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basic principle about bullying

There's a key idea in the WMF Office's interaction with Fram which is almost wholly overlooked here, and is really important, that cuts through common bullshit within Wikipedia about impossibility of defining when bullying is going on. This principle has not ever been understood by any ARBCOM, as far as I know. If it were understood and adopted as a bright-line type rule, it would go a long way toward reducing the oppressive bullying that goes on and is generally ruinous of this community. In my mind, it would have worked to curtail bullying that I know about personally, over years against me. In my mind the principle distinguishes between those who acted as bullies and are fairly labelled as being bullies, vs. situations where I and others were perceived as bullies unfairly by some persons.

I appreciate the comments of BU Rob, Ajraddatz, Megalibrarygirl, Howcheng, and some others above. To me, the fact that the Office is taking some action against harassment, i.e. removing an apparent bad actor for a while, gives me a tiny bit of hope here. This topic has attention of many sidetracked with outrage on side issues, not addressing the failure of ANI and ARBCOM processes to deal with problems. What a shame that it is probably impossible to get any learning to happen here at all, about how to really take action against bullying. Does the simple principle need to be spelled out in words of one or two syllables? Say, what do _you_ get from the coverage above of what WMF Office said to Fram, and evidence in some diffs above about how Fram acted? --Doncram (talk) 03:54, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

You miss the point entirely. If Fram misbehaved, it is the responsibility of the English Wilkipedia community, through its normal processes, to determine that, it is not the job of T&S to bypass ANI and ArbCom completely and institute behavioral blocks and bans. Policy is explicit that the WMF gets involved only after the community has had its chance and blown it. That is not the case here, where it appears that a high-ranking WMF official applied pressure for T&S to take precipitate action on a complaint filed by a personal friend. That, all that, is what the controversy is about, not whether Fram is "guilty" or not, so your comment is wrong in its entirety. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:08, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
A not-insignificant faction seem to suggest that they don't trust the community processes to deal with these issues effectively and hence, WMF intervention is good (esp. that it sides with their proffered outcome). ∯WBGconverse 04:20, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
To BMK, well, no, I did not miss the point. To BMK and WBG, well yes I do pretty much think the Engish Wikipedia community does fail in its normal processes. You can't even tell whether Fram misbehaved horribly or not; I think you do not have any rule that works for you to judge which behavior is unacceptable or not. Can you see any potential rule implicit in what has gone on? --Doncram (talk) 04:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Beyond My Ken, I have ZERO trust in this community and there are entire private groups of people agreeing with me too scared to post here. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:22, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
@TheDJ: You're a fucking admin of this community. Please resign your tools immediately if you wish to so blatantly declare your resentment of us. It's clear you're not here to serve a community you have "ZERO trust" for. ~Swarm~ {sting} 06:26, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Swarm, ah yes, close rank or you are not part of the group. gotta get rid of those who vocalize the dissenting opinions. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:31, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
What a ridiculous thing to say. You're part of the community by being an admin. By all means disagree with the hivemind but it is downright insulting to those you're supposed to be leading as an admin by saying you have no trust in them. Anarchyte (talk | work) 08:26, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Why did you apply for admin in the first place if you didn’t have trust in the community? This is absurd. If you hate everyone in this discussion, just resign. I totally agree with Swarm in this. Oshawott 12 ==()== Talk to me! 09:09, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
The DJ, weren't you the one who suggested a one-year site ban for everyone who supported banning the WMFOffice account? Yes, yes you were. You have no standing to accuse other of closing ranks or trying to get rid of dissenters. Lepricavark (talk) 12:32, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I can sure say that I’ve never seen DJ anywhere, and this has definitely gave me a bad first impression. Oshawott 12 ==()== Talk to me! 13:59, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Oshawott 12,
I'd say this illustrates how big this place is. My initial reaction was to be stunned someone could possibly not know TheDJ, but then I realized in CopyPatrol work, I routinely run across editors I've never heard of but who have hundreds of thousands of edits. While I wouldn't attempt to compile a list of the most important contributors to Wikipedia because I'm sure I would be missing important chunks of contributions, if I were to make such a list based on things I've seen, the DJ would be in my top 10. I understand the DJ turned in their tools, but I hope they have not decided to walk away. If that happens, it would be the single biggest negative outcome of this whole mess. S Philbrick(Talk) 17:08, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Swarm, that comment is completely inappropriate. --Yair rand (talk) 06:44, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Ah, DJ, so you're a brave dissenter, is that it? Defending an all-powerful corporate entity against us horrible, bloodthirsty volunteers with our pesky moral objections. What a martyr you shall go down as. Not to worry, though, your honorable, oh-so-brave statement will be memorialized on my user page, right along side our glorious supreme leader. Your bravery will not be forgotten. In all seriousness though: Humor aside. Joke's over. Resign your tools. The community deserves nothing less from you. Or, at the very least, run a reconfirmation RfA, immediately. Put your stance to the community that appointed you. Admins on the other side of the debate are willing to do so with no issue. I would do so with no issue, if it came to that. You're so sure you're right? [redacted] ~Swarm~ {sting} 06:47, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Well that escalated quickly. nableezy - 07:07, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
What has been escalated? A WP:MOSTACTIVE has been unilaterally desysopped and banned, by faceless Foundation staff members, in an unprecedented move. The community is rebelling against WMF in an unprecedented move. An admin has overruled an Office Action in an unprecedented move. The WMF Office has wheel warred in an unprecedented move. A second admin has overturned the Office's wheel warring in an unprecedented move. The Chair, having directly intervened with a COI, has accused the community of malice and sexism, in an unprecedented move. And yet this is what you'd consider to be an "escalation"? Really? ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:15, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
That was just a reference to calling somebody a traitor, seemingly for holding a position you dont agree with. I dont actually disagree with nearly everything youve written, excepting the quisling bit. At the end of this, where do you think the relationships between the people who have staked out these maximalist positions go? Either you are with "the community" or you "support harassment and bullying", or even are a misogynist, according to the other side. There is a former arb saying he hopes what was a few days ago an admin in good standing be globally locked and multiple admins and a crat that had, as of a few days ago, exceedingly wide support across the community be stripped of their tools. There are multiple admins saying essentially if you dont oppose this action you are worthless as a member of this community. You think theres any going back to working together after this? Especially if each side gets more strident in how they voice their opinions? Jesus, the I/P pages get less heated than this. nableezy - 07:51, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm not trying to be hysterical or incendiary, and I am certainly not trying to be the one to invoke Godwin's law. Yet I can't think of any better description beyond "quisling" for an admin who sides with the Foundation and directly attacks the community on this. Yes, in ordinary circumstances, it would be inflammatory to say such a thing, but in the case of an unjustified ban coming from the WMF, I can literally not think of a better description for an admin who directly attacks the community and defends the WMF without actually presenting evidence to support such a viewpoint. Quisling, class traitor, corporate shill, you can take your pick, but from what I've seen, a good faith, evidence-based, debatable point of view in support of the Foundation's actions is not something that has actually been presented. ~Swarm~ {sting} 08:30, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I agree, there has been no evidence-based point of view in support of the WMFs actions anywhere, from the WMF or anybody else. Im just saying there aint no walking that one bit back later if (or hopefully when) cooler heads prevail. There are a number of admins on this page that have the respect of a wide swath of the community. And yall are cannibalizing each other. nableezy - 08:52, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, in my decade+ here, I've come to know Fram, Floq, and Bish as recognizable, serious members of the community and administrators. AN, ANI, RFPP, RFPERM, AN3, XfD, any area of the admin backlog; I know all of these admins as responsible and respectable members of the community. I don't know DJ, and I've never seen DJ before now, when they're defending the indefensible. So you'll forgive me for not "recognizing" their contributions, which I have never seen anywhere in the past decade. DJ is not a known, respected admin within our community, and I don't think I'm "cannibalizing" a colleague, so much as calling out a user who's made it clear that they don't belong within our ranks to begin with. ~Swarm~ {sting} 09:11, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a large place. You (Swarm) may not recognise DJ, but I do. Maybe because both he and I have been around here a few years longer than you. I have a great deal of respect for DJ, based largely on encounters with him a long time ago. People change and take different paths to different areas of Wikipedia, and he and others I don't encounter each other as often (largely to be fair, because I am not very active on-wiki), but I still respect them. Unless you have gone down that route, of activity tailing off, and/or moving to different areas of Wikipedia or the WMF projects, it can be difficult to get a sense of how attitudes and philosophies can change. And people get older and get more life experience as well. There will always be those who are extremely active in particular areas, and hold strong opinions, and are very forthright, but there is always a need to empathise with the views of others, especially when feelings run high. For the record, TheDJ has handed in their tools at WP:BN, citing the re-sysop of Floquenbeam, but I doubt the tone of the discussion here helped. Maybe now is a good time to build bridges, rather than burn them. Carcharoth (talk) 11:24, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm going to echo Carcharoth here. If you don't know who The DJ is or what he does, that's fine. But to say that DJ isn't 'a known, respected admin' means you are profoundly ignorant of their contributions. And even if they were a random newbie, they would still not deserve the vitriol. You can disagree with someone's viewpoints and positions without resorting to gross incivility. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I would not have used Swarm's language or vehemence, but I can empathize with someone's views and also believe that if their take is that they have ZERO trust in this community, then they indeed have no business being an admin. Turning in their bit was the right move, regardless of Floq. Grandpallama (talk) 11:37, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I full-throatedly endorse what Carcharoth has said here. Sysops are all volunteer editors and will do what they wish. No one should be considered "less than" for choosing to do one aspect of admin work or another. Whether we are familiar with another editor's work has no bearing on the merit or value of that work, and neither should it lead to any negative judgment. TheDJ is a valuable member of the community, possibly invaluable, whether any one of us individually values him. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 13:50, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
You all make a great point. My personal name recognition of DJ does not determine whether they're right or wrong. I should not suggest it did. That said, they're still wrong. DJ may well be a valuable member of the community in many respects. They are, however, betraying the community here in turning a blind eye to obvious issues, and moreover, in openly denigrating the community, they should forfeit the mop. No one could pass an RfA after saying what DJ said. Slandering the community is not acceptable coming from a community representative. Period. If DJ honestly believes that I'm wrong, then he should have no problem with my request to reconfirm his adminship. ~Swarm~ {sting} 05:29, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
[1] ​. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 05:34, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, getting rid of the dissenting opinion is certainly one optic for the WMF action against Fram, vis-a-vis their software initiatives. - Sitush (talk) 06:49, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I mean, it's a possible optic for complete fantastists, but yes, it's a possible optic. Normally people complain that the WMF doesn't care what Wikipedians think about software development, though I suppose it is just about also possible that the WMF cares SO MUCH what Wikipedians think that they hatch secret plans to ban dissenting voices from Wikipedia and it just so happens that the first person so banned also has some, er, conduct issues... But yeah. No. The Land (talk) 07:22, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
There is a lot of fantasising going on because we have so little information to work with. Here's another: while some people have fantasised about this discussion broadly reflecting a male/female divide (although acknowledging Bish as an exception, and presumably you, too), it could equally be fantasised that the broad division here is between people who have a historic close connection to the WMF through chapters, grant awards, the "in residence" program etc, and those that have not. I doubt either of these fantasies is anywhere close to reality but they are optics, nonetheless. - Sitush (talk) 08:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
@Swarm: it is preferable that your comment is struck, it could not be helpful. cygnis insignis 09:12, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Cygnis insignis, what for? He might be a bit harsh, but I totally agree with the spirits. DJ has no role in administrating a community, whom he does not trust, at all. ∯WBGconverse 09:27, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
And Swarm speaks for Swarm. The community is an accommodating term, only the other user would do well to outline what they mean. Assuming the right to step as defender is what, magnanimous?, i suppose it could be viewed that way, but not helpful as i see it. Do you doubt the processes of the appropriate place to make that assertion, someone who should not have tools, stripped of rank. cygnis insignis 09:38, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
What? I don't claim to speak for someone other than myself. Though I'm not going to pretend I'm not in the overwhelming majority. Also, regarding my comment being "not helpful", the only way I am empowered to "help" is to speak out against injustice as I see it, and that's what I'm doing. Regarding "the processes of the appropriate place to make" [an argument that an admin should not be an admin], the appropriate place would be WP:RfA. What are anyone's chances to ever get to speak out against a bad admin in a voluntary reconfirmation RfA? I have directly asked for one, and I would love to make my argument in the "appropriate process". But I highly doubt that DJ would forfeit his mop over this, and I doubt that he is so naive as to think that there would be any other result. So, the implication that I should save it for "the appropriate process" is simply not realistic, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't still deserve to be called out. ~Swarm~ {sting} 05:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
My, that sounds unpleasant. Like insinuations and other tactics routinely acceptable at ANI. Actually, though that editor and I have had differences, I don't think the simple rule I think is applicable here applies there. I am not saying just one rule works always to differentiate what behavior should be acceptable or not. But please don't badger me about past individual interactions, i don't want to play 20 questions about which cases exactly I am reminded of, from the facts suggested here. About Fram, by the way, I read all the above long discussion thinking that I could not remember any past interaction with them, though now I think there was some interaction. It doesn't matter here, I am just speaking about statements and diffs above. WBG, do you have any framework for defining what is acceptable vs. what is harassment in this case? --Doncram (talk) 04:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Struck out my question; unnecessary, it was. Replied over your t/p. ∯WBGconverse 09:27, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think we have a David vs. Goliath case here. For a majority of participants here, some combination of Fram and/or the community are David here and are being bullied by the Goliath WMF. For a significant minority, an anonymous complainant (David) is being bullied by Fram (a powerful admin and one of the so-called "unblockables", hence Goliath). To explain the outrage on both sides, I think it is human instinct to side with David over Goliath, the bullied over the bullies. There just happens to be disagreement on who's the bigger bully. But for the general problem, I agree that we need to fix the environment long-term. It should be easier to impose small but escalating sanctions on long-term users for misbehavior, a complicated discussion we can have after this is over. However, the OFFICE charging in and surprising the community is not a good solution. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:39, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
    There seems to be a misconception that Office took action because they had no confidence in the ability of enwiki processes to reach a just outcome. According to one of their own statements, the main reasons they did not refer the matter to Arbcom were privacy concerns and potential conflicts of interest. – Teratix ₵ 04:44, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
    I don't think the reason matters here. If it's for privacy reasons, they need to be clear about what general types of cases are not referable to Arbcom, because they don't mention exceptions to the ability to share info in the wmf:Privacy policy ("To Protect You, Ourselves & Others"). The COI excuse is laughable: if "being criticized by Fram" is a reason to recuse oneself, the WMF would be struck from the case long before Arbcom. In any case WMF has not shown an ability to communicate effectively with the community in this saga, instead WP:BLUDGEONing us with meaningless legalese. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:05, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
    I agree, that was intended as a separate comment and not a reply. – Teratix ₵ 06:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
    Interesting about David vs. Goliath being a simple principle that seems descriptive about two factions here. But we can't have a simple principle that "David is always right". What about cases where a newbie comes in, inserting too-close paraphrases from sources, and a very powerful editor notes the problem. The little guy isn't automatically right.
    What is clear enough misbehavior here, for ARBCOM or the community otherwise to have taken actions?
    I see no big difference between having "no confidence in the ability of enwiki processes to reach a just outcome" vs. there being privacy concerns which prevent ARBCOM from handling the case properly. Privacy concerns, and the general David vs. Goliath-ness of the situation for a harassed victim, do preclude an ARBCOM case from being the solution, so I don't have confidence in it working out either. Or, hmm, maybe the community had enough to act on, from facts presented here, so that an Arbcom case wouldn't have been necessary? --Doncram (talk) 05:29, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
    I see no big difference between having "no confidence in the ability of enwiki processes to reach a just outcome" vs. there being privacy concerns which prevent ARBCOM from handling the case properly. There is a big difference. Hypothetically, there might be a case where the Foundation legally cannot share enough relevant information with Arbcom, but that doesn't necessarily mean the WMF thinks Arbcom is incapable of making the right decision if they had all the facts. – Teratix ₵ 06:59, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • From my experience with arb com for 2014-2018, I find neither part of the WMF explanation sensible or even believable. (as others have said also:. 1. Unless there is some additional hidden secret, there is nothing here that seems to imply any particular privacy, and even if it had, this would have exposed it. Even if it did require privacy, arb com deals with similar situations continually--I can recall many. 2.Arb com also routinely deals with situations where part of the problem is people expressing their anger to arb com , even in extreme terms. It's fairly usual during a case. One of the reasons we have arb com clerks is to act as a buffer.)
However, I am not trying to defend the way arb com does things involving harassment and bullying, because (as I have previous said in each of the last 3 arb com elections), there has been drastically insufficient willingness on arb com to do what is necessary about these problems. But trying to deal with a particular case secretly by fiat from above without discussion is the worst possible way to go about it. I find it incredible that even those with little WP experience could have been so stupid. Even in actually hierarchical organizations dealing with workers who did actually depend upon the whims of an actual management, this would have raised unfavorable reactions.
and, as has also been said, most recently by Doncram just above, the effect of this has made it more difficult to deal with any harassment from the individual. After thissort of publicity, anything done will seem unfair.
But there is one positive effect of all this: it has made it clear to us all how entirely unfit the WMF is to deal with the actual operations of the enWP. It's not a matter of the current people there. It's inherent in their role--if they raise the money, they think themselves qualified to deal with what they do not understand. DGG ( talk ) 05:35, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
DGG - they're only "raising the money" in the same sense that I would be if Paul McCartney decided to go busking on the London Underground and I put up some posters, tweeted about it, and sat in front of him with a tin cup and a sign round my neck saying "Good cause - give generously". -- Begoon 05:55, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
DGG, "by fiat from above without discussion" it's why we have terms of use. We are here because of the inaction of en.wp. We have only ourselves to blame for this fiasco. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:26, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I would be the first to agree that we have not dealt with it satisfactorily,, and that the rash and disruptive action of the WMF might give us an incentive to do better--it has at least shown us that action in this needs to be both open and fair, giving the person accused a chance to respond, and to appeal. But I suspect it is more like to discourage action altogether, because of our revulsion to their interference. DGG ( talk ) 08:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC) .
@TheDJ: - we haven't even heard from WMF what exactly went wrong, so how can you blame the community for inaction? Do you know exactly what the accusation really is? starship.paint (talk) 07:55, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The "bullying" narrative is horseshit. Bullying and harassment are serious issues, and if a long-term bully has run amok and the community has failed to deal with it in spite of multiple credible complaints, then I would be the first to defend the WMF stepping in. But attempting to create such a narrative as an explanation here is as pathetically comical and non-credible as the sexism narrative. There is no evidence whatsoever that Fram is a bully who the community powerless to stop. Nor has there even been any attempt to make such a case to either the community or to Arbcom. I'm a huge advocate for civility enforcement, but don't pretend that this is much-needed civility/harassment enforcement that was taken as a last resort. Fram, while imperfect, is certainly not an obvious target for such drastic enforcement, if good faith civility enforcement reforms were intended. ~Swarm~ {sting} 06:17, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I (usually) host a quotation on my userpage that advocates for booting uncivil users. I also host a link to an RfA plagued by incivility that led to the candidate's retirement. I did not only participate in the thread you refer to, but I issued Malik a final warning. I respect Malik, he's a good editor, but I also believe in standing up for WP:5P4. I've spoken out publicly against friends for incivility. I've blocked established editors for incivility, to be been overruled and chastised for it. And I can't claim to be the best example all the time, but I try to own it and apologize when I fall short myself. I am simply not a flip-flopper on civility, and there is no way you can portray me as one. The only reason I'm an admin is because I wanted to advocate against incivility. I was nominated by a user I met trying to improve civility at RfA. I built credibility advocating for civility at WQA. I don't say the attempt to portray Fram as a harasser is "horseshit" because I'm a hypocrite on civility. I say it's horseshit because it is. Or, if it's not, no one's letting us know. Even now, even after all this, blockings, desysoppings, wheel warring, outright rebellion against the WMF, we still have no proof that Fram engaged in bannable or desysoppable conduct, that such evidence has been presented to the community, and that the community has repeatedly been unable to deal with it normally. It's no secret that Fram's an abrasive, aggressive, controversial admin. And yet, it somehow still can't be demonstrated that he deserved to be blocked, banned or desysopped?! How is that the case? If Fram deserved it, surely it should be easy to explain how and why, and it would not come as a particular surprise. But no. We have nothing. We have no explanation, no evidence, no attempts to go through the community, no unchecked misbehavior that would warrant an unprecedented intervention from the WMF, a supposed charitable organization with minimal to no involvement with the project itself. When asked, we're met with silence. There is no good explanation. There is no evidence to support the bullying narrative. That's why I say it's horseshit. You have to be either a WMF shill or an enemy of Fram to back the Foundation on this bizarre extremism, because logical thinking does not support what we're seeing. ~Swarm~ {sting} 05:29, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • There is actually something to Doncram's argument. The community processes are not good at dealing with harassment and bullying from established editors, hence the essay WP:UNBLOCKABLES. The community and ArbCom should long have been much more serious about dealing with longterm incivility and uncollegial conduct. I don't rule out a role for the WMF in dealing with such problems if they cannot otherwise be resolved. The problem here, of course, is that community dispute resolution was not even attempted, and that no understandable explanation for this - and the action itself - was provided. The community backlash against the WMF is therefore justified, and I, too, fear that this episode will make it more difficult to deal with longterm misconduct by established editors in the future. Sandstein 06:30, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
    There may be problems, but the world is not perfect. We need to be able to have robust discussions, including robust exchange of arguments. Bullying can be a problem, but very many cases where bullying has been claimed have just been protracted arguments where at least one side did not like the way the discussion was going. We have strong guidelines against e.g. outing. And we are not talking about a stalker hounding someone over multiple channels, sending them creepy pictures, and whispering "I know what you did - maybe I'll tell your mother tomorrow". As long as we are talking about talking, there still is the old Sticks and stones rule. Especially people (like Arbs) who voluntarily step into the limelight must be prepared to deal with more than normal levels of criticism - that comes with the job. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 06:55, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
There is a problem on en:wp with bullying and how the community deals with it. A couple of years ago I contacted an anti-bullying charity and spoke with someone about bullying on en:wp. It was a 45 minute phone conversation, within which I read out some edit summaries that had been listed at ANI and defended by at least one admin and one checkuser. The charity worker didn't even let me finish quoting the edit summaries before they interrupted with, "that's appalling". I made it clear that the summaries hadn't been directed at me, so the charity worker wasn't just being sympathetic. The problem as I see it is that en:wp's 'law enforcement' and quasi-judicial system comprises individuals with very little separation from 'plaintiffs' and 'defendants'. The solution would be to have clearer separation. Some comments elsewhere on this page suggest that this recent WMF intervention was an alternative way of tackling bullying (if indeed this case can be classed as such - certainly the WMF has classed it as harassment), but the WMF has gone about it the wrong way in my view - namely, using a very secretive 'hitman takedown' approach, with no right of appeal, on one individual who is a known WMF critic, when what would really be needed is an overhaul or revision of the whole system. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:06, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
To me, ANI’s popcorn. Could you show us all the diffs just so we can know the nature of the bullying you talk about? Oshawott 12 ==()== Talk to me! 09:17, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think DGG and Sandstein have hit it on the head there, and Doncram does bring up a valid general point. Yes there are bullying/harassment/civility problems on the English Wikipedia, and we as a community (its not ArbCom's fault) have been poor at dealing with it - poor at defining it, even. Yes, there are surely cases that can't be dealt with by the community/ArbCom route. Yes, I'm quite certain there are people who are afraid to even approach the community/ArbCom route because they see it as intimidating and fear public exposure and ridicule. Yes, maybe a process conducted by a body outside the English Wikipedia community is needed to tackle these difficult problems. But surely openness, discussion, consultation before such a change in direction was implemented would have been far preferable, instead of just deciding on the new approach in secret and hitting us with it before we had any idea anything had changed. The way it has been done comes over to me as condescending and unnecessarily domineering, and I think that lies behind a lot of the anger. Anyway, if I might offer a meta comment on this specific discussion, the emotive/charged/confrontational responses some have received here for simply presenting their honest opinions seems to me to be a very good example of what is wrong with our Community. If we want to solve issues like this, we absolutely have to put our anger on hold and accept (no, welcome) opinions that contradict our own. So I'd urge everyone to try to dial it back a bit (even in these fraught circumstances), and try to see it from the the opposing point of view - because all POVs in this dispute have considerable merit, in my view. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:24, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Strongly endorse the sentiments expressed by Doncram and those others named, and think it a good starting point to address online harassment (or worse) and any emergence of structural bias in our community's ability to reduce it. I think about solutions, and averse to the framing as, for example, 'the problem of women editors' when that is clearly not the "problem" that needs addressing. cygnis insignis 09:27, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
    It is actually already being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Can we handle harassment?--Ymblanter (talk) 09:34, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
    Cheers, cygnis insignis 09:40, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Participation in the discussion at WP:AC/N is definitely worthwhile. It's both been very productive, and held in a much calmer tone than the legitimately annoyed and angry talk here. If we ever get any dialogue with the WMF, then being able to offer our own thoughts on handling it could be beneficial. I encourage editors to at least give it a read. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:24, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Stopping bullying is a great idea. The catch is that secret processes by unexplained rules don't stop bullying. Their proponents say "look, there's nothing available online for people to look at, isn't that great?" Well, ask Laura how that worked out for her complaint -- I mean, if she even complained in the first place; even that seems like a surmise of dubious validity. In the absence of solid data, the bullying mob makes shit up. I mean, if you go to wikirev.org you'll some of them making up stories based on axes they were grinding in 2010. With a secret process you can't be sure who will be bullied, and maybe that's a relief for some special someone who really started this process whose name we don't know, but we know that it will raise tempers and paranoia and will lead to somebody being bullied. So what we need is a standard public process of discussion. If someone comes with a harassment complaint, either it will be bogus and no action taken and soon it will be forgotten, or it will get a half dozen comments on the record from people who back the action to show the rest of the world that no, this wasn't entirely capricious. The difference we need is only to introduce a process of impartial jury selection to improve the quality of our public process and inspire better confidence in its results. There is even a private company claiming to do that in social media (minds.com) though if you look at the details there are big loopholes and imposed compromises. We are an idealistic community that should do better than this. Wnt (talk) 10:26, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Yow. You go to sleep, and then look what happens. First off, yeah, let's dial back the vitriol. I'm pissed about what happened here too (if I somehow hadn't already made that clear), but on this project, we have always accepted that reasonable people can disagree. Let's please not attack someone like that just because they do. And on the other side of it, claiming that this discussion doesn't really represent consensus and there's some "silent majority" otherwise is also unhelpful. We don't and can't know if that exists. If the "silent majority" wants to be heard, they need to drop the first word and quit being silent.

