User:GreatSculptorIthas/Opinion on Fram Ban

This is not originally meant to be a well-formatted or widely-read essay. I am writing this as much to collect my thoughts as anything else. Anyone who may read this in the future, please consider that at my time of writing this I have been contributing for months, not years, and I may be missing or misunderstanding things. But here I am, recording my thoughts at this time (June 12, 2019).

I hear a lot about incivility on Wikipedia, but to tell you the truth, it's much more complicated than people make it sound. As an average user flitting around, working here on this page and there on that page, most of Wikipedia seems very civil. Anyone who uses social media, gaming, or forum services elsewhere online is probably used to seeing profanity and personal attacks just anywhere. Sites like Reddit and Facebook are infamous for their toxicity. And to tell you the truth, I really have not seen that on Wikipedia. I can't just see these problems randomly on talk pages, and I certainly don't see them in mainspace unless (maybe) I look at page history.

But that doesn't mean there is not a civility issue. The problem that many people fail to catch is it takes two to tango. Many new users don't interact with others as much as the power users, admins, and older users do, and I think that is partially because it's a bit hard to interact with others on Wikipedia. Talk pages are generally unwieldy and poorly designed, and for good or ill, onsite private messaging is not a feature—only email. So what happens is that many beginning users aren't really exposed to this until later—until they start to step up and take a bigger role in the community, as I have. Not to toot my own horn, by the way—I said a bigger role, not a big one.

When I got serious about editing, I read a lot. Among other things, I started reading RfAs and XfDs. I started interacting with others on Signpost articles and the talk page consultation. That's where the incivility happens, as far as I can tell. It's in the larger pages with multiple people talking. It's in the areas with experienced editors who know lots of other editors and have a history with them. It's a result of old AN/I issues, ARBCOM cases, and other procedural discussions being dragged back up. It's often reciprocal, as far as I can tell. And in general, as soon as a page starts talking about people—about each other or other editors—rather than the content of an article or how a page works, things go downhill quickly. In addition, there is an element of WP:OWN and gatekeeping, as well. RfA is practically a hazing ritual as far as I can tell, unless you are someone like Evad37 and extremely well-liked. Even then people will apparently question your motives. There is an element of "new people don't have 'a clue.'"

I read Rob's comments on WP:FRAM after he left. I can't say I am more than basically familiar with AN/I or ARBCOM personally. I have never really more than skimmed cases there. But I get the gist of what he said: in order to handle any case of inappropriate behavior, we turn everything into an investigation and go through page histories and diffs and so on. I have seen that in other procedures, if not directly at AN/I or ARBCOM. And to be honest, that's exactly what is happening with WP:FRAM right now. Instead of discussing the issue of T&S going over the heads of ARBCOM (which I will get to shortly myself), or poor communication from WMF, or the central issues, we have people talking about who is partners with whom and asking who runs the WMFOffice account. We have people trying to figure out "the real reason" (and while there may be biases, anyone who thinks that this is made up out of whole-cloth or specifically to mess with Fram needs to take a breath). We have people who are digging into who does what at WMF. This is exactly the problem. There is no method of quietly dealing with an issue of someone being rude or over the top. As Rob pointed out, there is no victim protection. On another site, if I was harassed I would just report the user. If it was persistent, I may just make a new account. Neither of those options is feasible on Wikipedia, which has no such easy "report button."

Neither does it present the option of making a new account. We tend to demand that users present all of their accounts, and checkusers can almost certainly link them anyway. Furthermore, Wikipedia relies on networking to get things done, and a username is a powerful thing. Even what little work I do would be very difficult to continue if I tried to make a new account and hide that I was the same person.

So where does that leave WMF but to treat Wikipedia like other websites and implement these types of blocks and bans? If the only way to deal with a sensitive issue is publicly, why on earth would people bother to do that rather than leave, as Rob mentioned? I think that WMF needs to have this ability, and it needs to be able to ban users including "important" admins. And more importantly, enwiki needs to think hard about its processes for dealing with incivility, harassment, and even everyday issues, because those are what snowball into incivility.

Because clearly, we don't like being stepped over by T&S. We don't like it when someone else handles something without telling us about it or giving us a chance. And you know what, I agree that T&S and ARBCOM did not do a proper job of bringing this out and explaining what was going on. And I think that to basically say out of the blue that WMF doesn't have confidence in enwiki's ability to deal with users like Fram was uncalled for—that kind of concern needs to be voiced long before a major incident and long before you use your newfound powers to deal with it.

And I also think that the WMF did a terrible job of communicating what the ban/block was for, what was happening, and what the process was for investigating this issue. There was no discussion with us about this. And clearly, the WMF did not review the cases in de and zh which happened before this one in order to craft a clear policy of how to handle the use of such powers—this was an ad hoc procedure and they played it by ear. That was a mistake. You don't test out a new procedure on an admin without ensuring that you and ARBCOM both have statements and explanations ready to roll out at the exact moment.

