation can offer counseling and other support to these employees in a way that it can't to volunteers to police these areas. I can, however, think of at least one scenario where I could support a temporary ban. Namely if someone with access to sensitive user data - Checkusers and Oversighters - committed a severe breach of that trust, especially if that person had already lost those permissions so it's not just a matter of removing them. It's possible that a single incident or a series of incidents which flirted with the line of appropriateness without necessaryily going over would merit a strong Foundation response but not so strong as to merit a non-appealable lifetime ban. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:37, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Item 1: It is not at all clear that there are any situations where these bans would be appropriate.
Item 2: All bans should be appealable. If there is evidence that would show that a ban was inappropriate it must be admissible.
Item 3: See Item 1.
Item 4: See item 1.
Item 5. The question is unclear. Which stage does this refer to? Before a ban? After it? The communities will discuss temporary office actions any time that they feel inclined to do so. There is no reasonable way of avoiding this. If anyone tries to stop them it will not be pretty. We have already seen what can happen if a temporary office action is challenged by a local community. Avoid this. Nobody wins. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:47, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
On the whole, partial and temporary bans are a bad idea. They should only be considered when the local community requests WMF involvement, and then the specifics can be worked out with that community, or when the local community is in such disrepair that a WMF intervention is needed. Partial and temporary bans should always be appealable. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:25, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Tryptofish. There have been a few cases in which the arbcom and admins of a project could not impartially judge whether the terms of use had been breached. For such rare cases, an indef office ban can be reserved. In all other cases let WMF keep its hands off and let the admins and arbcoms do their jobs. It is bad for the reputation of both the project and the local admins/arbcoms if WMF is seen to be intruding. What happened recently begs the question whether the WMF is unconvinced of the impartiality or competence of a local arbcom. If so, they know there are channels to discuss the issue with the relevant community. Woodwalker_talk 10:16, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse Tryptofish's position. Starship.paint (talk) 11:08, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If evidence is used that cannot be shared with the accused, the accused should be able to ask a functionary who they trust to review the evidence. A functionary is any WMF approved person who has signed the non-disclosure agreement that would allow them to review the evidence. The trusted functionary can look for inconsistencies in the evidence or point out additional factors that should be considered. This protects the interests of the accused which include having a fair hearing. You have to be fair, or else you will disrupt our communities of editors. Additionally, it must always be made clear to the person sanctioned in what way they need to improve. Our goal is to help people improve themselves. Jehochman (talk) 14:23, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not at all. If the WMF feels, a community cannot or does not handle incivility or violation of terms of use properly, their first and only option should be to deal with the community rather than than step in themselves. Stepping in like a deus ex machina may fix the immediate issue. But it comes at a cost. The cost is alienation of the community. Alienated users will not endorse the project like they otherwise would. They are likely to reduce their engagement or stop contribute themselves. The WMF may raise their concern on the local equivalent of the village pump. They may point the community to cases that may need special attention. They may raise their concern on the local meta pages that are connected to whatever the concern is about. They may even talk to individual editors. It would be wise to keep all of this interaction in the open. That is, no private emails, no non disclosure agreements. The weapons of the WMF should be words and persuasion rather than bans based on star chamber decisions. ---<(kmk)>- (talk) 15:52, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
For 1, I will answer "None", rendering the rest moot. The Foundation should only be acting in cases of extremely serious issues potentially requiring law enforcement involvement, or massive cross-wiki abuse. In any of those cases, the bans should be permanent. The Foundation should not be stepping in for more minor issues where temporary sanctions may be needed; that's up to the communities to handle. Seraphimblade (talk) 23:14, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The Foundation should only issue office actions if they have a legal responsibility to do so, or where a community does not have a complaint process. In case a community's complaint process is considered to be insufficient (i.e. because there is no option to privately complaint against another user), the Foundation should work with that community to improve their processes or ask them for a community decision that allows Wikimedia to handle all complaints directly. Before an office action is issued, the alleged user needs to have the possibility to defend themselves against the allegations. Office Action Policy should define the complaint process to include independent investigation, hearing, voluntary mediation, appeal process(es), final determination/adjudication (example of a complaint process: EEOC). This process should include a community review priority, and it should define in which cases the Foundation believes that a community's decision making and conflict resolution can and should be overruled by Wikimedia. Any office action against a user should be appealable. The appeal should be handled by an independent, different team. All durations need to be available for office actions but, again: Community processes and decisions should have absolute priority. It should be default that the community participates in the discussion about temporary Office Actions that affects one of their members. The wording "allowed" in your question is unmasking. You should rather ask in which cases the Foundation shall be allowed to intervene in community matters. The shared goal should be that Office Actions are in accordance with the local community and their policies and processes so that conflict and friction within the community as well as between community and Wikimedia will be limited to the lowest amount possible. Office Action Policy should have a provision when and how local communities can challenge Office Actions. A community appeal should not be handled by the previously involved teams within Wikimedia. --Martina Nolte (talk) 05:33, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
gar nicht --Geher (talk) 12:05, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Point 1: Candidates for adminship who abusively argue back to reasonable criticism and those publicly supporting likely libel in vanished users' user pages quickly deserve partial or temporary office actions, at least conduct warning.
Point 2: Yes. Allow appeals.
Point 3: Try to start with conduct warning while asking questionable users to disclose all kinds of paid editing. If they are uncooperative, then impose harsher actions for at least 30 days.
Point 4: If questionable users have clearly improved the conduct, consider sealing the logs of office actions from the public view.
Point 5: Allow the community to appeal temporary Office Actions with convincing evidence.--Jusjih (talk) 21:00, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
1: None – T&S procedures are unsuitable for the sorts of behaviour that warrant partial or temporary sanctions. 2–5 should not arise, because this extension should be reversed. Kanguole (talk) 21:08, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
2: in some cases a blocked user should be able to defend oneself. 4: the biggest issue of the current office blocks is the lack of communication (or any relevant explanation). I guess that this situation wouldn't arise if the blocks were explained. Even if you don't wish to disclose the exact cause for the block, at least provide some general explanation on the reason for a block. Because otherwise, in a situation where neither community members nor the blocked user oneself have any idea about what they've been blocked for - it's simply ridiculous.--Piramidion 17:34, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There should never be partial WMF bans. As mentioned before, foundation bans should be reserved solely for pedophiles, people making threats of violence, and similarly dangerous people. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:32, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
We do need some sort of Foundation ban. We do need to realize that individual Wikis can't deal with certain issues, and even on the English Wikipedia they can't deal with some cases. People don't want to go to ANI right now the way ANI is. Until a better mechanism for dealing with abuse is setup. What other alternative is there? Sir Joseph (talk) 00:21, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: Am I looking at this wrong or is there some disconnect between the community and T&S concerning blocks or bans? There is an issue of smaller Wiki's and those with an ArbCCom and it is hard to try to make a one-size-fits-all rule. I predominantly edit the English Wikipedia so my answers are accordingly.

Private inquiries may be one thing but I will reassert that "private trials" not only will be intolerable to the community but the founder of Wikipedia has weighed in about this that they should NEVER occur. Now, I can see a use for a "temporary" block or ban from T&S where 1)- there are legality issues, or 2)- clear intent of harm to Wikipedia or another person, as an emergency action only, if there is an ArbCom in place.

Other than that I can only see T&S stepping in (concerning anything "Temporary") if there is a case where the Foundation is asserting that ArbCom has acted in some manner inconsistent with the Foundation's overall goals. In this instance, I think the entire community should be notified. The word "temporary" in the case of the English Wikipedia would be some immediate emergency action pending ArbCom notification, review, and action. That would be the only time I could see a need for the use of any "temporary" and emergency actions.

I believe that any over-stepping will be a detriment. From what I have observed and been involved in this community, the Admins, and ArbCom takes our policies and guidelines seriously. If The WMF or T&S thinks there need to be discussions and/or improvements concerning civility issues that is the discussion we need to be having not some token attempt at clarifying "can or when" actions can be taken. "The office" can pretty much do anything they want but the fallout from arbitrarily and unnecessarily usurping authority should be closely considered. We are all volunteers, and I think Wikipedia has taken a place among the world because of the earnest endeavors of our editors. This has happened even though it has been reported that we are doomed.

While there are flaws (is not the world we live in full of them?) by-and-large we do want and expect civility. Please (@ the WMF/T&S) understand, I do not want to be involved in any endeavor where there can be secret trials. I feel this will be a strong sentiment with a vast majority of editors towards T&S and even ArbCom. The thought makes the hairs on my arms raise and tingle. Privacy concerns are important (private information), and any potential real-world harm (personal or to reputation) must be given priority. It cannot be used as a reason to conduct private trials. The community cannot be brought in after-the-fact for some confirmation or opinion, with only a pitiful crumb of information, because of "privacy concerns" or gag-orders. That is paramount to insanity. The U.S. whistle-blower hearings have shown that names can be withheld and redactions used to negate needing private trials.