    That being said, I think it should be made clear that the English Wikipedia community, being founded by, for lack of a better term, a bunch of geeks (and still being populated, to a large extent, by that; I mean, let's be honest, what would you call someone who voluntarily spends part of their free time writing an encyclopedia?) has its own culture, and that probably is not comparable to many, if any, other places people might be used to. Being right and being competent will often be prioritized over being nice or polite. That doesn't mean those things have no value or that we shouldn't aspire to them (and I think in the past, we did a better job of at least trying to aspire to them), but it also means the guy who's an old grump but does an absolutely stellar job will be sticking around, even if his grumpiness gets turned your direction one day because you stepped on his toes. Of course, there are certain red lines which must never be crossed (off-wiki stalking, threats to do violence to other editors, etc.), but the community has always largely agreed on those. So, I'm all for a discussion about how we handle "bullying", but I would also want to be very narrow and very conservative in how we define that term. Being a little grouchy is not, generally speaking, bullying, it just means we have a variety of people with a variety of temperaments. (I wish I could remember who said it, during a discussion of whether Wikipedia is a "work environment" and should be treated with the same sort of saccharine-sweet HR-approved veneer of "politeness". They responded that if Wikipedia is any kind of work environment, it is a shop floor, not a high-rise office. If anyone remembers who said that, please let me know and I'll credit them appropriately, but it was, I think, an excellent observation.)

