User talk:Kbrown (WMF)

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Survey

Hello. Thank you for the message on my talk page inviting me to participate in a survey. Unfortunately I have no recollection of taking part in that community discussion, although it's entirely possible that I did and have forgotten about it. If you could provide me with a link to the page where I took part in the community discussion, it would be very helpful. Best wishes, --Viennese Waltz 11:17, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Viennese Waltz. It looks like your edit was this. We auto-generated the list of who participated, so there was no evaluation of how minor or major an edit was. It looks like yours was a revert. Please feel free to contribute to the survey or not, whatever is most comfortable for you. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 11:34, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, that was a banned user whose posts are reverted on sight. --Viennese Waltz 12:10, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't participate because it seemed to me that WMF had overreached itself to such a ridiculous extent in the Fram affair that it lost all credibility. Why would I bother giving my opinion to an organisation that can demonstrate such lack of judgement? --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 12:00, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I see you've received the note on your talk page as well inviting you to participate in the survey. That is the correct place to express your (clearly strongly held) views on the matter, not on this user's talk page. --Viennese Waltz 12:12, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I did that first. But that has no transparency. Which is ironic. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 13:07, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's a confidential survey, which is kind of the point. I don't really care what your views on this matter are, I'm just saying that this user's talk page is not the place to air them. --Viennese Waltz 13:19, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That's OK. I don't mind that you think that way. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 14:15, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the invitation to take the survey.

(I'm responding here to your talk page message rather than taking the survey because the survey is hosted by Google: I generally refuse to use proprietary or commercial Web services — Google especially, mostly because of their near-monopoly position in a few areas — and there's no practical barrier to running a Web survey using free/libre software.)

The primary reason I did not comment on the community consultation was that I did not feel there was much I could add beyond what I wrote here and here on the incident that precipitated it (in a nutshell: whether the WMF's handling of the situation was appropriate could only be assessed by the WMF because nonpublic information was involved; there is at least some argument to be made that WMF could have communicated their actions better, although I'm undecided whether I agree with that; and I would not be opposed to having an ombuds commission of some sort to which to appeal WMF decisions).

I hope this helps. Thanks! —{{u|Goldenshimmer}} (they/their)｜Talk｜Contributions 23:13, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

hello:) 204.100.170.180 (talk) 19:25, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A survey to improve the community consultation outreach process

My apologies for posting as an external interloper, but I tripped over this user's talk page: User talk:Incnis Mrsi and noticed that they were permanently banned from Wikipedia. Presumably, that is the reason they have not responded to your survey. I'd like to make some short remarks.

I believe User:Incnis Mrsi to be (to have been) an active an productive editor of Mathematics articles on the English Wikipedia.
I examined a number of posts wherein User:Incnis Mrsi was accused of being "toxic" or "abusive" and see nothing of the sort -- on the contrary, I saw what appears to be perfectly normal business-like communications, of the kind that you might hear, verbally, in business-office meetings on a daily basis. Certainly, some of these comments might be construed as being abrasive, and certainly, some of them point out obvious mistakes and/or wrong-doing by other parties, possibly even hurting their feelings. But hurting someone's feelings is not the same thing as "being abusive", especially when the hurt party has committed errors (and based on my reviews, egregious errors, at that). Now, I am applying American norms, here, and am less clear on international norms. I have some experience with Chinese business settings; they are more polite, but from my limited review, I just don't see what was objectionable with User:Incnis Mrsi's behavior. He is speaking as a normal Westernized individual would speak (write).
I have noted a decade-long trend of academics, even top-notch, famous academics, being hounded out of Wikipedia, pretty much always due to accusations of incivility. A few that come to mind are a German math professor, author of half a dozen rather popular and authoritative math books used in undergraduate and graduate-level courses; a mid-career Italian astronomer, with hundreds of published articles, being accused of being a crank; a young professor, fairly well-known, degreed in General Relativity, being hounded out by undergraduates. Some (or many, or most?) of these cases appear to be pile-ons by admins who do not work in physics/mathematics/astronomy, do not participate in (for example) Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics, and then do random drive-by deletions, get their nose out of whack, and then accuse the authors of incivility when there's push-back, resulting in a permanent ban. I don't see that it's a good idea to ban domain experts. I'm disappointed that after a decade of these abuses, there seems to be no mechanism in place to deal with this. I'm disappointed that User:Incnis Mrsi seems to have fallen victim to this, as well. (I don't know who he is; I assume that's a pseudonym. Based on his edits, I assume he holds a doctorate in mathematics. Based on commentary, he's not famous. I'm assuming "he" not "she" based on personality traits. I've had only a handful of direct interactions with him/her.)
There's a fairly simple mechanism, I would think: perhaps admins who have never once made any edits to any physics/math/astronomy (PMA) articles should not be deleting the same, and should not be threatening and accusing or otherwise abusing/harrasing the PMA editors? If there's really a problem, I would think that the assorted wikiprojects (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics) could deal with it, as they would be better judges of character and content. Even in the worst case, one could ban the problematic editors from editing non-PMA articles. (I'm thinking that, in every case, they don't seem to have civility problems when working with peers; its usually inexperienced (I assume young) admins, (maybe undergraduates?) far out of their depth, who get in a tangle and provoke, mistake self-defense for incivility, and then wield their ban-hammer.)

Anyway, I think WP is the worse off for this behavior; its not hard to encounter these cases on a semi-regular basis, and its been on-going for maybe 14 years now (I first noticed the big brawl over at general relativity in 2006). 67.198.37.16 (talk) 23:37, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi 67.198.37.16. Thanks for your thoughts. I (and the Foundation) are not really the right place to adjudicate them, however - the block on them is a community block, and would need to be reviewed by the community. The same for concerns about how a topic area is handled and whether certain types of users are being excluded. These things all are the community's purview, not the Foundation's or mine. I would suggest that you raise your concerns at the administrators' noticeboards for discussion if you want to pursue the matter. Sorry I can't be of more help, but community autonomy is quite important to the movement! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 12:47, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

OK, Thanks for the reply. I don't really know how to interact with the ANI in any meaningful fashion. I was trying to bring to your attention not so much one particular user, but rather a general issue that spans maybe a dozen, maybe more blocks: respectable, qualified individuals who get shouted down by mob rule. I'm not mincing words: "community autonomy" and "mob rule" are synonymous phrases, having overlapping meanings. I'm trying to state that WP does not seem to have any way of policing the mob, and that, whatever the ANI comes up with, no matter how unjust or unfounded, is taken as "the law". This comes off as a kind-of wild-west justice: whoever has the largest number of supporters who are admins, wins. Perhaps it is time for WP to develop a more sophisticated system for adjudication. FWIW, I am under the threat of a ban, right now, as I write this, and I believe that there is nothing at all in my edit history to merit that ban. I'm trying to be outspoken about these issues, while I have a chance; they are important for WP and the ongoing health of WP. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 20:44, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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