Talk:Steward requests/Username changes

Tanvir babu

Hello, today I got the message that my account rename request was rejected from Tanvir babu to Md. Tanvir Alam due to an existing name as Md. Tanvir Alam , i want to state that the username or page as "Md. Tanvir Alam" with description of "A rare species of homo sapiens, with 24 base pair. "

was created by me as a futile attempt to rename my existing username. please advise.

sincerly yours- Md. Tanvir Alam —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tanvir babu (talk • contribs) 02:52, 18 August 2019‎ (UTC)

Request for reversal of vanishing

There does not look to be any place to handle revocation of vanishing requests. I refer to actions of two other Wikipedia users en:User:Worm That Turned and en:User:Yamla. I will notify them both of this request.

• User:Vanished user adhmfdfmykrdyr to be restored to prior name of //redacted// ^{(per request of Fæ)}

My original request to reverse the this vanishing was made to English Wikipedia Arbcom. I was directed to the Stewards. Please see my original request [1] for details of that discussion and original rational. I have expanded upon that rational assuming not all of you are up on the current dramafest on English Wikipedia. I have attempted to be as sensitive as possible while providing a narrative outline of the reasons behind this request. The linked pages, in particular the PDD talk page linked below, has considerable supporting evidence and information. Regrettably it is all a very long read. Extracting only the pertinent information would not significantly reduce the length and making it coherent would result in a considerably more prosecutorial document.

I am requesting that the vanishing of en:User:LauraHale be undone. The guidelines for vanishing on enwp en:WP:VANISH says "It is not intended to be temporary. It is not a way to avoid scrutiny or sanctions. It is not a fresh start and does not guarantee anonymity" and requires the user requesting the vanishing to "be in good standing". After investigating the events surrounding the Trust & Safety Partial ban of en:User:Fram I have found evidence to support that this vanishing was specifically to avoid scrutiny by the community. The evidence I have currently publicly assembled can be found on my section of the Fram PDD page. Further behavioral evidence of attempting to avoid scrutiny is the fact that, rather than going through normal channels wherein the request would have been refused as a matter of policy, a request was instead sent to the Global Renamers mailing list asking for the deletion of the talk page of now en:User talk:Vanished user adhmfdfmykrdyr. This was mistakenly and innocently done by en:User:Yamla and reversed by enwp Arbcom member en:User:Worm That Turned although as an independent administrative action WTT chose to move the undeleted page to en:User talk:Vanished user adhmfdfmykrdyr/Talk page history archive thereby making it inaccessible to anyone who does not know to look for it. Per the conversation I cited at the beginning of this request WTT has refused to move it back. I request that the talk page be restored to its proper place upon reversal of the vanishing. Should the vanish remain I will, of course, seek community consensus for the return of it to its proper place in the vanished account.

If this were merely the case of a private individual wanting to leave the project I would not be so adamant about the reversal of the vanishing. In this case though I direct your attention to: My rational in my original request on Arbcom Talk, linked at the top of this request; My comments on my talk page [2] under the sections "Request" and "stretching the envelope; and my previously linked comment on the Arbcom Fram PDD talk page.

In short I believe there to be prima facie evidence of improper COI editing occurring over years on English Wikipedia and possibly other projects; that possibly included several other, still active, Wikipedia editors who, at a minimum appear to have supported and shielded a problematic editor, again over a period of years; As mentioned elsewhere there is evidence to show that an English WP arbitrator en:User:Courcelles, a current member of WMF Trust and Safety en:User:Fluffernutter and the WMF Board of Trustees Chair en:User:Raystorm were among these editors. Further, I have made the case in my PDD commentary that there is reason to believe that T&S was used improperly to stifle en:User:Fram whose criticism of LauraHale's standard of editing was directly and detrimentally effecting articles associated with various paid and unpaid relationships with the Australian and Spanish Paralympic Committees. There are also questions to be asked in reference to the relationships between and among Wikipedians, WMF, WMFAU, The APC and The SPC.

