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We've been patient enough, and it's time to take next steps

It has been nearly two weeks since Fram's ban. It has been nine days since the WMF board meeting. The supposed call with ArbCom has already taken place last week. We have heard either nothing, or from WMF, worse than nothing—we have received patronizing, insulting, pat-on-the-head type responses from them which said nothing of any substance at all.

It is apparently necessary to take more drastic and obvious measures, as was necessary in the past cases when WMF overstepped. I hoped that they had learned from their mistakes, but they had not. However, I think it fair to give them a chance to provide a substantive response rather than needing to take those steps. So, JEissfeldt (WMF): One more chance, but if all you're going to say is "This is our policy and we won't change it", please don't waste your time. To Board members Jimbo Wales, Raystorm, Pundit, and Doc James: "Discussion is ongoing" is no longer sufficient. Provide a deadline by which we should expect to hear from you. To arbitrators AGK, Callanecc, GorillaWarfare, Joe Roe, KrakatoaKatie, Opabinia regalis, Premeditated Chaos, RickinBaltimore, SilkTork, and Worm That Turned: We need to know what happened on that call now, not weeks from now.

It's been more than long enough to hear appropriate responses. We understand that a response won't come in a day, but it has been two weeks, and we have heard nothing but insulting condescension from the WMF and nothing from anyone else. It is time to get moving, or it will be necessary to take more drastic measures to ensure that the community has your attention and isn't being blown off. And please believe me that we will, if need be, get your attention. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:03, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Hear, hear! El_C 19:05, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
+1 --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:11, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry, Seraphimblade, but these things do take time. There was a lot to go through, on top of Arbcom's usual business (we have 2 cases live at the moment on top of everything going on here and A/R/C, and a significantly reduced committee). I understand your frustration, but there's little any of us can tell you at the moment. WormTT(talk) 19:15, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    So when can you tell us anything? This is, of course, nonsense, and as Arbcom, Jimbo et al can see, tearing the community apart. Do they actually give a shit about that? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:18, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    Arbcom is slow. We always have been, by design. Needless to say, we aren't ignoring the situation, and of course we care about the health of the community. Do you see a magic bullet that will make this all better? I don't. WormTT(talk) 19:21, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

    Worm That Turned, you know as well as I do that in certain situations, where the matter was urgent, ArbCom acted swiftly. I can't discuss those here, but I will cite them to you over email if you would like. This is an urgent situation, and ArbCom needs to treat it as such.

    And yes, there is a magic bullet that makes this better immediately. WMF backs off what they did, assures us that they realize their mistake and will never again interfere in day-to-day community governance issues, and turns the matter over to either the community (if all the problems were on-wiki) via either a complaint or a public ArbCom case, or turns the matter over to ArbCom if private information must be handled. From there, whatever happens, well, happens. If there is private evidence, and ArbCom evaluates it and determines that the ban is warranted, I will accept that decision. If an ArbCom case is held, and the result is that Fram is sanctioned, I will accept that. Quite honestly, I don't care too much about Fram, I don't even very much like Fram, and I'm rather irritated at being put in the position of defending Fram. But this isn't, at the end of the day, a referendum on Fram. It is a question of the English Wikipedia's editorial independence and self-governance, and the "magic bullet" is for WMF to respect that and never again do something like this. But yes, that magic bullet does exist, and it is in WMF's hands right now. That said, I do appreciate your willingness to reply here, but "We'll get to it someday" is no longer acceptable. "Someday" needs to be specified. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:35, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

    you know as well as I do that in certain situations, where the matter was urgent, ArbCom acted swiftly. I can't discuss those here, but I will cite them to you over email if you would like. The problem is that in this case, I think it's pretty clear that the WMF (or at least some people on the board) have their backs up. Jimbo's statement that they're trying to reach an outcome that will "neither allow invalid precedent to be set, nor to set invalid precedent" coupled with the constant insistence, above, that WMF bans are above appeal and therefore all of this needs to go away gives the impression that some people on the board recognize that they screwed up but that they're trying to talk down others who have their backs up about refusing to give an inch to the community in fear of setting an "invalid precedent", ie. giving the community the impression that it can question WMF decisions or that they're subject to any sort of community review. That sucks - if that's really the tone of discussions, I think anyone with that mindset absolutely doesn't belong on the board or in a position of authority at Trust and Safety; it's the worst sort of managerial incompetence - but right now ArbCom and Jimbo need to cope with that sort of obstructive never-admit-fault, never-give-an-inch resistance from people on the board, and it's inevitable that this will require caution. While obviously a lot of what happened here will have to remain unknown for privacy reasons, I do hope we eventually learn the details of the boards' deliberations on the topic and who took what position - anonymous complaints deserve privacy; people on the board of the fifth-largest website in the world do not, at least not for actions and positions they take when running that website. Some degree of accountability and transparency for the WMF is required here. But right now our tools are limited and it's inevitable that discussions will go slowly. --Aquillion (talk) 19:53, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    Arbcom is deliberate by nature. Their delays are understandable under the circumstances. The lack of communication from the board is another matter. It underwhelms.- MrX 🖋 19:40, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • It's not quite as simple as that, there are a number of factors, which I don't feel comfortable elaborating on while discussions are ongoing. I think the case request is reaching some clarity on a way forward, which should happen in the short term. Arbcom cannot over-rule the WMF, we hold no jurisdiction over their actions, beyond community dissent - even by your own yardstick, Arbcom has no magic bullet. What we can do is work with the WMF on options that might work going forward - it takes time. I know this is frustrating, but I'd like a decent solution. WormTT(talk) 19:51, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    @Worm That Turned: Has there been any thought to delaying the other cases? If things go south on this WMF thing, well there might not be a need for an ArbCom pretty soon and whatever you guys decide might be moot and overshadowed by WMF. --Rschen7754 19:55, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    Rschen7754, I've seen no discussion of delaying other cases. Not do I think those participants would be very happy about it, since not all the community is actually following this. WormTT(talk) 20:25, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    Worm That Turned "I've seen no discussion of delaying other cases."—I assumed the week delay with the Canadian politics case was due to this. That's not the case? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 04:23, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
    Curly Turkey, I believe this was due to the drafting arbs real world commitments, though I'm sure this took their attention. The reduced committee size, combined with a high amount of inactivity at the same time has taken its toll, a discussion for another day. WormTT(talk) 06:34, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
    Speaking as one of the drafters on that case, yes, it was real-life stuff rather than this incident that caused that particular delay. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:50, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
    Agree. Personally, I feel responsible for continuing to provide local community dispute resolution on those matters. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:22, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    "Arbcom cannot over-rule the WMF" - right. But you can make your opinion known. "We hold no jurisdiction over their actions" - right, and it's also not your duty to defend their errors. "Beyond community dissent" - and that is the point. ArbCom members are elected as community representatives. I would hope they take that mandate seriously. It's not your job to settle on a bad compromise to sweep T&S mess under the carpet. There is nothing wrong with going for a good compromise - but I think it must be clear that ArbCom does not stand in the middle between the WMF and the community, but firmly on the communities side. And thanks for being responsive! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:01, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    Stephan Schulz, every member of the committee is a member of the community, and one that was elected to Arbcom. I'm sure we are in the community's side. I'm moving on to my phone now, but if you (or anyone else) wants to discuss my thoughts further, please do email me. WormTT(talk) 20:31, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    WTT, I was not suggesting that Arbcom attempt to overrule WMF. Arbcom has been mooted. I was making a point that the WMF, via it's department-level representative and its Board of Trustees, has failed spectacularly at communication and damage control. - MrX 🖋 20:10, 23 June 2019 (UTC) 
  • Quoting Board member Pundit (from 3 days ago): "the discussion is ongoing, and another problem is that some Board members are more difficult to reach (due to justified reasons). I am frustrated by our pace, but also hope for a sensible outcome." We can wait a little more, I think. --Yair rand (talk) 19:24, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
+1. We are actively and rapidly hemorrhaging trust and volunteers. Producing a substantive statement needs to be a priority. Providing a deadline for that statement needs to happen very quickly. Our community is tearing itself apart, and the longer it continues the harder it will be to move forward from this. Tazerdadog (talk) 19:28, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I am sorry user:Worm That Turned, 2 weeks of absolutely NOTHING is inexcusable. The WMF is tearing the community apart, admins are resigning by bushes and other volunteers are inactive. You are our elected body if the community is not capable to solve the problem. The fact that you comment here, but cannot say 'the WMF does have a case, bear with us for a couple more days' does not give us hope that you will come with a beleivable answer, but merely that you are waiting for a fabrication from WMF.
Maybe already clear, user:Seraphimblade seen my proposal above: +1 (and likely also with a statement from ArbCom that is Janesque). --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:29, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I think you are looking for an answer to a different question than I, Beetstra. WormTT(talk) 20:06, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Nah, just waiting for AN answer that I can trust, WTT. The longer it takes, the less I trust. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:29, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
+1. I get that it takes time to make a decision, but you can at least indicate whether you have the means to make a decision. We all get that you're short-staffed and it's summer so some of you will be out of reach, but just "T&S has told us what Fram is alleged to have done and we now need time to discuss it" or similar would be fine. Even "T&S told us to go fuck ourselves and from now on they'll do what they like" would let us know where we stand. ‑ Iridescent 19:34, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't think this is about Fram. Arbcom aren't looking to "take over" any ban. The question is more about how this could have happened differently and how we can manage things going forward. So, I can't really tell you what T&S have said, because it's not my place to do so. WormTT(talk) 20:06, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
@Worm That Turned: I would say it's your job, as a serving arbitrator, to explain exactly what the Arbitration Committee now knows, and how they now know those things (subject to the usual privacy constraints). I know you're a volunteer and all this pish, but you did volunteer for this task and it's really about time we started getting answers, not bullshit excuses. Nick (talk) 21:07, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Nick, Arbs have explained to the best of our abilities what has happened - we are subject to privacy constraints. There has been a discussion with the WMF, and as a committee we are still discussing that meeting. As to your other point - Arbs volunteered to sort out disputes within the community, private and public, but nowhere in the job description does it state that we should be "representing the community to the WMF". As it happens, because every Arb is a community member and is passionate about the project, we often do that willingly, but to be clear it's not the task we volunteered for. WormTT(talk) 10:44, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
How can the community be torn apart if we assume good faith? There are a few things we should learn from Wikipedia, assuming good faith among them. But there should also be some big changes at the end of this, community respect and all. Attica! Attica! (whoops, sorry, wrong film). Randy Kryn (talk) 19:36, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
"WP:AGF is not a suicide pact" is something I read a while ago that sees relevant. Maybe even more to the point, it's not a one-way street. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:46, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Of course not. It does mean that some editors assume good faith in the foundation and people like Jimbo and Doc James, and trust that when the dust settles the respect between the WMF and the Wikipedian community will have to be repaired. I've suggested a good common sense peace offering above (300 new full travel and room scholarships a year to Wikimania for long-term editors who've never gone, funded by a special goal directed corporate donation drive). Better than throwing rocks at a window neither "side" really wants to break. Randy Kryn (talk) 19:54, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
AGF is not a suicide pact, and since there is NO info, I also assume good faith on Fram (and even more so after Superputsch, VE, MV, the material that they let rot away and the empty statements from Jan - my AGF runs so thin that I will not even believe ArbCom telling methat WMF is right if they do not come with sufficient evidence). --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:50, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I was a steward during superprotect. By this time WMF had gotten the message and had privately come to us to see how they could try and make things better (and I think publicly too, I don't remember). It worries me that this has not happened yet. --Rschen7754 19:57, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • It's been two weeks and we don't have an answer as to whether Fram even committed a violation. Seriously. He was banned under a ToU clause that prohibits certain behaviors. I'm simply asking the question if he actually violated the clause. Nothing beyond that. And I still can't get an answer. I even asked Doc James, our community-appointed board member, who was supposedly investigating this, whether Fram actually breached the ToU. He said "I don't have insight into the investigation", and then deleted his comment because he's "going hiking for a few days". This is where we're at. Our own community representative on the board can't even confirm for us that there was a ToU violation. Literally nobody involved is capable of telling us that it wasn't a dirty move. ~Swarm~ {sting} 20:02, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • This narrative that we're "tearing ourselves apart" is an exaggeration. Most of you are on the same side of the aisle and just shouting at the void because aren't able to get all the facts yourself, but you ran out of steam a week ago. The list of casualties, besides Fram, are those who voluntarily desysopped and can immediately get the bit back with one post to WP:BN. There's no substance behind doing something temporary like that and only creates this façade of an emergency in front of discussion that doesn't seemingly have anywhere to go. You all discussed forking, striking, leaving, hashtags and banners among the myriad of options but one option never got more support so it's a bit like RFA reform. By the time this resolves, Fram's ban will be damn-near over with and those who "retired" will be back with the tools again. This all just seems so pointless now. — Moe Epsilon 20:05, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    This ^. There is certainly a conversation to have with the WMF about how to make this process better moving forward. But it's clear from the quickly dropping participation outside the same few names on this page that these "solutions" aren't going anywhere. Let the board, ArbCom, and other people who are taking a reasoned and measured response to the situation have time to do their work. The sky isn't going to fall, even if this is left for a few months. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 20:12, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    How many admins and editors will we lose over those few months? Edit: even a "We screwed up and we are negotiating a solution" would be better than the patronizing nonsense we continue to receive from WMF. --Rschen7754 20:14, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    Have we permanently lost anyone? Admins do diva resignations literally all the time, and many of the names on that list of eight have done one or two before over other situations. As Moe said, they can get their tools back at any time. We don't know the permanent damage yet and won't for a few months at least. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 20:20, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    Well, that's not how it works. Sure, people can come back from having resigned, but not everyone does. Even if we only lose half the admins who either resigned or were banned, that's a substantial loss. To say nothing of anyone else who just left and didn't say why, and there's no way we can measure that, but I would wager you a substantial amount of money that the number there is greater than zero. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:22, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    There's still literally no benefit to announce your desysopping in this situation. If you leave permanently, either it will resolve or it won't and you won't be here to care either way. If they come back, it pretty much makes them a hypocrite to request their tools back since they'd still be administrating under the terms of use of the WMF and the T&S team again. Barring something very drastic such as the WMF/T&S team dissolving, why not just wait? — Moe Epsilon 20:35, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    If WMF does not change the path they are on, maybe. Also, global renamer (for example) cannot be automatically restored. --Rschen7754 20:23, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    Meh, we're all replaceable, and as volunteers we all get to decide what to do with our time. Is it unfortunate that people have left over this? Absolutely, and that's why we need to work collaborative towards a solution. But the fact that people have left shouldn't be a reason to demand immediate action, especially when the WMF hasn't responded to the pitchfork approach thus far. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 20:34, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
'we're all replaceable.' I keep sighting that thoughtless phrase. If Leonardo had been aborted, someone else would have painted The Mona Lisa; if Proust had died in childhood, someone else would have written À la recherche du temps perdu; if Shakespeare didn't exist, Hamlet, or sonnet 30, would have been written by Ben Jonson or someone else. No one is replaceable, except in corporate groupthink. Any editor here knows that innumerable articles would not have been written to the comprehensive level of excellence and expertise they display, were it not for dedication of an individual or two who drove them forward to FA status.Nishidani (talk) 20:58, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
We are all unique individuals that bring our own gifts and contributions to the table. But the reality is that the project will survive if any of us (or even groups of us) leave, and to assume otherwise is the height of self-importance. We can't be responsible for ensuring that 100% of editors will stay all the time, and as I've argued below I think that the pitchfork approach won't accomplish the goal of retaining people anyway because it isn't working. I'd even say that this approach is actively harmful: if you were the WMF, would you want to engage with a community of people that were attacking you and attempting to out the victims of the alleged harassment? -- Ajraddatz (talk) 21:06, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Well to answer that would derail the argument of this thread. I will just note however that in writing 'attempting to out the victims of the alleged harassment,' everything is in the placement of the adjective 'alleged' before harassment, rather than before victims. 98% of these pages has been about the fundamental principles of a democratic project, in any case, and the politics of the innovative turf dispute. Nishidani (talk) 21:35, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, people who are used to being able to judge cases for themselves are not comfortable with leaving all the evidence to a private tribunal that is not accountable to them. That is understandable, and we should be working with the WMF to create a more accountable and transparent system that better meshes their "internal to a hierarchical organization" approach with our open democratic approach. But continuing to demand more information when they've already said they can't/won't talk specifics, continuing to demand that they unban Fram when they've said they won't, and continuing to personally attack WMF staff are collectively just not a viable way forward here. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 21:49, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
You seem to miss the point of a protest. It is to change someones stance, even if they don't want to. At the moment, the first and most important change is for the WMF to talk to the community at eye level. The community needs the WMF mainly for practical reasons - they provide the infrastructure. In principle, they can be replaced (in practice, this would be very painful, of course). The WMF, on the other hand, would not even exist without the community. An I doubt they can find a new community. There are many tools the community has to increase the pressure - just imagine any future fund raiser being accompanied by community banners requesting that money should be given to local organisations instead. Or to Amnesty International or the Red Cross. Or imagine a discussion of this constitutional crisis on the main page. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:07, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I would appreciate it if you didn't belittle me and my comments by saying that I have missed the point, but to clarify, my point is that actions can, should and will be done that don't involve the tactics being used on this page. The WMF needs us, we need them, let's work together to find a system that works or is at least tolerable for all of us. Mend fences and build relationships over further destroying a relationship that is already strained through actions by both sides. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 22:13, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Ajraddatz, I certainly hope you don't think I'm belittling you in any way, but I think "missing the point" might be somewhat appropriate. I'm all for having candid discussions with the WMF, but they don't seem to be willing to have them with us. But any process we can live with involves the WMF staying out of the day-to-day governance of the English Wikipedia. That would include either unbanning Fram or turning all evidence for the ban over to the ArbCom and letting them make the decision, and a firm pledge to never do that again. Those portions are not something we can or should compromise on. Now, if the WMF thinks we can improve in other ways, let's hear that from them, but candidly, not in corporatese, and with a firm understanding that the community will decide whether or not to accept their recommendations, and if we don't, tough. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:19, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

I understand your point and I disagree with it. I think that the WMF does have a role to play here, and that we need to meet in the middle rather than continuing to demand some kind of autonomy that I don't think we've ever had, and would not be beneficial to us to have. But I know that you disagree and I respect that. Edit: to be clear, I'm not offended over the suggestion that I've missed the point. But this entire discussion has made me realise just how often we passively question each-others competence and intelligence, and passively (and sometimes actively) insult each-other during discussions. I'm trying to both make sure that I maintain an acceptable level of decorum myself, but also point it out when I see it directed towards me. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 22:29, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Ajraddatz: Can you say for certain that nobody left permanently because of superprotect? I remember a lot of dewiki admin resignations and I don't think that is a wiki that will autoresysoponrequest. I also don't remember people saying stuff like The sky isn't going to fall, even if this is left for a few months during that either - if I had said that during superprotect I can guarantee you I would not have been reconfirmed in 2015 had I run. --Rschen7754 20:38, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    I obviously can't say anything like that, and again I'm not excusing what is obviously a colossal communication and process failure by the WMF here (if not in their action, then in how it was done and communicated). But that damage has largely been done, and they think that Fram has been appropriately banned and aren't going to change it. As I've said before, the pitchfork approach hasn't worked yet and I doubt it will in the future especially with such reduced participation here. So let's try the mature reasoned approach instead. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 20:42, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    Which is? We've asked some simple questions point-blank and gotten patronizing nonsense in response. I would even say that Jan's response this Friday is what prompted some of these resignations. --Rschen7754 20:45, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    They've told the general public everything that they are comfortable saying. What they've said already has lead to attempting outing of the victims of Fram's alleged harassment, which kinda proves why they don't want to say more publicly. They can say more to the board / ArbCom, and are currently in that process. And if those avenues don't work, then I plan on trying to form some sort of working group with T&S and community people to go over process workflows and figure out a better system that would be tolerable for both sides. I've done this before on a different issue to satisfactory results. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 20:52, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    Can they actually say more to ArbCom? According to Jan, the community does not and cannot have all the facts of this case. I also note the very disturbing statement from Jan on Friday that Foundation bans are non-appealable, which would imply that decisions are final and cannot be changed, ever, even if T&S is proved wrong later. That is why people got so worked up about the statement Jan made on Friday. --Rschen7754 21:03, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    I don't know, we'll see. It might be that we can't move the needle on this specific ban, but that doesn't mean we can't try to make a better and more accountable system moving forward. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 21:10, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I was posting above when I saw the ping from this thread, so see there for a brief response. Otherwise I agree with what WTT has said here. I think this is an issue on which everyone is very sensitive to a sense of precedent, as well as the specific facts of this case, and that means thinking things through, even if it's a little slow. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:24, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    I don't see what's unclear here. The precedent that must be set is very clear: WMF screwed up and they must never do this again. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:28, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • As I mentioned above, I find the talk of everyone being sensitive to a sense of precedent alarming, because it gives the impression that the WMF recognizes that it screwed up but refuses to back down because unbanning Fram and acknowledging a mistake would "set a bad precedent". If it is possible to convey anything to the WMF, the most important thing is that that outlook is toxic and unsustainable - it's an entirely inappropriate position for someone in an a position of authority over any project to take, since it leads to endless doubling-down and constant exacerbation of what could have been minor, easily-corrected errors. This is even worse if it's in defense of the idea that WMF bans are not appealable, since that position is not and will never be sustainable (is the WMF insisting that they would, if necessary, leave a flat error in place simply to make a point?) --Aquillion (talk) 21:00, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Thanks for the ping, Seraphimblade. I unfortunately was not able to be on the call—it was during my work hours, and though I'd originally planned to step into a private room and get on the call at the office, an issue came up that my team needed to urgently handle. That issue has taken up a fair amount of my time and energy this week, so I am still playing catchup somewhat, but I have read the meeting notes and caught up on emails, and am currently catching up on all the various and sundry conversations happening onwiki.
As for the matter of urgency, you are right that the ArbCom can act urgently when needed. But usually we only do in cases where there is extremely urgent danger to the wiki, and it's best to act first and sort things out later (for example, level 1 desysop procedures for potentially compromised admin accounts). While I agree that there is certainly danger to the wiki in this case, acting quickly would be unwise. Please remember all of the factors here that affect timing: the differing timezones and work/family/life obligations of the ArbCom members who need to discuss and work together on this, the other wiki-related demands on arbitrators' time (the existing case requests, block appeals, email matters, etc.), the work schedules of the WMF employees handling this situation, the availability of board members and Jimbo, etc. The worst thing we could do is act quickly and rashly, without giving this issue the consideration it deserves. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:31, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
GorillaWarfare, I certainly appreciate those things, having dealt with them myself. But ArbCom itself puts dates on what it does. What I am asking for is something more concrete than "We'll get to it when we get to it." I do not believe that such a request is unreasonable. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:36, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Seraphimblade, there's a big difference between "we'll get to it when we get to it" and "we'll give you an answer when we have one". This is the latter WormTT(talk) 20:45, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Worm That Turned, if WMF didn't give you any useful information on the call, we need to know that too. If they did, we need to know what it was. If the result was "They didn't say anything we didn't already know", well, just say so, and we'll go from there. But we do need to have a summary of what happened on it, sooner rather than later. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:59, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm behind on this and desperately trying to catch up, but can we please bear in mind that ArbCom and the WMF/T&S are separate bodies. We (ArbCom) are doing what we can to look at the case in front of us, at our usual slowish pace, and to get information from T&S behind-the-scenes. But we have little more insight into what T&S and the WMF board are doing than you guys do. We certainly can't set deadlines for them. – Joe (talk) 20:46, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
You can tell them to pull their fingers out. You can tell them just how damaging their actions - and inactions - are. And you can tell T&S that they do not have the trust of the community. Given the racist and homophobic behavioural tool developed by the Foundation (see above) I don't feel safe, and I would certainly never trust them with any more personal material than I absolutely have to. Tell them that. Go on. DuncanHill (talk) 20:53, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