    So, for whoever above said someone found a few rude edit summaries on ANI "appalling", well, I got news for you—sometimes, people are rude, and abrasive, and blunt, both on the Internet and in real life. Sometimes that truly does cross a line, but sometimes it's just how they are and such as it is. So, I want to make sure we handle the situations where we do, indeed, have a case of deliberate targeted harassment. But I want to make sure we don't mistake the wrong things for that. "I keep screwing up and X keeps catching me when I do" is not harassment. "X is a grouch to everyone and was grouchy with me too" is not harassment. "X sent me a ten-page email telling me how worthless I am, and has demanded a response twice a day for three days since" is harassment. So, let's by all means figure out a way to handle genuine harassment or bullying, but let's also not be afraid to tell people "Look, you need a bit thicker skin" if they feel the need to shout "harassment" or "bullying" every time someone dares to say fuck in their presence or legitimately points out a mistake they made. Seraphimblade Talk to me 14:49, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm User: Stephan Schulz and I endorse the above comment. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:01, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
The "shop floor" comment was made by Wehwalt, here. aboideautalk 18:31, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I did write that. It refers to the strong disagreements one can have while engaged in the common goal of building this encyclopedia. It does not excuse harassment or similar conduct. Just so it's clear.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:05, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    • I do not recall commenting on bullying/harassment cases before, as I am not a regular participant on the noticeboards, but I will say that most of the cases I've seen where "bullying" or "harassment" is alleged, it's a case of a person being overly sensitive. This includes the case WMF T&S warned Fram about. Obviously, there are occasional real cases which should not be dismissed. Just a general observation. I concur with the substance of Seraphim's above comment. Enigmamsg 15:04, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
This. This right here. While I also agree with Enigmaman that most such allegations on en-wiki have been cases of people being overly sensitive or trying to silence someone who was actually right about their problematic editing, overall, I'd say that Seraphimblade hit the nail squarely on the head, and this needs to be a core aspect of how we view and address this situation. rdfox 76 (talk) 15:38, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
@Seraphimblade: - Just to be clear, since I was the one who made the "silent majority" comment - I don't know that there actually exists a silent majority who is observing what is unfolding here but holding their tongues for fear of retribution. I do know there are people who have not weighed in yet on this incident. I just wanted to make that clear, because I personally am of the belief that WMF way overstepped their bounds, and that the response of the community (the unblocking, re-sysopping, etc.) was an altogether valid and organic response. Nothing that has been said or done so far has led me to believe that the actions of Floquenbeam, Bishonen, and now WJBScribe have been against consensus. With that being said, the messaging of WMF leads me to believe that they are speaking on behalf of a more sizable group of people that may not necessarily be representative of the people who have been commenting here so far. But that could just be reckless speculation on my part.--WaltCip (talk) 18:57, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
WaltCip, the comment I saw that precipitated that comment was not yours, but written by TheDJ: I have ZERO trust in this community and there are entire private groups of people agreeing with me too scared to post here. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:24, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Allow me to say that while I'm not familiar with the user in question, I am highly skeptical of that claim. It's extremely dubious for several reasons. Enigmamsg 20:34, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I agree to some extent with Seraphimblade. It is important to distinguish between legit claims vs nuisance claims. I think a major issue is that people don't seem to feel safe bringing their claims to light. In addition, a lot of excuse making for WP:MOSTACTIVE goes on. I don't care how active or good an editor is if they are driving away other volunteers. That seems to have happened here. And how can we get more transparency when the act of transparency causes individuals to experience further harassment from others? Also, the shop floor analogy doesn't have to be place of "rough and tumble" or a lack of civility to one another. We all have different amounts of tolerance and we need to respect each other's levels of what civility are. That would even happen in a shop environment! People in every work place must learn to get along or the project dies. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:27, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I am an admin on enwikt, not much of a Wikipedian, but similar issues about the initimidating climate and its effect on contributors and potential contributors arise.
In my gut I strongly agree with Seraphimblade's extended comment above. And I don't have much sympathy for silent-majority arguments. BUT, I am concerned about the effect of the tone of discussion on potential contributors. It does not take much to discourage them. It isn't just a matter of not biting the newbies. OTOH, I don't think that ham-handed actions by T&S or ARBCOM or any body that operates in partial secrecy (even though the secrecy is justified) are going to be terribly useful in creating a climate that will lead to broader participation by new contributors. Harassment and bullying are charges that are easily made against the behavior of people who are intensely engaged in wikiwork. We need some level of tolerance for strong dialog, eg, heartfelt criticisms, even repeated, of a fellow contributor's competence in wikiwork.
I hope it goes without saying that, for the good of the movement, civility has to be the norm and does require enforcement actions of some kind, preferably mild to start, and accompanied by person-to-person persuasion. DCDuring (talk) 19:05, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
You can't build 5,800,000 articles by prioritizing just civility in manners,as if it trounced every other consideration(evidence of hard work, competence in the topic etc). That prerequisite is fundamentally designed, with some good reason, to protect many people with thin skins (and often very little else) and ensure constant recruitment of new editors. Civility issues should be, but never are, measured tacitly by looking at what the respective editors actually do round here, whether they complain a lot, haggle over minutiae, obstruct efficient editing and all the things summed up by WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, esp.excessive argufying on talk pages in proportion to actual article input (beyond tinkering or reverts). While this place should certainly be friendly to newcomers, people who have been around a long time should have adaptively developed tough hides, sufficiently worldly-wise to shrug off occasional expressions of exasperation thrown their way. We are here to undertake hard yakka. Anyone who's worked as a navvie knows you will cop a bit of stick, which is dropped commensurately if you show your worth, but which gets thwackier if you become a whingeing lounger, always ready to drop whatever you are not doing to complain to the union. In practice, the high priority to make the Wikipedia environment impeccably civil has probably burned, rather than recruited, more highly productive editors. The most civil editor I have encountered managed to stop the Shakespeare Authorship Question from getting out of its conspiratorial quagmire theory base. He never put a foot wrong, and almost drove one of our finest Shakespeare authorities to abandon the place. Fortunately, several very good admins and editors finally twigged at the Passive-aggressive behavior lurking behind the mask of urbanity, and allowed Tom Reedy to pull it through, with a little help from friends, to FA status. So, when prompted by instinct to thrash the whip of sanctions, please learn to take an extra half hour reading through the talk page with an eye to passive aggessivity and Ididnthearthat niceness and if someone there displaying inimitable manners while just reverting or dabbling about, before rushing to judgement.Nishidani (talk) 20:12, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Superschutz

Superschutz, im englischen Original Superprotect, war ein Gruppenrecht, das die Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) am 10. August 2014 eingeführt hat. Es ermöglichte den Inhabern dieses Rechts, Seiten auch vor Bearbeitung durch Administratoren zu schützen. Das spezielle Gruppenrecht wurde eingeführt, um den Wheel-War vom gleichen Tag um den Medienbetrachter zugunsten der Wikimedia Foundation zu entscheiden. Im November 2015 wurde das Gruppenrecht wieder entfernt
Translation:
Superschutz, in the English original Superprotect, was a group right introduced by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) on 10 August 2014 . It allowed the owners of this right to protect pages from being edited by administrators. The special group law was introduced to decide the wheel war of the same day to the media viewer in favor of the Wikimedia Foundation. In November 2015, group law was removed.
Say No to Trust and Safety: Nothing, absolutely nothing learned. --Informationswiedergutmachung (talk) 21:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I think "group law" needs to be replaced by "permission", or if we want to be more technical, "(user) group right" ~ ToBeFree (talk) 11:34, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Has the foundation lost sight of its purpose?

It's hard to see the Fran ban, the Floq desysop, and Jan Eissfeldt's 1435 word statement as anything other than a power grab, and an unjustifiable assault on the character of one of our most devoted users. This is not a form of coordination. These actions, and the self-serving dictates that followed, come at the expense of the trust and confidence of this community. Our self-governed project has surely benefited from WMF's reliable servers and functional software, but the credibility of this entire project rests on the quality of the content that has been tirelessly assembled by volunteers, many of who have dedicated thousands of hours to this project, with no pay. This content is the basis on which the foundation derives its ability to receive millions of dollars in donations each year.

This community has consistently proven that in almost every case, we are capable of policing our own users to the benefit of disseminating knowledge to the people of the world via a collaborative editing. We are a well-run organization, in spite of the WMF, not because of it. I fear the consequences of WMF's self-appointed role of supermoderator, in which the rules are arbitrary, hidden, and the outcomes unappealable. What gives WMF the moral right to usurp these powers that have been under the aegis of the English Wikipedia community for so long? - MrX 🖋 11:58, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Some troubling context.

Someone reported yesterday that they dropped this discussion into Word, and it was over 1600 pages. That was yesterday, it is far larger today. (I recognize that chunks have been moved or archived.)

For context, the Mueller Report, which was far too long for many interested parties to read, was 446 pages.

We've hit a multiple of that and more will come. While I think @Seraphimblade: provided some useful advice, I shuddered when I read If the "silent majority" wants to be heard, they need to drop the first word and quit being silent.

Before I make my suggestion, a few more numbers.

256 editors are contributors to this page. That's a lot, but still a fraction of active users.

The average contributor has under 5 edits to the page, while 20 editors have 22 or more. Both facts mean this discussion is not representative of the community.

Should the WMF contract a competent organization to do a random sample of active editor and ask some questions? That might generate some feedback from the slient majority in summary form (without bringing this page to its knees).--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:46, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

  • I echo SusunW's comment regarding minority view. There are many editors who do not feel comfortable engaging in pages such as this one, though they are following the commentary. I know this as I am hearing from them in various other channels. They are the editors who avoid contentious situations. You'll never know who they are because they are the silent majority. But they are paying attention, and they are speaking their minds, just not on a page where they are anxious regarding what might happen if they do so. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Come on. Sphilbrick didn't say that this is a minority view. He said we don't know if it represents the view of those who haven't commented. Don't twist the meaning of his words to suit your wishes. Grandpallama (talk) 13:39, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    • I strongly disagree that it's a minority view. Yes, a small percentage of the users of en.wiki have chimed in, but that's the case for any en.wiki process. I suspect the views here are fairly representative of the overall editing body. Tossing aside the opinions here by stating that there are many other users who haven't commented is rather unhelpful and unproductive. Enigmamsg 20:10, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
      Enigmaman, by definition, it's a view of the minority, which may or may not be a minority view. It may or may not be representative. S Philbrick(Talk) 21:14, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
      • Please see the comment I was responding to, which explicitly called it a minority view, which very likely is incorrect. Saying many people have not chimed in is correct, calling it a "minority view" indicates that it does not represent the view of the majority, which is a rather ludicrous assertion to make. Enigmamsg 21:17, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I suspect they didn't mean just this discussion, but all the related discussion. I just dropped everything in this editing window into Word and got 235 pages. The point remains though, regardless. I concur with Enigmaman that this is likely a representative sample, though statistically it is probably somewhat tilted. A true RFC would bend it somewhat more towards neutral, but not by much. I don't think contracting an external organization would help. The bottom line here is the WMF badly, badly messed up and is fumbling about in the dark, with no directions and no torch, trying to figure out how to solve the problem. No amount of polling the editors here will change that reality. I've said for many, many years that I feel the WMF is woefully incompetent (and now I wonder if in saying that they'll up and decide to ban me), and this is merely a permutation of this. This is just the most recent example of this, as we've seen from testimony from the German Wikipedia. I suspect that once the WMF board meets, there will be an end to this from their side, and that Fram will have his ban officially revoked. After that, there might still be a great deal more material added to the various discussions, but nothing will come of it and we'll be back to business as normal until (not if) the WMF screws up again. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:37, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
    Hammersoft, true RFC; this is one; you know that this has been advertised in CENT, for a long time? ∯WBGconverse 03:36, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • No question that this discussion reflects a minority of users and it is dominated by Fram's supporters, who are repeatedly weighing in, and if my experience is any indication, they routinely challenge anyone and everyone who disagrees with them to a far greater extent than anyone is calling them out. The bottom line is that anyone who weighs in here needs to be ready for that, and it's something that is quite intimidating to many editors, particularly content creators who, as a rule, prefer to avoid the drama boards. As a result, the "silent majority" is often a silent, intimidated majority. To the extent that "any en.wiki process" is like this reflects the problem: a loud flock always ready to start bleating "four legs good, two legs bad" declares a "consensus" immediately and shuts down anyone who argues otherwise. Montanabw(talk) 20:46, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
    • I have weighed in several times and I don't recall ever having contact with Fram or discussing him. Additionally, some of the people who are upset with the WMF's actions have said they do not like Fram and at least one said they would like to see him banned. I'm skeptical of the claim that this is dominated by Fram's supporters when so many users have chimed in, but I don't know the qualifications for being a Fram supporter. Enigmamsg 20:53, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
      • I've virtually never interacted with Fram. Doesn't stop me from wanting an answer to this. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 21:16, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
        • I've publicly said in the past that Fram's conduct … has been an atrocious mix of unnecessary overpersonalization, extreme defensiveness when challenged, lashing out at anyone he feels isn't sufficiently agreeing with him, and a general attitude that his opinions are invariably correct and it's his duty to bludgeon them through regardless of opposition, but it doesn't stop me wanting an answer to this, either. Fram was warned about his behaviour last year, toned it down, and other than the "fuck arbcom" diff and a minor squabble over pronouns, as far as I can tell has been completely uncontroversial since; as best I can tell, his recent conduct has been a good example of Wikipedia's civility enforcement mechanisms working correctly. ‑ Iridescent 21:22, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict × 2) Sphilbrick, first off, "page" isn't an actual unit of measure. I've read a good deal of this discussion. (Then again, I also did read the entire Mueller report, and I do know I read quite a good deal faster than most people do.) But I'd still dispute your premise. An articles for deletion discussion with ten people arguing to delete and none arguing to keep would be considered a clear consensus to delete the article. An RfA with 95 people arguing to give the individual an admin flag and five arguing not to would be considered a crystal clear consensus for the crats to promote. An RfC on a change to a core policy, with 30 in favor and 2 against, would be considered a clear consensus to make the requested change. The participation of 256 editors is way more than the normal quorum to consider a consensus established by that discussion. Yes, that means decisions are often made by those who care the most about the issue—but in a lot of ways, that's a feature, not a bug. I would, however, oppose some anonymous "survey" replacing that. Surveys are easy to manipulate. "Should editors on the English Wikipedia be nice to one another?" "Oh, look, 99.5% of respondents said yes, we've got a mandate to ban editors behind closed doors!". We don't do things that way. If you want your voice heard, you show up to the discussion, and you explain, with your name on it, what you think, why you think it, and if you wish you defend your position. (And so far as the assertion of Montanabw that this is about supporters of Fram: I don't particularly like Fram to begin with. This is about the English Wikipedia's editorial independence, and the WMF not stepping in where they have not been specifically invited to. It's not about a referendum on Fram.) Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:19, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I find this topic ludicrous. You could go to every single community discussion and call it a "minority view" by the standards given. Just because less than 1% of editors have chimed in, does not make it a minority view. Enigmamsg 21:25, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Enigmaman, your argument could be equally applied to reach the opposite conclusion. And just as an example of how people who offer disagreement are harassed, this is an example. Montanabw(talk) 21:55, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Television ratings (aka Nielsen) are generated by using a very small percentage of the total TVs in use. Political polls are generated by polling a very small number and assuming it's representative. The same goes for when US TV networks "call" a state for a certain party/candidate. They base their "call" on the small percentage. In Wikipedia discussions, we assume the people commenting are representative of the larger view. I believe this page does that too. Most people are dismayed by the WMFs actions while a few choose to make it out to be "justice" against "harassers", even though the WMF provided no such evidence and communicated terribly. There is no evidence to suggest that the community at large somehow feels strongly differently than the overwhelming sentiment here. As for the diff you gave, I do not condone that kind of behaviour, and I understand sometimes people are victims to unpleasant actions like that. I still find it improbable that there are large groups of people afraid to edit this page. Enigmamsg 22:33, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Montanabw, that, on retrospection, was a non-optimal edit. But, I don't take kindly to someone (1) diva-quitting, after resigning tools and (2) then slapping retired templates (3) only to take someone to ANI (with the pathos of that ANI edit, being his last edit on the project) and (4) failing to get a sanction, declare that he won't ever edit (and that this is not his community) yet (5) continuing to post numerous statements across everywhere and some near-trolling over BN, (that was called out by others) and triggered me ..... Since there is some false perception among the silent-majority, who apparently need to be mollycoddled to speak out, that all of this majority is a part of sinister conspiracy and long-term voyagers of Mt. Fram, my thoughts can be read over here. ∯WBGconverse 03:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Long time lurker, first time caller in this fiasco I've been reading this page since it popped up and I try not to get involved in hot-button issues like this. I like to do my thing and make the encyclopedia a better place. My opinion reflects that of the community at large, even though I have not chimed in about it. This was an overstep by the WMF with no transparency for their actions with dubious rationale for doing so. I've never dealt with Fram, but as a denizen that frequently reads through AN, ANI, and BN; I've seen that he can be difficult to deal with. But I find the gagging of a productive and competent admin to be troubling. Wikipedia is only as good as it's editors- when someone gets insta-banned that is a great net positive to the project, it is worrying for everyone. Jip Orlando (talk) 21:43, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Seraphimblade, you just hit the nail on the head. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 23:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I think I initially misunderstood your post. I get it now.S Philbrick(Talk) 23:09, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: The analogy to the Mueller Report is surprisingly apt, the more I think about it. Both scenarios feature a rich and powerful entity whose disruptive and widely unpopular actions are, supporters assure us, nonetheless very popular amongst a silent majority and that appearances otherwise are, basically "fake news." We even have a bona fide false accusation of a "witch hunt"! And ultimately the powerful entity is going to get away with whatever they like because they have all the power. Now, it's not a flawless analogy; certainly the WMF isn't putting children in cages. But with an opaque banning process that doesn't even pretend to be fair to the person accused (who is apparently non-personed enough that editors can freely insult them as a "harasser" and "abuser" on-wiki without any worry of being blocked for NPA or BLP) the similarities are there if one cares to look. 28bytes (talk) 01:31, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