I do see where some use of an actual temporary block or ban might be needed even in cases where there is an ArbCom, and I think T&S is not going to abandon this idea. I feel it should follow a strict emergency use only avenue until it can be addressed. I am going to also state that in the most severe cases such as "pedophiles, people making threats of violence, and similarly dangerous people" (as mentioned above), and I would add totally egregious acts (I consider undisclosed paid editing among them), this would be important and any action should be across all Wiki's under the Foundations control. I want to have faith that the Foundation understands the importance of our editors and our process (again, concerning the English Wikipedia), and although we use "should" a lot (when more direct words would ultimately be more appropriate) the "Ignore all rules" aspect seems to dictate some watering down. I feel that in areas of civility such as personal attacks and harassment we could and should be more forceful as a deterent. That is just my opinion though. I think the above statement addresses all five of the questions. Otr500 (talk) 09:54, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Item 1: Only for the currently devolved areas (legal, threats of harm, threats of suicide, Child-related), or for areas specifically devolved by communities in the future. This latter category may cause split aspects of authority across communities (some might devolve harassment, others might not). This is not impermissible and beyond our ability to follow - I suggest a dynamic list of meta. It might be judged that nothing in the first 4 categories wouldn't be suitable for a non-PERMABAN, that is for the WMF to judge. Nosebagbear (talk)
Item 2: Yes - this is open to negotiation, but it's got to be a non-T&S body. I'd say ombuds, but they're achingly slow on cases. I'd suggest either forming a new group, or forming a body of current individuals, such as a panel of 3 stewards who must unianimously concur to uphold. Nosebagbear (talk)
Item 3: The WMF seems to disagree with the idea that blocks are preventative. Their one imposed temporary office action was wildly beyond the unianimous thoughts of en-ARBCOM. So I first say 1 year max. But it's got to be justified as to a) how it's preventative b) why it's that long and not, say, 3 months. Nosebagbear (talk)
Item 4: I've set out below why the accused needs to know the evidence: both to defend themselves and to know how not to act if they return from an office ban. The current warning system is intolerably vague. Only in cases where a genuine threat is predicted should the evidence not be turned over, and anything of that severity shouldn't be temporary. Nosebagbear (talk)
Item 5: As said in the first section, temp bans should only be permitted by communities that accept their introduction. I suspect in most cases the evidence can't be shared to the full community - so this is probably non-viable, but it critically must have been accepted as a pre-condition of usage by the community. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:42, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Something like that should be always appellable--Ferdi2005 _[Mail] 16:31, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Per my answers to Question 1&2, the answer is effectively "Probably not". The more fundamental issue is that T&S needs to be willing to engage in constructive discussion about what sort of cases they shouldn't be touching at all. Alsee (talk) 11:22, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, so far the WMF was unable to provide a convincing rationale how such bans could be beneficial. Appealability by an independent body of elected members is an absolute requirement for not ending up with a toxic system. --AFBorchert (talk) 21:35, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

With transparency, fairness, a proper arbitration case, and limited timespan (1-3 years) or a path to appeal. These are hard criterias for implementing the office bans.

Transparency and a proper arbitration case: publicly conducted, unless the accused accepts a case in camera. Private evidence is admissible only, if justified with strong reasons.
With a mixed board of local, community-appointed arbitrators (or other trustees) and WMF employees (preferably professional arbitrators or mediators). The mixed board is to support cooperation of the WMF and the communities, and to balance the shortcomings of both sides: the lack of trust, and the lack of efficiency to address harassment and uncivility.
Permitting the accused to defend themself, regardless of any obstacles, such as being blocked. The accused can be blocked from editing anything else, but the case pages, during the case, if that is deemed necessary.
Providing a path to appeal in front of a similar board, that preferably has a different composition.

Implementing the office bans is only acceptable, if these criterias are met, most crucially a transparent case, that decides the sanctions. This process should be applied to all office actions, not just partial bans.

Regarding the mixed board: a cooperation between the WMF and community representatives is essential to heal the distrust between the WMF and the communities, and to reconnect these two sides. It is appreciated that the WMF tries to address long-term issues of communities, that community processes - such as the Enwiki ArbCom - failed to address for many years, but the involvement of the communities and its trustees in a transparent judicial process is necessary to prove the communities that these actions truly serve the community. The only path for the WMF to achieve the civility and diversity goals targeted by the Wikimedia Movement 2030, is in cooperation with the communities and its trustees.

I understand conducting cases in public will require a more significant effort on part of WMF employees (particularly the T&S). Fortunately, the WMF has the resources and means to hire professional arbitrators and mediators to fulfill these roles and responsibilities, thereby introducing neutral, uninvolved decision makers. Please make the office actions fair, neutral, transparent, and accountable, that serve as an example to follow, not as a process to fear. — Aron M (talk) 04:14, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

General questions and comments[edit]

Conflicts of Interest and Recusals[edit]

One of the most concerning aspects of the Fram case was the fact that the spouse of the WMF Board Chair filed the initial complaint. When a WMF Board member or a another member of his/her immediate family becomes involved in a T&S complaint, the Executive Director and the WMF Staff are placed in an impossible position. (The Executive Director reports to the Board through the Chair, and all Office Actions must ultimately be approved by the Executive Director.)

The response to this concern has been that the Chair notified the Board and Legal of her recusal. The problem is that both the name of the complainant and the scope and date of the recusal were kept confidential. (But for the complainant posting a highly visible public notice on her talk page, the community may have never known of this conflict.) Staff were put in the difficult position of having the complainant publicly naming the involved T&S staff members without a corresponding public recusal by the spouse. Even if there was an early and publicly disclosed recusal of a proper scope, how could a staff member be confident that the WMF Board member would not extract a future price on the staff member's career? It seems to me that possible solutions would be to exclude WMF Board members and their immediate families from filing T&S complaints or to have a more comprehensive and public recusal process for cases where a family member files a T&S complaint. Thank you for your careful consideration of this problem. Hlevy2 (talk) 14:00, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

None of the board members are involved in the day-to-day operations of the Foundation. They meet three-four times per year and set strategic direction. It is not clear to me that one trustee would have any sort of influence over what T&S does, and really this seems like the smallest issue here. But a statement from T&S or the board to that effect would be nice if it is a common concern. – Ajraddatz (talk) 14:10, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree broadly that the board is unlikely to be directly involved in day-to-day decisions, but there is the idea that the best way to avoid scandal is to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. (If New York Brad pops in I'm sure he could elaborate and provide some Latin name for it) I think what we do know strongly suggests that, unfortunately for T&S, they got played on their first-ever deployment of this new tool by a complainant who knew they could not make their case on wiki and decided to use backchannels to get what they wanted. There is also the matter of T&S doing something that would normally be handled by ArbCom when a member of T&S paid staff has a real-world relationship with a member of En.Wp ArbCom. I'm not saying or even suggesting that anything untoward actually happened, but I feel like the office shoud've been in front of this, not scrambling to keep up with it. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:54, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to see the evidence you have that the complaint was filed by her, as opposed to just regurgitating Wikipediocracy theories. (I hesitate to call them "conspiracy theories" because in this case it may very well be possible, but right now it assumes facts not in evidence; Raystorm's responce to the entire situation was after Hale had already been more-or-less harassed by more zealous Fram defenders for a week or two.) Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 19:06, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please read this diff from Feb. 9, 2018 carefully. It refers to specific T&S staff members. Hlevy2 (talk) 19:57, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

...and? Nobody denies that the user in question knew what T&S does, and contacted them prior to the advent of partial bans. This is not evidence of a conspiracy. – Ajraddatz (talk) 19:59, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

And there is nothing in the public record as of the date of that "notice" or better yet, as of the date of the first complaint, that the Chair of the WMF Board publicly recused herself from any discussion of that matter. If the only people receiving notice of the recusal are Legal and the other Board members, how would T&S know that she had recused herself? Further, assuming that the T&S investigation dates back to 2017, how could someone run for election to the WMF Board without disclosing that a member of her immediate family was involved in a T&S investigation? There is a problem if we craft rules to protect the confidentiality of all the parties and then one party makes aggressive public statements about the matter. Hlevy2 (talk) 20:21, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I was being careful not to name names myself, and you are right that we don't know and most likely never will know for a certainty who exactly did what, but I am reasonably convinced it is what it looked like. (who complained, or at least who one of them was, not necessarily that "the fix was in") Beeblebrox (talk) 19:38, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It is very obvious who the complainant was, from this comment by an ArbCom member. Who the second complainant was is less clear. [2]. Black Kite (talk) 23:38, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

was it though? Beeblebrox (talk)

It strikes me that the chair of the board will have to answer difficult questions as to her personal ethics should she choose to try to remain on the board past next Wikimania. Her previous statements on the score strike me as imperfectly candid, though the questions in the past did not actually anticipate this situation. Even though I imagine T&S will ring-fence the board elections, they cannot spare her that. At this point, I'm more interested in that than in finding proof positive that LH did this or LH did that or LH did some other thing. The community has had only two board members to represent it through a time of crises rather than its granted three, because of these things.--Wehwalt (talk) 05:14, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Without getting into personalities, it seems to me that T&S should rarely, if ever, get into a dispute that involves a member of the WMF Board or an immediate family member. When a complaint that involves WMF Board members or their families is filed, there should be an immediate, public disclosure. The WMF Board members should be required to waiver any confidentiality regarding T&S matters when they join the WMF Board. Hlevy2 (talk) 18:14, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Policy for a tool that does not work?[edit]

This will be a policy for use of a specific tool against rogue users, but the tool itself will only work if the users in question play nice. Rogue users does not play nice, that is why the tool are used against them. The tool itself can be easily circumvented, especially for clever rogue users that don't play nice.

I don't believe we need a policy for use of the tool, we need a proof that the tool actually work for rogue users. I'm not sure it is possible to make such a proof, because we don't have any means to track users without using the same features (aka “tools”) used for the temporary and partial bans. If we use the same features, then we will find that the tools are 100% effective, while in reality they are far less effective.

To rephrase: We end up defining a policy that will be failing due to inadequate tools, and due to the inadequate tools it will seemingly work flawlessly.

It is a waste of time to write a policy without a better tool. — Jeblad 18:22, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There has been much discussion of "unblockable users" and "harassment." Allegedly this policy is designed to address both problems, but in fact, it can be (and many people would argue has already been) misused by an "unblockable user" to harass her political opponents. As designed, there is nothing to prevent a rogue user from targeting good rule-abiding users or administrators. Hlevy2 (talk) 20:06, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is always a risk. On en:wiki AN/I and ArbCom (and Jimbo) have been used with some success by the "bad guys" in the past, the same applies to just about every other real world agency created to avoid harm, including the police and law courts. While there is no reason to think that WMF T&S would be any different, this is no reason to not empower them. Rich Farmbrough 22:34 4 October 2019 (GMT).