@Joe Roe, Worm That Turned, and GorillaWarfare: (and other members from ArbCom active in this thread): Well, the opening of this thread was first addressed to members of WMF, as earlier posts here. I (we all) know WMF is slow, opaque, and I fully understand that you guys are further behind. What I miss here until now is statements from members of ArbCom stating that they, like the volunteers here, push for clarity. Is ArbCom understanding the anger of the community, and does ArbCom have the feeling that WMF understands it? Until now you all seem to be (meekly?) waiting, which makes me worried that your answers are not going to satisfy the community either. --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:04, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

I apologize that it seems like that. The ArbCom is (and has been) actively discussing how to proceed now that we've had the meeting with T&S. As I've said, I would like to allow some time to see what will be forthcoming from other parties involved here (namely, a statement the board apparently plans to make). I don't think anyone plans to wait indefinitely; I have personally just voted in favor of resolving the open arbitration case by motion and organizing an RfC, and others have voted as well recently. GorillaWarfare (talk) 21:21, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
@GorillaWarfare: Allow some time? Days, weeks, months, years? Until the next statement asking us to allow some time? The one after that? DuncanHill (talk) 21:24, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
To be clear, I'm not proposing at this point that the ArbCom hold any specific action until statements have been made, but rather be cognizant if/when we begin to move forward with anything (RfC, case, etc.) that a statement is in the works. Jimbo did not make any reference to how long it would be before this statement would be made, but I think it would be reasonable for it to take a week or two. GorillaWarfare (talk) 21:53, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
@GorillaWarfare: A week or two - that means three weeks to a month after the ban? Have I got my maths right? DuncanHill (talk) 21:58, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, your math is correct. GorillaWarfare (talk) 22:01, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
@GorillaWarfare: Does that strike you as reasonable? DuncanHill (talk) 22:15, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I am simply saying that given Jimbo mentioned the board is "in active conversations" on the 21st, I would expect that means a statement will come in the next week or two. I of course would prefer a statement sooner, but I am not in the position to impose deadlines on the board. GorillaWarfare (talk) 22:21, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
@GorillaWarfare: That's a very diplomatic way of saying you think the delay is unreasonable. DuncanHill (talk) 22:26, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
To say that would be to say that I was expecting the board to make a statement, which I was not. I am glad they are making one, even if it may take a while. GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:26, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
@GorillaWarfare: In other words, the Committee is meekly waiting, and neither you nor WMF has any clue how angry the community is. I am sorry: user:Seraphimblade, the only way forward is to seriously damage the reputationof WMF or en.wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:16, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
@GorillaWarfare: The trouble is, the month will pass and they will still not have got around to making a statement, or any statement will be as patronising and empty as those from T&S so far. Then, when editors continue to complain, we'll be told they're discussing it again and we should wait for them to make a statement. DuncanHill (talk) 09:37, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
@DuncanHill: I'm beginning to get a little confused on this page, where "they" is being used to refer variously to the ArbCom, the board, and the T&S team. Are you referring to the ArbCom here, or the board? GorillaWarfare (talk) 14:45, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
@GorillaWarfare: The Board. You are being very elusive when being asked what you think of their delays. Do you think a month is a reasonable time for them to take? I've asked before and you deflected it. DuncanHill (talk) 14:55, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying. I'm not trying to be elusive or deflect anything, I'm trying to be clear. I did not expect the board to get involved at all, so to say they're being unreasonable seems to imply that I was expecting their involvement. Now that they have decided to become involved, I do think a month is too long to meaningfully assuage any concerns the community has—the time for assuaging concerns has clearly passed. But I suspect their statement will be about how to move forward from this, not an attempt to assuage concerns about the specific incident. We shall see. I hope this has been clearer. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:30, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
@GorillaWarfare: Thank you, yes that is much clearer. If they do simply try to "assuage concerns" they will have completely missed the point, and the boat. We need something meaningful from them, not the usual WMF "Oh we love you very much but we are right and you mere volunteers who cannot possibly understand what the grown-ups do" crap that the Foundation is so very, very, fond of. I don't know who advises them on PR but it's clearly an idiot. DuncanHill (talk) 17:37, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • It would be one thing if the Arbs who commented here had said something like "Huh? Fram? Who is that?" But it's clearly the very opposite of that. I don't mean to insult anyone, really, but I think it's a little childish to demand a response right-now-or-else. I'm still willing to be patient. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
@Tryptofish:I think it's a little patronising to criticise people for asking for an indication of just how much time "some time" is. I don't mean to insult anybody, really. DuncanHill (talk) 21:42, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I do not think it is "childish" to expect that after two weeks, if an immediate response isn't possible, we would at least have a commitment to making one by a particular date, rather than "Oh, someday or another". Really, it seems to me childish to handle a major issue with "Oh, I suppose we'll say something sometime." I don't think anyone would reasonably consider that acceptable. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:45, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I think both of you are over-reacting. Yes, I agree this is important, and yes, I agree that the answers so far have been inadequate. But I also think the people who represent us are actually working on it, rather than stonewalling us. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:49, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
This is all a matter of morale. What is the chance we believe they are genuinely working toward a decision to listen to the community? What is the chance we believe that they know they have decided to give another non-response, and they are waiting until as many people as they can manage have gotten bored of waiting and given up hope and slumbered off, before making it? Wnt (talk) 00:22, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, that's a very good point. I hope that it's entirely clear that the community is not going to get distracted from this. And I think it's reasonable to consider it a lost cause to get a better answer from any of the persons who have repeatedly given us corporate-speak answers. And it's clear that, within the subset of the community that is active in these discussions, nerves have gotten frayed, which is something that WMF ought to care about. I wasn't clear enough about it in my earlier comment, but I see nothing wrong with asking about a time frame, and nothing wrong with expressing profound dissatisfaction with what we have heard so far. I just don't like the idea – at least not yet – of making ultimatums, nor do I think we should ABF about ArbCom or Doc James. When we get to the stage of those people coming back and saying WMF are not cooperating with them, then that's the right time for more drastic action. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:13, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Some of the supposed 'reduction in activity' here is more likely to be people waiting to see what statements are forthcoming from ArbCom and the WMF Board. Once that has happened, the anger in the community over this (which is real and is not going away despite what some are saying) may turn in certain directions. If ArbCom do not stand up for the community, then the community has the power to change the arbitration policy, disband the current ArbCom (with no reflection on the current members) and elect a new ArbCom that truly represents the feelings of the community on this matter and empowered to transmit that message to the WMF. That may be the strongest signal possible to send to the WMF, short of the strike and/or redirect all behavioural matters to the T&S email address options. There are sufficient numbers of people (well over the required 100) to make these changes. For whatever reason, ArbCom are not seeing the very real danger they are in here, of either being disempowered by the WMF or ejected by the community. Carcharoth (talk) 11:00, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Acknowledging the ping. Unfortunately there's nothing I can add to what's already been said. As an individual user of the site I have had no further response from Jan to the email I mentioned on this page some days past. Personal emails I've had as a member of the Committee have mostly been from other users of the site in support of the proposal for the requested ArbCom case to be a forum for a discussion between enwiki and WMF, though there have been conspiracy theory emails as well, which I have read, but not responded to. I suspect other Committee members have received similar. People here are aware that there was a phone call discussion between some members of the Committee and Jan - as reported above the contents of that discussion are still being chewed over. As it was a private meeting, at this stage we cannot indicate what was discussed without agreement from those involved in the discussion. When I looked at the email list a few minutes ago, there are proposals for summarising what was said, but no agreement as yet. My feeling, as an individual on the Committee but not as a representative of the Committee, ie, my purely personal feeling, is that the Committee is caught in a difficult position, and I'm not entirely clear what our role here is or should be. What everyone agrees is that there should be some form of dialogue between enwiki and WMF. Where there are differences in thought is in the exact nature of that dialogue. I feel this is not just about Fram, nor just about Office Actions, but about the relationship between enwiki and WMF going forward. However, whatever anyone here on enwiki thinks and agrees, any discussion is entirely subject to agreement and involvement from representatives of WMF. I am not sure how much the WMF are monitoring this page. Nor am I sure how effective or helpful gestures of civil disobedience would be, though I quite understand the passion that propels such ideas. I feel the same passions and frustrations. My suggestion (again, I stress, as an individual member of this community) would be for folks to communicate directly to WMF. Not rudely or aggressively, but in the same spirit of creative humanist endeavour that propelled this community to make Wikipedia in the first place. If everyone, instead of posting here, wrote a polite email to people in WMF explaining how they feel about this situation, and how they feel that what is needed right now is open dialogue between the community and WMF as to how we can better work together, that might achieve something. From various things I have read recently that have been linked here about the Foundation's proposals for our "toxic" community, I suspect that there has been a fix in the Foundation on the negative aspects of the community. I think it is time we showed that we are not entirely toxic, but that we are people who care passionately for creating a free encyclopedia that is comprehensive, trustworthy and reliable. And that, above all, we welcome open and honest discussion. If there is evidence of toxicity in our community we would welcome that being pointed out so we can deal with it. Openly, honestly, and fairly. SilkTork (talk) 16:09, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
    @SilkTork: A simple question: who do you email? Jan? ca@? --Rschen7754 18:18, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
I would suggest using this page [1] as a starting point. It might help to cross-reference with the flow chart - File:Trust and Safety Office action workflow.png = to better target those who may have some influence or interest in the matter. I will copy this message to a new section as I think it may have got lost in all the text that appears on this page. SilkTork (talk) 22:06, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I see evidence of toxicity in our community on this very page (and its archives). I see bludgeoning, personal attacks, piling onto people with opposing points of view, almost doxing (though most of it was off wiki), and in the midst of all that, a bit of constructive conversation. – Levivich 19:18, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't think it appropriate to see this page alone as representative of the enwiki community. I think the whole of Wikipedia is what represents us best, and not just the articles, but also our guidelines, such as Wikipedia:Assume good faith, and projects such as Wikipedia:Teahouse. I see a community which has not only created the world's most popular encyclopedia, but an entire system to ensure that the encyclopedia, which remains open to all to contribute, is well written and reliable, and the rules which govern how the encyclopedia is written, and which topics are allowed, are fair and open and which can be challenged and amended at any time, meaning the project and the rules remain fluid and progressive. The task before us would seem almost impossible given the tendency of teenagers, people with an agenda, and malcontents to try to sabotage or undermine what we do on an hourly basis, but is achieved through the positive spirit and supportive camaraderie of the community. Wikipedia is one of mankind's greatest achievements, made even greater by knowing that it has been made communally by willing volunteers who all have an equal say in what happens, and where we vote on everything. And this has been done without external assistance, including that of the Foundation which was created two years after Wikipedia was founded, by which time we had nearly 6 million articles, and our policy and guidelines looked this this: [2]. The idea of being respectful and avoiding personal attacks was already established. So, I hear what you're saying about strained behaviour in these strained circumstances, but put that into context of what we have achieved and continue to achieve, and also put it into context of why people are angry. SilkTork (talk) 22:06, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • There's clearly a lot of unproductive gnashing of teeth here, but this is a bit of an unusual situation. Beyond that, while I absolutely agree that there's toxicity on Wikipedia and we could do more to stem it and enforce WP:CIVIL, I'm extremely skeptical of the ability of T&S to do so effectively on a community of this size using the approach they're taking here - they seem to be taking the approach Facebook or Twitter or YouTube is taking for moderating their platforms (a moderation system using professional, non-community moderators that makes final, unappealable decisions based on anonomyous reports from within a walled silo, so to speak.) And all else aside that sort of system has a very poor track record on large social-media-ish communities due to scaling poorly and providing so little transparency; Wikipedia has its issues, but I would still say that our moderation and conflict-resolution system is better than the others I mentioned. Changing Wikipedia's culture will require working with the community. That's why I've said that if they want to set dictates from above (which is their call and may, yes, be necessary), what they should do is something akin to what was done with WP:BLP - give the community an ultimatium of "you have to do better on this", be a bit specific about what "better" means, and then give us a chance to hash out and enforce stricter policies to represent that. We're capable of self-moderation, but we need to know, specifically, the standard they want to hold us to so we can adjust our policies to match. And this assumes that that is the problem at all - if SilkTork, who knows more about the situation, says they have the impression that that's the case, I'm incined to believe it, but the WMF's public statements have been frustratingly vague. If they want harassment to be treated more strictly on Wikipedia, or for there to be safer ways to send in complaints about it or whatever, the first step ought to be to convey that to the community rather than to throw a bunch of random top-down solutions at us with no community involvement. If we completely fail, then they can do it themselves, but it feels like working with the community hasn't really been tried yet. --Aquillion (talk) 20:15, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Worm That Turned, I offer the following middle ground solution:
  1. WMF rescinds its prior ruling and refrains from such rulings in the future without allowing ArbCom to assess.
  2. At the same time WMF enacts a suspension of Fram's privileges until such time as ArbCom can rule on the behavior. (much like pretrial confinement)
This would still allow for a review of the behavior in question while curtailing all activities of Fram. It would also allow ArbCom to adjudicate the proceedings, provide a check against such power, and fix the gap in autonomy/independence. In no way does this revoke WMF's roles or prevent them from acting independently, should the need arise. By skipping over ArbCom in the manner they chose, they enacted a solution that was incomplete. IMHO, if the behavior in question was as bad as they say it was, a 1 year ban is inappropriately low. Likewise, keeping the Admin bit makes even less sense.
Please respond if/when able. Buffs (talk) 17:14, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Next Steps

At this point, I think it's pretty clear that a substantive comment is not coming in the near future. In my mind, it's time to start exploring in an organized way what "drastic and obvious measures" should specifically look like.

I'm floating 3 principles, and a concrete proposal here so that we can quickly find the appropriate course of action. The hope is that we don't get a lot of staunch "Supports" and "Opposes" at this stage, but rather generate insightful commentary to shape a proposal that we can formally discuss.

  1. The community should not, in any organized way, ignore BLP violations or copyright violations. Obviously, we're all volunteers here, and we can't force anyone to do the cleanup, but these are the categories of problems that have legal implications and shouldn't be ignored because we're mad.
  2. The community should not actively make articles worse. No inserting vandalism. There shouldn't be a cleanup after this is sorted.
  3. With the possible exception of the main page, the protest should stay out of reader-facing space. This is still an internal squabble, and we don't need the nuclear option of advertising it to every reader who clicks on any Wikipedia article. This means that things like full blackouts and reader-facing banners are overkill at this stage.

At the same time, this is a protest, and a protest is meant to disrupt. Here is my best idea on how to do that:

  • Freeze the main page. Keep it in its current state, and allow it to fall out of date. The symbolism behind that is that volunteers are the force that keeps the encyclopedia moving, and this conflict is having a very negative effect on the volunteer community. I know The Rambling Man has suspended his errors page for this mess already. It also is difficult for the WMF to reverse. What are they going to do, have a staffer manually learn and perform the processes that make the main page tick? That seems both unlikely and inconvenient. It also gives the WMF a progressive clock - the sooner they fix this, the less disruption is caused. Once the main page is actively out of date, we can put a small link at the bottom to an explanatory page. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:38, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Tazerdadog, They already have a progressive clock. The damage adds up every single day. We lost good admins today, and we're likely going to lose more. I'm afraid that either we're in some sort of a 'hot potato' situation where no one wants to make a decision in either direction - or, possibly more likely, they're hoping that after a while we'll give up.
    I agree, this would turn the heat up a couple notches however. SQLQuery me! 02:01, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • So far as next steps go, I did have a concrete proposal in mind. It has the additional advantage that it will take some time before any action is actually taken, so if it's true that this could still be worked out, that can be done. My proposal would, first, be to use the above ideas of a sitenotice to communicate the intent to put pressure on the WMF. Every editor who has participated in this discussion will be invited as well. On a specified date, the editors who agree to the proposal will begin to report every violation of the terms of use to Trust & Safety. And a lot of things are: Vandalism is against the TOU. Copyright violations are against the TOU. BLP violations, spamming/advertising, suspected undisclosed paid editing, block or ban evasion? All a TOU violation. Send them a report each and every time one of those things happens. Even if it's already been handled by someone not participating, make sure they get a report, so T&S can make sure the rubes didn't screw it up. I say we let T&S handle all of it, and see just how much work the volunteers who have kept this project running for nearly two decades deal with every day. If they think they can do it better than we do, let's send them a message: Prove it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:26, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Pragmatically, this may be a way forward, simply because we don't need consensus to allow people to send emails. One possibility to turn up the pressure would be to expect WMF to answer every email, and when they (inevitably) don't, send a followup asking for a response. --Rschen7754 03:19, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Freezing the mainpage does NOT acclish anything. Putting a statement on it regarding the situation will not accomplish anything. WMF will replace it with a neutral text, reprotect it saying it is an office action, and any community member that uses their admin bit to revert them will be reverted and desysopped for a certain amount of time. If we are strong enough in the end it will result in just the only thing they feel: loss of so much community that the encyclopedia is not maintained anymore. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:32, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes, they could do that, but I doubt they would given the further backlash it would cause. --Rschen7754 03:45, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
@Rschen7754: you think, they don't seem impressed at he moment. (some admins already stopped updating the templates behind main page, we lost 8 admins). I mean, I fully support the idea, even if one would suggest to add a banner or similar. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:04, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

I think "freezing" the Main Page doesn't really do much in this situation, unless you actually protect/delete/whatever every process that updates it, but that would be tantamount to disruption as well. The real problem is the next part of your plan: to add a notice as to why it's out of date. Most of anyone who cares about this is already here discussing it. The average reader will read the notice and will wonder the following things: "Why do I care about Fram when he's the accused party, not the victim?" and "Why do I care about internal Wikipedia governance and how their dispute resolution is handled?" and then skip the page to the content they came here for. The only ones who will care about it being out-of-date are editors who will make changes to fix it if they're able to. Something I want someone to do is explain this situation to someone who doesn't edit Wikipedia but knows of Wikipedia's existence (a relative, a friend, an online friend) and gauge their reaction. My guess is 1) it takes about forty-five minutes just explaining the fine detail and the fifty hoops you jump through editing here to get to this point and 2) they won't be impressed with you at the end when it boils down to "one person was accused of something we don't have all the facts on and banned by the website owners, but no one who uses the website agrees with the website owners having that much power and want to do it themselves". Ridiculous. — Moe Epsilon 09:12, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

It is not us who need to explain. Having material (even only the mainpage) deteriorate should make readers either not coming back (i.e. funds drying up), or the readers should ask WMF for answers. Let WMF explain your friend why the volunteers fail to maintain the site. The optional banner could read 'due to untransparant actions of the site owners (WMF), our volunteers do not feel to maintain (the front page/the content on this page). Please direct your questions to ca@ for clarification'. In the meantime, you can direct the wrong things you find to the same email. You are under no obligation to repair it or explain it, and I don't think WMF is currently in the right position to lecture you about the ethics. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:06, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

No confidence vote

What about a good old fashioned no confidence vote? Have a short statement stating that, in light of recent events, the undersigned have no confidence in the WMF Trust & Safety team and urge them to take urgent steps to remedy the position. WJBscribe (talk) 11:26, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Was that not tried here before a bot archived it because no-one had added to it for two days? I do think a proper summary of the situation needs to be written, which will take time. My view is that one of the strongest possible signals to send to the WMF would be to disband the current ArbCom and elect a new one. This depends on whether the current ArbCom are capable of doing what they need to do. Carcharoth (talk) 11:32, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
My suspicion is that a no confidence vote would garner increased levels of support now that it has become evident that no satisfactory response is forthcoming. Lepricavark (talk) 12:14, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I thought that too. People may have lost confidence for a number of different reasons, rather than all taking issue with the same elements, and we need a statement broad enough that it can be endorsed by the maximum number of editors. WJBscribe (talk) 15:15, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

New Constitution and then...