@28bytes: I agree with the substance of your post. The best part of the comment you linked was not the witch hunt allegation (which witches are being hunted here?). The best part was the insistence that the troublemaking user was definitely not a sockpuppet (based on what?). Checkuser takes a look and immediately discovers it's a sock of an LTA vandal. Enigmamsg 03:31, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Maybe you are interested in m:Talk:Trust and Safety#FYI. I'm a long-time user from German wikipedia, highly irritated by the irregular proceeding of the Trust&Safety team. As you know from the sections above, the same proceeding, including non-answers by T&S, was used before against a user of the German wikipedia (who already had been infinitely blocked by local admins). My idea is that some rules of a fair trial must absolutely apply to any such action. Not knowing the Fram case in depth, I don't want to say anything about this concrete case, but the general proceeding of WMF and T&S is, in my view, intolerable.Mautpreller (talk) 08:07, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

I've read your proposal, and encourage people to do so as well. starship.paint (talk) 08:59, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Ok, this is getting silly. No, an organization doesn't need to adhere to the rules of a fair trial to dispose of a volunteer. While I do think WMF should be more transparent with regard to the specifics of why they took the exact action they did (rather than a permanent global block) at the time they did, it's perfectly within the rights of an organization to say goodbye to a volunteer if they feel the volunteer is no longer of value to the objectives of the organization. The thing that I suspect is part of the central problem here is that, considering how much of Wikimedia's activity depends entirely on volunteer labour, the organization has been quite content to foster a sense of ownership for the project among its volunteer base. But it's Wikimedia's project, we just choose to help when we see it as a worthwhile goal. That's the agreement volunteers strike. WMF is a non-profit, but it's not a co-op and technically it's not beholden to any specific due process in the management of its volunteers.
Now that said, again, I want to stress that I am not saying WMF is blameless here. Their communication strategy was weak. We don't know why this senior volunteer was given a time-out, and the nature of the action combined with the vague statements from WMF muddy the waters. If Fram was harassing someone, why are they being allowed back after a year and why just English Wikipedia? If this is because of a general pattern of abrasive comportment, why not just say so clearly? However the big problem on the WMF side isn't that they decided to remove Fram. That's an unfortunate element of volunteer management but it is one that organizations sometimes need to engage in and it's understandable. The big problem is what WMF chose to tell the rest of the community WRT why. But that's not something a formal trial, which may or may not involve re-victimizing complainants when they face... ^^^ all of this ^^^ in response to their complaint, is going to make any better. Simonm223 (talk) 12:07, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Without the volunteer labour that has been spent building this project, the WMF would not even exist. –xenotalk 12:24, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
And I think this organzation, which lives from its volunteers (and not viceversa) has to duty the respect rules of a fair trial. Simonm223's point of view is a little bit to submissive to me. Obey, volunteer, obey! --Informationswiedergutmachung (talk) 12:27, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Actually you're looking at my perspective from the opposite direction. I am a project manager who cut his teeth in non-profits with large volunteer workforces. So my career was actually situated on the WMF side of things. WMF screwed the pooch on fostering a non-toxic volunteer culture here but volunteers thinking they own an org is something that orgs should actively avoid just because of debacles like this one. I'm actually highly critical of WMF here, but because I think they've let the maniacs run the asylum for far too long. Simonm223 (talk) 12:42, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I think you’re missing the point. The maniacs built the asylum, and hired a few bean counters to keep the lights on. Now those same bean counters are trying to put the maniacs in straight jackets. –xenotalk 12:44, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
(ec) It's not quite the same. The primary value of most nonprofits is their web of interconnected relationships and the goodwill of their brand. But for Wikimedia, it is in the repository of free information submitted so far - something that, as per the CC license, belongs to neither WMF nor its users, but rather to the world at large. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 12:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
To be fair, the strategies and actions coordinated by the WMF have added immensely to the brand and the product. Without that, arguably the WMF and its projects wouldn't be where they are today. You do need both, and for better or worse, we are stuck with the WMF. It is unlikely to be possible to change at this late date (the WMF was founded in 2003, only 2 years after Wikipedia started, however the massive expansion of the WMF came a bit later - I would say from around 2009-10). Carcharoth (talk) 13:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Fair. –xenotalk 13:20, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
The English Wikipedia pre-dates the WMF. You say that "it's perfectly within the rights of an organization to say goodbye to a volunteer if they feel the volunteer is no longer of value to the objectives of the organization". If you are of the view (as many are) that the WMF was created to serve the needs of the community, then that can be rephrased as "it's perfectly within the rights of a community to say goodbye to its foundation if they feel the foundation is no longer of value to the objectives of the community". The (imperfect) analogy that can be used is that of a managing agent contracted to service a block of flats. I know the WMF is not contracted to provide its services, but think for a moment if the English Wikipedia editing community were organised enough to contract out to an organisation other than the WMF to provide the services that the WMF provides. If the WMF knew that its contract could be terminated if it was not providing the right level of service, then it might have more of an incentive to get things right and not mess up. It comes down to whether there is respect for volunteer labour, or whether volunteer labour is treated as a disposable and replaceable resource. See here for more thoughts, the key bit being: "Effectively, the Board will have to sort out a breakdown in trust between the paid and volunteer workforce (one of the key aims of the WMF should be to maintain and nurture that relationship and not have it deteriorate)." Someone with similar (and strong) views on this is @Seraphimblade: see here. Carcharoth (talk) 12:47, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Ok, but how many volunteers are up in arms? 70? Out of what? 30,000 or so active editors? The other thing I suspect a lot of editors here need to do is look up and notice how much of Wikipedia is just... getting on without them. Perhaps, just consider for a moment, that the majority of Wikipedia editors who aren't extremely online don't care if Fram has the bit. WMF was created because Wikipedia grew to the point that it needed an organization to actually run it. Well surprise, surprise, running a volunteer-heavy organization sometimes means shedding a volunteer. And if that means alienating 0.2% of your volunteer force, well, it's something they should try to avoid, but not at the cost of letting a senior volunteer who has become a net negative for the project continue being grit in the wheel.Simonm223 (talk) 13:00, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
The other thing I suspect a lot of editors here need to do is look up and notice how much of Wikipedia is just... getting on without them. Perhaps, just consider for a moment, that the majority of Wikipedia editors who aren't extremely online don't care if Fram has the bit. That is a non-argument, and ridiculous. If my office neighbor walks into my office right now and punches me in the face, the fact that my company continues to get along just fine while a part of it is disrupted means the disruption is no big deal or can be ignored? That there is no obligation to address the problem? That's an ill-conceived approach to resolving obvious issues that require resolution. Grandpallama (talk) 14:45, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
All of our editors should to be able to expect natural justice in how they are treated. That's part of the values we're about as a community, more than just a website. Without community this place is nothing. Jheald (talk) 13:04, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
The problem is not to kick out a volunteer sometimes. It is the way they want them kick out, snobbish patronizingly. We say Jump, volunteer, jump and you may not ask Why? but only How high?? -Informationswiedergutmachung (talk)
(ec) We already have an editor and administrator retention problem, I do not think secret proceedings with unappealable decisions will help with that. And - for the most part - it wasn’t the fact that Fram was excommunicated that has caused consternation, but the manner in which it was done and communicated. There are critics of Fram who have objected, for example. There are editors who have never found common grounds in their lives linking arms in protest. That should be telling. –xenotalk 13:12, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict)x2 There's no such thing as natural justice. Grind the universe down to the finest powder and sift it and you won't find one grain of justice in it. What you are asking for, rather, is for the concept of justice you believe in to be adhered to by others. However, Plato was wrong, and these abstracts are not universal. So what you're demanding doesn't exist. It's arbitrary. It's nothing more than an agreement which was never made in this community or this context. Simonm223 (talk) 13:13, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Ok, Simonm223, you got an opinion and I am right. Have a nice day. And always jump, jump higher. --Informationswiedergutmachung (talk) 13:16, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
There is, actually, such a thing as natural justice, which is why we have a term and an article for it. True, you wouldn't find it if you ground the universe down to a powder, but that's only because then all you'd have would be powder. You will, however, find it in most (not all!) interactions between people, at least as a goal to be aspired towards. And that's what people here are asking for. --GRuban (talk) 14:22, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I also certainly missed the part where moral nihilism was a WMF value. —Nizolan (talk) 16:21, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Uh huh. But consider this. The WMF has around 300 employees. That is a relatively small number. It would be possible to replace all of them with a different organisation with different values. I suspect that of your 30,000 or so active editors, most of them would not notice if that happened. What actually happens is that people are more concerned about what happens in their own little area. Carcharoth (talk) 13:17, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) You know what? Go ahead and try to get 300 people fired because one admin has to take a year-long break from (checks notes) antagonizing Jimmy Wales regarding the spelling of Will.i.am and arguing with transwomen about whether it's offensive to use a neologistic pronoun that they prefer not to use. I'll just be over here, watching and laughing. As for Informationswiedergutmachung's WP:POINTed comments, that's some good understanding of the concept of consensus right there. Have a nice day but don't expect further replies from me - I dislike arguing with brick walls. Simonm223 (talk) 13:21, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I know what and this and also that. Thx for your dialogue monologue. Don't know your time zone, but in mine the sun shines and it is time to go out of my asylum to take my monthly shower. --Informationswiedergutmachung (talk) 13:30, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Would you like a list of what the WMF has got wrong over the years? This is right up there with the worst of them. Carcharoth (talk) 13:32, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Both Wikipedia and the WMF get things wrong sometimes —this is an example of the latter— but evaluating either organization strictly by its flaws would not be a balanced approach. El_C 17:32, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Its a carefully guarded myth that wikipedia predates the WMF. Before Jimmy Wales transfered the rights to the WMF (being its chairm) wikipedia was owned by a private company of him (Bomis). So the WMF is wikipedia.--Claude J (talk) 09:02, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
@Claude J:, uh no. I've been here since almost the beginning, so I can say confidently you are wrong. (And this is the first time I've seen anyone make that claim.) The only connection Bomis had with Wikipedia was that it provided hardware & servers. (Use the Internet Archive to see what Bomis' interests were, which was much different than creating an encyclopedia.) Wikipedia grew out of Nupedia, which was moribund by the time I joined in October 2002; Nupedia's only paid employee, Larry Sanger, had quit a month before I made my first edit. For its first few years after its foundation in June 2003, the Foundation existed in a shadowy form, as a way to pay for bandwidth & for someone to watch the servers, not to make policy. Even after it assumed a more substantial form -- elected a board of trustees, hired non-technical staff, opened a physical office -- it remained a sketchy operation until Sue Gardner became ED who substantially defined WMF, for better or worse. In short, there is no institutional or staff continuity between WMF, Bomis or Nupedia. -- llywrch (talk) 15:58, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
With the exception of Wales.--Claude J (talk) 16:24, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

A perspective on why WMF may be acting so opaquely

It strikes me that perhaps the only way to square WMFOffice's and Fram's comments (both of which seem credible) is the possibility that T&S believes Fram engaged in some form of harassment or abuse that it believes it cannot legally disclose either not only to the community but also to Fram himself for reasons of personal data privacy, namely, the privacy of Fram's accuser(s). So I think it's appropriate to look at that aspect in greater detail.

The privacy policy says that the WMF may disclose personal information if it is reasonably believed to be necessary to enforce or investigate potential violations of our Terms of Use, this Privacy Policy, or any Wikimedia Foundation or user community-based policies. The WMF might believe that disclosing an accuser's identity or complaint is not reasonably necessary to investigate the complaint. The problem with this belief, if held, is that the right to confront one's accusers has been considered since ancient times a critical element of a fair trial. The Romans viewed this rule as a guarantee against wrongful conviction. Therefore, in my view, disclosure of an Office Action complaint to the accused is reasonably necessary to investigate the complaint and doesn't violate the WMF's privacy policy. However, if they don't adopt this view, then the privacy policy can and should be re-written to explicitly give the WMF discretion to disclose complaints to the accused and to the community.