It is true that some rogue users don't play nice. However most of those are easy to combat. Which groups of rogue users we are talking about depends on what the other parts of this discussion decides. Rich Farmbrough 22:34 4 October 2019 (GMT).

Hay algunas cosas que querría decir sobre esto[edit]

1ª Tened en cuenta que no todos los proyectos son la Wikipedia en inglés.

2ª Tened en cuenta que hay proyectos en los que la comunidad de editores y la comunidad de hablantes es muy reducida y que la capacidad de gestionar una queja o incluso una amenaza dentro de la propia comunidad es muy compleja. Hay comunidades que se desarrollan en una lengua que se habla en un único país o en una zona y que hay veces que cuando dicen que “sé donde vives” quieren decir que lo saben y que en veinte minutos están en la puerta de tu casa. Y a lo mejor si llamas a la policía, en jefe de la policía es el hermano o la prima del que te ha amenazado.

3ª Hay grupos grandes con problemas similares para quejarse. En general cualquier lengua que se hable sólo en un país puede –potencialmente- tener ese problema. El problema del que hablo es tener la comunidad controlada directamente o por coacción por un grupo. Por ejemplo, en el caso de la Alemania de 1938, ¿qué probabilidades habría tenido una queja por el borrado de una cita contra el NSDAP dirigida a través de la comunidad? Cualquier editor en alemán (bueno, sólo el 95%) sabría que era mejor no tocar el tema o no oír la queja. Sin ser tan sangrante, ya alguien ha mencionado las “wikis rotas”.

4ª No veo mucho sentido a las expulsiones globales temporales. Si algo es lo bastante grave para requerir una acción administrativa de ese nivel –veo que se ha usado la expresión “lo peor de lo peor”- será porque es muy serio. No se envía a los Cascos Azules a cobrar multas de aparcamiento.

5ª La debida transparencia ha de ser usada en estos procedimientos, incluyendo una cierta capacidad de defensa del acusado. También ha de estar claro qué instancia interviene y por qué. No se trata de sustituir organismos operativos, como el Comité de Arbitraje, sino de suplementar los que no existen o sustituir los que no pueden operar.

B25es (talk) 19:04, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a translation of B25es comment:

There are a few things I would like to say about this.

Keep in mind that not every project is English Wikipedia.

Keep in mind that there are projects where the editor community and the speaker community is very reduced and where the ability to handle a complaint or even a threat within the community itself is very complex. There are communities that develop in a language that is spoken in a single country or a single region, and there are times when someone says "I know where you live" it means they know and they can get to your door in twenty minutes. And maybe if you call the police, the police chief can be the brother or cousin of the one who made the threat.

There are big groups with similar problems to make complaints. In general, any language that is spoken in a single country could potentially have this problem. The problem I refer to is having a community that is controlled directly or by coaction by a group. As an example, Germany in 1938, what would be the chances of a complaint about the deletion of a quote against the NSDAP directed through the community? Any German editor (well, only 95%) would know it would be better not to get involved or to avoid hearing the complaint. Without being so extreme, someone already mentioned the "broken wikis".

I don't see too much sense in temporary global bans. If something is severe enough to require an administrative action of this level (I see the expression "worst of worst" has been used) it would be because it is very severe. You don't send the Blue Helmets [United Nations peacemakers] to collect parking fines.

Due transparency should be used in these procedures, including some capacity of defence for the accused. It should also be clear which instance [body] intervenes and why. It should not be about replacing operative organisms, such as the ArbCom, but about supplement those that exist or replace does that cannot operate.

It is only slightly better than the one Google Translate would produce, but I hope it helps. --MarioGom (talk) 11:14, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikimedia Foundation Office and Trust and Safety team must follow the same process that ordinary editors use to request non site-ban sanctions on the English Wikipedia against any functionary or any editor accused of behavior issues other than threats and child endangerment[edit]

Proposed: That the Office/T&S should use en:Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests for formal charges that the Office wants the community and Arbcom to discuss together or en:Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee for accusations that the Office believes can be handled summarily by the Committee, without necessarily involving wider community input, but not private Arbcom-T&S conferences or email for functionaries. Although ordinary, non-admin editors accused of legal or other threats might be addressed in such private fora, they probably should not be. EllenCT (talk) 00:44, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is basically a police/justice approach right ? Collect evidence (when needed in confidence) and then ask witnesses if they want justice to press charges and possibly disclose identity of accuser to accused (in court) ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:12, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Right; the point is not to mirror social institutions but avoid drama while still allowing for anonymous complaints to percolate through the Foundation, and preserve the advantage of the monolithic corporation possibly dealing with harassment complaints better than the community free-for-all. I'm not convinced they will until they get some practice at it. I wish they hadn't tried to start with an admin involved through a third party with the Board Chair, but I suppose they had to start somewhere, and maybe that just felt like the biggest challenge. EllenCT (talk) 19:24, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For the purposes of blocks and bans, there is no precedent to have separate sanctioning processes based on level of user access. That's simply not a thing. Any sysop can block any user, and the community may ban any user, regardless of their permissions, subject to the normal requirements. Those with advanced permissions may be brought to ArbCom (on projects with ArbComs) in order to remove those permissions, and ArbCom may well decide to take additional action. But they are only the venue for issues of administrator misconduct in as much as it concerns removal of the tools.

We similarly do not hold public or private hearings based on user access levels. We hold public and private hearing based on the nature of the evidence. GMG ^talk 03:06, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

One reason Fram's ban blew up is because he was an admin. I am not sure that maintaining the canard that adminship is no big deal will serve to keep the community from being similarly distracted and distraught on a regular basis. If someone makes a retaliatory complaint of harassment to T&S, the accused shouldn't be denied a public hearing just because the nature of the evidence is that it was sent in email to a T&S staffer. When T&S finds ordinary vandals who aren't making threats, pointing them out on en:Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee will get the clerks to open a en:WP:AIV request pretty quick, and as since clerks are often admins anyway, deal with the issue faster than email or the conference call would have. And there is nothing in this proposal saying that T&S can't go directly to WP:AIV. Obviously if someone is threatening to murder editors, T&S will simultaneously involve the police according to the process they already have, block according to the process they already have, and WP:DENY recognition on WT:ARBCOM, which seems ideal to me. How would you improve the proposal, without turning T&S complaints into an anonymous means of retaliation and abuse? EllenCT (talk) 15:44, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The section heading says "any functionary or any editor" - it could just say "any editor" I guess, but it covers everyone. Rich Farmbrough 22:41 4 October 2019 (GMT).

My punctuation game is off; I mean, "(any functionary) or (any editor accused of behavior issues other than threats and child endangerment)" -- if the Foundation uncovers threats of violence or attempts at child grooming by an admin, the community should certainly be told even if the evidence has to be entirely private. If it's a non-admin, not so much. EllenCT (talk) 18:20, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We are drifting[edit]

Dear WMF. I notice a lot of comments here regarding a specific application of your last ban. I think that is very much clouding the discussion and pulls almost all of the discussion into the application of those measures towards one specific case, whereas clearly you are asking a broader question.. I'd say that this is a problem in setup. You are asking about the application of measures, but I think it is unclear to many people what gap you are trying to cover with the measures. You clearly have a GOAL with the measures (and I think you can see some of that in the description of those measures). However before discussing the measure, it think the discussion should focus on what YOU (and we) think the problem is. What types of complaints were you not able to handle well BEFORE that the measures were trying to cover. What do YOU see as your responsibilities and what does the community see as your responsibilities. What you think your legal risks can be even. It seems like we have chosen a hammer and now we discuss how the dent got into the car. But maybe we should ask why the car was pulled into the shop in the first place before arguing over the type of hammer and what it is for. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:49, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree. This does seem to be putting the cart before the horse. Establish exactly what problem exists before asking whether a specific remedy is appropriate. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:04, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is harassment, mostly of the TAGTEAM variety, such as was seen in GamerGate disputes. Fram was a terrible way to handle it. Enwiki's Arbcom is going to run their own RFC on it soon. I'm glad to see the terrible policy proposal be rejected in the interim. EllenCT (talk) 21:44, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

en:WP:TAGTEAM is not even a policy. It is marked as an essay. I for one would not feel comfortable with the WMF enforcing their interpretation of the already quite vague directions given in this kind of essay. ---<(kmk)>- (talk) 15:51, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Avoiding responsibility through a role account is bad[edit]

Using the WMFOffice account for making actions is a way for people who take actions to avoid responsibility without. It makes it more likely that decision makers feel empowered to engage in actions that cause community conflict because they don't feel like they have to shoulder the responsibility for them. This should stop and any further community action to the extend that they are made should be done with accounts linked to individual people. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 07:12, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In general yes, but not to the extent that the use of the role account should be forbidden when there's a genuine reason to do so. Some of the people the WMF bans are genuinely dangerous; it's perfectly legitimate that when taking action against someone (g.g.) accused of being an agent of a hostile intelligence agency, or accused of using a WMF project to recruit for a terrorist cell, that the person taking action would be uncomfortable making their real name public.Iridescent (talk) 08:59, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Adding to this, it doesn't take much Googling to find out how much off-wiki vitrol and harassment was directed towards a former T&S manager who had taken responsibility for some bans. I think that using the role account should be absolutely acceptable when dealing with users deserving of a global ban. Issues arise when that role account is used to engage with the community, though even there, the completely inappropriate response from members of the community surely will not incentivize them to post with their individual accounts in the future. – Ajraddatz (talk) 19:15, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think that a large part of the inappropriate response was a reaction specifically to the way the role account was used to avoid communication. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:15, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In the Fram case we've seen the WMF hint at things without explicitly saying them. There was an entire finding that Fram did not commit any off-wiki harassment because the WMF tried to imply that he did without stating so explicitly.