WMF has a long history of incompetence and power grabs in some areas. Structural fundamental flaws underly this. Board-appointed board members is one example. Being able to be tried by a secret clan in response to a secret complaint, a trial which you can't participate in, and where nobody ever even tells you what you supposedly did wrong is another example. Them being able to build themselves an ivory tower is nother. Let's write a new constitution and ratify it. If WMF goes rogue and ignores, it we tell the world about the problems and tell them to send their wiki money to a new foundation instead which would then take over and operate by the constitution.North8000 (talk) 12:47, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Another proposal for work stoppage

No questions have been answered, no changes are being made, no mistakes admitted, no mistaken decisions reversed, and our alleged representatives on the WMF board have been absolutely impotent, with Arbcom not a whit better. It's time to start focusing on direct action to move WMF... Two things come to mind: (1) If WMF is so all-fired hot on micromanaging this site, I propose letting them micromanage it. All administrators to stand down from admnistrative duties, including but not limited to vandalism reversal, account name violations, page protection, sock puppetry investigation, COI and paid editing investigation, copyright violation investigation, deletion debates, and all noticeboard activities. If it is auxiliary work, it is shut down until this situation is fixed... Go ahead and build an encyclopedia, but leave the maintenance of the site to the Eissfeldten in San Francisco, and may they have fun with it. (2) Fundraising happens in November-December. If things aren't fixed by then, time for a big, coordinated fuss in the mainstream media with a view to shaving multimillions from the donation skim off our labor. Additional suggestions? Carrite (talk) 05:19, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

In particular, the bots need to be shut off. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 05:21, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
You will need widespread consensus to carry out such protest actions effectively and I for one will oppose them for now, at least until our elected representatives, including Doc James and Jimbo Wales and ArbCom, have reported back to us. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Nah, the bot operators just need to stop maintaining them. The bits of string holding the servers together will do the work for them. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 05:29, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, Cullen, but I think it's a bit unconvincing to suggest that the continued silence doesn't mean anything, and that we just need to be patient. Doc James has skipped town to go "hiking for a few days". Prior to that he could literally not even confirm, upon direct questioning, that the ban was for an actual violation, instead claiming that he had no answers. It's unconvincing that he, or Jimbo, or Arbcom, still have not figured out what the hell happened, and if any one user involved has deduced that there was an objective ToU violation, they would surely be immediately forthcoming with that information, rather than joining the Foundation in their wall of silence. This reeks of a coverup. ~Swarm~ {sting} 06:59, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
One idea would be to fix the vandalism but refer the vandal to WMF by pinging Jan, and also, so that there may be oversight by board members, also pinging our community-designated board members and Jimbo each time. We should not be undermining Jan's paid labor by providing it free.--Wehwalt (talk) 09:49, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
We also have three paid "Community Engagement" staff and eleven paid "Community Relations" staff, all of whom have been distinctly absent from this collapse of community engagement and community relations. If you click on their photos, there's an "email this person" link on each of their staff profile pages. ‑ Iridescent 09:59, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
That Foundation staff page is horrible. There is something very odd in how it loads. It's slow and scrolls as it loads. Half the linked profiles don't actually tell you anything, but hey, the staff get to pose and look cool in photos. It's not a page to actually either help you find someone, or know what someone does if you do find them. DuncanHill (talk) 20:53, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
@Wehwalt: what is the use to ping Jan (or Jimbo ..) if you have reverted the vandalism? You expect a 'thank you!' letter? They're likely just ignoring it. Better would be that you send the vandalism to them, so they can revert and talk to the editor who is vandalisingharassing our encyclopedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:48, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
It would be to deal with the editor in question, since they have taken on that function. I think that what I wrote does speak for itself. And I don't want to pull a Doc James on the community but I'm probably not going to be available until late this afternoon as I will be driving, should you need a reply.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:51, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
But one of the few things we do know here is that T&S consider maintenance and tagging to constitute "harassment" of the vandal/spammer. I would suggest "I am concerned that if I revert this vandalism/spam/copyright violation you would consider it harassment, so am forwarding it to you to discuss the appropriate action to take" as a suitable cover notice. ‑ Iridescent 10:55, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Ah. I think the idea would be that, if there is to be action, enough people would participate to provide suitable cover, or it would not happen. And with that, I must go for now.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:58, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • diff. I will adhere to above request for an indefinite time. I am sorry, anyone who is commenting here with 'we have to wait until Jan, Jimbo, Doc, the ArbCom etc. have come back to us': we have requested answers from them for a long time, and we have been absolutely stonewalled. ArbCom clearly has not much more information than what we have (if any) suggesting that they are stonewalled as well. No-one we could possibly trust has even given any idea on which way WMF wants to go, whether things were (un)reasonable, or what timeline there is on it. And the longer trusted editors take, the less I am going to trust the answer. We have lost 8 admins over this (which already will have some effect on the maintenance of this site), this just needs to be a growing movement. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:48, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't know what's up with the delay. On one hand, if WMF Board was going to give us crap like this I think they would have by now. On the other, it is disconcerting to see admin after admin resign. Either they are endlessly arguing about the matter or they are hoping it will suddenly die down. --Rschen7754 06:00, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • For the record, I would stop short of imposing drastic, self-inflicted harm to the project. We'd ultimately be damaging the credibility of Wikipedia and ourselves. However, that's not to say we should allow them to get away with endless delays until this dies down. There are users involved who are directly accountable to us, and we should not let them forget that should they side with the WMF in a coverup. ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:28, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I did look at that. Apparently we've switched from two- to three-year terms for community-designated board members so they aren't up for election until next year. Perhaps James will put off answering questions then on the grounds he is going windsailing (one of the few remaining excuses in the book). Or perhaps he'll take another hike. Probably a large part of the community would tell him to, given the opportunity.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:31, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
All administrators to stand down from admnistrative duties, including but not limited to vandalism reversal, account name violations, page protection, sock puppetry investigation, COI and paid editing investigation, copyright violation investigation, deletion debates, and all noticeboard activities. Way ahead of you. I don't want to ever again contribute even a single drop to the WMF's gravy train. Fish+Karate 09:39, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Yep. I'm not doing any more mainspace work until we get a satisfying and credible answer to the question, "what the hell are the WMF up to?". And I'm certainly not giving any more money to their fundraisers either. Reyk YO! 10:12, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Folks want to take direct action, write firm letters of complaint, or run a huge request for comment, great. But avoid using Stonewall as a rallying cry, that historic event that started a literal lifetime of protests for equality, deserves more respect than to be used as a disposable label for an inside baseball debate. --Fæ (talk) 10:01, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
It's a reference to Stonewalling—nothing to do with either the bar or the riots. ‑ Iridescent 10:16, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
How odd, thanks for the info. In the context of protest, it seems automatic to think of Stonewall. If others are promoting a protest activity, I suggest they imagine of another way of phrasing it, as I doubt I'm that much of an outlier reader. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:54, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I changed the thread title to something more generic. There just isn't any reason in my mind to make this comparison, or to even suggest that we might be connecting our bit of outrage with a well-known landmark historic event, especially since its 60th anniversary is in a few days. It just doesn't help the cause here. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:19, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
It's the 50th anniversary. Also, I'm pretty sure the term 'stonewall' for WMF's tactics significantly pre-dated the Stonewall riots. Enigmamsg 14:30, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
It dates back at least to its use by Stonewall Jackson as a general term for a particular type of tactic. Tying it to the Stonewall riots and claiming that's its origin (or is perceived thusly by most readers of English) is silly. Grandpallama (talk) 16:38, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2008 November 14#Origin of the verb 'To stonewall'. Deor (talk) 18:37, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • At the end of the day, they are the ones with the big bucks and financial incentive to protect their paying jobs, so I have little hope anything of value will come of this. The Foundation has been constantly encroaching on the community for years now, and their actions over the years to engage us (Oliver as liason???) has been pitiful. Not trying to be dramatic, but it really does feel like they look down upon us, mere volunteers and the paid employees are the really important people. It's one of the reasons I've gotten less involved as of late, as every interaction I've had with the WMF has been an exercise in being talked down to. It would be interested to be a fly on the wall and hear how they really talk about the community in private. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 10:50, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    • WMF management have profiles on the most active volunteers, so they know what to think of you, and me. I discovered this for myself when Gardner was WMF CEO and I was chair of WMUK. Search the wikimedia-l archives and you'll find WMF Legal officially denying me access to the report(s) they hold on me. They have never denied that reports exist. --Fæ (talk) 10:59, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
      • They may have options on you or I but that doesn't mean they give a damn what you think. WMF has turned into a cash cow that has different priorities than the community. Most overlap, but not all, and most do put themselves above us. This is not based on this one incident, but on a series of them. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 11:06, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Again I have to say many organisations do this, for the precise reason of "well you did not deny it last time now you are, ergo last time it was true". Say nothing and no one can read anything into it (well they can try, but it has no logical basis) respond just once and ever more what you say is judged by that. I also have to say that every organisation I have even worked for (paid or unpaid) has always treated it workers according to their pay grade. Why should Wikipedia be any different, because its the internet?Slatersteven (talk) 11:03, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm assuming most of those other organisations you worked for didn't have "We solve problems better together. For it to work well, each of us needs to be honest, accountable, and transparent to one another.", "We are there for one another; we support one another through life’s ups and downs, our mistakes, our successes. We challenge one another in service of our personal and professional development.", "We strive for empathy, we accept no less than civility.", "If we do not understand what the other is feeling, we are still open-minded to where they are coming from." and "With curiosity and humility, we learn from our mistakes as well as our successes." hard-wired into their written principles, though. (Connoisseurs of West Coast touchy-feely corporate babble should cherish that page.) ‑ Iridescent 11:10, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm reminded of Animal Farm. "No animal may sleep in a bed......with sheets". Just waiting for the rules to change. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 11:13, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
If you mean "have written rules which say what they can and cannot do" yes (in fact I was once used as a means of breaching such rules, in a way not wholly unanalagous to this situation), hell we even have laws that say what they must do (and yes I was one of my other tasks has been to enable a company the breach those laws). They still find ways round them. Yes they all pay lip service to ideals they never uphold (often very publicly).Slatersteven (talk) 11:20, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

If you think WMF is micromanaging, striking isn't the best course of action - they'll never notice. Submit requests to investigate sockpuppets. Ask them to handle speedy deletions. In particular, since it was mentioned as a thing Fram handled problematically "even if [their] concerns have been valid", ask T&S to handle copyvios.

On that note in particular, since we can be banned for doing it wrong, I'd like proper guidance on how to do it right. Preferably a training module and a flowchart of appropriate actions. Guettarda (talk) 15:47, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I winder, what level of support would this actually get? And if it is admnis (rather then just edds) all it means is more work for them when it is over, after all all that stored up trouble will still have to be dealt with. Thius does rather smack of biting of your nose to spite your face ("the only way to save Wikipedia is to destroy it, now start the bombing").Slatersteven (talk) 16:06, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

It's better than simply not doing these tasks and not telling anyone about them. But more to the point, copyvios and sockpuppetry are TOS violations, as are things like PAID violations. If they want to handle those tasks, maybe we should let them. Guettarda (talk) 16:24, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Have they said they want to handle them? that is not my impression of what is. Trying to break Wikipedia to make a point (and that is what this is) is (ironically) a violation of policy. It also plays into the impression this is less about protecting Wikipedia then it is about protecting mates. If you withdraw labour (either secretly or openly) all you will do is play into the hands of those who say the problem is amdinship and arbcom, and edds who stack the system to protect their vision of the project. As I said all you are going to do is store up more trouble for when you come off your breaks, not only workload but the inevitability that a new batch of admins and arbcom members will have to have been appointed. Ones who are not only not part of your clique, but whose whole alligence is to WMF. I have said above (more then once) part of the problem (assuming it is a problem, and not in fact a solution) is the changing demographics of Wikipedia, and that is only going to be hastened by withdrawing labour.Slatersteven (talk) 17:09, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
@Slatersteven: there is a distinct difference between breaking wikipedia, and not making sure that the encyclopedia doesn't break. But making sure the encyclopedia doesn't break may result in you getting banned by WMF. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:12, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I disagree, for me the issue is intent, not how you achieve it.Slatersteven (talk) 18:15, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I think we need to take gradual yet escalating approach to any work actions. As inviting as turning off the bots or sabotaging the next fundraiser may be, either will result in a mess which will fall on us to clean up. Then there is the issue that not all Wikipedians are eager to go as far as either of these actions. And why do something as extreme as these if we can at least get the Foundation to talk to us with less effort? So I propose we set up a series of actions, starting with modest acts & working our way to the more extreme responses. For example:

  • We start with what has been proposed by some of the leading voices here: wait for ArbCom to release a statement, & engage in a letter-writing campaign to any & all WMF staff in an attempt to get them to discuss this matter -- per SilkTork's suggestion above. We continue this for a few weeks.
  • If we feel we are not getting results at this stage, we begin to discontinue maintenance work on Wikipedia. One of the first steps might be to shut down the entire dispute resolution process & forward it all to T&S. And I mean everything: every squabble, obvious trolling, etc. that appears on WP:AN/I goes to them; in fact, we replace WP:AN & WP:AN/I with pages containing the email addresses of the T&S staff. Let them deal with the finger-pointing, the petty bickering, the drama. (Which might be a good thing: less drama, more time to work on content.)
  • Next step would be to stop performing the non-automated maintenance. No more New Page Review, no more deleting pages, etc. Now we are getting into the space where we'll have a mess when this is all over.
  • After this, the next step is to shut down the bots. By my rough calculations, this will be 2-3 months from now, at the earliest. This is where each of us takes a gut-check, & decide whether to fight, to acquiesce, or simply leave.
  • The last step will come in November/December when the Foundation has their annual fundraiser. That is when we volunteers launch our own counter-campaign explaining why people should not give. The message at that point will be quite clear: none of the money is really going to help keep Wikipedia -- or the other projects -- going, only to pay the salaries of Foundation functionaries who have proven they don't care about the projects. By that point actions will only strengthen this message.

I'll be honest: I hope this doesn't even get as far as replacing WP:AN/I with Jan Eissenfeldt's email address -- although it might be fun if it went that far or a little further. But if we take this step by step -- rather than one massive & extreme motion -- I feel that this will strengthen us as a community, & those who are wavering or siding with the WMF will solidify with us. Maybe, if this all fails, we will end up with a core of people strong enough to make a fork work. -- llywrch (talk) 17:11, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

"When they go low, we go high". I think that should be the guiding principle in any sort of protest. --Rschen7754 18:17, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Who is meant to use T&S and how and why

There is a question here that needs answering, namely who is entitled to use the WMF's T&S process if they are feeling harassed during the course of their editing or other on-wiki and off-wiki activities, and whether T&S are able to act impartially in the process. My concern here is that people in positions of trust and responsibility are using the T&S process and the cloak of anonymity it affords them to avoid the transparency need to be able to trust those in positions of responsibility, and that complaints made by those in the following positions may be given preferential treatment (even if not intended). Given that, should the following be afforded the use of the T&S process, or should their concerns be handled a different way using a different process?

  • Various functionaries (e.g. checkusers and oversighters) making complaints about how they have been treated while carrying out their work
  • Arbitrators making complaints about how they have been treated while engaging in arbitration work
  • Stewards making complaints about how they have been treated while carrying out their work
  • WMF employees making complaints about how they have been treated while engaging in work for the WMF
  • WMF Board members making complaints about how they have been treated while engaging in their work as Board members
  • All the above, if they edit using a personal (community) account and wish to make a complaint from that account about how they have been treated

As an example, if a WMF employee raised concerns with their line manager or people in the HR department about how their treatment on-wiki was affecting their ability to do their job, should they or HR legitimately be able to use the T&S process to anonymously raise their concerns, or should it be handled a different way? Should an arbitrator be able to use T&S to anonymously raise concerns about an on-wiki comment made about them as an arbitrator or ArbCom as a group? Should WMF Board members be allowed to make an anonymous complaint to T&S if on-wiki criticism is made about actions they have taken? Compare all these with a complaint made by an ordinary editor (the vast majority of cases) and consider whether T&S can act impartially in such cases, especially if they work with, or for, or know the people making the complaints. Are there checks and balances in the T&S process to avoid such conflicts of interest arising? Carcharoth (talk) 14:22, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

As most of us didn't even know T&S existed before their recent actions, I do wonder indeed who it is that is behind the alleged allegations. I say alleged allegations as we actually don't really know if any allegations were made, still less what they may have been. All we have is the action. DuncanHill (talk) 14:25, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I knew they existed, and was on several of the monthly ArbCom calls with them, but so far as I knew, they only handled situations such as child protection or threats of harm (where law enforcement contact might be required), or massive cross-wiki abuse (and I figured the stewards generally handled that). I had no idea they were planning to handle run-of-the-mill issues like disputes between editors, and from all indications, the current ArbCom was caught off-guard by that too. Seems like something they might have wanted to discuss in advance. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Stewards can only handle so much in terms of cross-wiki abuse. A sockmaster with 100 accounts, stewards can just lock all the accounts. A user who is blocked from one wiki but who has thousands of contributions on another? That's hard, because it infringes on the community global bans process. Sometimes stewards will lock an account with a lot of edits that is blocked indefinitely on most/all of the wikis they are active on, but it very well might get overturned on appeal. (Stewards are not a global ArbCom). --Rschen7754 18:14, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
According to File:Community_Engagement_-_Maps_of_teams_and_workflows.svg "Maintain Quick and Public Response" is one of the stops on the Trust & Safety tube. DuncanHill (talk) 22:06, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

No good is coming out of this

I can imagine some possible scenarios.

1. Suppose that Fram really did engage in some egregiously bad behavior, and the victim later decides to give up her anonymity and talk to the media about it. Fram's defenders will look really bad as a result. "We didn't know Fram had done that" wouldn't be a particularly good defense if the victim points out, "Well, the Foundation told you that what Fram had done was bad enough to ban him for a year. Why would you defend him without even knowing what he had been banned for?"

2. Suppose that no further statement is forthcoming from the Foundation or the victim, and Fram serves out his one-year ban and decides to return to the English Wikipedia and run for adminship. Given that the community members on enwiki who care about this issue appear to be largely pro-Fram, I would guess he would likely be returned to adminship. (I suspect that the vast majority of editors on English Wikipedia are not aware of this situation at all, but those who care will presumably be around for the RfA.) This would likely increase the hostility of the Foundation toward our community's self-governance. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 17:50, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

I believe the Foundation has already pretty clearly showed their hostility toward it. Now, I agree there aren't any great outcomes here, but rolling over and letting them do it is not a good ending either. The best outcome would be if they'd sent it to ArbCom to begin with, but we've already crossed that bridge. But "Oh, they might become hostile to us if we shoot back" is not a very convincing rationale. WMF committed the hostile act here, not this community. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:58, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
@Metropolitan90: I guess that you have not really understood what we are all so upset about. I, for one, will condemn WMF's behaviour in this case even if they are right. You're right though that nothing good comes of this. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:03, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Fram wouldn't be able to return without every single movement he makes being scrutinised by whoever reported him or by T&S. This is in effect a indefinite ban, especially as neither Fram nor the community has been told anything worthwhile as to what he did and how to correct it, or where the policies about harassment are deficient and how to correct them. This will keep happening and happening. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 18:08, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I havent written one word in support of Fram because I have no idea what he is even accused of doing. If somebody were to come forward and say Fram did X, Y, and Z on-wiki and those actions constitute harassment and here are the diffs I would listen to them respectfully and make my own judgment on it (though that judgment wouldnt really matter that much). What I am opposed to is this idea that we have a secret police that uses secret evidence in secret trials for matters that fundamentally are on-wiki issues. If Fram harassed a user on-wiki then the diffs are still here (assuming they havent been oversighted, and I understand that has already been verified to be the case). If he harassed somebody off-wiki, which I doubt as I have no reason to believe he is lying to us, then fine, say that already and I bet most of the people here will move on. Why would you defend him without even knowing what he had been banned for? Because I dont know what he is banned for, and as far as I can tell neither does he. Does it not bother you that an unappealable ban can be issued without even telling somebody what they are presumed to be guilty of? Does it not bother you that an unappealable ban can be issued without a person even having a token opportunity to defend himself? I dont even know if Ive ever come across Fram, but my objection to this has nothing to do with Fram. I object to a Trust & Safety team that appears untrustworthy, that claims an absolute power over this community, that explicitly provides no recourse for an unjustified ban. What protects any user from a T&S ban that is not based on any actual misconduct but a personal beef with one of the members on the team? Do they have any conflict of interest policies? Any way of enforcing them? Any way of knowing if one is at play? As far as I can tell the answer to each of those questions is no. So without knowing why Fram was banned I feel completely comfortable objecting to this entire process. nableezy - 18:12, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Sorry for the ambiguity of my last comment. I meant that if WMF saw that we were giving adminship back to Fram, that would lead to WMF/T&S banning more English Wikipedia admins, since they can apparently find evidence of hostile attitudes in even innocuous edits like tagging an article with {{primary sources}} and {{third-party}} templates. By that standard, any admin could be banned. I'm not saying that we should roll over and play dead for the Foundation. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 18:20, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
And as far as something truly bad coming out about Fram, there's a much better answer to that: "Fram's on-wiki edits were scrutinized and none were found to be particularly inappropriate. In conversation with the WMF, members of the community repeatedly asked whether something besides Fram's editing had been involved, and that question was not answered, even in a general sense without revealing detail. Given this, we acted to the best of our ability based upon the information we had, and the confusion caused is one main reason we generally oppose closed-door processes." Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:40, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Also, Fram has said very explicitly that he did not do anything off-wiki that could possibly be applicable here, and the communications he received from T&S that he made public indicate that all of the concerns were on-site at en-wiki. If he is being truthful about that, then it eliminates the possibility that he did something awful off-site that we don't know about. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:21, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
It's still impossible to reconcile "awful off-site" with "one year ban".--Wehwalt (talk) 19:42, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Ding ding ding. Actually, if the WMF wanted to do something quietly they could have just globally banned him indefinitely. Think most people would have shrugged and assumed something awful happened off-site and left it alone. This is not me giving them ideas hopefully. nableezy - 19:58, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Of course there is a potentially good outcome of this (completely independent of what eventually happens to Fram and his accusers). A good outcome would be an WMF internal redesign of the handling of such cases by T&S as well as a redesign of the community processes and responsibilities. A redesign that provides for more transparency and a clear assignment of responsibilities for WMF and community.--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:17, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

  • The OP misses the point. I didn't resign my admin bit as a sign of solidarity with Fram. Frankly, we don't like each other, but we manage to work together because we both can be professional. I have no idea if his transgressions warranted a ban, but that isn't the issue. My complaint is that it should have been handled by Arb, if needed in private, and the WMF shouldn't have simply imposed a one year ban on a long time editor and admin and just told us "he deserved it". That is insufficient. The problem is how the WMF has gradually grown to show less and less respect to the greater community and they are all too willing to impose upon us, yet unwilling to show the same accountability we would expect from admin here. This was just the final straw for many of us. My user page explains more. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 10:54, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

More bits bite the dust

Boing! said Zebedee and Dennis Brown have handed their tools in. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:12, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Extended content

Link: Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard. That brings us a total of 8 admin (and 1 non-admin) resignations. Names at WP:FRAMSUM. starship.paint (talk) 17:24, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard Lectonar ....I will refrain from elaborating, but unless we can see in the clear, please remove my bit. and GB fan (no reason stated) have resigned adminship. starship.paint (talk) 05:31, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom Vacancies

It seems that part of WMF motivation to get involved in policing en-wiki is that our ArbCom has been suffering from attrition and can't always get things done. It was mentioned that ArbCom was concerned about some of Fram's activities but this wasn't followed up properly because of lack of human resources.