The second legal consideration is that even if disclosure is consistent with the privacy policy, the WMF might believe it still violates the GDPR (EU's general data protection regulation). The GDPR has stricter consent rules than U.S. law. The way this likely would have come about is if the complainant demanded that WMF not share their complaint or identity with Fram. Whether the WMF might be permitted to disclose the accuser's complaint against their wishes is not fully clear to me. If there's someone where knowledgeable about GDPR Article 6(1)(f) and how it might apply, please speak up. R2 (bleep) 19:26, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

I think the main problem here is that T&S did not handle this in a way to allow itself and ARBCOM to both have a prepared statement. They had as much time as they needed before actually issuing the ban/block to think about what they could and could not reveal and to write a statement following all of the legal and procedural lines, as well as to ensure that ARBCOM could do the same thing. And yes, potentially Fram deserved a notification as well. I can't speak on that one way or the other. But enwiki certainly deserved to hear a considered and pre-written explanation from T&S the moment that Fram was banned/blocked. If that alone had happened, it would have mitigated a lot of this issue. Prometheus720 (talk) 19:43, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
This. Assuming the timeline by Fram and OR are correct, they had every opportunity to have a prepared statement from wither or both the WMF and ArbCom explaining why they were taking this step, without exposing anything that would reveal the genesis of the complaint. You'd have people still grousing over it, but you wouldn't be seeing the outrage that we have been seeing. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 19:51, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Prometheus hit the nail on the head exactly. Not much more that can be added to that, really.--WaltCip (talk) 19:54, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Yep. Except that they also hung that Official account and its (primary?) operator out to dry. All of this could have been handled so much better (if indeed there was a need for it--which I am still not convinced of, and there's nothing yet to accept on good faith), and now here we are--dozens and dozens of Wikipedians, some of whom can't even look each other in the eye and say "how are you", all more or less united against an administratively necessary cadre that, wittingly or not, has made itself into an overlord when it promised to stay out of things. Drmies (talk) 00:24, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Ahrtoodeetoo: - It would be well within the bounds of Legitimate Interest as a justification to provide sufficient information for a fair assessment, unless a judgement was that actual harm or seriously major disruption would occur. The WMF would have to show that they minimised data transfer and minimised disruption to the data subject(s). The former couldn't really be done (it's somewhat all or nothing) but the latter could be done with steps like implementation of a 2-way IBAN at the outset of data sharing. It's a risky enough area that a DPIA would need to be done, but that's a couple of hours work from a staff member. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:39, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
That was my suspicion. Thanks for the input. R2 (bleep) 23:12, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
This isn't a trial. That's part of the problem. People keep trying to insist that the conditions of a trial must be adhered to but... it's not. WMF has not implied Fram did anything illegal just that they don't want Fram to admin or edit English Wikipedia for a year. It's a weird disciplinary action for a lot of reasons; but Fram has no right to confront his accuser in this regard. Simonm223 (talk) 12:14, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
You misunderstand me. I'm not saying that Fram has the right to confront his accuser. He doesn't. I'm saying that it wouldn't violate the privacy policy for the WMF to disclose the accuser's identity to Fram, because enably Fram to confront his accuser is reasonably necessary for the WMF to properly investigate the accusation. R2 (bleep) 20:59, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

I am reminded on an incident I was involved in years ago. I was witness to an act that was both foolish and questionable (what they did was anonymous, but involved something that mean i could iD them), this was as part of (both mine and someone elses) paid work. I informed the management, who told me not to tell anyone (to protect the other person). However it was already too late, and it had got out (I was not alone in seeing it), though they had not been identified at this stage by anyone else. They were then fired without any explanation to anyone, to protect them (lets just say that if it had gone really bad they might have ended up in a ditch, it was that weird). Thus (and without knowing the story) this may have been more to do with protecting Frams image. Like the people you see on TV banging on about some injustice until it turn out ion fact they were at fault.Slatersteven (talk) 18:06, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

I doubt that. They have more or less stated the intent was to protect the accuser's identity (Which prolly hasn't worked). —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 20:05, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Which would also be a valid reason, but they may also be double bluffing as well. The point is they are trying to protect someone, and much like the case I outline above it might be possible to identify who it was based upon a slight detail (as I did with that person). "Well they had reported Fram for calling them a self confessed chicken strangler" "Well Fram TABned them from that article over their conflict with user:frasmmate62", ect. In fact given what is happening here I think it is more then justified to want to conceal the ID of someone who might well be subject to retaliation, and that means providing no information that might be usable to create a paper trail back to them. That was the reason the person I knew was sacked, not for what they had done (it was in hindsight obvious they had been caught, they had been moved sideways). Rather they had been sacked because irt was obvious that if I could figure it out so (eventually) could others, and that was the end of their ability to work there.Slatersteven (talk) 09:08, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

There may also be another reason, the reason why intelligence agencies never confirm or deny anything. Once you deny something the next time you do not deny it it is (in effect) a conformation. To give a silly example "was it user 62, No: was it user 26, no: was it user 6, we cannot say: Haaaah it was user 6". By refusing to say anything, the next time they refuse to say it is not confirmation. And lets not forget, it may be any of us who next time may not want our case made public.Slatersteven (talk) 10:16, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Bishonen unblocked Fram (+ reactions)

[3] - at 07:20, 12 June 2019 (UTC), Bishonen unblocked Fram with the following reason: Reversing the wheel warring by WMFOffice. Please note that Floquenbeam did not wheel war in unblocking Fram; WMFOffice did when they re-blocked. See WP:WHEEL. Created this section for reactions to this latest incident. starship.paint (talk) 07:40, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

In all seriousness, Bishonen did something incredibly brave. The WMF made an example of Floq, and yet Bishonen did the right thing anyway. We're not worthy of these admins' sacrifices. ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:48, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Hear, hear! El_C 07:51, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
We can try to be. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:53, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
how many more you willing to lose wmf?50.106.16.170 (talk) 07:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
I support what Bishonen did. She's essentially enforcing the community's consensus that the block and ban are illegitimate and doing what she can to further that. No doubt she'll also be deopped for 30 days because WMFOffice still seems to be completely averse to anything resembling talking it out. Also, thank you, Swarm, for the levity. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 07:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Thank you to Bishonen. That decision displayed strong moral character. We will soon see if the WMF can figure out to stop digging the hole deeper this time. Tazerdadog (talk) 07:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
checkY. Reyk YO! 07:50, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, the WMF is harming their own encyclopedia by causing us to lose active admins. You're not placing the blame on us, are you? If you want to toe the line and pick up the slack, good on you. Some of us have principles behind our contributions here beyond blind obedience to the Foundation. ~Swarm~ {sting} 09:13, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict × 2) This clearly has the popular support in the community, but I'm in the pessimistic camp. The unblock is clearly out-of-process and will almost certainly be reversed again; Bishonen will be desysopped just as Floquenbeam was. WP:WHEEL does not apply because the community does not have the authority to overturn WP:OFFICE actions – let's not kid ourselves here thinking we have a procedural policy-based reason for unblocking because we don't. There may be a "community consensus" to unblock, but we lack the authority to actually carry it out. What Floquenbeam and Bishonen have done is more akin to civil disobedience than a legitimate administrative action. Mz7 (talk) 08:32, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    At this point, however, the community has little and less tolerance for anything WMFOffice does. We're straight-up desperate for ANYTHING resembling actual dialogue, especially as regards the allegations of Raystorm's involvement and the motives thereof (which, if even partly true, is a serious issue that the WMF needs to deal with as soon as possible), and given they have not attempted to shut Fram up on Commons, their "everything is privileged, we can't tell you dick" claim is implausible on its face (since they would have escalated Fram's ban if that were true). We want WMFOffice, or whoever is using that role account, to actually make their case and answer the accusations, but all we've gotten is canned responses and radio silence. The WMFOffice account (and by extension the WMF staffers of Trust and Safety, in whose name the ban was levied) is practically destroying its own credibility. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 08:40, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    We are not going to get the dialogue we are seeking through this approach. I expect we will have yet another entry in Fram's block log and yet another former administrator. Mz7 (talk) 08:48, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Do you really believe we're going to get any kind of reasonable dialogue if all we do is say "Tsk tsk, we're very disappointed in you"? In real-world terms, the WMF is in the catbird seat, and we are nearly powerless against them. We need to level that playing field in some way and make them understand that real, honest discussion is required, and not the boilerplate bullshit they've been foisting on us. This is one of the few actions available to us, and we should not hesitate to use it. Your way will inevitably lead to the WMF getting what it wants, and the erosion of our right to govern our own community. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:05, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Which is why I called on the Arbitration Committee to make a statement — after all, it is their mandate that was usurped. El_C 08:35, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes, it is indeed civil disobedience, and considering what the ramifications are of letting the Foundation go in this direction, completely justified. Not having a technical legal basis does not mean it is not morally the correct thing to do. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:38, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
  • let's not kid ourselves here thinking we have a procedural policy-based reason for unblocking because we don't. Yes, we do, and this is a textbook example of an exceptional case which is the exact reason that particular policy exists. Seraphimblade Talk to me 11:03, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Let me get this straight - we've lost (so far) three admins? Fram, Floq, and Nick? With Bish (and God knows how many others) likely to follow? When will @WMFOffice and Jimbo Wales: pull their fingers out and sort out this mess? If they're not careful there won't be any admins left very shortly and this wonderful site will decay and end. GiantSnowman 08:37, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Ansh666 has also left because of this and Nick is now asking for a desysop, with a certain desysops happening with Bishonen and another one when blocking consensus happens. What a mess. Jovanmilic97 (talk) 08:49, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict × a billion) I know I probably shouldn't be here (was trying to keep this account free of blue on the pie) but I do want to clear this up a little. I never said that it was entirely coincidence (the wording I used at WO was, I believe, "mostly unrelated"). I was planning to resign the bit soon, dragging my feet a little, but this situation made me finally give it up. Any further questions should go to my user talk. I do not wish to be further involved here - watching from the sidelines with some popcorn is good enough. Thanks, ansh.666 09:51, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Arbitratory section break

  • People, please don't resign! Make them de-sysop you for some tiny token of disobedience, but don't leave it where they can minimize the statistics by saying "we didn't do that and we don't really know X's reasons for resigning". You know they will! Wnt (talk) 11:21, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    You seem to ignore the fact that Rob resigned because of their support for the WMF. StudiesWorld (talk) 11:35, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    More accurately, I resigned because the community has shown itself to be perfectly okay with engaging in witch-hunts, harassment of people they are assuming (falsely, most likely) were reporters of Fram's behavior, and the defense of "harassment and/or abuse of others" with no understanding of the evidence. This is a disgusting display of mob mentality, sensationalism, grandstanding - you name it, it's here. In fact, I imagine the lot of you are confirming to the WMF that the community cannot handle the enforcement of civility, because you are showing that incivility is a core tenet of the enwiki community. This page will be used as the justification for future WMF office actions because of how egregious the targeting of victims and reporters is here. Rather than reflecting on why the WMF needed to step in to hear evidence that you have not seen because a victim felt it necessary to avoid the community's wrath and fury, you are collectively bringing about the death of the community-based decision-making process on Wikipedia by taking this opportunity to highlight all of its failings. ~ Rob13Talk 12:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Who exactly was targeting victims (whoever they are)? Laura's t/p features a prominent notice, that sheds enough light on the issue and the community has every right to ask Raystorm of her conflicts with Laura given the amount of their collaboration. ∯WBGconverse 12:19, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    BU Rob13: Until very recently, you were a member of the Arbitration Committee. Is it your position that the committee is not capable of handling privacy-sensitive matters? From what we have gleaned, the committee was not even given an opportunity. –xenotalk 12:24, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    I cannot comment on whether the Committee ever had the opportunity to discuss Fram's recent conduct. The only statement I've made thus far is that ArbCom did not report Fram to the WMF, and I only said that because the single diff the WMF provided Fram may make it seem the report came from ArbCom. It did not, unless it happened after my tenure, which is highly unlikely since the WMF takes about a month to act on these reports, minimum.

    It is unequivocally my position that the current Arbitration Committee is wholly unable to resolve civility issues of this type, however, for the following reasons.