I'd suggest that if the WMF needs to be anonymous for the reasons you suggest, they should have to explicitly and specifically explain why they are doing so. It'd be too easy to say something like "We have carefully considered the circumstances and decided to take advantage of the process designed for the safety of the community. Safety is an important consideration and..." which is Not Really Lying even if nobody thinks the accused is dangerous. Ken Arromdee (talk) 12:54, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Anonymity did not matter much here - Jan Eissfeldt, when he finally deigned to come in and attempt damage control, just blew the exact same smoke up our arses. Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 19:03, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, for dealing with people who are genuinely dangerous I can understand it. But it shouldn't be used for potentially controversial decisions. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 19:11, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking as a long-term member of the functionaries team at en.wp I must disagree with the premise that a role account is always bad (as in, I wish we had one for some of the stuff we have to do on-wiki, sometimes things don't get done until someone willing to put their name on it steps up). I'm not at all sure it was the right call in the Fram case, but in the more established role of T&S, dealing with the worst of the worst abusive and dangerous users, it is an excellent solution. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, if we didn't let them use the role account, people might start suing staffers. EllenCT (talk) 21:46, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Like Beeblebrox said, this reasoning applies to the worst of the worst only. However, the process we discuss here is about "partial bans". If someone is found guilty of the worst of the worst, a partial ban is clearly inappropriate. So the argument is not applicable to partial bans. ---<(kmk)>- (talk) 16:04, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's not avoiding responsibility, it's invoking collective responsibility. Controversial actions are rarely (if ever) the result of one person's decision. Vermont (talk) 15:44, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Are you making a general observation? Because if so, I suspect you are merely giving your impression, and no research has been done on this. My experience has been that it is far more likely that a controversial action be taken by an individual. If a collective, or group, is involved, then it is more likely with the multiple minds on it, that one or another will see potential downsides or flaws that the originator of the idea does not see. The group brings far more knowledge and experience to the decision than one person alone can possibly bring. KillerChihuahua (talk) 12:17, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Despite some egregious concerns on the rest of their actions, I do feel a role account is legitimate - the decisions are made collectively. HOWEVER, if they want that protection, then they have to ensure any query to that role account is answered within 1 full working day - however many queries they get. If they do something likely to get queries then they should know to make time for answering. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:03, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Role account is required in this decade. But personal engagement where possible is also a good thing. Rich Farmbrough 23:09 4 October 2019 (GMT).

Due process[edit]

Nobody should be punished for an action without being told what they are being punished for. Kafka wrote about how the legal process looks when that doesn't happen and it's not pretty. When there are private complaints, whoever takes complaints can start investigating the history of the person who's complained about. It's always possible to ask the person who's complaining whether or not they are willing to make their complaint public. Whenever a Wikimedia project has internal processes to deal with problematic behavior the health and safety time should engage with that internal process instead of trying to circumvent it. In enwiki that means they should ask arbcom to open cases when they think there's ban worthy behavior and argue the case for the ban towards arbcom. Engaging with the existing processes would have the beneficial side effect that in the process members of the health and safety team who currently seem to have a hard time understanding how the community works to learn about how it's processes work. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 07:36, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot fully agree, although this contradicts what I would like to happen. I can imagine circumstances where it is necessary to ban an individual without telling her what she has done wrong. What I consider an allowable policy must contain:

(quoting the above editor). Whenever a Wikimedia project has internal processes to deal with problematic behavior, the Foundation should engage with that process. (There are circumstances where the Foundation might need to dissolve the process, but that is a separate issue.)

Furthermore, the complainant should be encouraged to start that internal process.

The Foundation should not "punish" editors, but may block editors to prevent damage or disruption to the projects. This means a temporary restriction is inappropriate unless the editor is informed what she needs to do.

All restrictions (even those involving potential violations of law) must be appeal-able. If there were a real ombudsman, that might be the appropriate person to appeal to, but the person must have access to all the information that the T&S team has, and must have the ability to question people without first contacting T&S.

If the complaint is found inappropriate, sanctions against the complainant should be on the table, even if the complaint is private. For example, if the complaint is found to have no foundation, a restriction against further complaints by that person should be considered. If a complaint is found to be malicious, then sanctions against the complainant in actual Wikimedia projects might be appropriate.

— Arthur Rubin ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:25, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Last May I knew by a 3rd party that I had been secretly subject to a funding ban, which was in place till 30 June, but which nefarious effects lasted till 2 weeks ago. Inquiring with the WMF what it was, after some weeks I was given a completely bogus explanation about the reasoning, very easily demonstrable to be a fraud, showing that not even a shred of appearance of due process has been followed there. Despite repeated inquiries, I'm waiting till today for an explanation on why/how that was allowed to happen through all the chain of command and system of checks and balances that supposedly is in place, and a guarantee that steps have been taken so that it doesn't happen again, to me and to others. In the meanwhile, I would advice anyone to distrust WMF by default, at least while it's behaving like an obscure medieval organization immersed in secretive punishments and trials. That sort of behavior is not what the Wikimedia movement is about. I sincerely hope the situation improves, as everybody wins with a Trustworthy & Safe WMF that does not harass members of the community with bogus accusations and fraudulent punishments one has no way to contest.--- Darwin ^Ahoy! 16:07, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am having trouble with " I can imagine circumstances where it is necessary to ban an individual without telling her what she has done wrong." - I cannot. What circumstances could possibly exist in which even the banned individual is not told what they did? This is manifestly unjust and unreasonable. KillerChihuahua (talk) 12:40, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree in 99% of cases a reason should be provided, but you always have to have an exception. For example, in cases where the conduct could be a crime I doubt WMF wants to be in the position of saying they banned the person because of X criminal conduct (even if the person is doing what WMF says they are), and then defending a libel suit should the person choose to file one (regardless of how meritless the suit may end up being and other things that would have to take place to make this even possible). It is a never say never situation because in my experience you will eventually encounter that situation. Again, this should be an exception to the rule and only used in the most extreme of cases. KnightLago (talk) 22:36, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@KnightLago:: If they've been convicted, then there is no reason to fear a libel suit, but more to the point, why would they be banning someone for a crime committed off wiki? KillerChihuahua (talk) 12:11, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@KillerChihuahua:: Did I miss someone saying it had to be committed off wiki? I could come up with a few crimes that can (or have been) be committed on wiki, and that usually does not mean law enforcement is even aware before WMF has taken action in the past. KnightLago (talk) 03:48, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Suppose someone sent a severed head to one editor and burnt another editor's house to the ground. Telling them they are being banned for arson lets them know who has ratted them out. Rich Farmbrough 22:48 4 October 2019 (GMT).

That would assume the arson had no witnesses other than the person whose house burnt down. Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 00:06, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That is the problem with the lack of due process. Suppose that someone goes to T&S claiming "I saw editor X burn down my house." Editor X should be able to argue that the complainant never had a house, or that X was in a different country on the date of the fire, etc. People can misuse T&S complaints to troll their wikiadversaries as much as they misuse other complaint mechanisms. Hlevy2 (talk) 18:33, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Or, for that matter, that the complainant was not in the country in question on the date of the fire. This requires investigation by T&S of its informants. — Arthur Rubin ^{T C} (en: U, T) 19:16, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Limited Fairness available: Accused or Accuser?[edit]

Some of this discussion has been had above, but as it's the point on which much of due process disagreement swings on I think it's worth filtering out. The same discussion will shortly be had on enwiki for our ARBCOM cases, but here it applies to the WMF limited/partial cases.

It's impossible to simultaneously have two things:

Complete anonymity (and thus, to a degree, protection) for the accuser/whistleblower, and
Full (or even near-full) evidence being provided to the accused to let them make a full defence and bring awareness of other relevant contextual points

There are partial mitigations that can be done either way, e.g. anonymise the names but leave content visible, or have an appointed defender who can see the evidence instead. However these are false mitigations - the first would leave individuals still easy to identify and the second still wouldn't know all the information because they can't ask the accused on it.

So we are left with a general unpleasant choice: which beneficial point do we value more? There might be edge cases (though most would be permaban instances), but we're looking for a general statement of priorities.

It would also be great if the WMF could give their reasoning for why they judge accuser privacy (a worthwhile goal) higher than evidentiary due process (also worthwhile): @Trizek (WMF), Samuel (WMF), and Kbrown (WMF):, along with all of the communities' thoughts. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nosebagbear (talk)

Interesting question, Nosebagbear. So, there are two prongs to answering this. First is why the Foundation prioritizes the privacy of people who report incidents to us, and the other is what "due process" means in the circumstances the Foundation, as a platform provider, is in.

As far as why we value the privacy of reporters, it's important to keep in mind that we're talking about literal user safety here in most of the cases we review. If someone has done something awful to you - threatened to kill you, say - then the absolute last thing we want is to direct that person's attention back to you, and increase the possibility of them carrying through with that threat. On a less severe level, we want to avoid revictimisation of people who are already vulnerable and/or being targeted, because we aim to avoid causing additional mental distress. If it comes down to it, we're going to prioritize the literal life and safety of the reporter above the ability of the accused to receive a full data-dump of the case. But frankly, it rarely comes down to flatly having to choose one or the other.