Would it make sense to keep a list of community volunteers willing to serve as interim arbitrators so that vacancies are filled immediately when they occur? The elected members of ArbCom could pick whoever they think would be suitable from the list of volunteers. This way ArbCom would always remain at full power and be able to get things done. Jehochman Talk 12:50, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Sweet Lord no. Arbcom is a community-elected body. Granting arbitrators the power to arbitrarily (wordplay not intended) fill vacancies on the committee with whomever they feel like is a short road to dictatorship, especially given that the current committee seems to have no problem with repeatedly inventing powers for itself without (or against) community input. If there is an issue with attrition and vacancy on the committee, hold a special election to fill vacancies. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:09, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
What if a group of nominees were posted for a week or two of community comments. That way if there were serious, but unknown, problems with any candidate, there would be an opportunity to challenge them. This could operate like the process for selecting Checkusers and Oversighters. Jehochman Talk 13:18, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Better, but the process for selecting CU/OS is still pretty secretive. Even the candidates don't know why we are appointed (or why not), regardless of community comments. If they're only appointed to fill a vacancy until the next election, I'm fine with that. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:24, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Half way between the 2018 and 2019 elections, the committee has ten active members, two inactive and a vacancy. It was reduced in size from 15 to 13 a couple of years ago, do we need to reverse that, or maybe have a mid year by election if there is a resignation? My assumption is that ten is sufficient, provided they are sufficiently active, but I know from Arbs I have spoken to in the past that the activity level required is not insignificant. ϢereSpielChequers 13:11, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
We need more arbitrators because I keep hearing that they have trouble getting things done. Having extras would allow them to take breaks, avoid burnout, and prevent groupthink. A midyear election sounds good, but it would be a ton of work; I don't see it happening. I don't think having a minority of members be appointed as temporary fill ins would lead to dictatorship. At the next election they would be replaced by elected arbitrators. Jehochman Talk 13:16, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
IIRC that was part of the rationale for the numbers then. I don't think there has been a big reduction since. When I ran and served, I stated I'd be balancing content-work and arbitration, which I think gave me a more holistic perspective on everything here. I highly doubt it was this reason that WMF got involved Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:19, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
If we assume good faith, WMF got involved to try to improve things. (In America we have a joke: What are the nine scariest words in the English language? "I'm from the government. I'm here to help you.") They felt the need to help because we didn't make enough progress by ourselves. A more robust ArbCom might convince WMF that their help isn't needed here quite so much. Jehochman Talk 13:44, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Heh, I just don't think it had anything to do with the WMF thinking arbcom was overburdened. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:50, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I agree. Where does the suggestion that WMF thought ArbCom was overburdened come from? WJBscribe (talk) 13:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't think they thought ArbCom was overburdened. Rather, ArbCom has been overburdened. This has prevented us from making progress on the issue of incivility and harassment by vested contributors. WMF views the vested contributor problem as a major issue (alternatively called "toxic editing environment") and they are trying to "help" us solve it. If we do more to solve it ourselves, they feel less pressure to give us "help." Jehochman Talk 13:56, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Arbcom has made little progress on civility because the community is split about the topic, not because they have too much to do. Arb is supposed to be a reflection of the community, and the community is split about whether incivility is sanctionable or inevitable. In that respect, Arb has mirrored the larger community. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:03, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
and also about what is uncivil. I've also seen a distinction being made between incivility and harassment, in reference to Fram. Has anyone really argued that Fram was uncivil? Granted, the awful hostility-identification tool that has resurfaced in recent days claims to identify both incivility and "threats", but then it also fails abysmally in identifying either. Arbcom's apparent willingness to trust the WMF is a central issue, in my view, and therefore I would prefer new elections. But if we do try to use a quickly beefed-up Arbcom instead, let's be clear about identifying the supposed issue. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:15, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I've asked about interim elections, which is in the Arb Policy, to add arbitrators at WT:ACN. Mr Ernie (talk) 13:40, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Maybe we could streamline the election process. Perhaps a few former arbitrators would step up to serve for half a year. They would not have to deal with the learning curve as much. Jehochman Talk 13:41, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Just for reference, the next 2 vote getters who didn't make the cut in the 2018 elections, DGG and Drmies, are both former arbs (and both were in the top 3 for support votes). The addition of either of them, or both, to the committee would be very beneficial. Mr Ernie (talk) 13:48, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I would support that, rather than going through the rigamaroll of another election. We just did this six months ago and the data is still there for anybody who wants to inspect it. Jehochman Talk 13:58, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Agree. If a permanent fix is needed, we should introduce a mechanism where the closest runner(s)-up (if they got over a certain approval threshold) can be brought on mid-term to fill vacancies, perhaps at the request of the rest of Arbcom. Johnbod (talk) 14:02, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I think we should figure out the right size for ArbCom and then have "reserve" arbitrators who can step in if due to recusals/inactives the number drops below ready to fill in. I think right now we've got 2 active cases - at least one of which strikes me as very very demanding - and this monster case request/associated issues. I think we're asking a lot of a few people even with some people who'd been inactive becoming active for this. Have a wider pool so that arbs can live their lives but we have redundancy but seems like the best of both worlds - so in this case it would mean that DGG and Drmies would likely be active on some number of arb business. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:35, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

In a recent discussion about this (I forget where), Iridescent made the point that the fewer Arbs on the committee, the faster the committee can get its work done. Perhaps this is an opportunity to test the theory. – Levivich 14:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

  • I do not think that "lack of human resources" has anything to do with ArbCom's inaction on Fram. No, I can't elaborate on this due to my NDA. ~ Rob13Talk 14:30, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Plainly not what I said. The NDA covers everything discussed on arbcom-en, including any discussion of Fram, whether or not it had anything to do with the Foundation. All I said was that I don't think "lack of bodies" contributed a bit to ArbCom inaction on Fram. ~ Rob13Talk 17:44, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Well for goodness sake why even mention the NDA then? Your statement reads like "there's another reason for ArbCom's inaction apart from the lack of bodies, but I can't say what". Sheesh. Black Kite (talk) 23:34, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • What Rob and WTT said. I don't agree with Iridescent's statement about the fewer arbs the better, but the number of arbs had nothing to do with Fram. PMC and I are currently crawling through the Canadian Politics evidence and workshop, and it's a week-long process. And that's not even a complex case. It's just time consuming, and PMC has real life issues and I have tech issues at the moment, so it takes a while. Add the emails that fly fast and furious on this issue and the others, and the appeals, and the other emails about other issues, plus the on-wiki things, and being an arb takes a chunk of your day. Particularly with appeals, the more people we have to handle those, the better. Katietalk 18:31, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
It seems to me that two principles apply, The Peter Principle and Parkinson's law. For me therefore, the fewer the better. Leaky caldron (talk) 14:34, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I would think Hofstadter's law would be more accurate to the situation. To me it seems that a larger committee with more delegation to smaller groups of arbs would be able to work more efficiently, but that doesn't seem to be the way it works in practice. Every arb has a voice on every decision. There are probably issues that the committee handles which don't need participation from every member. I don't know what to suggest those are, though. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:54, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't that it is remotely more accurate. Peters and Parkinson's speak directly to issues concerning competence and human nature. That's why I referred to them. Leaky caldron (talk) 15:59, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, and I disagree with your implication that the remaining committee members are incompetent. Pressed for time and overworked, but not incompetent. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:58, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I have a fair bit of experience working on committees. One particularly relevant experience involves a committee for a professional society to review submitted papers for publication. When I served on the committee as a committee member, every single committee member reviewed every single paper. The review process often took multiple months, simetimes exceeding a year. When I was named chair, I reorganized the workflow. I added some committee members but now permitted committee members to select which papers they wish to review, and I made sure that 3 to 5 reviewers, but not the whole committee, were assigned to each paper. I'm skipping some details, but this single change improved the timing of the review process significantly. I think the median time dropped by more than half. I can easily see this approach being adopted by ArbCom.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:51, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Unless I'm misremembering, SilkTork recently suggested this: having Arbs organized into smaller panels that would hear each case/matter, so not every Arb has to be involved in every issue. It's an excellent idea. – Levivich 16:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
This has been suggested before. I can understand the attraction but my 4 years on the committee leave me worried that this could mean that the variety of views that there are on the full committee would not be reflected in small groups, so outcomes could be more by "the luck of the draw" for the panel than reflect what would happen if the full committee took part in the decision. Members of a professional society are likely to have more of the same mindset/approach than 13 or 15 elected members of ArbCom. Doug Weller talk 16:39, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
+1 That's a terrible idea, and the entire point of having all of ArbCom weigh in, as Doug says, is so that all representatives (that we elected) are able to participate. Grandpallama (talk) 16:46, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Think of it this way folks. There is an agreed Committee size that everyone thinks provides enough variety to decide a case. Say 10 people. So we appoint 15 or 20 people onto the Committee but only use 10 for cases. And smaller numbers for everyday tasks like agreeing to decline an appeal from someone clearly not here to build an encyclopedia. SilkTork (talk) 17:45, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Grandpallama, Nobody need be precluded from participation. In the example above where I talked about how I handled a paper's committee, I mentioned I was skipping some details. I'll provide one of those details. If a particular paper is assigned to, say, five of the 15 or so reviewers, they provide a preliminary position which is shared with the entire committee. In some cases, the entire committee will be perfectly satisfied with the report, but in some cases, one or more of the remainder of the committee might decide to get personally involved, and if they find that the initial report was deficient, it could change. The same concept could easily apply to ArbCom. Asking a subset of the committee to be assigned to the case doesn't mean those are the only members that can look at the material. It means those selected members are expected to immerse themselves in all aspects of the case, but any other member could monitor the workshop and decide to get involved if they feel that something important is being missed. It most definitely does not mean that any member of the committee is precluded from reviewing any case (with the obvious exception of conflicts of interest requiring recusal).S Philbrick(Talk) 18:04, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Sphilbrick, I do understand what you're positing, but it still doesn't get to Doug's concern (which I share) that the entire committee isn't necessarily involved. What if there are five people assigned to a case that concerns me, but three of those are committee members whose judgment I have very little faith in and didn't vote for, while I have trust in the overall committee? We vote for the people we want to be in these roles to make these decisions, so creating a situation in which those elected persons might not even be involved undercuts the purpose of the election in the first place. Grandpallama (talk) 21:25, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I agree with Sphilbrick but what we need to understand is that the numbers are too low to institute this system. To effectively prevent biasing our panel, we would need to up the members to 20-25 and have panels of 7-8 in rotation. Just for trivia, but the Indian Supreme Court has a membership of 30+1 and listens to cases in panels of 3, ultimately disposing 1.6 million cases in a year (I'm quoting the numbers for 2017). If we increase the numbers of arbs, I wholeheartedly support this idea. --qedk (t 桜 c) 21:35, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
QEDKAgreed that a much larger ARBCOM would make this a less loaded issue. On the other hand, I'm not sure how wieldy a much bigger ARBCOM would be. I think, really, we'd be better off saying that any ARBCOM member who needs to become "inactive" is considered resigned, and that a special election is held to immediately replace them. I'm highly sympathetic to the fact that everyone is a volunteer here, and that real life issues can disrupt plans and cause any ARBCOM member to have to step away. However, they are elected with a pretty clear understanding of the responsibilities they'll hold and the length of their term. If for some reason they can't fulfill those obligations, we should be able to replace them (without any black mark against them) rather than see those seats continued to be locked to someone who is unable/unwilling to participate. Grandpallama (talk) 14:13, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Based on what the WMF has said, we know that 1. there's some evidence against Fram that they can't share for privacy reasons, 2. they declined to share this with ArbCom (at least at the time?), partially for privacy reasons, partially because they didn't trust ArbCom to handle an anonymized version effectively, and partially because they didn't trust ArbCom's impartiality (or, at least, its appearance of impartiality) given Fram's previous criticism of them. If we take WMF statements at face value, those are the core problems, not anything to with ArbCom's size, activity, or willingness to aggressively go after harassment. I've speculated above that it is possible the WMF also feels that ArbCom and the community needs to be stricter with harassment, but if so they haven't conveyed that to us at all - just based on what has been conveyed, what we need is a way for ArbCom to safely handle anonymous reports and confidential information, and a general assurance to the WMF / T&S that we trust ArbCom to navigate conflicts of interest, or at least that we absolutely do not want T&S stepping in under such circumstances unless ArbCom has already tried its hand at a case and failed. It's possible the WMF / T&S has other concerns about ArbCom, but if so we should encourage them to share those concerns (or to confirm that that's not the issue) rather than going on blind quests for improvements without knowing what we're trying to fix. --Aquillion (talk) 19:33, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Actually we don't know that there is private evidence, though we are pretty sure there are private complaints. Fram has said that he hasn't done anything offwiki, and the WMF don't seem to be disputing that. In that case all the evidence has to be edits and logged actions. But that brings us back to one of the central points of this dustup. This is the first time that the WMF has dished out a 12 month ban on one project rather than a global block. This means that the WMF is moving into dealing with much less serious cases than they previously did, but we don't know what the behaviour is that would merit a 12 month ban. It is as if the local traffic cops had introduced a new rule, and were enforcing it, without first telling us what the new rule was. If they had simply come out and said from now on, any editor using the f word to another editor or group of editors will get a 12 month ban from the office. We would all know where we stood, some of us would grumble about the way they had made such a change, and some people would switch to language such as bampots, clueless whazzocks, screenagers with damaged attention spans or simply spilling libations to awaken the spirit of the San Andreus fault. But as it is, we don't know if the reason for the ban was incivility to Arbcom, enforcing quality rules on other editors, or some other activity that may even have consensus support on this wiki. ϢereSpielChequers 22:19, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Private evidence could just mean the complainant's statement. Or, if there is no actual complainant, the statement of the person T&S is going to bat for. The existence of that would not be a big surprise, I would expect there to be a statement, an email, whatever, from someone.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:47, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The WMF has said that there is private evidence, and that the reason they didn't go through ArbCom was because they didn't feel they could share it with them (AFAIK ArbCom does have methods and policies to examine private evidence, but apparently the WMF considered them insufficient.) We have to start from the perspective of taking those statements by the WMF seriously and focusing on addressing them. We also have to consider the possibility that there are other (unstated) problems that the WMF has with how Wikipedia handles harassment, which caused them to step in in this case and is making them shift towards a non-community Facebook-style moderation approach; but if that's the case, we need to push them to share their concerns rather than just shooting in the dark. Serious changes to our handling of harassment and civility matters would require clear imputus and direction, not vague guesswork, and there's no reason to think the WMF would care or acknowledge any changes on the community side if they're unwilling to say what they want anyway. --Aquillion (talk) 23:18, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • But therein lies the issue. We have no idea how the policies are deficient because WMF won't tell us that (and that is the sort of thing that should not be hidden behind claims of privilege). If we are to make changes to our policies, they should be as informed as possible, otherwise the changes we make run the risk of exacerbating the issues the WMF sees. I find it rather telling that out of all the statements made by WMFOffice and Jan, absolutely none of them explain how our civility/harassment policies are broken. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 01:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Aquillion: "The WMF has said that there is private evidence"[citation needed]. AFAIK, the WMF have still not even confirmed that there was a violation to begin with. ~Swarm~ {sting} 03:14, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Perspective & choices

I came upon this today in The Economist Expresso; "An anti-Brexit demonstration in March was the biggest protest since the Iraq war."

So, in my mind, that is a reminder that with the passage of time the overreach and wrongful exercise of authority by people who have been given authority (in the Iraq war case, Tony Blair) all is forgiven, forgotten and the abusers ( imo ) of such authority often return to places of respect and leadership ( e.g. Blair and W. Bush).

In fact, such authoritarianism (imo) is and has been so common and so often with regard to extreme matters of life and death ( usually unnecessary wars ), that its likely naïve for anybody to be very surprised or upset by what's going on here.

When the authoritarianism is such that it riles up large segments of the effected community, e.g. Vietnam War, whatever got the Yellow Vests thing going, segregation laws in the USA South, "Let them eat cake" in France, "Tea tax" in the USA, the super aggressive (imo) treatment of Aaron Swartz and Julian Assange, the effected community has only 4 choices that I can think of:

1: Do nothing and try not to think about it too much

2: Accept and rationalize the justification for the abusive authoritarianism

3: Demonstrate/Protest against the specific incident/event

4: Revolt against and strip away the authority of the specific regime.

In this particular matter, I do not, as someone alluded to earlier, have enough experience or skin in the game to, with authority (pun), guess or propose which of the 4 paths the community should take, but I can offer my opinion based upon what I've seen within this community and read about the current state of affairs which is:

Choice 3: is a no-go. The personalities of the editors are simply too cooperative and peaceful to choose this. Also, since I do not hear about any substantial demonstrations on behalf of Assange near where he is imprisoned, I just don't see the passion and time dedication necessary to do that, and even if it were to be done, the authorities have become super psychologically effective at appeasing and or waiting out the demonstrators; Macron being the best I've ever seen. Also, if the authorities are determined enough, they can usually keep doing what they want to do for years, regardless of the numbers or passion of the protestors (Vietnam War).

Choice 4: This is the least likely yet most constructive and courageous choice for the project, imo, however I do not have any idea as to how to go about this, though I think others here do know exactly how to go about it. Least likely for a whole host of reasons, primarily a lack of passion.

Choices 1 or 2 or a combination thereof: Extremely likely especially given the constant turnover of new editors and the more sheepish nature (imo ) of the younger generations as they stream into this and other platforms. Also, the overwhelming majority of editors know nothing about this whatsoever. Those who voice such anger and disappointment have not, as far as I know, taken any action to inform the general public ( which is the only way to reach the majority of the editors, imo ). Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:57, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

To do #4, write and ratify a new constitution. If WMF won't "start over" following it, we tell the world what the problem is, and tell them to redirect their Wiki donations to a new foundation. Whatever fraction they get will be enough to start a new un-bloated foundation to run it within the new constitution. Or merely starting on this path might be enough to get the needed changes in the current WMF. North8000 (talk) 15:57, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
WMF is not a government that we are forced to deal with. We are subject to its authority only if we want to edit on its websites. Consequently, a Choice 5 exists: to reduce or end one's participation in Wikipedia activities. There are other things that we can do with our spare time besides editing or performing administrative functions for Wikipedia. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 07:16, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, that is partially true, but I don't consider that a way of dealing "with" an issue as the other 4 are. One can also leave a country with a government they can't stomach, and, I can not think of any country today that anyone is forced to stay in and deal with, so, yes, leaving the platform/country is always an option but not in a way that addresses the problem at hand. Nocturnalnow (talk) 20:37, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Replace WMF staff

I also, in thinking more about Blair in the analogy above, think the main reason we have these conflicts with people in authority is because of a lack of intelligence and/or competence within the people put into authority. I do not think Blair is an evil or bad guy, but to tell Bush “I will be with you, whatever.”, shows he should not have had that authority in the first place. I'm getting the opinion that the same holds true re: the WMF people. They are starting to look to me more like Keystone Kops than anything else, and if that's the case, we can't focus blame on them or even expect them to correct the situation. And if that's the case, the only solution is to get most or all of them out of their positions and bring in an entirely new and much more competent group of replacements. Nocturnalnow (talk) 20:32, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

A modest proposal

How about the Foundation specifying:

  • Any Wikipedia can appeal a T&S decision (or, perhaps, even an OFFICE action) affecting the operations of the Wikipedia or an active member of that Wikipedia to the Foundation Board. (Under some circumstances, it might become an action item at the next Board meeting.) The board can take what action it deems appropriate, including confirming or reversing the decision, or shutting down the Wikipedia or the department responsible for the decision. (All "or"s are to be considered inclusive.)