    1. In order to avail yourself of ArbCom as a remedy, you must first go to ANI and see no resolution. This means that victims must throw themselves into the lion's den of ANI, often resulting in the sort of targeting of victims that we see toward Laura/Raystorm above, in order to even start on the road to addressing harassment.
    2. ArbCom does not hear cases based on public evidence privately, even when holding a public case would likely lead to targeting of victims. So even after going to ANI, you have to face a full month of further targeting in the public slug-fest of an ArbCom case in order to seek any type of sanction. Which brings us to...
    3. The current Committee is not willing to take definitive action on civility issues, especially at early stages when setting clear boundaries/expectations on long-term contributors could prevent major issues later. Even if a victim goes through all of this, after weeks of ANI and a month of ArbCom, the likely outcome would be - at most - an IBAN and an admonishment, at which point the uncivil editor may go on and harass some other person.
    4. There are no protections for the victims at any point in the process. This is where our on-wiki DR system majorly differs from other types of dispute resolution you find in the real world, like the justice system. In the justice system, you have the right to question your accuser and respond to evidence, which is important. But there are consequences if you intimidate or target the reporter. There are consequences if you badger them. There are consequences if you start stalking them around. There are no such consequences on-wiki, because both the community and the Arbitration Committee favors inaction over holding people accountable when they respond to claims of harassment by harassing the accuser further.
    For all of these reasons, no, I do not think the Arbitration Committee or the community currently has any hope of solving civility issues. I did not necessarily think that 48 hours ago, but I sure as hell do now, after seeing the community's reaction here. Victims aren't going to go through the process I just described, for no clear resolution while subjecting themselves to months of further abuse. They're just going to leave. Look at editor retention numbers. Look at the declining admin corps. Clearly, it isn't the case that fewer people are coming to Wikipedia, because our readership is as high as ever. Instead, more are looking around and saying "Yup, not for me." And I cannot blame them one single bit. ~ Rob13Talk 12:41, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Thank you BU Rob13, I appreciate your response and insight. –xenotalk 19:03, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    BU Rob13, I agree with you on all counts. My logical conclusion would be that a modification needs to be made to the ArbCom process to allow the private hearing of on-wiki evidence, at a very minimum. However, I would remain supportive of the WMF intervening if that failed in specific instances or generally. Would you be supportive of such a change? StudiesWorld (talk) 12:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    I think that would be helpful, especially if such private cases came with an automatic IBAN/prohibition on discussing the case publicly. The results for Laura/Raystorm of Fram's misleading statement speak for themselves. This cannot be allowed to happen again. (I shy away from saying I'd support it, since I no longer consider myself a member of the community, and do not plan to stick around long enough for any reform efforts.) ~ Rob13Talk 12:48, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    What about Fram's statement is misleading? Mr Ernie (talk) 12:49, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    (ec) Please correct Fram's misleading statement. There's always a possibility that Fram is intentionally/unintentionally tampering with certain stuff to downplay issues and it will be a pleasure to hear the corrected version. ∯WBGconverse 12:57, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    The part that emphasizes Laura in a warning from a year ago as if that has absolutely anything to do with the current situation. The WMF's email to Fram stated that he was being banned for a continuation of the pattern of behavior he had been warned about in the past. Since he has been a jerk to plenty of people since the last warning, but has not particularly interacted with Laura during that time, to my knowledge and given the IBAN that he has disclosed which is likely with her, it's highly likely someone else reported him for harassment. Emphasizing Laura's involvement out of nowhere, in apparent violation of a likely IBAN, is misleading. ~ Rob13Talk 12:54, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    I don't think Fram's message "emphasized" any other person at all - as I recall, she wasn't mentioned; just two diffs were given. The diffs were article diffs -- looked like a run of the mill editing dispute, the kind of thing ANI should be able to look at if needed without inviting any unusual attention (not much usual attention either, really). Instead, somehow this ended up in a Star Chamber few of us even knew about, and surprise surprise, that blew up in the complainant's face. And now you tell me that the harassment the complainant is receiving as a direct result of WMF's screwed up way of trying to supplant the admins is proof that we need to send more cases through that mechanism? You don't think there are going to be recriminations and acrimony with their next local ban, and the one after that? I suppose every time the peanut gallery goes after a new complainant in angry response to this loss of community, it's just proof we need more power for the Star Chamber, maybe they should be banning people for reading the wrong newspaper, eh? This is War on Drugs level foolhardiness. Wnt (talk) 13:05, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    I am entirely unable to see where Fram emphasizes Laura's involvement, out of nowhere. After an (apparently) factual narrative, he chooses to editorialise when he writes:-Basically, after you recive a conduct warning from the Office based on undisclosed complaints, ..... (that's hardly emphasis, either). At any case, he has made nil effort to link that undisclosed complaint with the next warning, (received courtesy of his meddling with Laura's articles). Nowhere does he state that Laura has pulled the strings or anything like that. BU Rob13, please provide the phrases, that lead to your observations of undue emphasis or retract and apologize. ∯WBGconverse 13:09, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Laura is the sole editor mentioned in his tirade. That is undue emphasis. In fact, mentioning Laura at all is a violation of his one-way IBAN. Given what it has led to, I certainly hope the WMF globally bans him for it. ~ Rob13Talk 13:18, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    That you wish for something to be undue emphasis, hardly makes it. At any case, am glad that you have left the community. ∯WBGconverse 13:24, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Being allowed to present evidence in your own defense at trial is one exception to IBANs I'd always like to see respected. Reyk YO! 13:28, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Fram may not be IBAN'd on Commons. In addition the imposition of the IBAN in general doesn't appear to have been warranted, and there was no way for Fram to appeal it. These are not the steps of dispute resolution our community utilizes. If an editor with a potential contact at the WMF is able to sidestep the normal processes in dispute resolution, and if that potential contact at the WMF is also involved in the dispute, then we ought to be very concerned about that. Mr Ernie (talk) 13:30, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    BU Rob13, thank you for your clear and concise statement. I fully support your description of the current situation. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:55, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Hear hear, Rob. Thank you for being a voice of sanity in the middle of this lynch mob. I think it's safe to say that very few of these people who are flying off the handle have worked in an office where someone has been terminated for cause, when management (read: WMF) is legally prevented from disclosing any details. WP:AGF applies to them as well, so any accusations of ulterior motives are completely unwarranted absent any solid evidence, as are assumptions of what they might have done if some fact were true. I don't know Fram and if I've ever interacted with him before, I certainly don't remember doing so. I do know of his reputation, though, and this looks to me yet another case of a user who has been getting a free pass on bad behavior simply because of his contributions, which only shows how much lip service we pay to WP:CIVIL – apply it like a cudgel to some people and look the other way for others. I freely admit I've done the latter myself for The Rambling Man, and I vow to do better on that in the future. —howcheng {chat} 16:21, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    I think it's safe to say that very few of these people who are flying off the handle have worked in an office where someone has been terminated for cause, when management (read: WMF) is legally prevented from disclosing any details. I think it's probable that many people who are "flying off the handle" here have more experience of what goes on in offices than you suppose. Deor (talk) 16:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    What Deor said. I have been in those environments. No one swears, but many of them are far, far more toxic than anything here, and a lot of it is because of the bullshit, talk behind the closed door, nice to your face and stab you in the back kind of environment. I would much rather be told to fuck off than try to navigate all that again. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:53, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    ↑↑This↑↑ ∯WBGconverse 18:17, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Office politics notwithstanding (which can indeed be ridiculously toxic), my statement was regarding someone who is terminated for cause. —howcheng {chat} 18:10, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    BU Rob13 I also fully endorse your statement here, thank you for making it. Thryduulf (talk) 14:11, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    BU Rob13 Same here, plus, we are taking at face value Fram's statement without any input from WMF and rushing to judgement, knowing that we don't have a good track record with dealing with this type of behavior. It doesn't look good for us. Sir Joseph (talk) 14:32, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    To be clear, I don't even think Fram is being intentionally misleading. The WMF has outright said Fram hasn't been told the exact evidence behind the ban to protect the reporter. Perhaps misleading was a poor choice of words, because it implies intent. "Talking out of his ass" is perhaps better. We know that Fram doesn't have the full story, because both Fram and the WMF have agreed that's the case. So why the community is accepting it as the full story is beyond me. ~ Rob13Talk 14:36, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    It doesn't sound like the WMF was very concerned with giving Fram a chance to defend himself. Lepricavark (talk) 14:39, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
...And within 2 days, we've already turned this into one of the biggest shitstorms this site has ever seen. Great job, WMF. A Dolphin (squeek?) 15:21, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
That's on this community. We have to decide something: do we support harassment because the editor does "good work" or are we going to stop tolerating behavior that turns away other good editors? I agree with Deor. In human resource situations when things have gone this far, protecting the victims of harassment is important. Legal issues I can't speak to, but I understand their sensitivity. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:58, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Megalibrarygirl, where did Deor say that? Probably, someone else, you wished to attribute to:-) ∯WBGconverse 18:17, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Winged Blades of Godric in an office situation, these kinds of disputes are handled by human resources. Deor brought up offices and therefore the people involved would be HR. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 19:01, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
You know, it is possible to both believe that the Wikipedia community should be more proactively protective of those who are being harassed and also have a significant degree of uneasiness in regard to how this has been handled, with secrecy and furtiveness that goes well beyond just not sharing specifics about the "who" that is involved. Grandpallama (talk) 18:39, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Nobody is saying that we should support harassment. That's a strawman. Lepricavark (talk) 19:53, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
  • BU Rob13 There is always a trade off to be made on sensitive issues like this. In real life too the question exists: what are state secrets of legitimate national interest that should be protected, and when has the CIA gone too far to punish whistleblowers? (Not implying that anyone here is a whistleblower, only making an analogy on the overall principle.) But the WMF has simply gone too far this time for me. We have an unelected, unaccountable committee looking at secret evidence submitted by a secret accuser with no ability of the accused to defend themselves or even appeal. Indeed there are cultural problems with the current community, but just as one would not want to be part of a community where harassment is rampant, one would also not want to be part of a community that is being forced to trust top-down decisions where there is no realistic way to depose of the decision-makers. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:47, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    I also endorse Rob's comment's above. People keep on harping about using community processes, but the actual community process for dealing with harassment is ANI...which is widely acknowledge even to be terrible. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:55, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Then delete ANI, delete Arbcom, and throw it all into the Foundation's lap. Go on, I dare you. DuncanHill (talk) 16:58, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Arbcom and ANI being terrible at handling harassment doesn't mean that everything needs to be punted to the Foundation (because ArbCom and ANI of course handle much more than that - disruptive, POV, battleground editing etc). As a side note, not that I want to, but I can't delete WP:ANI or WP:ARC, because those pages have more than 5000 revisions (only stewards can do it). Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Just wanted to note that I agree with Rob, Megalibrarygirl, etc. Wikipedia has increasingly become an ugly place, and our community processes have failed in terms of addressing conduct like this. I for one welcome intervention from on high to work toward solving the problems we have proved ourselves incapable of solving, and don't think that the circumstances of every block need to be public. And I think there are many other Wikipedians (and, importantly, potential Wikipedians) who would agree with me but are not involved in drama like this. Like Rob, I'm pretty disgusted that the only cause for which admins have righteously sacrificed their bits is the protection of a harasser. I don't buy that it's only about process, because if it were only about process, could we not wait for a board meeting in two days? What is the emergency here? One more note: there is an important gender split displayed in the voting above. This outrage seems to be mostly male, in a mostly male community. (I know that Bishonen is a woman; the split of course is not perfect.) This is not the path we should be going down if we want to diversify our community. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:43, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Catch me up please: is the assertion that Fram criticizes female editors more stridently or frequently then male editors? I generally don’t keep track of the gender of editors, so I honestly wouldnt know if they do or not. –xenotalk 17:54, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    I don't know if that is the case or not. But women are much less likely to want to spend their time in a space where harassment is allowed to persist. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:55, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    I don’t know enough about the specifics of the case to comment further. If Fram has engaged in harassment, there is a local governance mechanism available to those who have been harassed. –xenotalk 18:00, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Yeah, throw yourself to the wolves and be prepared to lose because he's WP:UNBLOCKABLE. That's what I mean by our community processes have failed. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:02, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
@Calliopejen1: That presumes that Fram did something that was block-worthy in the first place. It is certainly possible they did, but everyone seems to be grasping at straws as what could have been considered block worthy in the last year. If you know of block-worthy behaviour, or of harassment from Fram, then please, post the diffs. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:24, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • If the WMF or T&S have lost confidence in the Arbitration Committee to handle complaints of harassment that are privacy sensitive or involve established users, they need to say so plainly so that the committee can upload this responsibility to T&S. An avenue of appeal should be provided, as well. –xenotalk 18:11, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Agreed. Wikipedia's processes are completely unsuited to dealing with harassment, or really any behavioural problems. The group of self-appointed insiders at ANI routinely protect their own (either explicitly, or because those that are protected know how to modify/frame their actions to get away with what they are doing) and pick apart the reporter. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 18:14, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    I would agree, but a case has never been brought to ArbCom specifically on the basis of Fram's user conduct/suitability to be an administrator. I am among the few who think that Fram should have been sitebanned a long time ago, but not this way. --Rschen7754 18:34, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    True, but I also don't use the lottery regardless of how much its wealth-building potential is advertized because I know it's not suited for purpose. Any established community member knows what happens when you take an unblockable to a noticeboard: they get away with whatever nonsense they were up to, again, and you get a slap on the wrist for literally anything that you did that wasn't completely perfect in the process. We all know this, and for some reason we think this is acceptable. Also, to be clear, I don't think it's a good thing that the WMF had to step in here. I would love for us to have functional local processes to deal with these cases. But at the moment we don't. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 18:39, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    A noticeboard != ArbCom. There's also a difference between here and azwiki: there the process is broken, but here it was not given a full try, WMF just took a shortcut. --Rschen7754 18:53, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    It's the same actors in both locations, and you'd need to start off at a noticeboard. It isn't a functional system if the complaintant knows that they would need to dedicate months of their time and endless public scrutiny of their entire wikilife in order to maybe get results. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 19:00, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
I also think it would be helpful in T&S/WMF would explicitly say if they've lost faith in en, including ArbCom, to handle certain kinds of issues and if they have what those issues are or if it's particular to issues in this case. If it's the former, in response the community could decide to try and improve or we could decide, through inaction or lack of ability to come to consensus, to farm certain things out to T&S/WMF. The times (before this nonsense) where I've grown most dispirited about Wikipedia have been the times around civility discussions in both the abstract and around specific editors (or when those specific conversations about editors never happen or are shouted down by a a cohort who believe civility is a codeword for other things). I think WMF is wrong to try, as BMK keeps pointing out, to change the core dynamic between English Wikipedia and WMF because that's what they've done here. But that doesn't mean that the failings of our community that the WMF has decided are there are incorrect or wrong. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:35, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
There is such a thing as due process; just because someone is pessimistic about something succeeding doesn't mean that the accused isn't entitled to their day in court. And ArbCom does occasionally get things right (example: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Joefromrandb and others). If WMF clearly laid out a framework for how they were going to handle this sort of thing from now on, and clearly stated when they were going to act, and why they acted, that would be a step forward. I don't know why there is a gag order on these time-limited / local-only bans, for one. They aren't going to use one of these for child protection (for example), which is the big underlying reason why the global ones are. But as it stands, this is subject to use and abuse. If T&S local bans and desysops are a thing now, I have a long list of names and diffs queued up in Microsoft OneNote ready to go. But of course, I have to be careful because if I say the wrong thing to some user with the right connections, I could be banned overnight.
I also find it ironic that we are criticizing azwiki and going to desysop all their admins for (among other things) deciding things via Facebook when WMF is basically doing the same thing. --Rschen7754 00:26, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • That's not quite true. (I'm not sure if there have been more recent attempts, my memory isn't great and searching for case requests that weren't accepted is a nightmare.) GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:43, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Well crap, I didn't see that one from 2016. But I do think that if someone had brought a case against Fram in 2018-2019, I think it would have been accepted. --Rschen7754 18:53, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    Multiple people tried in 2017-18. I gave up at some point after my comment was removed by a clerk claiming it is unsubstantiated. In 2019, Fram's behavior improved considerably (in my opinion, and not only in mine as far as I know), and I though this is not necessary anymore. Though I still keep my diff collection, just in case.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:31, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    An arb recently added Fram as a party to a case and more or less got pilloried for it. There has been discussion about Fram's conduct at ANI in 2019 as well. – Levivich 20:59, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
    I know Fram has been brought up tangentially in a few case requests since 2016, but none of those focused squarely on Fram. --Rschen7754 00:26, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
    I think that Sandstein and DGG have stated the points I was trying to get across more effectively. --Rschen7754 18:29, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I also agree with Rob13. The Land (talk) 18:07, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Moreover, the WMF should be working with us to design a reporting mechanism that is fit for purpose, staffed by both trained volunteers and the community, allows the alleged harasser to respond to the (suitably anonymized) complaint, is accountable to the community, respects the privacy of the reporter, whose decisions are appealable and is able to impose sanctions fairly (including on the reporter if the process itself is used to harass through vexatious complaints). I agree that harassment is a problem. This ham-fisted, cynicism provoking and poorly communicated effort to combat it is counterproductive because it burns through the community good will needed to design and operate such a system. [I seem to recall this being on the Anti-Harassment team (of developers), but they're still working through deficiencies in anti-abuse tools...] MER-C 18:35, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
MER-C, I've been mulling over in my head what I think the next step should be, not for the Fram situation but the underlying shortcomings that led to that situation, and this is a pretty good summary of what I was thinking.S Philbrick(Talk) 20:32, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
BU Rob13, I appreciate and agree with your reflections. MER0C and Sphilbrick, this feels like a thread worth a separate discussion. It's worth exploring how other communities have dealt with this at scale. [e.g., reporting models, subcommunities w/ differing social norms, ombudsfolk focused entirely on communicating about such issues] – SJ + 19:34, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Sj, Yes. I confess I've watched with bemused horror at the attempts by Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and others to grapple with this problem, and watch them flounder and fail and generally mess things up. I smugly felt that Wikipedia was doing a much better job of dealing with these issues. These last few days have given lie to that assumption. That doesn't mean we shouldn't look closely at what those platforms are doing, we just can't simply say we'll use them as a model for what's right. We should use them as examples of how to do it badly. I'm still thinking we need to figure out how to distinguish between civility issues and harassment issues, which won't be easy.S Philbrick(Talk) 23:46, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I thank Rob13 for their measured responses and agree with what he said. As a community, we have failed to provide a safe working environment for many. We don't have the processes in place to do that. We also need to keep in mind that when speaking of consensus, especially in highly-charged issues like this one, the vocal minority may not actually represent the community. SusunW (talk) 19:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

On the Nature of Shitstorms: A case study in how to not handle a T&S ban

Let's start by saying harassment is a problem across the internet in general, and Wikipedia is not immune to it. I also agree with Rob13 in broad strokes and many others that enwiki can be bad for witch hunts, and that how we, as a community, respond to it is not always the most humane and decent way. But what makes harassment tricky is that it is also, in many cases, subjective, and there is a significant amount of the population that conflate feeling harassed with harassment has happened.