On the topic of "due process", I want to stress that that's a jurisprudential term not equivalent to "fairness". It has a definition in courts of law, because the courts recognize that if society is going to do state-sponsored violence to someone, there are certain standards the state needs to meet before it can legally do that. This is not that. There's lots of legal precedent showing that when the outcomes are less extreme, the requirements for due process are correspondingly not as high, and that exactly what due process requires is something to figure out for each unique fact pattern. We definitely believe that the way we handle complaints should be fair, which is the ultimate goal of due process as a concept...but we're a privately-owned website and we're not inflicting violence on anyone. The most severe measure under this policy is the Foundation as owner banning someone from using our privately-owned website. On top of that, Wikipedia itself has a uniquely good, complementary system for reviewing complaints because everything someone has posted on-wiki is saved in archives and everyone can easily see a person’s history and postings exactly as they looked at the time they posted. That all means that legalistic "due process" is not always going to be the right standard for us to use before we, you know, ban someone from editing an encyclopedia or dictionary or whatever. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 17:53, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kbrown (WMF): thank you for your considered response. Regarding cases that a genuine threat of safety would apply than of course that would take precedence, but it seems beyond dispute that any case where any reasonable belief of that, at all, could be made, would be a case for a global PERMABAN, not a limited/temporary ban, especially with relevance to outside the 4 delegated areas, (which is what my question applies to), and so that aspect of the answer isn't directly relevant.

I use "due process" as the phrasing as the (en)community accepted phrasing for a sufficiently safeguarded internal regulation system - obviously it isn't intended as high as a criminal case or the dispute would be much broader than an evidentiary-sight consideration. That said, I (and we) use "due process" rather than only saying "fair" because it is expected that the WMF act fairly to all editors, both accused and accusers, and that that fairness level is adjudged to be quite high indeed for quasi-judicial cases. After all, you can set any level of accused protection on the stated legal grounds, which includes higher than what you mention as appropriate for an "encyclopedia or dictionary or whatever". Has there ever been a consultation at what an appropriate level of fairness is? You comment being able to review complaints, but the problem is that there are aspects of T&S-directed complaints that we can't review - off-wiki evidence, the autonomy of any T&S staff members involved, how a non-permanent sanction level is generated (our one frame of reference - Fram's 1 year ban, was unanimously dismissed as OTT by en-ARBCOM) etc Nosebagbear (talk) 18:21, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Has there ever been a consultation at what an appropriate level of fairness is? Not to my knowledge, and I would argue that the community at large is neither qualified to, nor the appropriate body to, determine how the platform provider - the WMF - conducts investigations into how its platform is used. Just off the top of my head, our T&S processes are heavily informed by our legal obligations to involved parties - what happens when the community !votes that we must, say, publicly explain all bans, which we can't do due to those legal obligations? It's certainly understandable that community members would want those ban explanations, but it's just not gonna be able to happen. That's one example, but it's not the only element of our process that is informed or determined by things that are outside of the community's..."control" isn't quite the right word, maybe "authority"? And I don't mean that in a snooty, "You can't tell us what to do, how dare you!" sense, but rather in the sense of "we have obligations in these cases beyond 'do what the community !votes', and those obligations will exist no matter what the community !votes." I'm not saying that our investigation decisions can never possibly be reviewed by anyone, ever - I've seen some people arguing for some sort of appeal body, and that's a totally valid suggestion - but having the community try to set what does and doesn't count as due investigative process for us isn't going to work, imo, because we have obligations to parties other than the community. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kbrown (WMF):, indeed, and hence most areas have never really been disputed in any sense (e.g. stating someone was banned for certain behaviours risks a mix of outing and libel risks etc). My query was more to point out that due to some inherently closed off areas, stating that unfairness can be avoided due to the general transparency of editor history on-wiki isn't quite accurate. In the past there's been functionally complete acceptance at where the WMF drew the investigative format, and those who have known certain aspects (Stewards etc) have been very positive towards your handling of various cases.

However with a) the FRAMGATE saga and b) the more general attempt(s) by T&S to consider cases outside the core 4 areas, the aspects in my initial raised question arise: there used to always be very clear massive reasons not to share and, I'd suspect, very clear evidence beyond any conceivable dispute or even mitigation (even had the accused been able to defend themselves fully knowingly). But both those aspects can be (partially) disputed in cases not within those boundaries - with the added issues of the downright scarred T&S/Community relationship that now exists.

As I said, there is obviously reasoning for both positions. But if the absolute confidentiality of accuser is going to be what T&S opts for then you need to do three things:

Own it - you need to set out why you think it's the morally correct position, with functionally no chance of negatives towards the accused
Explain how individuals receiving a limited ban should know what behaviour to cease on their return: some of the WMF's warnings (and the warnings explanation page) have been seen and it's really hard to determine exactly what behaviour should cease in some of them
Explain what setup is (or will be) used to prevent accuser misbehaviour, whether that be illegitimate claims or a legitimate claim but where investigation also discovers misbehaviour by the accuser. Nosebagbear (talk) 21:59, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

+1 Nosebagbear said it better than I was likely to. 19:16, 13 October 2019 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Arthur Rubin (talk) [reply]

Hi @Kbrown (WMF):, would you/T&S be able to provide answers to the aspects above? They're raised repeatedly in the main sections (and elsewhere), and really need to be answered before the consultation closes to give an informed judgement, if the WMF is going to be specifically against accused awareness. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:47, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Nosebagbear: What are you looking for answers to? Whether we'd implement the three things you listed (own it, explain it, etc)? I can't really speak to that specifically - revising investigation/bans documentation to that extent would require working with a bunch of parties to make sure it was legally functional, didn't provide w:wp:BEANS, and generally was appropriate for public-facing documentation, and I can't say what the results of all those efforts would look like. I can certainly pass on that this is your recommendation, however, and the team can discuss revising our documentation. Side note: I want to clarify that I did not say that the Foundation is "against accused awareness". We speak with and notify accused parties when and as logic and user safety allow. What I said is that iff we are in a situation where we are limited to choosing exclusively one or the other of "protect victim" or "give full details to accused" (that is, where doing one would mean the other was impossible), we are likely to opt for the former. In cases where it's not an exclusive choice, where there is middle ground, we would inform the accused to the extent we're able; in cases where there is no concern about protecting the reporter at all, we would be able to tell the accused exactly what they were alleged to have done. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 12:06, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kbrown (WMF):, yes I meant those three areas, apologies for any lack of clarity. I'm not sure how BEANS would apply in this specific situation - it's not a list of potential prohibitions that might be taken as ideas for bad actions, but a mix of post-action specifics and investigative evenhandedness . Please do pass those 3 requested aspects on to the team(s). Nosebagbear (talk) 12:18, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kbrown (WMF):, I deeply appreciate your effort to explain T&S's official position. Yet, I do have a few questions and suggestions.
First and foremost, I would like to remind that — to the best of my knowledge — the ultimate aim of Wikipedia is to collect all the existing encyclopaedic knowledge. I do not say it is realistic, especially in short term, but it is some kind of horizon that all of us are dreaming to achieve. Obviously, creation of some bureaus allowed to block renowned editors beyond anybody's control is an idea very much to avoid during this long way.

Above, you write about T&S's legal obligations having effect on the course of its actions. It is fully understandable, but only in regard to actually legal cases. If somebody breaks the law on Wikipedia by — for example — spreading child pornography or making death threats, block them outright infinitely and I am sure nobody will complain. On the other hand, you are neither obliged nor desired to act immediately when one breaks only Wikipedia internal regulations. It would be far wiser to cooperate with the editors then (for example through ArbCom), because — as you probably managed to notice — you caused more community disruption by your blithe actions than a whole cohort of vandals could be reasonably expected to.

In this place, everybody is embracing the idea of free knowledge and freedom, as indicated by being attracted to Wikipedia. Therefore, there is probably no chance to gain acceptance for this kind of Vehmic court. Your narrative of "when the outcomes are less extreme, the requirements for due process are correspondingly not as high" is tricky but pretty much pointless. Nobody ever contested the lawfulness of your actions. On the contrary, nearly everybody seems to agree that they were immoral and harmful for Wikipedia. Good men either show all their pieces of evidence or pretend they never had it, no third way. As a Polish proverb says, in loose translation, either mount or saddle. There is also another version: either mount or [expletive deleted].