I realize this takes some effort for the Foundation to write up properly, but it would make it clear whether a (perceived by a Wikipedia) problem is a rogue employee or department of the Foundation, or a systemic problem. I'm also not sure whether this is the appropriate page for this suggestion, as I haven't been monitoring WP:CENT lately. It's obviously on my WP:watchlist, but it doesn't seem to be on any of my active "watchlist"s. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:56, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Have you seen the flow chart indicating what has to happen before an office action is taken? It is impossible for a rogue employee, or even a rogue department, to implement an office action. Each action needs sign-offs from a boatload of folks at the WMF, including several outside T&S. ~ Rob13Talk 19:12, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
It is impossible for a rogue employee, or even a rogue department, to implement an office action. Imagine actually spouting this statist nonsense. Do you genuinely believe this is generally true in principle? That having a couple supervisors sign off on the approval of some action clears it of any possibility of irregularity? Does your belief extend to officer-involved shootings? I urge you to strike this tone-deaf nonsense. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 19:25, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
You think that is an appropriate analogy? cygnis insignis 19:33, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
If anything it’s a generous analogy. At least the police are legally required to follow the constitution, and are on some level answerable to their constituents. WMF can just do whatever it wants and lie to us about it and theoretically we get no say. So to actually believe there’s a protection against abuse from some internal review process is even more absurd than believing police review of their own actions is insulated from abuse. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 19:40, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
...having a couple supervisors sign off... I think maybe you need to re-read that flowchart? – Levivich 19:37, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Okay, imagine having a couple supervisors and a couple people in other departments of the same organization sign off on the approval. Same problem. It’s all inside the same organization. That’s the problem. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 19:42, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
If the procedure was followed, a number of people signed off on the decision. Doesn't mean they reviewed it. In fact, it doesn't mean they have access to the basis for the decision. It still might not, even if my proposal was implemented. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:20, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
VERY much this. In light of the need to protect victims of harassment I would be completely unsurprised to find out that significant details or most details are not provided to most individuals who approve OAs. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 20:25, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I guess if you assume that people aren't doing their jobs, then you're totally justified in being outraged by it. – Levivich 23:21, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, we don't know if they're doing their jobs, and that's kind of the problem. When something takes place publicly, it's open to review. When it's done behind closed doors, no one will have any idea if it was done correctly or not. What we do know is that the explanations given Fram do not seem to justify the action taken, and we have no other information. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:24, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
We have other information: Fram's contribs. What more could one want? Either one sees "harassment" and "abuse" (TOU violations) in those diffs or one doesn't. The question here isn't "what did Fram do?", it's "is what Fram did ok?" – Levivich 01:01, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Oh I have no doubt they're doing their jobs, I'm just pointing out that we're assuming without any evidence that "doing their jobs" means "reviewing the underlying accusation and all the evidence to ensure that a sanction is warranted and if so that the right sanction is being chosen." I can tell you that Legal's involvement is far more likely akin to "reviewing any statements, communications, and records to be made and ensuring that any risk of liability to the Foundation is minimized" than ensuring the right choice was made. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 23:36, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
From legal's perspective, whatever minimizes liability is the right decision, and they're asked specifically to give that viewpoint, which is a good thing. (Their viewpoint may have been, "if you don't do something, you'll get sued".) Aside from legal, the other people reviewing this were: between 2–10 members of T&S, two T&S managers, a vice president, and the executive director, and possibly communications. I know communications didn't do their job, but as to everyone else, I AGF that they took this seriously and gave it due attention. Do I think their judgment is better than the community's? In this case, yes. – Levivich 01:01, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I will just note that I have met two members of WMF Legal, and had multiple conversations with one of them, and they both strike me as people who firmly believe in the WMF's mission so saying that they only care about minimizing liability is probably a disservice to the perspective they bring. Barkeep49 (talk) 01:14, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Legal ethics come before a personal belief in "WMF's mission". And I promise you the office marching orders aren't "be more transparent than legally necessary even though it exposes us to more liability". How WMF's litigation counsel from Jones Day are fighting an office action ban lawsuit in the District of Massachusetts is emblematic of a traditional corporate approach rather than a futurist open society/open knowledge organization probably should be expected to approach it. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 01:30, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't think I could eat an entire Foundation. DuncanHill (talk) 19:28, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
They are like potato chips, can't stop at one! cygnis insignis 19:35, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Can I have that in B-B-Q? And I prefer the wavy sort of potato chip to the flat ones. Just a little flexibility to capture much of the market!--Wehwalt (talk) 20:24, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikimania

Wikimania is coming up in a few weeks, and it gives an interesting opportunity both to compare notes with people in our sister projects, but to have informal conversations with staffers. There will be lots of staffers there, is anyone following this page intending to go? I'm not going and I haven't been for a few years, and I suspect that it is still somewhat skewed away from the largest editing community in the Wikiverse. But it might be useful to start planning for it, find who here is planning to go, and perhaps organise an adhoc fringe event for governance issues or use it to liaise with other communities and maybe even chapters. It is probably too late to get an official slot in the program, but it shouldn't be a problem to announce a lunchtime meeting and annex part of the seating area for it. ϢereSpielChequers 12:56, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

This one is probably going to be more crowded than usual. ‑ Iridescent 12:59, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I followed your link, Iridescent, but cannot fathom what the following remark is supposed to mean.

Establishing and applying rules onwiki that help protect newbies, especially from vulnerable groups of contributors

In the real world of competent prose that means rules are devised to protect new editors (a vulnerable group) from other vulnerable groups.
If anyone can clarify this and render it intelligible to a grammarian, I would much appreciate itNishidani (talk) 15:40, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Nishidani, page history here, shows the author. Needs a copyedit. I'm not saying anything else, for fear ... of whatever. Victoria (tk) 16:07, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
One can't copyedit a sentence whose meaning is not clear. I find a lot of this in the prose coming out of that office, and would be tempted to write an essay, headed by some remarks on Castiglione's Il Cortigiano, were it not for the sense arguing with them is now pointless. I don't think any one up there is very familiar with humanistic arguments, logic and, despite our best endeavours, the games language plays on its careless, let alone attentive users. Anyone who prioritizes 'a nice atmosphere' of courteous euphemism, has never read, to cite the most egregious example, the witness of Iago in Othello, whose amicable concern and cautiously inoffensive wording disseminate poison, as they dissimulate care for the other.Nishidani (talk) 19:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers, I won't be there. I really ought to be, but at $3,000 for a 5 day jaunt, I'll leave it to the survivors of Brexit and the regular 70-strong WMF junket contingent. That said (beaming with glee), Wikimania 2020 will be literally right on my doorstep, and I expect you to be there ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:25, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm sure Thailand is a lovely place, but when I go to a Wiki event my wife won't come with me, and if I were to tell her that I wanted to spend a few days in Thailand she might not believe my excuse. ϢereSpielChequers 21:49, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm rather surprised that people have to pay to attend a WikiMania. $375 for a full event ticket. Has there always been an entrance cost to WikiMania? SilkTork (talk) 18:02, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    (+1) If somebody incurs his own travel expenses, he still needs to pay $375, to be a part of the proceedings?! And, we are striving to become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge? Or, is this fee optional? May-be food and all that? ∯WBGconverse 18:36, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    It's a somewhat perennial discussion. Making people pay out of pocket vs. using donation money to fund an event that some see as frivolous. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:46, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
    The discussion may be old, but the direction of travel is clear - fees for the last couple of years have been far more than they used to be. As the registration fee gets more expensive so the event becomes more ringfenced for staff and those on scholarships. I don't know to what extent the WMF influences scholarships to avoid dealing with critics, but Kudpung may have a view on that as he was on the scholarship committee one year. ϢereSpielChequers 21:45, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Two years actually. GorillaWarfare may find the conference frivolous, but she always goes. These events are precisely the venue to discuss issues such as the FRAMBAN and its ripples. I believe the scholarships should be awarded to those who will really benefit (and the community) from going and meeting the people they work with, and for whom distance precludes a very high personal high expense. Everyone in north America can afford to go to an event in North America, and most people in Europe can drive to any European event with their own cars. Bangkok is going to be ideal for people in the global south and China because the cost of organising an event here is only a sixth of the costs in the West. You can go 45 Km (30m) in a taxi here for only $12 and decent hotel rooms can be had for as lirtle as $18. It will be interesting to see if the BKK team will reflect that in the ticket prices and the WMF would be prepared to offer more scholarships.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:38, 26 June 2019 (UTC).
@Kudpung: "most people in Europe can drive to any European event with their own cars" - if they have cars, and can afford the fuel, and afford the time off work, or sanctions to their benefits if not working... I don't know anything about your background but the saying "check your privilege" springs to mind. DuncanHill (talk) 01:50, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Plus I very much doubt many people from London, never mind say Madrid or Rome, would go to Stockholm by car, unless as part of a bigger tour. Plane or train would be much better. Johnbod (talk) 02:13, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Kudpung: "some see as frivolous" is hardly the same as "I find it frivolous". Why would I go if I did? While I'm correcting the record, I do not "always go"—I have been to three Wikimanias in my 13 years of editing. I won't be attending this year. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:55, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Am looking at organizing some discussions around governance within our communities at Wikimania. Please ping me if you will be there. Unfortunately I do not have funds to cover others travel (but will be covering my own). Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:32, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Make sure you consider Wikimania's inaccessibility and lack of representation of the community when you do that. The scholarships are only available to candidates approved by the Foundation, and for the rest most editors, I am pretty sure, don't have the time and still less the money to go. The well-to-do and the chosen few! DuncanHill (talk) 09:32, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Despite the fact that a local community is expected to organise the event (albeit largely on a grant from the WMF, and there have been questions in the past where the money went), the conference appears to exist mainly as another junket for half a planeload of the WMF to showcase their own work and congratulate themselves, with the scholarship awardees and those who paid their own expenses mainly acting merely as a live studio audience. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:34, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes I agree with the concerns about lack of accessibility to Wikimania. The scholarship process from what I understand is independent of the WMF. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:00, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Semi-independent. When I was on it, our role was advisory. From the list we came up with, the WMF had the final say. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:08, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
What percentage of the time did they go with who the volunteer lead committee selected? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:17, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Not only the WMF/T&S needs to review their procedures and handling but the community too

From what i've seen/read so far about the whole affair I really dislike these opaque office action by T&S for cases that should ideally be handled by the community. Office actions should be restricted to clear illegalities or rather extreme harrassment, anything else including less severe harassment or "common" inappropriate behaviour should be handled (and sanctioned) by the community.

However this require community procedures and handling of such affairs to be sufficiently efficient. To that regard I really think it was a failure of the community to allow fram to be an admin for so lomg and that it did not deadmin him. while I value Fram's contribution and his focus on quality and i even can understand that repeated inappropriate behaviour is to degree tolerated by the community for otherwise valued and appreciated editors, I cannot understand why such a person can remain an admin though, From admins we need to expect more than from an average editors in terms of behaviour.--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:51, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

+1Yger (talk) 09:58, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Isn't that why we have ArbCom - They have and can handle incivility (including when it is with private information). If anything, we could do with some RfCs where we agree upon the norms that ArbCom should enforce there. For all we know, user:Kmhkmh WMF is considering my comment to you as 'too aggressive' and that adds up to my score together with some complaints and gets me banned. It is questionable whether Fram has properly overstepped the current on-wiki civility norms of on-wiki commenting to others, and it is even questionable whether those norms would have been overstepped if they were more stringent. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:15, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes we have Arcom for that, I'm just saying I have the impression that processes around Arbcom andfor dealing with incivilty are not efficient enough. That is too slow and too bureaucratic to deal with incivility. Another problem is informal support networks of people behaving in an incivile manner, which can slow down or even block the community procedures dealing with it. Maybe something like an Ombusman frm the community would help, somebody people can complain to in confidence and who advises but without making a judgement/sentencing himself. Instead he could file a request with arbcom on behalf of others and initiate an arbcom process.
As far as Fram is concerned I can only superficially assess but from what I've read (including statements/admisions by himself) he clearly overstepped borders/ behaved incivile fashion. Probably nothing that requires ban but just a reprimand but certainly enough to be considered unacceptable for an admin imho.
But be that as it may I completely agree that opaque behaviour of T&S is unacceptable as well. Right now (based on several incidence with T&S not just the Fram case) one might get the impression, that people having personal connection to T&S might get a favour und T&S simply claiming that's not the case (but nothing else) is hardly convincing. T&S needs to achieve better balance between transparency and privacy protection. One option might be that T&S takes on the role of the ombudsman mentined above rather than issuing office action in cases of incivility/less severe harrassment.--Kmhkmh (talk) 11:27, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
There are two points here that are particular to the Fram case, but are general principles; i) Has Fram been subject to a Request at Arbcom, or have an ANI post regarding civility, or a RfC (I honestly do not know, I have been away for pretty much over a year), because Arbcom are not going to act without steps being taken, and ii) the complaint went to T&S/WMF instead of via any of the above - understandably considering all but Arbcom requires public knowledge/participation. Perhaps Fram should have been sanctioned by WP:EN, but that did not happen for issues regarding sensitivity. It is clearly a WP:EN related issue, given the terms of the ban, but it was not placed through those channels. That is possibly the bigger issue than what Fram may or may not have done. LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:09, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

How ist the normal way for the enWP-community to get rid of an unsuitable admin? How can adminship be revoked by the community? I for one can't even see who is an admin, as the usual (A) doesn't appear here and I'ev so far not found the helper to activate this in my preferences. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk) 15:15, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

With a great deal of difficulty and drama. Ultimately it is via an Arbcom hearing or Office action, but in the former there are several hoops to be jumped through - evidence of attempts to address the matter - and in the latter it has traditionally been a case of "firefighting" the effect of an admin going "rogue" (I apologise for the idioms). All attempts at a community based method of removal of the admin buttons have failed. Some admins have voluntary procedures, but the majority of them are not liable to be actioned. LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:59, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
That seems to be a point the en.wp community needs to address, at least some other language communities have easier procedures for that, which in my expereience/perception (based on the de.wp example) have reduced admin misbehaviour.--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:12, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Fram's actions and his use of admin tools are unrelated. Most of what T&S alleges Fram is being sanctioned for (talk page and noticeboard posts) are things that could be done with or without administrator tools. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 19:42, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

That's right, but admins should behave exemplary and not in the way Fram has communicated. In the deWP no admin with such a foul mouth would stay an admin for quite some time, s/he will get de-admined asap via the usual community procedure, an Adminwiederwahlverfahren (Admin re-election procedure), that will automatically start, once 25 editors ask for it in a month, or 50 in half a year. The 25 would get on the list in less then a week, methinks. With the eternal adminship on enWP no community input ist really possible for such unsuitable admins, I think, that's not a good idea. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk) 20:09, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
At the same time, the de.wp method would not be viable on en.wp. Any admin that gets into any sort of controversy, or works in any area with extreme partisanship (see: Any area under arbcom or community sanctions, or working Arbitration Enforcement for same) would easily hit either the 25/mo or 50/yr threshold for an automatic recall, and as it stands it's widely agreed that the requests-for-adminship process is broken (lack of realistic candidates willing to stand, borderline hounding of candidates), but there's no consensus on how to fix it. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 20:19, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
But there's no reason to think that Fram wouldn't have been WMF-banned had he not been an admin. * Pppery * it has begun... 20:14, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
I think they would have been more reprimanded for being foul-mouthed have they not been admin. Some short blocks for incivility, and perhaps they would have improved their behaviour, and there would have been no pretense for T&S to act at all. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk) 06:57, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think that this is possibly related, but that T/S and the WMF needs to be more forthright about it if that's the case. All of their statements so far have implied that the reason they stepped in to handle this was because it relied on information that could not be safely shared. If they have a larger concern that the community should have de-admined or even banned Fram over existing, public knowledge about him (that is to say, they think our existing anti-harassment policies are insufficient at removing uncivil users), they need to convey that to us so we can tighten up to meet their standards. This isn't unusual, and it's something we've handled in the past - both WP:BLP and WP:COPYVIO are cases where the community handles things while ultimately having a dictate from above saying "you have to handle it to this standard." I feel like we need something like that for harassment cases as well, rather than just having T&S stepping in directly like this. (In addition to the disruption problem, the size of the Wikipedia community means that the bulk of harassment issues ultimately must be handled at a community level, so it's really better to work through the community as much as possible anyway. All else aside, and regardless of whatever magic machine-learning tools they might be looking into, T&S doesn't scale - it can't handle harassment in a satisfactory way all on its own.) --Aquillion (talk) 21:21, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
I see no magic there and "banned by AI" is imho way worse than "banned by T&S".--Kmhkmh (talk) 22:06, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Oh yeah, my comment was meant to be dismissive of that - clearly the technology is not there yet (if it ever will be prior to Strong AI.) Though it's important to remember that everything people have said about that above is speculative. The point is, if the real issue T&S has here is that they think Fram should have been banned by the community long ago and our failure to do so is what led them to step in, or that they didn't trust our representatives to ban Fram even with an anonymized summary of what he did, and felt that this case was so severe that that likelihood represented an unacceptable failure on the part of our anti-harassment policies, then that's a discussion we need to have. "Wikipedia's community WP:CIVIL / anti-harassment policies need to be stricter and more aggressive" might make some people unhappy, but it's at least a way forward, and we've dealt with similar dictates for WP:BLP and the like. T&S can't be a substitute for community self-moderation, and as this outcry shows, we should try to structure our policy so they need to step in as rarely as possible. But to do that, we need more clarity on what broke down here and how we can ensure the community is capable of handling cases like this on its own in the future. --Aquillion (talk) 05:07, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Vote of no-confidence in the WMF?

I believe it might be time for a vote of no-confidence in the WMF. Thoughts? I am a user and not a bot so please dont confuse me with a bot (talk) 15:19, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

What will it achieve?Slatersteven (talk) 15:14, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

What any other vote of no confidence achieves- a formal statement and hopefully change. I am a user and not a bot so please dont confuse me with a bot (talk) 15:19, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't mean to be unkind - but I think all these pages/bytes are pretty much confirmation that the community has no confidence in powers that be. — Ched :  ?  — 15:45, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The thing is though, the community's lack of confidence is pretty self-evident at this point. I can't see an official vote doing a whole lot more than reaffirming what's already known. If there's any benefit to doing so, I'll be glad to add my signature to a motion of no confidence, but I just don't see what it would accomplish. Kurtis (talk) 02:31, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
This is a good idea, especially since it's been proven to my satisfaction that this entire thing is a case of someone exerting undue influence to screw over Fram for doing his job. Jtrainor (talk) 23:36, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I saw was Fram hounding another editor improperly. Fram was not screwed over. They were counseled by peers, and then warned. It took nearly three years to get sanctioned. There was a lot of patience and multiple chances to stop the objectionable behavior. Jehochman Talk 01:53, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
You a. have literally no idea if what you think you found is what led to the ban and b. still are obliged to follow WP:ASPERSIONS even if the Wikimedia Foundation is not. Serious accusations still require evidence. If you are unprepared to submit that evidence you should not be making the accusations. nableezy - 02:08, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
How does one distinguish harassment from quality maintenance in this area? I have seen numerous editors (I don't myself) trawling through another editor's history to systematically revert everything because the editor in question is obviously pushing either crap into articles or showing egregious incompetence. No one normally takes exception to this. In the case alluded to, I saw numerous machine-produced and often ridiculously flawed translations by the one editor being systematically reverted by the admin in question. Since the editor doing that turns out to be a woman, this revert pattern has been assumed to be sexist harassment, blurring the issue between harassment and stringent quality control. I'm stating this without taking a side, since I limited by examination to what the said editor was doing with French and Spanish. The repetition of a flawed use of machine translations was self-evident, and was problematical. The intemperance of the reverting admin is another question. Nishidani (talk) 07:22, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
And I don't mean to be unkind but I think a bold proposal like this should come from a veteran and longtime editor, not a new one. Liz Read! Talk! 00:45, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@Liz: It would probably carry a bit more weight if it were proposed by, say, Iridescent, but the reason that this proposal isn't gaining traction (i.e. redundancy) would remain the same regardless of where it came from. Kurtis (talk) 02:31, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Purpose of T&S, can someone explain?

Let me admit: I do not get it. Which of these cases does T&S take on?

  1. Clearly illegal actions
  2. Actions where it is questionable if they are legal or not
  3. Clearly legal actions

Should (1) and (2) not rather be reported to the Police, and (3) be left alone?