But that's a procedural problem. Given what I understand of Fram, action needed to be taken and there needed to be consequences for their actions. I don't know what is standard procedure for bans/blocks, and a year seems like quite a long time to me. I can also understand the confusion and frustration about only being banned from enwiki, but not letting ARBCOM handle that. And yet, despite that, I think that the real problem is less what the WMF did, and more what ARBCOM or someone else could not do—stop Fram or other "important" users from mistreating others.

And there are a lot of reasons why that doesn't happen. Part of it is that some people maintain important parts of Wikipedia, and blocking or banning them would cause disruption. Part of it is bias. Part of it is fear. Part of it is social disruption and drama. And part of it is profiling—people who already have the mop surely should get a pass sometimes, right?

But the key is that we need to make it possible for enwiki to deal with its own problems so that WMF does not have to. The WMF was foolish this week and I lost some respect for them. But the real story here is that we were not trusted for a reason. I personally would have made every attempt to exhaust the abilities of enwiki to deal with Fram before going over its heads, if I worked at T&S. I don't agree with them, but I can certainly understand why they thought that would be pointless.

I have dealt many times with power struggles in various organizations, and I can tell you that engaging in the power struggle directly is usually a foolish way to find a solution. When you are in opposition, only one of you can win. When you work together, you can both win, and you only have to do half the work because someone is helping.

In this case, we need to develop enwiki's procedures and go back to the drawing board. We need to think long and hard about how we handle harassment issues, and we need to think even longer and harder about how we handle the daily disputes which lead to people disliking each other and having snowballing negative interactions (I'm looking at RfA, for one). I said I am not especially familiar with AN/I, but I know the term "dragged/dragging so and so to AN/I" and that already sounds like a problem.

The WMF ought to think about ways for users to handle issues themselves. Many websites have a block feature—perhaps users should be able to block other users so that they may not edit their talk pages, and it works reciprocally automatically. Sort of like a self-imposed interaction ban, but with actual teeth because it is built into the software.

On the talk page consultation (phase 2) discussion, I suggested that we redesign talk pages to have a sort of "comment wizard" as the default, opt-out way to post. You would start a new section as usual, or you would start your own "comment" as a top level comment or as a reply (via a reply link) to another user. This would be opt-out anyway, so teeth would be limited, but such a block would disallow commenting through the wizard and would only allow source editing. The goal would be to dissuade users rather than stop them, and that would help to reduce interaction even off of user talk pages.

We also need to have a discussion about how to increase our editor and admin counts. RfAs need to be improved so that they are not so accusatory. We need to make new editors feel comfortable contributing, both emotionally and logistically. We need to continue the good work on that talk pages consultation, too. We need to improve the onboarding process for new editors. We need to engage in active recruitment. And most importantly, we need to make sure that people feel like they can deal with issues that occur onwiki.

And yes, we do need to have a long hard talk about how T&S operates and communicates. There need to be apologies and repercussions there. To be honest, many horrible and truly inappropriate things were said here at enwiki as well, and people here should apologize as well. There was a lot of name-calling which should never be acceptable. I think we showed our true colors, and our true colors are ugly and spell "Harassment is ok as long as we think the other person is evil and wrong." WMF is not evil. They were rude, dismissive, and unprofessional—not evil. No one who works for a charity building The Free Encyclopedia (among other useful projects) is evil. What evil person would work for the Wikimedia Foundation? It's a charity, for goodness' sake.

What I do not at all find productive is trying to bring this to the media or turn this into a witchhunt for the person who reported Fram or discuss some conspiracy theory. I support User:MJL's attempt to bring civility back to this page and discussion. I hope that over the next few days, discussion turns towards introspection and working on improving how everyone does things, rather than fighting each other. What a waste of the few editors and admins we have left.

I sincerely think that due to the conduct of some (not all) people on this page, enwiki has lost as much or more credibility than the WMF or T&S did. And I think that we have actually cemented their position that enwiki does not have the ability or desire to stop harassment.

The best thing that we can do, for our own users as well as for "sticking it to T&S," is to prove them wrong going forward. Let's develop better policies. Let's get better as a group. Let's build the web, and build a wonderful encyclopedia to make this world a better place. Let's do all of the things that originally brought us to this project, and do them even better. Let's make this a learning moment. Yes, we must hold WMF/T&S accountable for their mistakes regarding Fram's ban. But that is pointless if we do not hold ourselves accountable as well.

And for Jimbo's sake, when we do that, THEN let's contact the press. Let them write a wonderful comeback story about how this was the moment that we all hit rock bottom and realized that we needed to (and could) take civility issues more seriously. That's what I want to read about. That's what will make Wikipedia a better place.