Finally, I would like to tell you not to worry. I wrote many harsh words, but I believe nobody will feel offended. I attack ideas, not people. People learn by mistakes, most profoundly — by their own mistakes. As you remember, you were able to perform fantastic job for a few years, with no complaints altogether. Maybe you could find out what has changed since then in order to rewrite your internal regulations and return to that mode of work. As Lord Acton famously said: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I urge you to limit your own power in order to retain dignity. Good luck!
Waiting for (preferably positive) feedback, Marcowy Człowiek (talk) 17:28, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Marcowy Człowiek, and thank you for these thoughts! I absolutely agree with you that the ultimate aim of Wikipedia - and other Wikimedia projects - is to collect free knowledge. To some of your specific points:
When I talk about the Foundation's legal obligations, I don't only mean "cases in which we are legally required to act by bannning a person", but also things like "situations in which we are obligated to do or not do things to keep from being sued, because the Foundation's resources are limited and we need to use those resources to help the world build free knowledge, not defending court cases we could have avoided." Having said that, understand please that I am not a lawyer and I am speaking very generally and only from my understanding; if you want to know more about out legal obligations and limitations, I would recommend you reach out to the Foundation's Legal team.
I think we may be misunderstanding each other with regard to what I meant by "when the outcomes are less extreme, the requirements for due process are correspondingly not as high". I was not talking about the legality of our actions, but rather the standards to which they should be held - that is, my point was that "when we're not taking legal action and the worst thing that can happen is banning someone from a website, the standard of proof does not need to be as high as in a court of law which might be able to throw someone in jail for life."
"Good men either show all their pieces of evidence or pretend they never had it, no third way." I'm not 100% sure I understand you correctly here, but are you saying that if we are to be "good men", we must publish all evidence in all cases onwiki? I'm afraid that's not possible, largely due to the legal obligations I mentioned earlier. Most notably, we have been sued for things like defamation in the past in retaliation for placing global bans, and that is without our publishing anything negative about the person we banned. If we were to publish evidence or allegations, we could very easily find ourselves in a situation where we did not have enough time or money to do anything other than defend ourselves in court over and over from people suing us. Now, possibly we'd win some or all of those lawsuits - again, I'm not a lawyer - but I would not judge it a good use of the movement's resources for us to have to spend all our time and money in these defenses rather than in helping the community gather the sum of all human knowledge. As a result, there will always be situations in which we cannot be transparent about allegations or cases.
You are absolutely correct that people learn by their mistakes. This consultation is one example of us attempting to learn from the mistakes that happened in the Fram case. We really appreciate your - and everyone else's - thoughts here to help us do that. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 10:06, 29 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Kbrown (WMF):, I am really impressed by your professional attitude and willingness to discuss. English is not my first language, so I apologise for any possible misunderstandings. I am not a lawyer, either, but I think that all the possible proofs may be successfully divided into three cathegories. The first of them are onwiki edits. Obviously, they can be safely shown in order to explain the reason of banning, unless they were illegal themselves and had to be oversighted. The second class is formed by cases of offwiki harassment with confirmed identity (for example: someone placed on his Wikimedia account the link to his/her Facebook account). In such a situation, even if the Foundation's Legal team deems it unsafe to point at messages from that (let us say) Facebook account, it is at least possible to show the Wikipedia edit linking to it — and it will explain something. Finally, there is offwiki harassment with unconfirmed identity (for example: some Facebook user claims to edit Wikipedia from a given account, but it is not reversable). I believe that such "proofs" should not even be considered, because in this case it is possible (and very probable!) that some vandal is trying to trick you into blocking a given user.

Having said all of that, I would also like to note that you never referred to the suggestion of solving such cases not on your own, but in cooperation with the involved project's ArbCom. It could increase trust in your actions, making them less disruptive for the community. You are right that your impact on somebody's life is far smaller than this of courts of law. People have committed suicides because of unfair judging in real life — here, hopefully, it will not happen, but somebody can easily commit a "wikisuicide", I mean: stop editing altogether. It is not really beneficial for anybody, is it?

What is also important, such actions seriously undermine the belief in ideals of the whole Wikimedia movement. We cannot be expected to deliver the impartial knowledge about the world if we are not impartial even inside our community. As you may already know, there were even some gossips that T&S blocked Fram because he was a vocal critic of WMF. I do not believe in such a conspiracy theory, but look, I do not actually have a single argument to convince its spreaders. Not a healthy situation!… Marcowy Człowiek (talk) 18:40, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kbrown (WMF): It's appreciated and promising, that the T&S is "attempting to learn from the mistakes". Another big company is going through a similar process just now. I'll leave it here as an example, how a mistake is handled: [3] I cannot stress enough the importance of transparency: that's the only way to gain trust from the communities, and prove the T&S is acting as "good men", to use Marcowy's wording.

The example to justify the lack of transparency (we have been sued for things like defamation in the past in retaliation for placing global bans) - most likely the very unique and unusual case of Abd - is actually about still-visible "content" (primarily on enwiki), with all the questioned (negative) material publicly available, created by volunteer editors, not the WMF. The direct reasons (or evidence) for the WMF ban are not available publicly (no transparency), yet the WMF was sued. That example shows that the lack of transparency does not save the WMF from legal cases. Out of the dozens of banned users this is the only one that I know of, that resulted in a legal case. From a practical perspective nobody takes that case seriously: it cannot cause any significant damage to the WMF. The T&S needs to overcome this fear of unlikely legal cases.

For this and other reasons the arguments for the lack of transparency give the impression of excuses to avoid accountability. This is a very bad example, with damaging effects: not just the WMF's actions are unaccountable, but this practice trickles down to the communities, resulting in a lack of accountability in the local governance structures, most notably in administration.

Healthy communities cannot be built on secrets. To address the incivility in the communities, the T&S needs to show an example of transparency, accountability, fairness and equal application of rules. I hope the communities understand, that this is hard work with risks. The more evidence the T&S gives of acting for the benefit of the communities, the more support and trust it can expect from the communities. —Aron Man.🍂 hist🌾 20:10, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No connection between WMF and community[edit]

The Wikis have many good faith editors, but also many that are not coming here in good faith. From the former group there are several which, albeit in good faith, do insist to edit contrary to local policies and guidelines (the latter group, obviously, does that almost by definition). WMF leaves that be. It is however the local editors who have to cleanup behind all the rubbish that is coming in. If an editor, in good or bad faith, is consistently leaving rubbish to clean up then there are editors that do that clean up. WMF does not provide tools. WMF does not maintain. WMF leaves that to go and get worse. Sockpuppets have free reign. Spam comes in at an increasing rate. Extensions to combat vandalism / spam / blocking / etc. are heavily outdated (and there is 0 intention to change that). And whether in good faith or in bad faith, if you add rubbish there is no way to stop you from continuing that. Any editor who needs to continuously follow up with others because their edits are below par are ... continuously following up with other editors.

If only, you (WMF) would provide editors with the tools and mechanisms to help combat such behaviour (again, whether in good or in bad faith), you would see much less editors being complained about. For all editors who 'need' to be followed around there will at some point be an editor who will lash out at them, or an editor who is taking that too far.

I understand that there are editors who are .. 'intrinsically toxic'. But any action, like what you 'advocate' here (and what you have done in the past) that is aiming at taking out any editor that is toxic, becomes toxic or appears toxic is not solving the root of the problem. Instead, it is weaponizing the editors who come here in bad faith. You (WMF) CANNOT do this without first solving the root of the problem. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:58, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What connection do you suggest? What tools do you feel need to be provided? thanks - KillerChihuahua (talk) 12:29, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@KillerChihuahua: Glad you ask. Below was a list of things I jotted down some weeks ago during FRAMGATE, not formatted for readability, but it sums up quite well what I mean:

Changes in civility policy Without consulting the community first, and enforcing that through unilateral banning of an admin. Zero, absolutely zero communication.
Jimbo replying to me, that: let ArbCom solve it, and if they can't I am afraid it is either a WMF top-down approach or anarchy.
VisualEditor was written to make editing Wikipedia easier, especially for new editors/to attract new editors. (I agree that a side effect here is that also established editors may find it useful, but that is not the aim of why it was written; note, editing also gets easier for spammers, POV warriors).
MediaViewer was written to make the visualization of the images more appealing to the world. (I agree that it is for everyone, but it is aimed at the outside world and possibly new editors more than the established editors)
Superprotect - we decide what you get!
Flow - only few wikis use it, full of flaws, I am aware of a currently broken discussion through flow. Written to make discussion easier for new editors. Implemented while it was a piece of crap, ‘bad’ stuff could not even be deleted long after (it still breaks).
Total negligence on maintaining the Spam-blacklist (my pet problem). there is a suggestion from Jan 3, 2006 (!). Nothing has been done.
related: 03 February 2006, phab T6845, the CAPTCHA 'discriminates against blind people'. It is also one of the mechanisms against spam. Still not fixed. Spambots have free reign. Because a captcha ... makes life more difficult for new editors (.. and new spammers ... and sockpuppets ... and spambots).
In my significantly !voted on suggestion to rewrite said Spam-blacklist I get a reply that even if I would get enough !votes it is 'unlikely that the Community Tech team would have the time and resources to create something similar to AbuseFilter. It may be possible, however, for the team to make some modest improvements to the existing bare-bones implementation'. (You know how this reads ... but anyway, in less expletive language: ‘we don’t care what you want or need, what the community wants or needs is not our priority’).
In the same overhaul-suggestion (which is based on cloning of the AbuseFilter and rewriting the clone) was stated that the AbuseFilter is itself archaic and needed a rewrite itself .. for which there is no time. 'Unfortunately, the AbuseFilter extension has been mostly unmaintained for years and would need to be overhauled ...'. (I forgot about this, subject for another request in the Wishlist I guess).
There is no MediaWiki driven effort to combat spam (I do detection myself separate from the software by one of my bots). There is finally work going on regarding recording who added what, but that is still far away from an analyzed live feed upon which the anti spam effort can react.
There is no MediaWiki driven effort to combat COI-editing (again, I do detection myself with a bot).
There is no MediaWiki driven effort to combat sockpuppetry (We run behind them continuously, even with help from the edit filters). You COULD have the checkuser extension do part of it - if an edit filter can match certain patterns, it is easy to have in the background also the IP check and browser info check (without showing the community). Has the CheckUser extension been upgraded 'lately'?
This survey is only in English (showing the disconnect ...) (added 1010).
(Per user:NKohli (WMF) in Talk:IP_Editing:_Privacy_Enhancement_and_Abuse_Mitigation#CheckUser_improvements) The checkuser extension needs a serious upgrade. That is not initiated because it needs a serious upgrade, but because it is in the way of the idea of hiding the IP addresses of anonymous editors. (Added 1010).

There is no talk or effort on the bottom-up approach. Help keeping out sockpuppets, COI editors, paid-editors, spammers, etc. and you frustrate your existing editor base much less. Build efforts for fact checking, build efforts for keeping material fact-checked. No effort is made for that. Some of these things frustrate the hell out of me to a level that I want to start yelling at the spammers/socks/... (I yell at the keyboard, not typing it). I am SURE that some of these feel harassed, hounded, ... (well, and so do I). It is my strong opinion that if we had better tools, if we had a bottom up approach, that we all could have a much more pleasuring edit experience, and that WMF maybe would see what the cause is of people getting frustrated, see that some editors need to be followed around. Or, we can use our time better on educating the good faith ‘crappy editor’ because we have to worry less about spambots and sockpuppets. You know what, we may even have time to just copy-edit 'good faith crappy stuff' without having to ask the editor to improve because we would simply have time for that.