It is not in the interest of the community for the ability of anyone; Wikipedia editor, journalist, donor or the common person on the street to be hindered in their ability to scrutinize the edits of this account or its relationship with other accounts, mentioned and unmentioned as well as the interactions of those accounts among themselves. Current evidence indicates and it is my opinion that this account is central in activity, interaction and motivation to questions which need to be examined. The likelihood of a case being requested with enwp Arbcom or a community discussion on Meta about the issues illuminated by the FRAM case and involving this user in the medium term is quite high.

Thank you for your attention, time, and effort - especially time Jbh^Talk 22:29, 12 September 2019 (UTC) Updated: (remove space from original username) 02:55, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure about how cross site notifications work. I will not see this in my enwp watch list. Please ping me on English Wikipedia en:User:Jbhunley. Jbh^Talk 22:34, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Emailing the stewards email address would be best. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:47, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, I support reversing the vanishing. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 06:12, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Is there any actual evidence of this conspiracy? (by definition - a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful, in this context against wiki-policies) I am not going to action or deny this request myself, but my personal opinion here is that we should not reverse the action and subject the user to further scrutiny and potentially harassment over unfounded theories. From what I understand, the previous name is linked to her real-life identity. I am quite comfortable with giving people a degree of separation between this website and their real lives, especially when they have explicitly asked for as much. – Ajraddatz (talk) 14:16, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

If there is a real proof of such thing I'd do the reversal, but no if you can't provide one, just as Ajr said. Simply speaking I'm not going to act on a conspiracy. You can submit it on stewardswikimedia.org. — regards, Revi 14:55, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good idea -- please submit any evidence via email. – Ajraddatz (talk) 15:36, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

(Edit conflict.) Thank you for getting back to me. Yes, I believe there is evidence. I will compile something but, ethically, I can only say the material is indicative of issues which should be examined. Also, while I know the word conspiracy is often used informally, I need to make clear I am not alleging a conspiracy as this involves named people, appears to involve money and conspiracy has a legal definition in many places. I am saying there is a long standing pattern of editing and behavior which appears it violate community norms and enwp PaGs which should be easy for the community and others to scrutinize for reasons of transparency and good government. Jbh^Talk 15:54, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

To be clear I mean to neither state nor imply malfeasance on the part of en:User:Fluffernutter. I am making an argument of appearances which the vanishing of this user makes unreasonably difficult to scrutinize. For clarity. Her husband was a named party in an arbitration case brought against an editor who was scrutinizing the vanished editor and causing disruption to her project much like Fram. Because Fluffernetter created a timeline for the case she had knowledge of this editor and the issues surrounding her in 2011.It is merely an indication of a linkage which someone scrutinizing the totality of this matter would likely want to explore solely because of Fluffernetter is now a member of T&S and her husband a member of the Arbcom at the time of the Fram case (I have seen no indication he participated publicly in the case and no reason to believe he did so provatly) I see no indications of malfeasance on the part of Fluffernutter. Jbh^Talk 19:52, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

• Just noting that I am still writing. It will be a PDF. Will the stewards email list filters let it through?I expect to have it sent by Wednesday evening UCT. Jbh^Talk 23:40, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Not a steward, but OTRS accepts attachments, and the stewards email is OTRS. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:06, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
    • Thank you. Jbh^Talk 02:13, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
      • @Jbhunley: There's also renamers@wikimedia.org, which is accessible by global renamers and stewards. You can get a quicker response there, and stewards might move your email to the renamers box as well. --Martin Urbanec (talk) 07:53, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
• User:Ajraddatz, User:-revi]] Sent to renamers@wikimedia.org CC: functionaries-en@lists.wikimedia.org Jbh^Talk 00:56, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

  Noting that in light of this document, I have reversed the talk page archiving. Worm^TT 06:40, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

  User:Ajraddatz, User:-revi: I was under the impression from comments above that renamera-l was a super-set of stewards-l in the same way en-functionaries is of arbcom-l but looking at it now I see neither of you are on it. I have corrected my misunderstanding and you should now have it on stewards-l. Jbh^Talk 11:28, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

  We can move the tickets back and forth. (That being said, I moved the entire ticket to steward queue, hiding this from renamers who are not stewards.) — regards, Revi 11:30, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

  Thank you. Jbh^Talk 11:58, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

I have not been involved in this case, nor have I been in communication with any related party. I do know the subject, in particular based on my activities in creating and supporting the WM-LGBT+ user group and in years before that my roles in WMF affiliates.

en:WP:RTV is a behavioural guideline. Consequently the remarks that a RTV "It is not a way to avoid scrutiny or sanctions" is guidance not policy, and should be carefully considered in the surrounding context of the request to vanish. The Meta guideline Right to vanish falls under the global privacy policy and does not contain these explicit caveats, this guideline is probably the better expression of the global community understanding of the RTV process.