  1. Actions unacceptable to the community
  2. Actions where it is questionable if they are acceptable to the community or not
  3. Clearly acceptable actions

Should (1) and (2) not rather be reported to the community, and (3) be left alone? And in the cases T&S take, they are Police, judge, jury, and prison warden, is that correct? --Pgallert (talk) 10:49, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

As far as I can see its purpose is to undermine trust in the WMF, and create an unsafe environment in which editors can never know if they are being subject to secret processes enforcing secret policies. DuncanHill (talk) 10:51, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Just because something is "clearly legal", that doesn't mean it's appropriate for an online encyclopaedia-building community. Wikimedia have written a lengthy terms of use, much of which is designed to ensure that people of all backgrounds can edit here in a safe and collegiate environment. T&S can, and IMHO should, intervene where those terms of use are seriously broken, illegally or otherwise. Not commenting in whether it was justified in the case of Fram, because I don't know. But in general I don't think it's unreasonable for them to take action in such cases. — Amakuru (talk) 10:55, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
If someone does something illegal, the police might be responsible for persecuting said individual in the real world but the WMF (and specifically T&S) needs to remove illegal content and ban such users as well because otherwise they would be prosecuted. Reporting something to the authorities and removing something here are not mutually exclusive, in fact, they are both needed. Something similar applies to clear ToS violations, especially when the evidence cannot be published without putting real people at risk. So it makes sense to have someone deal with such cases. Whether this was one of those, is another question. Regards SoWhy 11:13, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Pgallert, this post shows a significant lack of knowledge about what the legal responsibilities of a web host are —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:09, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
TheDJ, I already admitted that when posting. --Pgallert (talk) 09:15, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Legal where? There are an awful lot of legal systems around the world with completely different expectations. Jehochman Talk 16:04, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Reporting something to the police does not absolve the WMF of their legal obligations, ie. if something flatly illegal is posted here they have to remove it regardless of whether they report it or not, and can't just subject that to community consensus (or, well, technically they could, but they'd have to override us if we reached the wrong decision - technically this is the case on some WP:COPYVIO stuff, where the rules and enforcement are done by the community and there's some gray areas where we can decide how, precisely, to implement and enforce them, especially around fair use, but we don't realistically have the option to just stop enforcing them entirely, and the WMF would clearly have to step in if we tried.) That said, I agree that T&S needs to be more unambiguous about when it will step in and when it won't, both for the sake of relations with the community and so people making reports will know where they should go. The explanations for why this case couldn't be handled by ArbCom seem insufficient. --Aquillion (talk) 18:59, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
SoWhy, Aquillion, removing content is something entirely different from removing an editor. If people are at risk then the Police, not some self-declared do-gooders, need to get involved. --Pgallert (talk) 09:15, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Not really. If someone posts illegal content, not only the content needs to be removed but also the poster be prevented from re-adding such content. The WMF is not the only organization that is by law required to self-police illegal content on their services, regardless of any additional criminal prosecution. Calling someone "do-gooders" for doing what is legally required is not helpful. Regards SoWhy 13:02, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the measured response, SoWhy. Probably because of own experience I have skipped much of that argument, which is: Someone harasses me. This is illegal where I live. If I am required (by work contract, by ToU, whatever) to use the internal process to report it, instead of going directly to the Police, my protection is diminished, not extended, by the internal process. If the unit concludes that it was indeed harassment but does not allow the legal procedure to take its course, then they mean well but do actual harm.
I think we have something like that at Wikipedia, too. If someone harasses me and I explain my intention to take action, them I'm very quickly in WP:THREAT territory. That's why I think this process does more harm than good. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 09:23, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

One matter that we have tended to overlook in this discussion -- & T&S has not been helpful in reminding us of this -- is that there are certain cases we need to hand over to some unit of the Foundation. (These have been mentioned above, but with all of this text to plow thru, it's easy to miss them.) Those include matters of child pornography, threats of violence or self-harm, & other incidents that need to be handled quickly (e.g. libel or complaints of copyright violations) or are facilitated by having a someone with a Foundation title handle instead of a volunteer. (Think of the occasional suicide threat made on our pages: experience has shown law enforcement responds much more positively if a Foundation employee reporting this than if the average Wikipedia volunteer does.) But as it has been pointed out, these are specific instances; just because T&S can intervene because someone makes a clear threat to harm someone else, this does not extend to dealing pre-emptively with someone who is allegedly harassing someone else. Even if a case can be made that some unit of the Foundation needs to intervene because our processes have failed, the burden of proof lies on that unit; they not only must provide justification for intervening, they are subject to the community rejecting their justification. This is how partners behave. -- llywrch (talk) 18:31, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

The strings "child protection" and "child pornography" appear seven times on this discussion page. So this aspect is not quite overlooked. The fact that these cases are exclusively handled by WMF staff is not and has never been objected to by the community. However, Frams ban apparently is none of these. The very fact that the ban is partial (English WP only) and temporary (one year) gives away, that it is none of these cases. In addition, there was a build-up over several months with two formal warnings. So there was no need for quick action, either.
The WMF is firmly in community territory here. Given, that there was precedence like the Jannemann/Edith Wahr case in German Wikipedia, this is not by accident. ---<)kmk(>- (talk) 19:05, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Most likely you are right. A indef ban, as has been pointed out, would have gotten grumbling but little more. A one-year ban and a desysoping got people's attention.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:15, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Wehwalt, I hope that was not the only alarm that would have set this all off. (It's similar to admitting that losing a hand was objectionable, but people would have acquiesced to losing an entire arm.) There have been other things that made things worse: Fram had no idea why he was banned, no one could find a clear reason in his edit history that justified the ban, the unhelpful responses from T&S about this matter. (Raystorm would have helped herself by simply answering the question was she involved with only a terse "no.") There's just too many things that don't look right about this, & too many previous occasions when the Foundation arrogated rights from the projects. This is just another case of the WMF being amazingly clueless about how to work with its volunteer community. (Or maybe one person at the WMF being amazingly clueless.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:33, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
I never intended to defend T&S for sanctioning Fram. I guess I was unclear about that, but am unsure how I remove the ambiguity. -- llywrch (talk) 20:18, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Yet another proposal - Community / WMF relations going forward

I've been silently following this when I have the time. I absolutely agree that this goes far beyond the issue of whether a ban of Fram was justified (a symptom, not the cause). On the face of it, the ability to restrict a SanFran ban to a single wiki seems insane. After all, the general understanding of SanFran bans is that they are for extremely serious legal issues.

However, when viewing the bigger picture, namely Wikipedias without an Arbritration Committee, the need for such measures does become more understandable.

What is the issue? The issue is that en.wiki has very robust processes for dealing with harrassment. We have an Arbritration Committee. And yet, the WMF bypassed community processes and enforced a local ban. If these processes fail, that's a wider problem that the community needs to address. Yes, highly respected users can get away with things that newbies would not. If this falls beyond ToU requirements, that's something that we as a community need to address, rather than this rather Cloak & Dagger WMF process.

To make matters worse, such a ban is nominally unappealable. Despite the outrage from the community, the WMF have not moved. To do so would be compromising their rule prohibiting appeals. Hence, the WMF cannot back down without losing face and compromising a strong policy.

I want to focus initially on one quote from Jan:

I also want to elaborate on the reasons that Trust & Safety cases will not be discussed in public and often not even privately with members of the Wikimedia movement who sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). When we receive non-public information, the Wikimedia Foundation must handle it in a manner that is both consistent with our Privacy Policy and any other commitments made to the person disclosing their information. When dealing with sensitive allegations of inappropriate behavior, we must ensure that we are upholding a relationship of trust and confidence with people who have entrusted us with personal information about their experiences. This means that even in cases where users have signed a community NDA, our legal obligations may not allow us to share information given to us.

By its nature, the Privacy Policy is written by the foundation. It can be rewritten to allow sharing of information with users who have signed a community NDA. NDAs are legal documents, and the penalty for breaking such an NDA could be legal in nature, or constitute removal of advanced tools, or even a permanent SanFran ban. That would of course be up to the foundation. But allowing users who have signed a community NDA to access such information would help bridge the gap we're seeing here. Community representatives are accountable to the community, and I would hope that we take Arbcom's judgements at face value.

Now, wrt to the Terms of Use, the particular section in question is Harassing and Abusing Others. This is one of the more vague parts of the Terms.

  • Engaging in harassment, threats, stalking, spamming, or vandalism

One line, open to interpretation, is the reason for this particular ban. We have a en.wiki policy that expands upon this: Wikipedia:Harassment. If we take Fram's response at face value, and I see no reason not so to do, we get an IBAN predicated on edits - Even though acknowledging that my edits were correct, and that "We remain convinced that the activity on Laura’s articles listed above was not intended to intimidate or make her feel uncomfortable." I see no point where such actions violate the ToU, and therefore do the foundation really have the authority (even given to themseleves!) with which to impose an IBAN? The foundation also speak of increasing levels of hostility, aggressive expression—some of which, to the point of incivility—and counterproductive escalations. The edit (nominally) triggering the ban used an expletive. The problem? The terms of use do not require civility. We encourage you to be civil and polite - not require. This makes the issue of "fuck arbcom" moot. Expressing displeasure with Arbcom is not harrassment. Being somewhat uncivil isn't a violation of ToU. SanFran were wrong. And yet, their decision is unappealable. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 21:07, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Leading theories are that incivility to Arbcom was not the issue. See the above threads re Jehochman's findings. ϢereSpielChequers 21:54, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers, I am aware of Jehochman's section, however, in its current state, it's just that - theory. I'm assuming that Fram hasn't doctored emails from the WMF (which would be against ToU...). So yes, while there may be an underlying reason, I think it's reasonable to take that this reason has not be divulged, not even to Fram. Without getting too American - the 6th Amendment did have a reason for its introduction. Being told that you've done something extremely wrong without knowing exactly what is very, very, disconcerting. Especially in cases not involving straight-up vandals and paedophiles, it seems reasonable to give the accused more information. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 22:03, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Anyway, for the most part, I was trying to keep away from this particular case, really going for appealability, since the WMF isn't infalliable. P.S. Jehochman, I wouldn't mind giving my views on some of the evidence, I'm definitely not jumping to the conclusion that Fram did nothing wrong. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 22:08, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Jehochman's findings appear to be based on going through Fram's contributions and noting that he is frequently rude to people and has little tolerance for people who make mistakes, good faith or otherwise. I don't think any of this is a surprise to anyone, plenty of people have gone on record as saying they have always found him abrasive and uncivil. Also, given that WMF were watching for vier a year from their first warning, I personally think it much more likely that it was the totality of edits, rather than anything in particular, that led to the ban. The real question is whether this is a valid use of office tools as opposed to standard onwiki dispute resolution,and whether ArbCom should be doing more to protect those who feel harassed. There aren't easy answers to those questions because rights of those doing the accusing, to avoid being outed and harassed further, have to be balanced against the right to justice, something Fram has seemingly been entirely denied.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Nope. My findings are based on the user interaction tools that show Fram hounding one or more editors. Following them around after being asked not to by other editors and admins. Repeatedly the interaction is Fram showing up after the target. The target never follows Fram. The analysis is pretty data intensive and time consuming. Jehochman Talk 23:00, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Jehochman, without giving anyone any idea what you are actually talking about, this amounts to simply casting aspersions. And realistically, this is a public website. Other editors, including editors you don't like, may interact with you. That's part of the deal. Unless Fram was actually interaction banned, he's free to edit whatever catches his interest, and if there was such a problem, an interaction ban should've been put in place. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:18, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Also, in your analysis, are you distinguishing between hounding, and dealing repeatedly with problems caused by the target? I can easily envision situations in which people ask an admin to stop working on something even though it is just proper admin work. It happens all the time at ANI. I'm not saying that's what happened here, but I think there's a danger of saying "repeated warnings for repeated infractions" plus "rudeness" plus "cussing at ArbCom" equals "harassment". --Tryptofish (talk) 23:22, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
There is also a larger issue here, which is that, if T&S was acting on these interactions, they should not have made a ban unless the interactions continued after Fram was clearly told by T&S not to interact with that particular target. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:31, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I was under the impression that there was a smoking gun here, not something that requires expert testimony to prove. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 23:38, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Suggested resolution

  • That the WMF update the privacy policy to allow referral of complaints to local ArbComs where appropriate.
  • That the WMF make non-global or time-limited bans appealable.
  • That the community enagage in discussion with the WMF about possible disparaties between local policy/practice and ToU.

Anyway, that's my take on things. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 21:07, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

I like those three points. The first one is clearly something that has had a lot of support on this page. And the second one is, I think, a new idea that makes a lot of sense. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Thanks for making this, Bellezzasolo. These are all smart ideas. My main concern is that WMF will see touching the privacy policy as a nonstarter. There's been a lot of shakeup recently following GDPR, so there may be issues there (I honestly reckon any official response will vaguely refer to international privacy law requirements), though I suspect the main driving force behind secrecy is a combination of (1) avoiding public statements due to the risk of a libel or false light claim that'll make it past an initial motion to dismiss/demurrer, and (2) a genuine, sincerely-held belief that repeating/sharing harassing content in any form, anywhere results in additional harm to the target of that harassment. So I don't know if there's a way forward. I think actual, objective, dispassionate dialogue that honestly addresses these fundamental questions and reasons for why WMF does anything is a first step. If they can't be open about why an action is taken, they need to be as open as possible, and need to explain their lack of openness. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 21:21, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
One possible solution for that problem would be, instead of directly forwarding private material to ArbComs, they could decline to act on such complaints, unless there is substantial evidence that the local ArbCom already failed in the case, and advise the complainant to file locally instead. That way, anything that goes to the local ArbCom is going there by consent. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:42, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
That's called an exhaustion of remedies doctrine, and that is pretty typical of federal systems (which up until recently I believed would have described the enwiki-WMF relationship). I think in cases of harassment, the prevailing attitude at WMF would be that it's not acceptable to "refer out" a victim of harassment, and that being made to participate in adjudicative process is itself further victimization. I'm not sure if there's a middle ground there either. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 21:49, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, that's a compelling argument. This is hard. Maybe there needs, instead, to be a much better agreed-upon definition of what is within T&S jurisdiction and what is for local ArbComs. Just using a word like "harassment" to (sometimes) include rudeness can create all kinds of problems. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:58, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Based on what Jehochman is saying, the entire privacy thing is a bit of a red herring in this particular case. It seems as though Fram was WP:HOUNDing a user, and had been told to stop on multiple occasions (ie. people on enwiki were already aware of this, completely distinct from and on a totally separate track from any complaint that was filed with T&S.) That means that we could have potentially handled this on our own if we considered the evidence and Fram's behavior to be banworthy. WMF implied in their reply above that they saw our failure to ban for it as a failing by enwiki as a whole, which also implies that while, yes, they need to protect the name of whoever sent in the complaint, the issue was already known and therefore an additional reason to focus on that was because it was necessary to make it a T&S issue and give them a clear mandate to step in on something they felt that the community had already failed. The solution is therefore to get T&S to be more clear about what they want to see from us so we can tighten our own anti-harassment systems; in almost any situation like this, there will be enough on-wiki smoke for admins here to put out the fire before T&S feels compelled to act, even without the victim having to step forward in any serious way. That said, one additional fix might be to encourage admins to step in on their own initiative without requiring any report or action by the victim. --Aquillion (talk) 04:59, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I would suggest a fourth, that in general, and hedge it as you like, and subject to ands, buts, and the needs of the foundation, but as a general principle, T&S will not seek to impose sanctions for on-wiki words from before an agreed time not earlier than the present.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:30, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
If this is all about the WMF imposing a tighter civility standard on us than we currently have, then yes there needs to be clear and significant publicity about this so we all have a chance of knowing what the new rule is. and of course it has to be about future edits and not be a retrospective change. But if Jehochman is correct, then the T&S people are administering a ban that we would do if we knew about the evidence. Which is back to one of my biggest concerns, is this a case where Arbcom would have acted the same way if given the same evidence, or is the WMF changing the defacto rules of this site, but in an undisclosed way. The latter scenario concerns me far more than the former, but now seems the less likely scenario. ϢereSpielChequers 14:17, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I'd also note that I don't think the Privacy Policy needs to be altered to make disclosure to ArbCom possible. They just need to conform to the nonpublic information policy. See foundation:Privacy policy#share-to-protect-people. Another portion of the same policy, however, says that WMF shares no information that isn't "reasonably necessary" to "enforce or investigate potential violations" of the ToU. So... that raises questions about how much information is shared as part of the office action approval process. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 21:42, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • This is a better set than many of the proposals, I generally like it. I'm concerned about "where appropriate" - I'd want that spelled out (preferably just clarified to just the standard WMF areas (harm, CSE, etc). @Bellezzasolo: - I'm with you on point 2, but who would you suggest it is appealed to? I'd also want to put in a limitation so they didn't stand permabanning aggressively just to avoid appeal requirements Nosebagbear (talk) 19:12, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
    Nosebagbear, I was thinking about the appeal point, but I haven't yet come up with any spectacular ideas - in the absence of that, I would assume the WMF. It's by no means ideal, but to an extent, they do hold all the cards, so I don't think anything too drastic would stick.
    Regarding permabans, I excluded those for several reasons. Firstly, I'm not aware of permabans being misused, so would be inclined towards "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Secondly, the traditional permaban is for serious legal issues like pedophilla - I don't think that such bans need appealing. However, I dare say there could be two tiers of permaban - appealable and non-appealable - based on which part of ToU was broken. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 20:42, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
    I agree that permabans shouldn't be appealable - my point is that "traditional" doesn't hold up since the whole point is "this is all new", so just clarifying that permabans are for those areas, and non-permas are for the new areas (which need to be strictly defined as part of the whole discussion!) Nosebagbear (talk) 21:35, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Possible approach 2

Fram gives permission for T&S to publish all the warnings they sent Fram. (It seems very unlikely that they would send Fram information that they didn't want published if they consider him an abuser. I've been accused of having a lack of imagination, but I don't see it.) If Fram does this and T&S supplies the warnings, we can see whether a rational person might consider Fram to have told what he was doing wrong.

Reasoning:
Fram described the E-mails he's received from T&S, and said he doesn't know what he was being warned against. T&S said he was adequately warned.
If the E-mails were published, we could see what was said. I don't really believe Fram would lie about this, and I'm sure T&S would not fabricate an E-mail. That would be fraud, in this context.
I'm not sure Fram could publish the E-mails because of copyright (not privacy) considerations, and some might not trust him. Very few trust WMF in general (because of past lies about their internal policy on things such as Flow), and T&S in particular, but I think we can trust them not to publish E-mails they didn't send Fram.
— Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:21, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
If I were WMF I'd not release even with permission. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 19:43, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
That may be. However, there is no reason for T&S to reveal lies by employees, even if discovered. A logical assumption, consistent with everything T&S has yet revealed, is that Fram was banned because a WMF employee felt his friend was being harassed by Fram; and that the report was not investigated, but assumed correct. (I'm not saying any Wikipedian made the complaint.) T&S obviously cannot deny this, but they can release (with Fram's consent) what they told Fram, which may indicate that Fram was told what he did wrong. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:10, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Fram gave permission in his first responce, thus this is moot. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 22:27, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Thoughts on an anonymous reporting system

One of the issues brought up above is that currently, our systems for dealing with harassment mostly require that the victim step forward into an adversarial process. From a transparency standpoint, this allows people to know what they're accused of (and makes it possible to correct their behavior), but it obviously causes problems for victims by forcing further interaction with whoever's harassing them. And I'd argue that the Facebook / Youtube / Twitter examples show how easily an utterly opaque system like this can fail the people it's supposed to protect, too; it's easy to approve of it when it works, but sometimes, inevitably, it's going to say "nope" with the same opacity and leave victims with nowhere to go. I think a better approach is to use the admins we have by putting them 'on point' for the investigation and accusation of harassment reports, acting as prosecutors for things that are anonymously reported to them. Essentially:

  • Create an anonymous "admin call" button on the edit history page. When pushed, it allows you to anonymously submit that diff to some admin-only channel or page for moderation along with an optional comment explaining it.
  • It would ask the reason you're reporting and send it to the appropriate place (or, in some cases, direct the user to dispute resolution and other policies if eg. the complaint is "this content is factually incorrect" or the like rather than something admin-actionable.)
  • Any admin can review the report's comments, then grab the reported diff or diffs for a particular user up from that page (reviewing all diffs reported for a user so they can combine them into one case if necessary). From there, they can act immediately in clear-cut cases, or push a button that lets them create a public WP:AE-style case out of it for more complex things like harassment. Admins could mark a report as invalid (which would hide it from the main list of all reports against a user) or as handled (putting it in a different, slightly more visible list of all reports on the user for later reference), but it would still be there somewhere so others could later review if eg. an admin is dismissing valid reports.
  • Admins are also strongly encouraged to do so on their own initiative - to create cases based on things they see even with no report - which means that no one can directly conclude who sent the initial report in. Could have been the victim, could have been a bystander, could have been the admin themselves noticing it. This shifts the "heat" of the process to admin-vs-accused rather than victim-vs-accused.
  • Reports only become public when accepted by an admin. This serves several purposes. It prevents bad blood from invalid or marginal reports (a blatantly frivolous report would be actionable in some way, but otherwise the reporter would remain anonymous and would never have to fear WP:BOOMERANG or accusations of WP:ASPERSIONS, since it's non-public.) It also ensures that when the report does become public, it does so under the name of the admin, presented as the admin's action - taking heat off of any potential reporter (or reporters, if something was reported by many people.) Essentially the admin "tanks" any backlash to the report by making it entirely about thesmelves-as-prosecutor-vs-the-accused.
  • Once that WP:AE-style case is created for more complex cases, the admin who initially accepts it acts as the "prosecutor" or (or the "reporter" in the existing WP:AE context), collecting evidence and presenting the case rather than judging it. Additional people can also add evidence, of course.
  • Closing an accepted report would require a conclusion from outside admins (reaching some sort of consensus among them ala WP:AE.) * Additionally, there could be a checkbox in the report system to request that the diff be redacted and / or not referenced directly in any potential case, which would send it to Wikipedia:Oversight rather than to all admins for obvious reasons.
  • Admins would also be unable to see reports against themselves (until / unless they were accepted and turned into a case), for similarly obvious reasons.

This wouldn't be perfect, of course (we'd need some sort of oversight to ban people who straightforwardly abuse or spam the system), but it would allow for anonymous one-click (or several-clicks and some typing if you need to report multiple diffs and explain them) reporting without the need for people to present themselves personally inside the system by effectively allowing them to request that an admin, once alerted to the evidence, become "the accuser" for the case and handle it from there. It would make our system much more clear and easy to use - there would be an obvious "report this" button available, and users wouldn't have to know our detailed policies or navigate the system beyond that; administrators would handle those aspects for them. Right now, it can be a huge pain to report anything, since it's not always obvious where the right place to go is. Also, having integrated, easy-to-use 3RR reporting for regular users without having to use Twinkle would certainly be nice. When it comes to harassment, for most victims, the system would just be a straightforward 'click and forget' affair. At the same time, it would preserve enough transparency to ensure that the system is working and to retain our core values. It would, inevitably, require a lot of extra work from admins who would have to wade through the massive number of reports, but I think it would be worth it. While it might look like a lot of steps, many of them reflect processes we already use, and most of the rest would be automated in a way that would reduce red tape - especially from the perspective of casual users, who would no longer have to no any details about our processes to report something (beyond "is this reportable", which the report confirmation page could guide them through.) --Aquillion (talk) 05:34, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

I would tie access to the system to email access. That way there's a natural turnoff valve for people who're abusing the system. And it should go without saying that repeatedly and/or habitually making frivolous harassment reports should result in either a disruption (if on numerous users) or harassment (if they're laser-focused on someone they don't like) block. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 06:38, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Not sure how it would work, but yes this might be a start. We do need to do something that shows we are taking this seriously.Slatersteven (talk) 09:32, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I think there is much in this idea that is worth thinking about. It is suggestions like this which show what this community is capable of. I would love for the WMF to interact more with the community in order to discuss such ideas. If this gets a bit more support, I suggest we split it off from WP:FRAM, and create a RfC page. SilkTork (talk) 10:32, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
  • In many cases you won't really be anonymous if you click a button which effectively states "this diff, directed at (me?), was harassment". While it is possible that someone else tagged it as harassment, the assumption would be that the target did so. However, let's assume that it was flagged for checking by an random admin. That might work, but what if the harasser was an admin? They could flag it is unwarranted, or ask a friend to do so, and in the latter case even the log (if checked) wouldn't help. But let's assume that it was recognized by an uninvolved admin who took it on. The next but is how would they consider context? Most of the time with harassment (as opposed to simple civility issues) you need to look at a pattern over time, and that can be difficult for a single admin based on a single reported diff. If they do start an AE style discussion, people understanding the system would know that it was unlikely that the admin did it on their own, and thus while I respect that the admin might appear to take the blame, the fear would be that the person the diff was about would still be open to retaliation, as unless they specifically said they didn't make the report the public assumption would be that they did. I do actually think this is a good idea, but it isn't a replacement for anonymous reporting of harassment to someone who can handle it privately without making the details public and be trusted to maintain confidentially. Instead it would be good for identifying personal attacks and civility issues, along with blatant cases where retaliation was not a concern. - Bilby (talk) 10:57, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
    • To be clear, the idea is that all reports about a particular user would be viewable from one (admins-only) page, which they could access from that user's page or from the general listing of individual reports - so an admin could see a report on a user, go through and compare it to previous reports, and use those to put together a case. And yes, it's true that some people might suspect that the reporter is the victim, but it wouldn't be known, which is a huge difference; the actual case would be put together by an admin, so to most onlookers it would appear like an admin acting on their own initiative (and, in fact, could be.) Even the admin wouldn't know where the reports came from, so it could also simply be a passerby who saw those and got upset, or someone unrelated. --Aquillion (talk)
  • For a start, AE-style seems wrong, as it suggests that only Admins would be able to cast !votes on whether they feel the appropriate outcome is. I don't feel doing so is reasonable or wise. Another problem, which you note, is that literally thousands of editors are going to use it for all disputes - tens of thousands of reports. I'm concerned that the Admins who do participate would be overwhelmed, at least to a point that they either cancel accusations they shouldn't or include cases outside a strict harassment remit. Also, as the ANI boomerangs show, both parties are often at fault. Would a reviewing admin need to check both party's actions? If the diff were not to be referred to, will the accused still be able to see it - it seems like it might hinder their defence. Nosebagbear (talk)
I do like the idea of some sort of built in-reporting tool that on clicking various options allowed an issue (3RR or whatever) to be dropped in the right place would be worthwhile - sort of like a twinkle-lite. I suppose the issue is that making it wiki-agnostic would be really tough. Nosebagbear (talk)
I get the reasoning behind it, obviously, but I'm concerned about both practicialities, implementation and fairness. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:10, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
The reviewing admin would not check the reporter's actions, and in fact wouldn't even know who the reporter is. Yes, this makes some gaming possible, but I feel that it's strictly necessary in order to satisfy the requirements the WMF wants - they seem to believe the fear of WP:BOOMERANG discourages people from reporting legit harassment, so we simply can't hold onto it in all cases. I think we do have to give up those principles to an extent and be willing to evaluate individual user conduct in a vacuum - there really doesn't seem to be any other way to interpret the WMF's commitment to anonymous reporting. That said, the admin would of course be free to look at larger events around the diff and could file additional reports about those people, so if many people are at fault then the others would get in trouble, ie. if you pick a fight with someone and then report them for retaliating you can still get in trouble (and they'd have a chance to raise that issue when the case is opened.) And there would be a system to report obviously frivolous reports to some sort of oversight, of course, in cases where the system is egregiously abused. The discussion wouldn't necessarily have to be WP:AE style, yeah, but the reality is that WP:AE does manage to get outcomes in a reasonable timeframe for complex issues concerning established users, and WP:ANI often does not. We need a system that would produce results. WP:AE fits within our existing culture without devolving into quote the excessive distractions WP:ANI often does for difficult cases. --Aquillion (talk) 14:40, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

the WMF's commitment to anonymous reporting.