The only way I can read this proposal from WMF is that they want to take out (and they did) editors who stand in their way of attracting new editors, again ignoring that those same editors stand in the way of COI editors, spammers, spambots, sockpuppets ... but that is in their eyes not important. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 04:05, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A lot to digest here. I'm responding because I was pinged, to let you know that I do see this and will read through this and respond in more detail when I have the time - thanks for the detailed list! KillerChihuahua (talk) 12:19, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There are important bugs raised by the community from more than a decade ago, which are languishing. I have sympathy for devs, I really do. But the effort has by and large been put elsewhere by management. Maybe parsoid will fix many of these bugs, but who knows.
There is also the question of the skin re-work, what-ever it was called. No consultation, horrible mix of serif and san-serif. And after the event ignoring suggestions for better fonts for the font-stack which would obviate the problem of 1/l/I looking the same.

It's no surprising that these things happen, Staff work for WMF, they don't work for the community. And especially staff who don't come from the community do not realise that the community, between them, has more experience in almost every field (and certainly more opinions) than they do. True consultation with the community is going to result in valuable input, and should be the sine-qua-non of every initiative.

Rich Farmbrough 23:07 4 October 2019 (GMT).

It is funny how you mention the skin rework, user:Rich Farmbrough, there was a bug in the watchlist, breaking display with LTR-script pieces. Has been hanging around for a long time until it got fixed by some skin rework and someone noticed the bug was not appearing anymore. (That still means that devs ignored the bug). —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 04:22, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(That was task T9885, reported in November 2006, 'worksforme'/'fixed' on March 24, 2008, suggested to be fixed due to 'From what I can tell, the current watchlists do not use <br />s anymore, and I can't reproduce this bug on my local wiki.'/'Changing from WORKSFORME to FIXED. :) Recent move to table structure would have been the fix here.'). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 07:03, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

2 points added. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 04:07, 10 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What?[edit]

I have some unclear proposals that I forgot above. Some of them are already obsolete. Additionally, the reason why Fram has been banned is pretty much unclear. --Znotch190711 (talk) 13:33, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

He's no longer banned. He has been de-sysopped though. The detailed reasons are private evidence, but he applied for his Admin bit back and failed. You can see the opposer's reasoning here. Rich Farmbrough 22:53 4 October 2019 (GMT).

French commentaire[edit]

Bonjour/bonsoir,

Plusieurs soucis :

Lancer une telle discussion est très intéressant, mais limiter cette discussion a l'anglais me parait quand même plutôt réducteur car tous les wikimédiens ne sont pas forcément en capacité d'écrire dans cette langue.
Cette discussion présente un gros biais qui me parait gênant : il n'y a comme seule possibilité que la possibilité pour la foundation d'intervenir.
Attention, en agissant ainsi la foundation prends un risque juridique qui n'est pas neutre, en particulier dans plusieurs pays. Par exemple, autant en tant qu'hébergeur, la foundation n'est pas considérée comme légalement responsable en France du contenu présent sur les plateformes qu'elle héberge, autant en intervenant directement sur le contenu des plateformes et/ou en "gérant" les utilisateurs (et leur interaction) en l'absence de décision judiciaire (donc de sa propre initiative), la Foundation devient de fait un responsable éditorial. Légalement en France, les deux notions n'ont pas du tout la même conséquence. Dans le premier cas, un plaignant peut juste demander le retrait d'un contenu, dans le second cas il peut poursuivre la foundation et même jusqu'à faire bloquer tout ou partie de la plateforme publiant le contenu qu'il considère comme illégal.

Personnellement, je ne suis pas convaincu par ailleurs de l'intérêt de la foundation a aller se "mêler" des affaires communautaires.

De plus, il me parait quelque peu incompréhensible que la foundation tente de faire appliquer un "guide du comportement" qui lui est propre sans en avoir discuter auparavant avec les communautés concernées. Cela n'est pas souhaitable ni pour la communauté en général ni pour les projets, ni même pour la foundation.
Cela va inévitablement créer des tensions.

De plus, je m'étonne à titre personnel des méthodes employées : il suffit de déposer plainte/réclamation contre un contributeur et c'est bon il peut être banni d'une ou plusieurs plateformes.
Nous sommes sensé tous travailler de manière collaborative, mais là on oublie la notion de "travail ensemble" en lui disant d'un coup "tiens on a décidé qu'on veut plus de toi, dégage"...
La protection (qui peut être légitime) du bien-être du plaignant n'implique pas pour autant que l'on mette au pilori l'accusé en l'empêchant totalement de se défendre des accusations lancées contre lui. --Fanchb29 (talk) 19:37, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Translation (by Google translate, please improve if you can) · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:10, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Good day/good evening,
Several problems:

Launching such a discussion is very interesting, but limiting this discussion to English seems to me rather reductive because not all Wikimedians are necessarily able to write in this language.

This discussion has a big bias that seems embarrassing to me: there is only possibility that the possibility for the foundation to intervene.
Beware, by doing so the foundation takes a legal risk that is not neutral, especially in several countries. For example, as a host, the foundation is not considered legally responsible in France for content on the platforms it hosts, as much by intervening directly on the content of platforms and / or "managing" the users (and their interaction) in the absence of a judicial decision (thus of its own initiative), the Foundation becomes de facto an editorial manager. Legally in France, the two notions do not have the same consequence at all. In the first case, a plaintiff can just request the removal of a content, in the second case it can continue the foundation and even block all or part of the platform publishing the content that it considers illegal.

Personally, I am not convinced otherwise of the interest of the foundation to get involved in community affairs.
In addition, it seems to me somewhat incomprehensible that the Foundation is trying to enforce a "behavioral guide" of its own without having previously discussed it with the communities concerned. This is not desirable for the community at large, for projects, or even for the foundation. This will inevitably create tension.
In addition, I am personally amazed at the methods used: it suffices to file a complaint / claim against a contributor and it is good it can be banned from one or more platforms. We are all supposed to work collaboratively, but here we forget the notion of "working together" by saying to him at once "we have decided that we want more of you, clear" ... The protection (which may be legitimate) of the plaintiff's well-being does not imply that the accused is placed in a position of defense by totally preventing him from defending himself against the accusations against him.

D'autant plus que dans le cas du bannissement d'un administrateur du Wiktionnaire le 9 janvier 2018, une seule intervention imprévue et non concertée de la fondation n'a fait que donner plus de travail aux admins locaux tous les jours pendant presque deux ans. JackPotte (talk) 20:17, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Excusez-moi, mais il semble que vous participiez en français. Votre objection a donc été réfutée par vous-même. Je ne parle pas de vos autres plaintes, mais je laisserai le WMF répondre (ou non). S'il vous plaît excuser mon pauvre français. KillerChihuahua (talk) 12:34, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Other languages are welcome, but the english started first. (Les autres langues sont les bienvenues, mais l'anglais a commencé en premier (Google translate))· · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:59, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I worked hard on a dialog about the questions asked on the deadline I was told was for the translators to work. I guess someone else wanted it to happen sooner. EllenCT (talk) 21:47, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

By intervening the Foundation becomes responsible this is a very important point, and one we have brought up over the years. Perhaps something Legal would like to comment on? Rich Farmbrough 22:58 4 October 2019 (GMT).

Begging the question[edit]

The main page says "Partial and temporary Foundation bans under the office actions policy can be beneficial to the Wikimedia communities in the following situations (and/or combination of situations):...". That statement, written by User:Samuel (WMF) and left in place by subsequent writers, is posed a statement of fact. However this is not a fact, and many of the comments above question exactly this assumption of the WMF. For me, at least, the placing of that claim as the preface to this "consultation", undermines the whole process and shows that the WMF didn't learn much of anything from the scandal caused by its initial arrogation of power. 185.244.215.6 01:06, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. In addition, if one read the statements of some WMF Staff members, one gets the impression that they no longer understand the meaning of the word "safety." Safety refers to a serious prospect of physical harm, not a minor diminution of a subjective sense of personal happiness. Hlevy2 (talk) 18:22, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If ever, for small or defective communities only. Advice rather than action.[edit]