The subject has been subject to excessive hounding and especially nasty off-wiki abuse. Many of the off-wiki comments focus on the subject's sexual orientation and family life. These are not legitimate commentary, in many cases they amount to harassment and abuse, especially considering the focus on sexual orientation and abusive language.

There seems insufficient rationale here for stewards to undo the RTV actions due to the various unsupported allegations of bad motivation against the subject. Anyone investigating allegations, such as those that may relate to WMF governance, has access to the long term archives, as indeed does anyone else with a basic technical understanding of how the projects work. The fact is that the subject's real name and their being repeatedly subject to scrutiny for events from several years past (which seems to be the locus of the majority of allegations) is not part of a positive or necessary Wikimedia debate or discourse, is unlikely to result in any useful action in the light that the same events have been scrutinized before, and is causing demonstrable harm to the subject.

As a remark about policy, it may well be that the Meta privacy policies may be improved with more detail which reflects changes elsewhere such as the published right to be forgotten policies by large social internet networks, however those may be pursued and proposed separate from this over inflated case.

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 09:26, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Yet, to be clear, my document did not focus on anyone's personal life and if you are describing anything in that document as "... various unsupported allegations of bad motivation against the subject" you have obviously misspoke. The proper description would be various support for unmade allegations ... (about various people and projects). Have you read it? All 30 pages? I was very careful to stick to various Wikimedia related sites and, to the best of my recollection, 'one step away' searches about programs and projects not people. Further, while the account owner has said she has left Wikipedia other individuals who have not have participated in events wherein this person and account are a nexus, as may be demonstrated by reading the Annex.

I stuck to a single locus in the narrative because that should be sufficient not because there is not further material there. I considered that my narrative examination of one such, governance related, might prejudice a community inquiry by cementing a narrative before others have the chance tp develop additional information which may cast a different light on circumstances. Jbh^Talk 11:56, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Please revisit the opening paragraph of this thread which fails to respect the RTV action? It is not necessary to republish the full legal name of the subject to make a request here, considering the use of non-public email. It is not possible to claim that none of this is about the "people", while at the same time naming and shaming them, so that a Google search will return their biography and off-wiki abusive allegations on the first search page.

The subject is the target of harassment. The subject and their family is the target of multiple potentially career damaging off-wiki allegations which are written to be deliberately abusive, inflammatory, and lack proper evidence.

My statements are about the request above to reverse a RTV decision, they are not about you or your email, regardless of how carefully you are selecting your evidence and deliberately ignoring other evidence.

If you have an issue of governance for the WMF, a WMF Affiliate, particularly with the appropriate use of funds, then use their governance procedures so that someone from those organizations can request information and do authoritative research if needed, with a professional approach to testing evidence. It is not the role of global stewards to assess governance issues on behalf of the WMF or Affiliates. --Fæ (talk) 17:04, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Fæ Ummm.... I made the request. This whole thread relates to the document I mentioned which was created in as a response to a request for more evidence. Did you not notice how the signature Jbh^Talk is at the end of every major block of text before you dropped in? It only appears in the thread nine times so I suppose you could have missed it but... Really? Jbh^Talk 18:14, 19 September 2019 (UTC) (I redacted the name since by now they know who the request in in regards to, as would not have necessarily been the case when the request was made. But, really, a web search turning this up as opposed to the FRAM case is a weak point of principle to stand on here. Jbh^Talk 19:02, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

• Comment. I suggest speedily closing this request as inappropriate. Stewards as matter of policy do not have any authority to reverse any vanishing action against the wish of the vanished user. The are absolutely no global policy that says that any user can be involuntary unvanished. The mentioned English Wikipedia guideline is a local policy of one of hundreds Wikimedia projects and can not itself be the basis for a global action. Moreover stewards are not global arbitrators and can not adjudicate any factual matters stated in this request. Therefore any vanishing done pursuant to the right to vanish guideline is final unless the user herself requests reversal of the vanishing. Ruslik (talk) 18:15, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