One of the wry, somewhat forlorn déjà-vu disillusionments affecting people of my generation is that from the 50s to the 80s, one absorbed a sense that the rot of totalizing societies, how they formed, flourished and then led the world to tyranny, could be quarantined, and yet over the last decades all this hard learned historical and sociological knowledge is rapidly evaporating, as people become convinced we are living in a 'new world (cybernetic (dys)order.' Anyone with a reasonable literacy could cite a dozen examples from the standard works on the regimes of that period about the extreme dangers of delegating investigations to opaque authorities, and taking their judgements on trust. People here are so focused on gender discrimination (I see ethnonational and ethnic discrimination as equally powerfully present on media and Wikipedia, but no one is disconcerted about that) they forget the larger sociological issue -what happens when you institutionalize anonymous reports and invite a 'society/community' to make secret reports on their neighbours. Somerthing like the following:

(1a) It was 1933 and Adolf Hitler was upset. He had just taken complete control of Germany by suspending civil liberties, obtaining the right to enact laws without the consent of the legislature, criminalizing any public disagreements with Nazi ideology, forming special courts to prosecute ideological offences, and creating the Gestapo to ensure compliance… Yet the common people were not behaving as anticipated. Hitler expected them to help enact his agenda, root out treason, and report any malfeasance to the appropriate authorities, even if thart meant denouncing their neighbours,. What he found instead was that citizens were overzealous in this activity. Denunciations came pouring in to the Gestapo in massive numbers from all corners of Germany. Yet these did not strike Hitler as the reports of good, loyal Germans dedicated to the Nazi cause. Instead, they wer overwhelmingly petty and often spiteful, containing little in the way of real information about treasonous activity, ‘We are living at present in a sea of denunciations and human meanness,’ he complained to his advisors. Patrick Bergemann, Judge Thy Neighbor: Denunciations in the Spanish Inquisition, Romanov Russia and Nazi Germany, Columbia University Press, 2019 p.1

(2) it seems likely that they sometimes fabricate information in an attempt to gain personal or social benefits....Although it is difficult to say how often this occurs, the infrequency with which whistle-blowing reports result in useful information is suggestive . For example, the United States General Accounting Office (GAO) established a whistle-blowing hotline in 1979 so that individuals could call in to report fraud, waste, and abuse in federal expenditures. Over the first decade of its existence, the GAO—which did not offer rewards—received over 94,000 calls regarding the private use of government property, fraud by benefits recipients, mismanagement by government employees, and work-hour abuses. Of these, approximately 10,000 (11 percent) were deemed worthy7 of investigation. Of the calls that were investigated, approximately 1,100 of the allegations were substantiated. This means that only about 1 percent of these denunciations resulted in useful information. Unfortunately, the details and motivations of the other 99 percent are unknown. Patrick Bergemann, 2019 ibid. p.188.

(3)'Every day the post brought anonymous reports of the whereabouts of Jewish families. ... Sometimes clerks would denounce their office manager, a maid or farmworker would denounce their employer – in which situations social redress likely played a part- or business associates would denounce their partners. Sometimes old quarrels would resurface, while others were motivated by the hope of seizing their victim's property.’ Simon Levis Sullam, The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Itaaly, Princeton University Press 2018 pp.126-127

(4) Soviet archives house virtual mountains of letters written by people in all walks of life to Soviet leaders, authorities, ... Angry citizens sent letters of abuse and invective anonymously.....As reports show and as civic textbooks remind us, writing to authorities is a form of civic participation and can even be interpreted as a civic duty. But it does not necessarily produce democratic citizens. Every political regime educates political subjects that fit the desirable power configuration in the polity: a good citizen in one spies on the neighbours and reports “suspicious” activities while a good citizen in the other voices his or her opinion on the issues affecting others because he or she believes that only then a decision about collective life can be truly informed. Thus Soviet letter-writing produced good Soviet citizens but did not democratize the political system despite a surface similarity of letter-writing within Western genres of popular communication. What was different about Soviet letter-writing then? The most immediate and most striking disparity was the secrecy of correspondence: many Soviet letters were not meant for public eyes, especially the type of correspondence that Sheila Fitzpatrick calls “signals from below,” namely letters that reported the wrongs (actual or alleged) in hopes that the proper authorities would be notified and the transgressor punished.’ Natalia Kovalyova, Unlearning the Soviet Tongue: Discursive Practices of a Democratizing Polity, Lexington Books, 2014 pp.69-70

Good luck with the refurbishing of the 19th century's various experiments in totalizing control through anonymous grassing, all in order to make this a 'comfortable environment' for people sensitive to any grievance at whatever cost, via desensitivization or sheer ignorance, to the grief of modern history. Hat this by all means. Nishidani (talk) 20:33, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
  • If your objection is to allowing users to anonymously send tips to admins: The actual cases would still have to be assembled and publicly affirmed by an admin who would thereafter take responsibility for it. (Obviously, users would still be able to bring things to our existing systems themselves if they want to; I'm not suggesting replacing our existing system entirely with this, something the second part of your response seemed confused about.) This is beneficial in that it filters for cases that have some merit, allows transparent review of the case, and ensures that cases will be put together by someone who actually knows policy. This sort of anonymous reporting has been a common fixture of law enforcement worldwide for over a century; it is fair and reasonable, forcing accusations to be ultimately made into a case that the accused can answer.
  • If your objection is to the idea of WP:CIVIL and trying to enforce minimum civility standards on Wikipedia's editors: Wikipedia is not a government, nor are editors citizens who are here to live freely in pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Wikipedia is much more narrow than that - it is a collaborative project to create an encyclopedia. Participation here depends on being willing and able to constructively contribute to that project without disrupting it or becoming a net negative to it. Among other things, our success at that project depends on being able to attract and retain a wide variety of editors with a wide range of interests and backgrounds. That means that being unable to work well with others (whether it's harassment or general abrasiveness) is incompatible with our project's purpose and goals - even if someone is the most amazing editor ever, if they constantly drive off other editors with their abrasive behavior, then they're a net negative to the project and need to get the boot. Being unable or unwilling to extend basic civility to other editors is just as much as WP:COMPETENCE issue as being unable or unwilling to use proper spelling and grammar, and can do just as much damage to the project in the long term.
  • Finally, one last thing combining these points: The fact is that Wikipedia's purpose is to make an encyclopedia and not to serve as an experiment in governance. Fairness is important because few people would want to be part of an egregiously unfair system and because an unfair system is unlikely to produce a balanced encyclopedia. But as important as it is, it's ultimately a secondary consideration in a way that it wouldn't be if, say, our goal was to be a government rather than to write an encyclopedia. I've seen people dismiss WP:CIVIL (or, as you put it, our need for a 'comfortable environment') as irrelevant - but, in fact, those things are absolutely central to our mission, since we need to attract and retain a wide variety of editors and maintain an environment in which they can work (which means, yes, a 'comfortable' one.) It's your concerns that I feel go a bit outside our scope - yes, we need a solid system, something better than just inexplicable bolts of lightning from the WMF; but we need that system because the uncertainty stemming from the WMF's actions paradoxically makes our editing environment uncomfortable, not because of the abstract high-minded notions of justice vs. authoritarianism that you're pontificating about. Because, as far as that goes, Wikipedia is more akin go a library than a state - it's a specific space that exists to serve a specific narrowly-defined purpose, with specific rules set to best achieve that purpose, including rules that would obviously be draconian if enforced on a universal scale by a government. "This will be counterproductive to our goal of producing a useful encyclopedia" is a valid argument (including, yes, "I'm uncomfortable with the culture that this set of rules would encourage", which I think is the real concern at the heart of your objection.) "This is a symptom of creeping fascism" is hyperbolic nonsense. We're talking about the rules for booting people from the project of writing an encyclopedia if they can't work constructively with other editors, not dragging them off to a gulag to get shot. --Aquillion (talk) 22:11, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Aquillion, I hear you, I understand where you are coming from, but the editors of Wikipedia have made something greater than ourselves, and it's worth fighting for.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:32, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I have a thought on it -- No. We don't need to close the Star Chamber gap! There are two and only two kinds of complaint: one, which are those the WMF is legally required to keep secret for some legal reason, which they are not going to share and not going to have a lot of discretion about where and how long they ban someone for, and the kind that should be dealt with by the community in the open, joining the literally THOUSAND pages of administrator archives to be hidden in plain sight. We do not need to reward an action against an ArbCom critic by giving Arbcom more powers or making another ArbCom or changing our policies to match what we TOTALLY GUESS AND HAVE NO IDEA IF IT IS EVEN policy of the WMF overlords. Wnt (talk) 01:11, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Looking at systems which are used for similar purposes might be helpful in considerations about such system on Wikipedia. Here are some of them:

US courts
Confrontation Clause. No photograpy in courts, only sketches. No press allowed for some hearings. Witness protection programs. System of escalation and appeals up to Supreme Court
Flagging & triage systems of Stack Overflow (and wider Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites)
Used for judging the quality of questions and answers. User privileges to access some of the buttons depend on user's reputation (which depends on upvotes and downvotes by other users). Site allows editing of questions and answers of other users (wiki-aspect), but not comments. Some users are moderators (marked by diamonds ♦ symbol) voted into this role on regular elections with self-nominations. A theory of moderation—blog post by Jeff Atwood describing the principles.
Cheating report system of video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
The game itself includes technical system Valve Anti-Cheat which is meant to detect cheating. Players are allowed to anonymously report suspected cheaters. Suspected cheaters are reviewed in the Overwatch system, where other players (called investigators) can replay matches and confirm, deny, or mark reports as inconclusive.

—⁠andrybak (talk) 00:27, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Man, as a free speech fanatic I know the slippery slope too well, but this is like jumping on a plastic bag in Outer Mongolia in front of a poster of the ocean and expecting to wet your bathing suit. No ... just no. Wnt (talk) 01:14, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Jehochman thinks he found something about Fram

This is a significant development, I believe the community needs to be informed. Here is what Jehochman has said (including to ArbCom):

  • At the Arbcom case request: [3] I’ve found evidence on wiki that justifies the ban ... Anybody who wants to talk with me about it, please email me.
  • At WP:BN: [4] I’ve dug through the history. The ban is absolutely justified.
  • At WP:BN: [5] I won’t identify the victim. If you look deep enough you can figure out what happened.
  • [6] I looked and found harassment.
  • [7] This FRAMBAN appears to be about harassment and stalking. I think the ArbCom diff was cited to help protect the victim(s) from further harassment by others. Fram’s explanation lacks critical details.
  • [8] I believe ArbCom or at least some of its members are fully aware of what transpired with Fram.

Judging by Jehochman's contributions, he may have found something between 14:57 and 21:26, 25 June 2019 (UTC) - this timeline is my speculation and may be wrong. That's that. starship.paint (talk) 06:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Jehochman - I forgot to ping you. starship.paint (talk) 06:04, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

And this is now exactly what WMF instigated: a witchhunt until the last stone (of the stonewall) has been lifted. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:16, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

  • If true, this is truly the most depressing display of incompetence that I have ever seen, from the staff that performed the investigation, to Arbcom, all the way up to the board. A most horrid disaster caused by whoever made the policy that nothing beyond generic policy regurgitation could ever be said. A shock that independent community-appointed board members and Arbcom members subjected themselves to such a notion, above merely calming the community's distress by disputing Fram's assessment. If they had genuine stalking and harassment on him, then they all were complicit in letting him sew chaos, vilify and OUT the victim, and demonize their staff, they allowed his narrative to spread and fester for weeks, they allowed the community to rip itself apart, they threw their relations with the community in the garbage, and for what? All because no one would step in to just counter his false narrative? Because they wanted to prove a point that they would never divulge anything? It took some random nobody (rhetorical, no offense intended Jehochman) to do their own digging and find out what actually happened? If this is true, that's a staggering failure, and whoever was responsible for the stonewall strategy should resign in disgrace, with substantial changes on the WMF end going forward. ~Swarm~ {sting} 06:32, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Jehochman: If you have an explanation that the WMF will not provide, now is the time. "Email me for details" is too little, too late. ~Swarm~ {sting} 06:34, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I can understand a reluctance to divulge details here. However, at least a couple of people have trawled through all of the on-wiki contributions and say that they found nothing. Their efforts were then mentioned here by others. Perhaps Jehochman should email them and get some sort of agreement? Iridescent was one, IIRC. - Sitush (talk) 06:45, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
For the umpteenth time, they didn't have to divulge details. They simply had to dispute Fram's claim that he did not commit a ToU violation, and that it was a civility ban. All they had to do was deny it, and directly state that Fram committed a ToU violation, and the entire crisis would have been averted. I still find Jehochman's claim hard to believe, because the notion that the Foundation had something legitimate, and let an abuser spin a false story about how he was the victim and his complainant was the villain, it truly beggars belief. ~Swarm~ {sting} 06:52, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I am referring to Jehochman's unwillingness to divulge here, not the WMF. The investigations of a couple of admins found nothing and have been cited here by others, and now Jehochman (another admin) says there is something. So, the three should perhaps liaise with each other in private to resolve the disparity. - Sitush (talk) 06:58, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Swarm: - WMF did say the issues reported to us fell under section 4 of the terms of use, as noted above, specifically under the first provision entitled "harassing and abusing others." That provision lists the following harmful activities: Engaging in harassment, threats, stalking, spamming, or vandalism; and Transmitting chain mail, junk mail, or spam to other users. starship.paint (talk) 06:55, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
No. I do not buy that we are supposed to blindly accept unaccountable Office actions in spite of accusations that such actions were corrupt. This explanation was wholly insufficient in the face of an allegation that no such ToU violation took place. All they had to do was affirm the fact that the violation was legitimate, and that it was not a civility block. I've been literally begging for such a confirmation, over and over again. I even went to a board member directly, who could not confirm that the violation existed, in spite of weeks of "ongoing discussion". No one ever confirmed that a violation of that clause was present. That is what allowed an (allegedly) false narrative to take hold and fester. And that's still a monumental disaster on the WMF's end. ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

This is the Streisand effect in action - a belligerent effort to hush something up backfiring spectacularly. Anyone who thinks whatever this is won't eventually come out, with all the attention this page has been getting, is kidding themselves. If the WMF's intention was to protect parties to this conflict they have spectacularly failed. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 06:51, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

The WMF in particular seems to have failed to protect the editor nearly named Lara. starship.paint (talk) 07:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
And this I just don't understand. By acknowledging the existence of Fram's Commons statement but taking no action, the WMF are tacitly allowing Fram to out Laura as the heavily implied initial complainant that led to the 2018 warning, but somehow refuse to give any substantive information on the more recent development even to Arbcom. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@King of Hearts: - initial complainant that led to the 2018 warning - Lara's diffs are cited in the second warning. That would be Fram's 2019 warning for October 2018 diffs. Did you write that quote wrong? starship.paint (talk) 07:49, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • (ec) @Jehochman: Agree with above that you should provide diffs to substantiate your claims. If it's all public then someone else could dig in and do what you did as well; all you're doing by refusing the request is wasting people's time. Assuming your findings are sufficiently clear that others investigating Fram's activity would independently reach the same conclusion if they looked hard enough, it will be posted by someone on-wiki eventually, and there is no policy rationale for deleting such a post; trying to suppress public discussion of public knowledge will only result in the Streisand effect. If not, then I can only assume that you are perhaps too quick to jump to conclusions. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:57, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
    Indeed, if Jehochman can find it, so can someone else, and sooner or later, someone else who won't be so private will find it. starship.paint (talk) 07:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
That was my thought. If there is someone to be protected, Jehochman's "Eureka!" has done nothing to protect them. Quite the contrary.--Wehwalt (talk) 07:10, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
As I said, "failing to dispute allegations of corruption and lack of due process is failing to defend your supposed "victim". If there is a real "harassment victim", they've completely lost any and all credibility and their abuser is being allowed to freely dictate the narrative". That doesn't even make mention of the fact that the "victim" was named both on and off wiki. ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:14, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

I found some stuff that I'd personally consider to be harassment. In it, Fram makes a series of comments such as "<Editor X> has written most of the text, and that it isn't the first time his writing and approach has caused problems and embarassment?" and "your [responsibility] for producing such shoddy writing once again" and "the text is seriously deficient, you wrote most of it". Jehochman, is this the stuff you regarded as being justification for the ban? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 07:15, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Pinging @Jehochman:, could you confirm or deny whether this is what you were referring to? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:44, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Did Fram say these things to an editor who he was already IBANNED from? This is one of his implied defenses: he was already abiding by an IBAN against his supposed "harassment victim", yet he was banned anyway. ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:18, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
No. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 07:21, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
You know Wikipedia has a search, right? If ArbCom wanted to sanction Fram over something on their own freaking noticeboard Im pretty sure they could have. nableezy - 15:32, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
AFAIK Jehochman isn't the first to suggest they may be aware of what it is. Someone else said something similar I think about a week ago, that they were giving themselves 95% probability of knowing what it was. (Not it wasn't Clayoquot.) Personally I suspect there are others who may also have an idea of what it is who haven't said anything about that. Nil Einne (talk) 07:25, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Nil Einne: - I remember, it was Headbomb. starship.paint (talk) 07:33, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I wouldn't consider any of that to be harassment. Unfortunately, many editors put erroneous material, or copyvios, or stuff that's otherwise substandard, into articles. And many of these editors are repeat offenders. You can't use the "harassment" defense as a shield to prevent anyone from taking out the bad material or remarking that it's not the first time this editor has written junk. Reyk YO! 07:28, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
BTW a point about the privacy aspect of this, worth remembering that regardless of the wisdom, the WMF could easily have backed themselves into a corner before this controversy even began. If the WMF had given assurances to the complainant that the WMF would not reveal their complaint or identity, then while I don't know of the legal situation, ethically I personally and think many others would feel they are bound by that again whatever the wisdom of them of them making such a promise in the first place. Once it blew up, they could try speaking to the complainant again, and warn them if they didn't beforehand (which they obviously should have) that while the WMF may not reveal their identity, since the details are public it's possible others may uncover it. So it may be better if they at least partly reveal the details. (E.g. to arbcom.) Or otherwise try to get ahead of the situation. But if the complainant still won't budge, again whatever the legal situation I'm sure they will feel bound to honour that request even if they're sure it's going to be public at some stage and no matter what flak they are taking. They could of course have declared to ban in the first place under the confidentiality requirement, or decide to overturn the ban later, but they couldn't reveal someone's identity against their will. Incidentally as I've mentioned before I still see no real reason to think this has anything really to do with the L editor. And don't think I quite mentioned before but sadly enough, assuming it does have nothing to do with them, this is further proof that all that stuff about pressure from a board member due to a personal relationship etc was nonsense. They've actually suffered significantly from something that had little to do with them. As I'm sure I did say before, assuming we come to the conclusion or find out somehow this had little to do with the L editor, whatever the faults of the WMF, we as a community also need to consider how we behaved in our treatment of the L editor and those associated with them after this blew up. Nil Einne (talk) 07:51, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
(Redacted) by myself, with apologies to editor L for the speculation. starship.paint (talk) 08:08, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
These speculations don't help any to resolve the issue. I have not much sympathies for Laura's editing skills but she needs to be left alone, now. ∯WBGconverse 08:10, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm not advocating for anything to happen to L, WBG. starship.paint (talk) 08:13, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Nil Einne, what exactly did the community do wrong with regard to the L and R editors? Just would like to hear your view. starship.paint (talk) 08:13, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Members of the community continued to make speculative statements about L being the cause of the Framban, even once it became common knowledge she was receiving off site harassment. Like you just did with your near nonsense suggestion she was partly involved / tipped off. L's recent edit history shows that in several previous days she'd stop editing at about 0-3 hours before the time of Fram's ban (17:45). So nothing suspicious about about her stopping at around that time on the 10th. And obviously the reason she didn't return after the 10th was most likely the offsite harassment. So no reason to assume a tip off. You might not have explicitly advocated for her to be further harassed, but your suggestion of at least partial involvement could have encouraged the offsite harassers to continue their work, or at least not to feel guilty about what they've already done, and hence be more likely in the future to harass other good prolific female content creators. Im sure you didn't intend that, but you might want to think things through a little more before making similar posts. FeydHuxtable (talk) 08:51, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@FeydHuxtable: - thank you for explaining. Without your explanation, I would not have thought of that on my own. I have redacted my musing. starship.paint (talk) 09:12, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