As long as there is an existing community of a certain size, and they have more or less exaggerated methods, they should solve their own problems theirselves.
- There might be a small Wiki with three or five active users.
  - RfC and admin election is difficult among small number of participants, and one or two users might dominate everything and throw every opponent out of the project.
  - In such cases, stewards (volunteers) first and a WMF department might try to understand the issues and find a minimum solution.
- There might be small Wikis with 10.000 articles, founded a decade ago, by some seven users, which are all gone meanwhile.
  - An usurpation by interested parties might happen, who are not going to present NPOV free knowledge, but following a commercial or political or religious agenda, denying cases of mass murder etc.
  - Here office actions or even disconnecting the entire Wiki might happen, if no neutral volunteers are left which will take the large effort to ensure neutral articles.
- If there is a community and basic methods of conflict resolution are defined, intervention by WMF is making things worse than better.
  - The community might decide to ask WMF for help, if they cannot resolve certain problems, e.g. remove the one and only active sysop which might dictate inacceptable decisons.
  - Surprising flashes by WMF into an existing community with defined but never perfect problem solution procedures will leave devastation.
  - The first action by new T&S agenda did happen in the largest community, with the largest ArbCom, with most structures and rules and internal procedures to solve problems internally, without any clear announcement or warning to the community: FRAMBAN. That should have never never ever been decided. The WMF communication strategy has been as poor and stupid as possible, and the result would have been very clear and obvious to everybody with any minimum knowledge how a community works. Those who made that decision are definitely in the wrong position.
  - If WMF continues their medium level office actions while a community and problem solution mechanism have not been exhausted, with the same staff, they will make nonsense again.
- WMF should consider support for communities and conflict solving mechanisms if problems cannot be solved in a satisfactory way by the community itself. Community should be made stronger to deal with complicated cases. Advice might be offered, but advice is no subject of enforcement. No community mechanism is perfect; tools might need further development and continuous improvement.
  - A ban and any office action is the ultimate ratio after all community mechanisms failed, not the first one.
  - There are conflicting fields: The communities need active and experienced and convinced volunteers, not a pile of newbies for two weeks and ten edits. Community members might disagree in cultural, political, religious views, on NPOV issues. They might have different habits, different style in workflow and communication. Naturally there are conflicts within a community. If the community has a certain size and enough users not directly involved, they are hopefully able to solve their problems theirselves.
  - Mistakes and failures by volunteers are regular events. The question is the appropriate answer. If the only tool you know is a hammer, or conduct warning and ban, every problem is looking like a nail.
  - Indeed some individuals do not fit into any community, they have a personal agenda, they keep inacceptable habits even after multiple warnings. Certainly some persons need to leave the projects after a career of red lights and stop signs. However, it is up to the community, if existing, to make such decisions. No business for WMF.
  - Anyway, those conflicts are very difficult to solve. An office action, a ban, is actually no solution. It is very easy to block one account, but the person might return with a new nick, and if smart not exactly on the same topics as before. And communities cannot get rid of every opposing volunteer, since no people will be left to do the work. WMF will not edit the articles. Real solutions are hard to achieve, they need a lot of knowledge on history and internals. WMF will not be able to provide valid solutions on thousands of possible cases. WMF can ban users, but WMF does not solve problems.
- T&S as a player on intermediate level within existing communities will cause an atmosphere of fear and permanent danger of unexplained unpredictable unchangeable actions without any review. As their has been a ministry of truth to cover administrative lies, they call themselves trust and safety but cause mistrust and insafety.
  - Community issues are to be discussed transparent in the public as far as possible, and decisions need checks and balances and reviews.
- T&S shall be limited to act on real world threats, legal issues, offwiki campaigns, as long as communities have not exhausted all available internal mechanisms. The result is global ban, at least, if it is a severe case. If no community alive, it will depend.

--PerfektesChaos (talk) 13:26, 16 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with PerfektesChaos. Healthy communities should solve their own problems theirselves (with ArbComs etc.). Interventions outside of the communities are very dangerous: no transparency (when Fram was blocked, no one knew why, same situation as Josef K. in Kafka's The Trial), undisclosed rules, serious problems with communication (e.g. When you have to retweet your shitty pseudo-thinkpiece three times because no one cares - such offensive speech is unacceptable), no chance to reverse or negate an Office Action (Office Actions are explicitly not subject to project community rules or consensus). Gdarin | talk 17:34, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia communities are not healthy. The research projects done by the WMF in recent years show that incivility, bullying, harassment is part of our editing experience, and administrators are not exempt from these mistakes. The Fram case, the mass-desysop proposals of azwiki and crwiki show that issues go on for years, and the established community processes - including the English ArbCom - can't resolve these, or even further escalate it. I wouldn't use the word that the communities are "defective", however they aren't healthy, either. There is a lot to improve to meet the Wikimedia Movement 2030's goals.

Intervention is necessary, to resolve these long-running issues, but not how Fram's case was handled. Cooperation with the communities' trustees and transparency is the key. As I've detailed in a proposed solution, a mixed committee of community elected arbitrators and wmf employees would be appropriate to decide cases, that can result in office actions, thus gaining the trust of the community, while ensuring that the WMF's and the movement's basic principles are applied.

The final key to trust from the communities is to prove the communities, this is done for the benefit of the community, and the wider movement, not just specific individuals. In the case of Fram the common perception is that case would not have happened, if the victims don't have connections to the WMF. My experience confirms this, as the WMF T&S has done nothing about the violations of the Terms of Use and policies I've reported to them about 3 months ago. These violations were also unresolved by the community (including ArbCom).

If the office actions are applied transparently, and shown to benefit the community, there would be more trust. There are solutions to achieve this, only the will to implement those is needed. I wish the T&S the best in implementing a solution, that will close the gap between the WMF and the communities, improve the health of the communities, and avoid further debacles. —Aron Man.🍂 hist🌾 17:06, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Translation of Office Actions Policy[edit]

Office Actions Policy should be made available in all (world languages and/or the top languages of Wikimedia projects. A multi-million dollar organization should have the means to provide the majority of their users with true access to core rules and conditions, specifically if those policies threaten them with a global ban. This current community consultation is almost pointless without accessible versions of the policy in question. The limited participation in this consultation is evidence enough. Looks a little bit like someone was told to launch this consultation but didn't really wish for much feedback? --Martina Nolte (talk) 06:10, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Or they decided to shoot first and aim later, understandable given the Fram controversy. In any case, I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment, Nolte. Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 02:51, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"didn't really wish for much feedback" - maybe. But: "Unterstelle nie Bösartigkeit, wenn auch Dummheit als Erklärung ausreicht" (thats AGF in other words) - IMO its out of the capability of the WMF that there are people in this world who do not speak English. A global world is, in the eyes of the WMF, an english speaking world. ...Sicherlich ^Post 09:43, 9 October 2019 (UTC) [reply]

Defining partial and temporary Foundation bans[edit]

My opinions: There should be no doubt that the WMF or T&S will maintain authority for using "partial and temporary Foundation bans" as well as global bans. This is possibly imperative in certain situations. The severity of allegations would be an important factor. A problem is that, and specifically, concerning certain platforms like the English Wikipedia, the scope of any bans or blocks should be defined for clarity, and the term should incorporate "emergency" into the wording. I am sure the Foundation does not want a "disconnect" with the community. On the English Wikipedia, we have Stewards and an ArbCom, and it seems equally imperative that the Foundation works with these in areas of security and safety.

I keep seeing references to the "Fram Affair" (or whatever it will infamously become referred to as) and I personally am trying to work through what I have seen as a "disconnect" with some members of the Foundation. I saw improper and hurtful comments. The community that has built this encyclopedia are generally knowledgable. Even the appearance of impugning the intelligence or integrity of editors will garner disdain. I have seen decisions by ArbCo that I do not agree with --BUT-- I support that we have and need an ArbCom. Moving forward we need to fix (or repair) issues to build a better community and encyclopedia not continue with issues that causes a toxic editing atmosphere for many. Explanations can be given every day of the week that an editor with a relationship with a Foundation member had no play in the turn of events, but from what I have seen (on-wiki postings) this caused a cloud of concern and the secrecy that was pushed only made it appear as a cover-up. "Diffs" have been used to show there were improprieties. "If" it was actually an ironic twist of fate of circumstance, and there was no actual connection, the lack of transparency and apparent conflicts of Interest made the case into a circus.

I feel that if the Foundation would amend the wording to include "emergency" this would ease a lot of tension. In the case of platforms with an ArbCom it would be deemed that an "emergency action", such as possibly an Interaction ban (IBAN), that would certainly be for editor safety, that the term "temporary" should be only until action can be implemented by ArbCom. Discussions of "temporary" being anything other than very short-term (certainly not 90-days, six months, or a year) will be seen as a usurpation and show cause that we are not self-governing. Unless the good faith and integrity of ArbCom are questioned they cannot be arbitrarily by-passed or ignored. I mean to state, they can be, but there will surely be fallout and detrimental consequences.

I read all the time that blocks and bans are not punitive but for the benefit of the individuals, the community, and the encyclopedia. A temporary emergency action should be just for that instance, be it editor safety, privacy concerns, or to mitigate legal ramifications. This is where a working relationship between the Foundation, Stewards, and ArbCom is crucial. All of these concerns should be communicated and worked out. When a case is started transparency with the community, certainly any possible victim and accused, cannot be over-stated because in the world most of us live in, the above mentioned "Due process", is part of our world. "Secrecy" should be limited to investigating and ascertaining facts like severity and privacy concerns. When a case goes past that, especially when some fault is considered, this is the beginning of a new phase and any implications of "secrecy" should be replaced by "privacy concerns". I have read where the founder stated "no secret trials". It seems to me he asserted faith in ArbCom and (paraphrasing) stated he would absolve them if this was misplaced.

Conclusion: It is my opinion that "temporary" (emergency) blocks or bans should be considered by the Foundation only when it involves egregious actions, where safety is a concern or likely harm may result, and there is a need for action to be implemented immediately. If there was to be some concern between the Foundation and ArbCom this should be communicated immediately as well as concerns revolving around the community. Any supposed "concerns" should not ever "appear" at the instance of a case. The community can understand a need for privacy but there are too many ways to deal with that beside secrecy. The community needs to be as informed as possible, regardless of any needed redactions or other necessary procedures. An "after-the-fact" request for community involvement of a case, that is shrouded in secrecy and accusations of improprieties, is paramount to insanity and may look like trying to get a rubber-stamp in-the-dark approval. Otr500 (talk) 14:11, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

+1 Hlevy2 (talk) 18:21, 17 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Issues at StackOverflow/StackExchange[edit]

For those who might have missed them, there were remarkably similar issues at StackExchange in the last month or so: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/338655/248268 Just when you thought it couldn't get worse... Nemo 10:40, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wow! All that over recommending gender neutral language over being forced to use preferred pronouns. EllenCT (talk) 05:45, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you[edit]

Thank you for the staff statement. It seems to address the concerns in a productive manner. Jehochman (talk) 02:19, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]