Small aside on the cultural norms in Western society

There is also a natural (and fairly recent, in liberal Western society) desire/instinct to "acknowledge/believe/validate the 'victim' party" which presumes guilt, and competing with the desire/instinct to presume innocence (an operating principle of Western democracies), which "blames/disbelieves/invalidates" the 'victim' party.

In any situation, this to leaves several outcomes, from clear cut cases

  • Accused is provably guilty and punished
  • Accused is provably innocent, and walks away

to less desirable ones

  • Accused is guilty, but not provably so, and walks away, satisfying the 'presumption of innocence' people
  • Accused is not guilty, but looks 'guilty enough' in the eyes of the whoever makes the call, satisfying the 'believe the victim' people

And this is further compounded by the nature of the beast that someone may very well genuinely feel victimized by something because their cultural norms are distinct from the ones of the community, or because they have genuinely misinterpreted a comment in a way that it was not meant to be. We can imagine walking into a strange land and being genuinely offended that you're getting spit on when entering someone's house, because in most Western society, spitting on someone is considered a form of assault and disrespect. But in another culture, the same action may very well have the meaning of 'I am sharing my water with you' and a sign of respect. And there is also a third option, often less considered, that spitting is simply a thing people do and give no thought about, and they'll just spit wherever and you happened to be where the thing lands on.

The TLDR of that aside is that harassment is complicated and has no single solution than can make everyone happy, especially in cases where different cultural standards are at play.

However, the issue here is that the WMF has cocked up the response so badly that both their competence and legitimacy is no longer accepted by default by a sizeable amount of the community. No one is faulting the T&S team of wanting to protect the safety/privacy of whoever made a complaint. However, in light of what the community knows, here are some plausible scenarios, in increasing order of malignity from the WMF and the T&S team.

  1. T&S has unquestionable evidence/proof that Fram has engaged in what most objective third parties would consider harassment, and that this behaviour is both long term and unlikely to improve.
    The problem with this scenario is that this goes against what little is known about the WMF ban. We have diffs of, at its most egregious, a minor content dispute about acceptable sourcing. The reason most people in the community would not support a harassment ban based on those is because telling someone to use appropriate sourcing isn't harassment. It may not make the person being told to step up their game feel great, but it is not harassment. There may be other behaviour, but slapping {{cn}}/{{blp}}/{{third party}} tags and removing poorly sourced content isn't grounds for a ban.
  2. T&S has questionable evidence/proof of the above. For example, something can be quite rude in one culture, but not in another. Or someone with hard line beliefs taking offense at a point of order that does not align itself with the belief of that person.
    The problem with this scenario is that you side with a side simply because of the narrative that they feel victimized. While we should do our best to avoid those situations when possible, they are also unavoidable on a project as large and diverse as this one. Should we start banning editors simply because certain people cannot get their views and feelings accepted as reality, and feel harassed because of this? Again no. The question here is on what grounds does the WMF think they can overrule our cultural norms and replace them with theirs, or that their norms have more legitimacy than ours? Enwiki is not a project where we need to have an external arbitrator impose 'fairness' onto us in the same way it might be needed on a smaller wiki with a lower diversity of editors, where you may have strong biases against other ethnic groups, due to the cultural norms of the social groups speaking that language.
  3. T&S hold that criticism of ARBCOM is harassment/bannable, or is harassment/bannable because it had swear words and a pissed off tone in it.
    We're getting at Stasi / Gestapo levels of dystopia here. One may argue that there is a violation of WP:CIVIL, but WP:CIVIL was not raised in the context of this situation. If we start banning, AT THE WMF-LEVEL NO LESS, people for saying 'Fuck ARBCOM', should we also start banning our best people for writing things like "Shit I cannot believe we had to fucking write this month"? Wikipedia is made of people, and if the very institutions of Wikipedia give cause to Wikipedians to be angry, they will act as angry people, and rightfully so. Fuck specific editor, they're an incompetent asshole. Sure, block that. Fuck specific institution, they're incompetent. That does not fall anywhere near the remit of T&S.
  4. T&S silenced a WMF critic, either at the direct behest of WMF, or through some Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?-type of zealousness from an employee, thinking it would please their employer.
    While I feel this is mostly a crackpot theory, the shit-poor handling of this by T&S and complete lack of transparency has left the community to find explanations for why Fram was banned. And, because no explanation has been forthcoming, and that good faith explanations are lacking and problematic, this leaves the real, if perhaps implausible, possibility of something willfully nefarious at play.

The whole clusterfuck here is that we are not convinced that #1 is what is happening here, and every response we had from User:WMFOffice so far fails to convince us that #1 happened. It is thus actually irresponsible of the community to fail to entertain scenarios where #1 is not what is happening. And, because the community is made up of diverse humans, they will respond as diverse humans will. Some with calm, some with rage, some with a 'let's wait' approach, others with a 'let's fucking burn the whole thing into the ground and make them pay' approach. And they will continue to do so until the WMF convinces us that Fram's ban is a case #1, or that the WMF rescinds the ban and gets their T&S team up to date on what is or is not acceptable action.

How anyone working at T&S lacks the necessary insight to know their actions would not result in this fully avoidable shitstorm is beyond me. Especially since apparently a similar situation happened on dewiki before.

Perhaps that is why Shitstorm is a full (and well written) article in German, while Shitstorm is nothing but a disambiguation page in English. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:13, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

(Actually that appears to be INcreasing order of malignity; might want to change that.) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:17, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
@Elmidae: Yes, I'll fix that, thanks. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:22, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Headbomb: - an excellent piece. The latest response by the WMF, while superior to its predecessors, really failed to even mention two areas (as opposed to vagueness/avoidance on all the others). 1) How the accused could have a fair defence in the current format 2) Why should the local Communities trust T&S' judgement Nosebagbear (talk) 22:44, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
    • @Nosebagbear: With the understanding that the 'fair defense' bit does not need necessarily need to happen in our view, if indeed, having a public hearing would jeopardize someone's safety (which here, would be likely, given the vitriol caused by the WMF). Proceedings can all be private, but what needs to be clear to Fran is what the violating behaviour was, and what needs to be clear to us is what the nature of the behaviour was. But sadly, while something vague like (I'm completely making this up)
"Fram is banned for 1 year, as a T&S enforcement relating to long-term harassing behaviour against specific editor(s)"
might have been acceptable before, this will likely no longer cut it. An oddball solution might be that whowever made the complaint makes a WP:CLEANSTART and gives WMF permission to air the details, although it might not be possible if that person divulged their real life identity on wiki. Not that I'm comfortable asking a complainer to make a clean start to begin with. An alternative is to have ARBCOM (perhaps with certain recusals, if ARBCOM members are involved somehow) privately review a more thorough portion (not necessarily complete) of the evidence/problem behaviour in question under NDA and see if they agree a T&S violation was indeed the case. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:08, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The fundamental disconnect is that one side of their mouth says that the WP:OFFICE action is necessary, extraordinary, and there is no change in scope ... while the other says that they have new fine-grained powers and step in when our community is all in violation of the T&S and they plan to introduce new standards. Wnt (talk) 01:59, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Headbomb: I think your four scenarios are a good framework in which to look at this situation. I would say that scenario #1 seems unlikely primarily because T&S/WMF limited its ban of Fram to only the English Wikipedia and for only one year. If Fram's behavior was really so terrible that WMF had to get involved, I would have thought they would have imposed an indefinite ban from all projects. As it stands, we don't know exactly why Fram was banned, but we do know why he says he was banned, and the incidents he says precipitated the ban were two instances of normal, reasonable editing, and one incident of rude language directed toward ArbCom. If those were not the real motivations for the ban, then presumably T&S can say, without exposing anyone's private information, "No, we didn't ban Fram because he put {{primary sources}} and {{third-party}} tags on an article or because he wrote 'Fuck ArbCom'. He did something much worse than that which we can't tell you about." But if those were the real motivations for the ban, then the members of T&S need to re-evaluate whether they have enough common sense to handle trust and safety issues for an online community. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:25, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Not to mention that if Fram's behaviour was so terrible it needed WMF intervention, we shouldn't be grasping at straws trying to figure out what exactly was the terrible behaviour in question was or struggling to understand its general nature, given none of it is rev deleted. I don't know, what exactly the T&S team received for complaint concerning User:Reguyla/User:Kumioko, but I sure as shit know it was well-deserved and long coming T&S ban from my interactions with that editor, and can point to several ban discussion, a long block log, AN threads, ARBCOM proceedings, and a plethora of abysmal and inexcusable behaviour. I'm not super familiar with Fram's recent activities, so the fact that I don't personally know what this is about isn't really troubling. However, the fact that no one in this community seems to know what this is even about is definitely troubling. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:58, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • From these 4 scenarios, I presume that several editors have already sifted through Fram's last year worth of edits, and have not found systemic 'attacks' on specific editors (to a level that one of them may have complained). Which likely leaves only options where Fram has either upset an editor using a few edits, or that his was off-wiki. In the latter case, except if Fram is communicating with a large number of editors, Fram probably is aware of who it (may) be. That latter scenario then makes the 'hidden action' of WMF very obvious to Fram and hence unlikely. However, if it is the former, that would have an enormous chilling effect on our administrative actions, every repeated BLP action can result in a complaint to WMF that the editor feels harassed and you being banned. (and I am fully aware that I qualify for ArbCom criticism and WMF priority criticism, only the former having gained some traction - and I still remain, both should be abandoned). --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:01, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Fram has stated that T&S told them that the ban (and the warnings that led up to it) was based on on-wiki behaviour, so we can rule out off-wiki shenanigans on his part. While Fram's account may be incomplete, he does point to the diffs that T&S cited in their emails to him, and thus far T&S has not done anything to refute Fram's account (though given the circumstances, doing so might expose the complainant). —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 19:32, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • And yet I have not seen any case of editors who were pushed that far (by Fram). (Fram and I have things we agree upon, and things we vehemently disagree upon)
I cannot see that the action of WMF is even reasonably appropriate, and can only wait until a spammer whose site I blacklist or a sock I keep wiping out complains about harrassment to WMF ... and so do all of us. Chilling ... --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
My theory - one shared by others - is that it has to do with a certain WiR that Fram has been in a cold war with using T&S to win their dispute. It helps that two of the diffs Fram provides involve her (the two that prompted the second T&S warning). Again, T&S has not refuted anything Fram has said, nor have the diffs in question been revdelled (which, if this was legitimately harassment, they would have been by now). —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 19:54, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Without knowing for sure, it's certainly the leading theory, as far as I can tell. This is part of the problem with this ban, because it's nature is unclear, and it is making "citizen detectives" operating with incomplete information trying to figure out what the hell is going on. It's possible that the leading theory is, broadly speaking, in the ballpark, even if it may be off on specific details. It's also possible that it's way off base, but every alternative scenario I'm trying to come up with, based on what is known, is either ludicrous or ridiculous. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:57, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
And that is the thing. If T&S had gone into a bit more detail as to why the ban was limited and that Fram had prior warnings, this thread would likely not have blown up as bad as it did, but the way T&S handled it (and Raystorm's accusing everyone defending Fram of sexism in her statement, nevermind that the sex of Fram and the WiR were and still are not apparent factors here, only threw gasoline on the fire) meant that a Streisand effect was inevitable. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 21:56, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Trust and Safety?

A curious convolution.
Trust. Warm and fuzzy, relaxed open and honest.
Safety. Also warm and fuzzy tones, but locked into a framework that includes absolutism. Generally, "trust" is not a simple component of "safety". "Trust me, I'll be safe" is not OK. "You can trust him, he works safely" is also not OK. Some element of trust is part of any process, to some extent, you must trust that the information provided is truthful. However, a threat or a violation to safety necessitates an authoritative response. Safety is more closely aligned to security than to trust.
There is a strong element of pretence, of fiction, in this name.
I think the WMF should break "Trust" out of "Safety". The assumption of trust is not safe. Safety is not achieved from an approach of trust. Trust and safety are in more ways in conflict than they are in harmony.
Trust is important. But it is different to safety. I do not trust WMF Trust and Safety. They will say "safety" in an appeal to their own authority when their claim to trust is weakest. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:14, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
"When I hear talk of trust, I release the safety catch on my...", no wait, got confused, but it did seem to be going that way. ;-). 67.164.113.165 (talk) 00:30, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Interesting. I thought yesterday, there's no longer trust from my side and safty I've felt the last time before the last Wikimania. Trust & Safty can go around and kick out everybody they don't like, they don't need to explain anything. Their victims must also held for their "we can not talk about it" excuse. -- Marcus Cyron (talk) 04:59, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

People report harassment claims only after it's gotten incredibly bad because victims are almost never taken seriously by their own communities (sometimes even by their own families). I'm glad to know there is a place I can turn to for help if the Wikipedia community has let me down. I'm glad to know that if anyone was systematically harassing myself or other Wikipedians that there is someone -- Trust and Safety -- that will have our backs. Why are we so quick to support the alleged harassers as opposed to seeing that whatever happened here was so bad that it had to be kept private? If legal and safety issues are involved, that's a big deal. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:42, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, you are absolutely right when mentioning the necessity of a safe place - but imho this is (in Wikipedia) just the theory. A "Trust & Safety"-Team which does not correspond to the project's principles (i.e. transparency, community involvement) is not a place of "trust" for me. We had a similar case in the German Wikipedia: one user was banned by office action- without one single letter of information to the community, without any possibility to discuss the case or to have it changed - and without even knowing that this office action had been effected by the Trust and Safety Team. That's not what I want from a project like Wikipedia, that's nearly a scandal for a project like this one and I am convinced that I am not the only one who strongly thinks about the question whether I'll still be able to identify myself with Wikipedia's aim and whether I want to spend time for such an intransparent and patronizing project. --AnnaS. (talk) 14:25, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

I think it's something of either to put the fox in charge of the henhouse or a road to Damascus experience to have Jan in charge of trust and safety. Jan was one of the main villains in the MV/Superputsch disaster, where the WMF waged an outright war against the communities out of pure vanity. So either he has come to his mind and acknowledged his complete unacceptable behaviour then (that's the road to Damascus possibility) and learned from his disastrous wrong-doings, or he didn't, and in that case he is the absolutely wrong person for the job of trust and safety, as he has proven to be the very opposite of trustworthiness. I'd like to hear from him about this. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk) 22:07, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Two questions

Having read through this a few times I have a couple questions.

  1. Is WMFOffice an account used by one person or is it used by anyone in the office? If it is used by more than one person how do we know who is saying what when they post here. There is a reason that WP:SHAREDACCOUNT exists.
  2. Why does Floq have to go through a RFA in 30 days. a) He has not lost the confidence of the Wikipedia community. b) The WMFO said the desysop was "temporary" - it would be temporary if rights were restored at the end of thirty days - if he has to go through a new RFA the removal is not temporary.