I believe you are incorrect. Right to vanish explicitly states it is a courtesy not a right. Like the English Wikipedia, most other Wikimedia projects tolerate the "vanishing" of users who wish to leave permanently. The term is a misnomer in that it is not a "right" or guarantee but rather a courtesy extended to valued contributors who wish to leave. A courtesy which has been abused can and should be withdrawn. So this request is solidly within process. Argue against the evidence but discounting it on grounds of being "out of process" is, in my strong and resolute opinion, improper. Jbh^Talk 19:46, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Your wikilaywering is really pathetic. Ruslik (talk) 21:01, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

I am not wikilawyering I am being pedantic ie insisting words mean what they mean rather than be forced to play Alice to your Humpty Dumpty Jbh^Talk 02:08, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

You are exactly wikilaywering because all contributors are by definition "valued" by us with exception of vandalism- or spam-only accounts or LTAs accounts. You are basically implying that it is one of those accounts, which was vanished by a pure error. Ruslik (talk) 08:17, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

That is an interesting viewpoint and way to frame the issue but ultimately, I believe, incorrect. There is no requirement that if an account is "valued" that it "must" be allowed to vanish. The basis for this request is this account's centrality to the history of the Paralympic editing projects, including being the person with the most allocated hours on the Tender (annex A); having both written the rules for and won the contest in Annex D; and obtained benefit from grants C.2-4. The last reaches into issues of governance as illustrated by C.3.5 in light of C.2.3. There is also the matter of INF.E.002 which is still causing chaos on en.wiki.

Because of demonstrated centrality to several issues over many years I feel strongly that others in the community may want to examine what happened. Beyond that, since some issues relate to a large ongoing project for a third party (the APC and maybe SPC) the on-wiki history may be of interest to non-wiki-savvy people who, just for instance, may want to look at editor interactions over time and not be able to because, not knowing this account has been renamed would not know which account to look at. Nor would an outside third party, starting from a non-wiki source like the ARC Linkage Grant and associated Paralympic history project (Annex F, SDS.12) be able to trace things beyond the Tender (Annex A) to see what happened on-wiki because the name change of the account acts as a firewall.

The question of the "value" of the person's contributions do not enter into the calculus only the potential "harm" to the community by making it more difficult to look further into matters which, on their face seem to impact both the orderly management of the community and its health as well as the governance of the Foundation, WMFAU and grant making procedures. As Fae said, the Stewards do not have a role in those things but, by performing the vanishing, have taken a role in those issues. I ask only that they reverse that, unintentional and good faith, interference.

(The numbers above, as I am sure are aware, refer to particular elements in the document all stewards were provided. I mention this for the benefit of other readers of this page who might be confused.

Jbh^Talk 13:21, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

I pointed you above to the limits of stewards' authority which you completely ignored. So, please, do not write all those walls of text and do not send any documents because I am not going to read them. I am not interested in any details about any grants. Stewards do not distribute them, do not audit them and are not in position to decide whether they were granted appropriately or not. In addition, I do not understand how renaming an account can prevent examination of its edits? All editing history is still available. What you are proposing - to forcefully rename an account to the old name, which contains the real person's name - is essentially equivalent of name&shame punishment and a direct violation of the privacy policy. In fact the old account name can be even completely suppressed on user request as it is personally identifiable information. Moreover all those insinuation above are serious enough that in many jurisdictions they can be regarded as a legally actionable libel. Ruslik (talk) 12:03, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

What does

Please list the specific projects that you need to be renamed in under your request, unless you are requesting a global rename. mean? Post SUL, how can an user be renamed on a specific wiki? Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 06:16, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Winged Blades of Godric, It is still needed for complicated renames, for eg. see this request. ‐‐1997kB (talk) 07:04, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

... That said, that wording is not clear. I've renamed the section and expanded the text -- does this make any sense? – Ajraddatz (talk) 13:40, 13 September 2019 (UTC)