Any clarification that others can add will be appreciated. MarnetteD|Talk 17:17, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

MarnetteD you are assuming that Floq did not lose the confidence of the Wikipedia community. They have lost my confidence, for one. I'm sure I'm not alone. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:26, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
That is sad for you since Floq did the right thing. Floq hasn't lost mine nor, looking at their talk page, many others. If you want the bit permanently removed there are other venues for getting that to happen. MarnetteD|Talk 17:31, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
MarnetteD any admin that acts in a unilateral fashion without considerable thought on such a difficult issue (with minimal facts to boot!) has lost my confidence. In addition, it's a fallacy to assume that because many people support something it was the right thing to do. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:52, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
You must not be taking the time to read things. You are certainly misreading what I wrote. Floq took considerable thought before acting. The support I mentioned on the talk came after the action not before. Once again if you want the bit permanently removed there are venues to make that happen. Maybe you will get a WP:CONSENSUS there and maybe you won't. We will never know until you start the process. MarnetteD|Talk 19:01, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
MarnetteD, I can assure you that Megalibrarygirl read your comments; it's very odd to assume that she didn't. She simply disagreed with you. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:05, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
It also wasn't especially unilateral, given the overwhelming consensus at that point (when the outrage was peaking) that it should be done. Grandpallama (talk) 19:04, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Who is the line manager of User:WMFOffice? –xenotalk 17:19, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Either Valerie D'Costa or Maggie Dennis. IIRC, someone said somewhere in this morass that Maggie is currently on holiday. ‑ Iridescent 17:26, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Can we call her back? –xenotalk 17:39, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
I already think it's bizarre that the Wikimedia community is trying to overrule office actions, now we're trying to set their employees' vacation schedules? GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:10, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Not to mention, Maggie IS NOT on vacation. She’s on medical leave. Courcelles (talk) 18:11, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Courcelles, I don't think that it's appropriate to put out online that she is on medical leave. I'm pretty sure this violates WP:PRIVACY. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:50, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Quick! Call the hospital! Puts things in perspective, anyway. Hoping she's OK and makes a swift recovery.  — Amakuru (talk) 18:18, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
@Megalibrarygirl: You are probably unaware that Maggie made a public announcement to that effect (I saw it on Facebook, it may have been posted elsewhere). —howcheng {chat} 06:25, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
(multi ec) Sorry for my attempt to add levity, of course I wasn’t serious and she would certainly deserve all the vacations. Moonriddengirl is one of our greatest assets and I hope she gets well soon. –xenotalk 18:23, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Ah, apologies for missing the joke. :) GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:33, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
With regards to the second question -- based on WMFOffice's responses so far, especially this particular one: "Admins who do take such actions should not be subjected to threats of removal of their admin rights, when their actions are based on a good faith belief that they are upholding the Terms of Use (and any action in support of enforcing a Foundation office action or a community global ban is, by definition, upholding the Terms of Use)." I'm guessing they believe there's a silent majority dynamic at play here, where it's assumed that there are people who have been following this whole debacle and believe Floq committed an error so egregious that he violated the trust of the community -- but that those people have not spoken out, due to the futility in doing so with all of the back-and-forth noise on this incident, and will hold their tongues until the reconfirmation RFA is initiated. I know many people are expecting Floq's RFA to be a love-fest (certainly relative to some other RFAs I've seen), but I would not be surprised if there were a much larger dissent than expected.--WaltCip (talk) 17:25, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't expect Floq's reconfirmation RfA to be unanimous by any means. After all, some people certainly already have expressed dissent. I think the WMF already expected that their action would go over better than it did—Fram can be quite abrasive and isn't the best-liked person around here, and I don't even think he would argue with that. The response here has seemed quite discombobulated, and I think, frankly, that WMF expected that opinion would be, at worst, about evenly divided. I do not think they were prepared for the overwhelming negative response. At this point, this is not a referendum on Fram, it is a matter of the English Wikipedia's editorial independence, and I think most of us here realize that, regardless of our personal feelings regarding Fram, that is the crucial thing at stake. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:40, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
(+1) to the above. Obviously, it won't be unanimous and I can foretell scores of opposes. ∯WBGconverse 17:58, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Seraphimblade, this is absolutely not an issue of "English Wikipedia's editorial independence." That's a red herring. This is about a person who was banned for a year for apparently a long-term pattern of poor behavior. The fact that it had to go so high and that WMF got involved at all should give us all a clue about the real problem: English Wikipedia isn't policing itself well. In addition, victims deserve the right to have their privacy considered and if this is the way that it has to be done: so be it. If English Wikipedia was doing a good job in the more transparent areas to prevent harassment etc, then there would not have been a need to get WMF and T&S involved at all. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:58, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Then you they should have been honest and upfront, and told us in advance that you they were taking over the policing of the English Wikipedia. And, in my view, you they should have not escalated the policing regime such that the minimum sanction is a no-appeal 1-year ban. At least, not without prior consultation and discussion. You mention transparency, but you they act as if you they don't know the meaning of the word when it applies to you them. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:07, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Talk about red herrings. A lot of claims are being made in that post without a shred of evidence. Please don't cast WP:ASPERSIONS about individuals or the community at large without proof. MarnetteD|Talk 19:11, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict × 3) Megalibrarygirl, in the particular incident in question, there is no evidence that there was even an attempt to resolve the matter via normal processes prior to taking it straight to WMF. So, I'll agree that a process cannot possibly work when it's not even tried. So far as editorial independence, deciding who may be an editor and administrator is every bit as core to that as decisions based upon article content. Now, in both of those cases, we realize that there are instances where the WMF must intervene. Chief among those are legal considerations, but there is also broad community consensus that the WMF ought to handle child protection cases and cases of threats of harm to self or others. (And those are quasi-legal as well, as they may involve reports to law enforcement and the like.) But just stepping in and saying "You haven't blocked this guy, and we think you should've, so we will and no one's allowed to unblock him" is every bit an encroachment on editorial independence as them stepping in and saying "We don't like how this article says X, so it's now going to say Y instead, and no one's allowed to change it back." It is a misuse of Office actions to use them simply because the WMF thinks the community made the wrong choice. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
@Boing! said Zebedee: not sure what you're saying here at all. I'm not WMF and I already know that English Wikipedia fails its editors quite often. MarnetteD I'm not casting aspersions. I think that anyone looking at the issue the way that Seraphimblade is framing it is incorrect. The issue IS very much about a failure in English Wikipedia. I know many editors that have hesitated to report using our own tools because they in turn had seen how those who did use the tools were harassed because the process isn't working. I'm here to talk about what I think the problem is. I agree with Seraphim that this isn't about Fram per se, but I don't think it's about our freedom as editors, either. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 19:20, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
@Megalibrarygirl: My sincere apologies, I confused you with someone else - I've edited my comment above. I agree that the English Wikipedia has some serious failures, but I really think an unannounced and undiscussed takeover by WMF is close to the worse possible way of fixing that. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:30, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
@Megalibrarygirl: Or avoiding en-wiki's dispute resolution process could have something to do with unclean hands and avoiding scrutiny. LauraHale has been topic-banned from using Spanish-language sources by AN since January 2014. The thread was initiated by Fram, and after that she has claimed that Fram has hounded her. If this was handled at en-wiki, this whole history could be assessed. I doubt that the WMF T&S, taking private email complaints, was aware of this dispute going back to 2014. Framing this simply as "harasser vs victim " is daft. --Pudeo (talk) 19:31, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
@Pudeo: you may think it's daft; I think it's apt. I don't know anything about what your alleging and I didn't really gear up into editing seriously until 2015, so I'm not really aware of what you're talking about. Seems to me, however, that Fram has been involved in many different issues with different editors. If they did not feel comfortable reporting on English Wiki, that's an issue. As for Laura, on an offsite forum (no I am not linking) people have recently posted her picture in a thread about Fram's ban and they wrote something like "names to faces." You can see how harassment can happen to someone just after their name is mentioned in a discussion like this. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 19:43, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Due to Fram being one of the most outspoken about pushing back against software that is/was poorly designed/buggy/unfit for purpose, including Visual Editor when it was released, Flow, Media Viewer and superprotect, it is about our freedom as editors. This action creates a chilling effect for all those who have legitimate criticism of the WMF, especially regarding their previous failures to listen to and act upon community feedback. As I stated above, the WMF need to work with us in order to fix the underlying problem of the absence of a suitable venue for reporting harassment. This action is counterproductive towards that goal. MER-C 19:38, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
@MER-C: Why would you think that this has anything to do with criticism? It seems like he was banned due to some form of harassment and violation of TOU. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 19:49, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Poor communication, distrust and cynicism based on past experience with the WMF (Die Lösung comes to mind). If it was about ____, they should have explicitly said so when imposing the ban - for example "We have banned ____ for undisclosed paid editing in violation of our terms of use". This isn't one of their pedophilia bans where naming the reason for the ban is counterproductive, otherwise Fram would have been banned completely. If they allowed Fram to respond to the ban publicly, then they should have, and there was nothing stopping them from, provided a justification and brief history of the matter while still respecting the privacy of the complainant. Additionally, if the WMF believe our processes cannot handle complaints of harassment, they should tell us in a friendly manner so that we can work with them in order to fix them. None of this happened. Furthermore, if it was not about Fram's legitimate criticism of the WMF, then the WMF need to explicitly say so to help avoid any implication that it is.
FYI: The Visual Editor saga happened in 2013, superprotect in 2014 and Flow has been ongoing for several years until recently being killed off. MER-C 20:37, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Again you claim "failure in English Wikipedia" without presenting any evidence of what that failure is. That is textbook WP:ASPERSIONS. MarnetteD|Talk 19:26, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
MarnetteD If our community, ie English Wikipedia isn't dealing with an issue well, it's OK for me to criticize. Or are you trying to silence me by accusing me of WP:ASPERSIONS? I enjoy the right to say what I think is true: that Wikipedia often fails its editors who want to be free of harassment. I see it all the time and I don't know how to stop it either. It doesn't stop being a problem just because we ignore it, though. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 19:52, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Speculation is not useful here. If the internal processes need to change due to editors fearing retribution for legitimate complaints, WMF needs to initiate that dialogue with the community rather than taking matters into their own hands and expecting everyone to follow suit.--WaltCip (talk) 19:29, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
A clear catch-22. I assume you're asking for specific examples of the process failing to adequately deal with unblockables. If she gives specific examples, then no doubt people will rush to criticize her for making accusations or personal attacks against those individuals. If she continues to talk nonspecifically, then you accuse her of casting aspersions... against the project I guess? Ironically this is also the catch-22 that anyone hoping to report harassment or abusive behaviour is faced with and exactly what is wrong with our system. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 19:30, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
I think it would be ridiculous to consider criticizing the English wikipedia in general to be WP:ASPERSIONS (which is about attacking the reputation of inidividual editors). Anyhow, here's a specific example just today of process failiure. I'm sure I'll get critized for posting this specific example as Ajraddatz says, but whatevez. Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:07, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't think you'll be criticized for specifics, because you linked to an entire archive of a noticeboard, so it could any one of dozens of topics. Enigmamsg 02:59, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Enigmaman, The section was I was linking to was removed - it is now at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#The_Rambling_Man. Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:13, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
The WMF are not the higher-ups. There does not exist a point at which things escalate so far as to go to the WMF. I haven't a clue who Fram is or what they may have done (beyond the linked diffs) and I don't care. There's a chain of decision-making here and the WMF is not in it. --Yair rand (talk) 20:00, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

If you look it all over (including my previous post) A strong and knowledgable critic of WMF, and in some kind of an ongoing contentious situation with someone with WMF connections, then maybe even an unpaid parking ticket can get you smacked. If we get more info, we'll see how my crystal ball is. North8000 (talk) 22:14, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

  • MegaLibraryGirl suggests that she's being silenced with accusations of "casting aspersions", but "casting aspersions" is not some subjective, slanderous accusation that can be debated. It's a statement of fact that simply means "making accusations with no evidence to back you". I've reviewed Mega's statements, and I see no actual evidence to support the Foundation having been presented. None. Plenty of strongly-worded opinions against Fram and the community, sure, but nothing, absolutely nothing, to demonstrate that there is an actual issue that provoked this situation. [retracted ~Swarm~ {sting} 01:40, 15 June 2019 (UTC)] ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:09, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm sorry you feel like that. I personally think Sue is one of the nicest, most caring and compassionate people I know. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:31, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
@Ritchie333: - is a nice, caring and compassionate person precluded from casting aspersions? starship.paint (talk) 02:14, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Back to my original questions

Since this thread has been sidetracked by thoughts about "Wikipedia has problems" I would like to see if I can get answers to

  1. Are posts by WMFOffice coming from one person or several?
  2. Why does WMFO feel they have the authority to maie make Floq go through a RFA in 30 days. Isn't that something that the Wikipedia community should decide?

Whatever discussion continues above I would like brief answers to these questions. MarnetteD|Talk 21:52, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Did you mean make? Oshawott 12 ==()== Talk to me! 01:53, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Thank you Oshawott 12. MarnetteD|Talk 01:57, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Has the WMF said that Floquenbeam needs to go through an RFA in 30 days? As I pointed out before, their initial comment wasn't entirely clear but seemed to suggest it was up to us. As they also more or less stated for Fram after they came back (rather than 30 days). The only thing they seemed to definitely say is Floquenbeam couldn't be an admin for the next 30 days. I looked at WMFOffice's contribs and there doesn't seem to be any more recent comment about Floquenbeam's administrative status than this one [5] which is the one which seems to suggest it's up to us whether and how Floquenbeam becomes an admin again after 30 days. So can you clarify where the WMF have said Floquenbeam must go through an RFA? I looked at the earlier discussion and I don't see any further comment from the WMF saying that Floquenbeam needs to go through an RFA. It would be good if we could get further confirmation from them, but as things stand, it seems to me they've already said it's up to us and have never said that Floquenbeam must go through an RFA. (Note as I explained in great detail above, even without any objection from the WMF I don't think an automatic re-sysop is likely without further guidance from us although this does not need to be in the form of an RFA.) Nil Einne (talk) 03:10, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I’m still waiting for clarification from the WMFO on that and other questions. –xenotalk 10:43, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
The sentence as written states "If they wish for their admin rights to be restored, a RfA can be opened once 30 days elapse, and the community may decide on the request at that time in such or another way." There is no ambiguity about the fact that a RFA has to be opened. After that there can be quibbling over what happens next. Thankfully Floq has had the tools returned. MarnetteD|Talk 14:36, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
"in such or another way" in fact explicitly leaves this decision to the community. Would ping WMFOffice but I know any "clarification" would just lead to more confusion. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 15:08, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Plus all the previous pings have been ignored, as far as I can tell. Enigmamsg 16:27, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
It’s likely the individual or individuals who have been using the account have been asked to refrain from further comment and actions pending further direction. –xenotalk 16:31, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
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