The problem now is Jan's message of the 21st. He states '.. the community does not and cannot have all the facts of this case ...'. This now has either a secondary effect (we really do not have all the facts of this case (Jehochman is right that there is bad stuff, but this is not the stuff that got Fram banned), resulting in possibly the community bashing down a wrong victim - still, all hell will break loose), or Jan's meaning was 'the community should never figure out all the facts of this case, because then all hell will break loose'. I cannot understand that they did not understand the implications of either option. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:42, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Nothing good is going to come of this aspect (even if we guess everything perfectly, we will get no confirmation; and we could potentially endanger people whether we guess right or wrong.) But I do agree that User:JEissfeldt (WMF) clearly screwed up (again) by dramatically citing the community "not knowing all the facts" as a reason to shut down further discussion - it practically invited this sort of digging. More generally, though, the important focus of this discussion ought to be on the flawed T&S policies that brought us to this situation - unnecessarily bypassing community procedures, attempting to put what would otherwise be a fairly normal ban (for harassment, presumably?) above appeal simply because it went through the WMF, doubling down on the idea that appeals are forbidden while admitting they'd screwed up, etc. And, conversely, they need to be more open about whatever flaws they see in enwiki's handling of harassment (admittedly, this section probably isn't helping with that, although I'd reiterate that the screw-up that led to this unhealthy speculation and overwhelming focus on Fram's edit history is mostly on T&S.) Either way, this case is a lot bigger than Fram; the important thing is to make sure that T&S gets the message and approaches harassment issues in a more constructive way - focusing on our policies and culture and what can be done to evolve them, rather than trying to hurl lightning bolts at individual editors from ten thousand feet in the air, so to speak. --Aquillion (talk) 09:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Just making a note that it's been 9.5 hours since Jehochman started spreading this allegation, that he has found Fram guilty of stalking and/or harassment, and he has utterly failed to explain or remotely substantiate his allegations. This is little more than a personal attack, as far as our policy is concerned. This is aspersion-casting by any standard, and he should not make any further commentary that makes allegations against Fram unless he is prepared to substantiate it. While the WMF is immune to our rules, ordinary editors can't just make accusations and fail to substantiate them, "privacy" reasons or not. If you're going to make an accusation you are unwilling or unable to substantiate, then don't make it. It's a personal attack. If you're not a member of WMF or Arbcom who is acting on privileged and/or confidentially-disclosed information, you are not bound to keep public information that you have uncovered secret, and it not only does a disservice to the community to claim that you're exclusively privy to non-confidential information, but it does the original case further harm by contributing to a coverup. ~Swarm~ {sting} 09:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I only saw this this morning, the WMF staff may be able to ignore local policies but Jehochman can not. Unless he presents some evidence publicly or at a minimum to a member of arbcom by the time I get home (in about 8 hours) I'm just going to go through his contributions and remove all the references to frams actions as unsubstantiated personal attacks per WP:NPA. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:20, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
While I hesitate to doubt Jehochman's word, this is actually fair as a matter of policy and practice. I will take the side of the truth, and in absence of a truth, I will take the side of Occam's Razor. Right now, that means that I am more likely to renominate Fram for RfA in absentia than I am to take the side of aspersions. ~Swarm~ {sting} 09:21, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
AGF, I suppose it's far more likely to be a genuine disagreement about what constitutes harassment than Jehochman deliberately talking crap. Reyk YO! 09:27, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Is it a "subjective", flexible definition of harassment, as interpreted through the lens of incivility? If so, it would have been best to simply own it. We could have understood. But now, it's weeks later, and we have a random nobody (again, rhetorical, no offense) claiming to have discovered "harassment", with no diffs, and no specifics. This does nothing to improve the situation, and arguably makes it worse. ~Swarm~ {sting} 10:10, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • If the WMF gave less information, the community would still be trying to find out what happened. If the WMF gave more information, the community would still be trying to find out what happened. The only way that the WMF could prevent people from digging is by a) not banning Fram, which doesn't address the problem, and b) by giving all the information, and outing the victims themselves. And the only reason that the WMF gave any information here was to respond to community demands for it. Some of the same people who said that Jan was "stonewalling" are now saying that he's said too much. What a completely absurd argument. If you are attempting to out victims of harassment, that is entirely on you, not the WMF. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 11:32, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Question Does this WMF/T&S group have the ability to "super-disappear" any actions, logs, contribs? (in the same sense that we once were involved in a "superprotect" experiment). Is it possible that there are things hidden from even those with advanced permissions? (I am familiar with wp:os - I'm speaking beyond that) Just curious. — Ched :  ?  — 12:44, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
    Technically yes; server-side manipulation of revision and text tables is certainly possible but I don't buy that. ∯WBGconverse 12:55, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
    I should have narrowed that down. Via a technical editing ability - or do some of them have actual physical access to the servers? (Not saying I'm buying into anything quite yet, just trying to eliminate the impossible, to see what remains.)— Ched :  ?  — 13:28, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

I also found what I consider to be evidence of harassment. I'm not going to link it here, but it included quotes such as "The mess is, as so often with these pulled hooks, yours"; "If you can't see what's wrong with your original text there [...] then you should refrain from creating articles on scientific subjects"; "if you can't make a coherent defense... then don't bother replying"; "lack of knowledge or understanding never seems to stop you from DYK participation"; and "A prime example of what is wrong with too many of (Redacted)'s edits". The editor in question at one point made a comprehensive list of users Fram had harassed, with evidence. SwineHerd (talk/contribs) 13:27, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

All of those statements date back to 2016 or earlier. If those statements had been evidence for a WMF ban, then Fram would have been WMF-banned years ago. * Pppery * it has begun... 13:30, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Doubtful. If that was really the harassment in question then there was no reason for this not to go through community processes. Also, by including those quotes you've allowed anyone to find out who the editor in question is. It took me ten seconds. – Teratix ₵ 13:39, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
It might be me but I think that is the issue some of has have suggested caused this, the fact they have not (up till now) been banned. Having said that I am not sure (without context) that any of that is harassment, they could be valid observations of a problem edd. It might be best if ALL speculation is stopped now.Slatersteven (talk) 13:42, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't believe any of those edits are harassment. They're exasperated comments about another editor's tendency to put errors in the mainspace, expressed at the correct venue for those comments. If you can't say, "You keep putting erroneous DYK hooks" at the talk page for DYK without it being regarded as harassment, then this is not an encyclopedia anymore but a padded hugbox. Reyk YO! 13:46, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

A hypothetical question on T&S behaviour generally

This whole business has ground to a halt. To achieve any sort of agreement for action I think we have to look at the question as two narrower aspects: 1. Assuming that Fram's actions are indeed unacceptable (I make no such claim), then what have T&S's actions been, and are we happy with that? 2. Were Fram's actions deserving of such a sanction, and was the need for this and their culpability adequately proven?

I see the first of these as being important, and bringing important issues of the relation between WMF and en:WP into question. It is also entirely independent of any questions of guilt.

The second I am far less concerned over (although I'm sure the individuals concerned would be concerned). It's also far harder to reach any agreement over it, and there are valid concerns of privacy.

I would like to see the first addressed (and everything has ground to a halt, so nothing is happening about it). Even if some editor's actions were reprehensible and deserving of a one year ban, is this the way in which WMF / T&S should impose such a thing against a specific project, such as en:WP? We seem to be well off the rails here, even though we surely don't disagree that there should be sanctions on such a reprehensible editor (and again, I'm discussing a hypothetical editor who is deserving it).

There is very little, given the secrecy, that we can do about the second. In the meantime, we should not delay some attempt to resolve the first. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:48, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

If you kick a dog for pooping on the grass you are mean spirited, even if your intention is to correct behaviour. If you kick my dog for pooping on the grass more than once, that is harassment. ClubOranjeT 09:54, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Sorry. I have no idea what your lesson is here. ~Swarm~ {sting} 10:07, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I may be wrong, but I interpreted the dog in this analogy as a well-meaning Wikipedian who has made some mistakes along the way, maybe posted some copyvio material or somesuch, while the other party is a mean-spirited admin who goes around kicking said dogs.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:00, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Amakuru, If you like, yeah. But not my dog, so all I'm likely to do is suggest they find a nicer way to stop them pooping on the lawn. ClubOranjeT 07:38, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
  • My my, isn't this an interesting twist to a social Wikipedia:Experiment?? What to do, what to do? We demand someone tell us this is a valid ban - someone does - and we immediately consider the idea that said messenger is in violation of our policies. Ya just can't make this stuff up. — Ched :  ?  — 11:44, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
    We haven't got to the stage of literally blaming the victim for being harassed or abused yet, so there's still some ground to cover. But at this rate I am confident we'll get there. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 11:46, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
    Ah, but do we know for sure that anyone has been harassed? As far as "abused" - wouldn't that type of behavior almost certainly call for a global ban? Hmmm, it almost writes itself no? — Ched :  ?  — 12:05, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
    and "[42] I believe ArbCom or at least some of its members are fully aware of what transpired with Fram." almost certainly reeks of the dreaded "conspiracy" — Ched :  ?  — 12:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • No, not at all (I don't know how others are going to interpret it, but it's certainly not my viewpoint).
I have, from the outset, seen this as a procedural mess by T&S. Unclear actions, questionable scope and justification for this case, then a refusal to communicate with a peer organisation. Those are problems and need to be addressed by WMF and ArbCom. But this is all overshadowed by Fram themself: What did they do and was some reaction justified? I don't actually care about that – it's a one-off case and it's more important to address the general situation.
So far, WP's reaction (i.e. this page and its environs) has been ineffective. Today's flurry around Jehochman is likely to make it even more so, even more focussed on Fram alone, and I see this as a bad move – hence this post. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:07, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I agree - setting aside the entire issue of whether Fram's ban was appropriate or not, even setting aside the whole issue of whether it's OK to have a "court" rule on secret evidence with (apparently) no oversight, there's another issue here T&S's procedures and policies.
Where I work, we're obliged to consider the risks posed by our actions, make a plan to mitigate those risks, and if something goes wrong, follow our incident response procedures. WMF knows they have the potential to disrupt the community, they know that the relationship with the community can be contentious. But despite that, there was either no risk analysis or a completely inadequate risk analysis. Their incident response procedures proved to be totally inadequate. As a result, they have disrupted the community, cost us experienced admins, wasted thousands of hours of volunteer time, and diminished the enthusiasm of many of our most dedicated volunteers. It has also worsened relations between editors (once this is over, we still have to work with people that we have been arguing angrily with).
Why does WMF not have (better) risk assessment procedures, when relationships with the community are an issue that, for example, identified as a "tier 1 riks" in a recent presentation to the WMF Board. This is a community health crisis, precipitated entirely by the way a T&S action was managed.
Where are the procedures? Where's the planning? What were people thinking? Guettarda (talk) 14:59, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I think this is insightful, although I would rephrase it. T&S (or even the wider WMF) perceived a problem, and decided to address it. But they apparently did not at all consider the possibility that their cure is worse than the original problem - i.e. they failed to properly weigh the potential for improvement against the risk of (expectable and unexpected) side effects. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:08, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, but the underlying issue is that WMF should have procedures that force people to consider the consequences of their actions. That should be a key point on their workflow, not a potential afterthought. Cultivating and engaging volunteers is central to WMF's role. Guettarda (talk) 15:29, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Comment from Jehochman

I am not doing anything hasty. I'm going to get feedback on how to present evidence. There might be a need to scrutinize other editors besides Fram, and it would be useful to have an ArbCom case. We are more thorough than WMF. Please comment on whether you think evidence should be posted at WP:RFAR, emailed to ArbCom, or emailed to select editors. I am mainly interested in the opinions of WMF staff and arbitrators because they might know more than I do, and might provide reasons to use one path rather than another. Also, to those who think I shouldn't have mentioned this at all, it's already out there and will surface one way or another regardless of what I do. Jehochman Talk 12:36, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Much as I like everything on the table, in this case I would suggest you ask a second opinion to evaluate the material - in particular with respect to its value as evidence of wrong-doing (i.e. does the other person share your interpretation), but also with respect to the question of how to present it in a way to minimise damage to other parties. And it would be good to pick someone very respected on the other side of the fence, e.g. User: Floquenbeam or (if he is still available) User:WJBscribe or one of the people mentioned by Fram in his proposal. When that other person agrees that it is sufficient evidence, then publish it for all. That won't solve the constitutional issue, but it might depersonalise it. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:49, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm working on sharing this with a select group of Arbitrators. I am not fond of the ArbCom mailing list. In the past it has been leaky. Jehochman Talk 13:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
If the diffs are still live on Wikipedia, the best course of action is to present them at the evidence phase of an arbitration case, and state why the diffs in question constitute a bannable offense by Fram, and let Fram respond. Since that is all rather pointless as the WMF has stated they will not be removing the ban, I'm not sure what you've found even matters at this point. Mr Ernie (talk) 12:50, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I think it matters that we investigate this ourselves and also look at other editors who may be involved and maybe need warnings. I don't know if WMF was entirely thorough in their investigation. We can confirm or refute their findings. This may provide measure of justice. Jehochman Talk 13:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • My suggestion is that you send your diffs to ArbCom. I think it might be unwise to present the diffs publicly right now, and sending to any other selected individuals could look one-sided. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:02, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
    Thank you. I've already sent the entrance to the rabbit hole to one arbitrator, and am compiling a list of diffs because the output of the tool I'm using isn't very user friendly. Jehochman Talk 13:08, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Second Boing!'s advice. You may consider the arbs that have commented here: GorillaWarfare, Worm That Turned, KrakatoaKatie and Opabinia regalis. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:10, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

@Jehochman: I trust you are aware that the WMF did find edits of Fram that they felt were inappropriate, and justified an IBAN. My recollection is that IBAN was honored (possibly with a couple minor mistakes). One would hope that if the WMF imposes a sanction, and it is honored, it cannot possibly be the basis for the ban. Are you confident that the diffs you are uncovering involve someone other than the editor involved in that IBAN, or, if involving that editor, occur subsequent to the imposition of the IBAN?S Philbrick(Talk) 13:47, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

I heard that but if you know of any public posting about it, please share the diff or link so I can make sure I am looking at the same thing as you. Yes, there has to be a trigger beyond the imposition of the IBAN for a further sanction. I don't know everything about what WMF said to Fram (nobody does but them and Fram). If anything, from what I've seen WMF was rather lenient with Fram for several years. Jehochman Talk 15:18, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, there has to be a trigger beyond the imposition of the IBAN for a further sanction. That is not a given. People have also expressed that older diffs cannot be the cause; that is also not a given. Remember that the WMF expressed that they took this step because on occasion community members submit evidence strongly indicating cases where local communities consistently struggle to uphold not just their own autonomous rules but the Terms of Use; that is to say, they are dissatisfied with enwiki's handling of Fram in some way (although they cannot / will not say exactly how.) Therefore, far from assuming that the offending edits cannot be something that we ourselves would not use for a ban (stale, already handled by an IBAN, etc), we should perhaps consider the possibility that the offending edits are most likely something that we ourselves would not use for a ban under our current policy, for one reason or another. This would neatly answer a number of questions. Either way, I don't feel the exact issue that got Fram banned is what's important; getting the WMF to explain what they think enwiki is doing wrong is important, especially since there's a troubling feel from this that at least some people within T&S are or were taking the position of "enwiki can't moderate itself, so we should just overrule them rather than working with them", ie. whatever failing they feel they've identified, it's possible they feel it's serious enough to use as an argument against enwiki self-moderation - and they don't think enwiki necessarily gets a seat at the table in that debate, so they don't feel the need to explain themselves to us. --Aquillion (talk) 17:38, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
On this page, some editors have been posting things Fram said that, in their opinions, are harassment. Although neither harassment nor incivility are particularly good things, there really is a difference between incivility and harassment in the context of what does or does not justify an office action, or even an accepted request for arbitration. Just looking at the posted quotes, they look to me like efforts to enforce policies and guidelines that were expressed in overly gruff ways, but they do not look like harassment. @Jehochman: I obviously don't know what you found, but I hope that you are keeping that distinction in mind. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:55, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Here’s another core, critically important distinction we need to keep in mind: Neither WMF nor the TOS are bound by our local policy definitions of harassment or incivility. They are in theory free to define any incivility as harassment. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 20:02, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Actually to be really precise you could possibly sue if they TOS banned you for something that isn’t reasonably “harassment”, but good luck getting past 12(b)(6). Their Jones Day lawyers will eviscerate pretty much anything. (That’s right, WMF uses Jones Day) —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 20:06, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Well, yes, that's true, but by the same token they are free to alienate the editing community. If they feel that our harassment policy does not match with their expectations, they would be well advised to discuss that openly instead of taking the approach of super-secret bans of users who guessed wrong. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:11, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @ Jonathan .. I'm curious about the wording "...select group of Arbitrators.". Are there some of the already select group that you don't feel completely confident in? — Ched :  ?  — 13:22, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
    ArbCom’s mailing list has historically been leaky. I am not fond of it. Also if I trust the entire committee I also am trusting that none of them have any malware on their computers or compromised email accounts. The attack surface of the committee is bigger than one or a few members. Jehochman Talk 14:00, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Are you shitting me? That goes beyond courtesy to the person harassed, which is what's at issue, not some solemn duty that it not be mentioned aloud. You might as well be worried that someone else will find the diffs and publish the same evidence that you will.
    I will say to any arbs that receive this evidence: You had better forward it to the list with no edits or redactions. As bad as the ex parte communication situation with ArbCom is already, don't make it worse by concealing communications from fellow arbs. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 15:25, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
    I would never shit you, my friend. My contact is free to share however (s)he likes but I'll let him(er) decide whether my communication is useful or not, and who needs to see it. Jehochman Talk 15:30, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The whole WP:FRAM situation reminds me of recent kerfuffle at Linux kernel mailing list with regards to behavior of Linus Torvalds. This quote: Two of the big initiatives that are going to be happening this next year - one of them is writing a universal code of conduct, and the second one is us making a new reporting system from [9] forebodes almost the same things as what happened on LKML, which now has a "Code of Conduct". See also similar situations in other open-source projects all over Github and other places. —⁠andrybak (talk) 14:04, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
    @Andrybak: Very important comparison - but who is behind this and what are they pushing for? (Other than the vindication of Ted Kaczinsky, I mean) Wnt (talk) 22:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Decision making should be public. Any impression that you are "protecting the victims" is an illusion. The archives of AN/I are endless and nobody on Earth cares about them but Wikipedia administrators. The identity of secret victims in a case that is tearing apart Wikipedia, on the other hand, will become major news. Every moment you delay only increases the odds that the whole thing comes out in a very well-read press article with an unfair spin. With payday-lender interest rates attached. For all we know you simply agreed to say you found something "to shut those crazies up". Why not? We're not the community, we're just an unruly mob squatting on the WMF's spotless servers, awaiting a mop for all of us. Wnt (talk) 22:07, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

What on earth?

Let me get this straight: Jehochman goes to a bunch of pages across Wikipedia tearing the WMF and its representatives a new one for the secret-evidence ban that leaves everyone speculating and leaves Fram no way of defending himself. He then decides to play Hercule Poirot for an hour, and proceeds to go on a talk-page spree posting the exact type of "can't tell you but I assure you it's justified" garbage that he spent the previous day vilifying the WMF for doing, throwing another barrel of gasoline onto this raging dumpster fire, and triggering yet another intense hunt for the identity of the "victim(s)", which then needs to be redacted? Why on earth would you do such a thing, Jehochman? What was the plan here? 28bytes (talk) 14:25, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

28, we have history that goes way back. I’ve let bygones be bygones, and I hope you will too. That out of the way, I am gravely disappointed in WMF handling of this matter. But before putting on my Spider-Man suit and climbing any tall buildings, I needed to assure myself that Fram wasn’t a bad actor. My digging turned up solid evidence of harassment. This case should have been sent to ArbCom. I’m hoping to finish gathering the evidence and present it to them if they are willing to hear it. I’ve already sent one arbitrator a preview. Sorry for any lags in replies. I just had a new refrigerator delivered; transferring all the food; big family and nobody else home right now. Jehochman Talk 14:38, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm confused - I though there was some Friday come to Jesus meeting with everyone that included all these Arbcom/WMF reps/T&S etc. players in some sort of conference call (including Jimbo). — Ched :  ?  — 14:42, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Jehochman ... you are not the first to convince themselves that they are correct, but if you put the evidence before 28bytes and they backed you, I would take that as firm confirmation.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:38, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Yep - I'll go along with what ^^he^^ — Ched :  ?  — 15:42, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
So if I'm reading this right - I don't think Jehochman is too far from what some of the others of us are saying: that there could really be a case made for desysopping/banning Fram, but it should have been done by ArbCom. It is just that Jehochman presented it in a way that got noticed by a lot of people, to put it diplomatically. --Rschen7754 18:18, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Whether Fram needs to be banned or not is immaterial at this point. People are up in arms NOT because they thought Fram was as pure as the driven snow, but because of how this went down. If it wasn't an emergency, T&S could have dropped their notes off at Arb (who we have seen act in as little as an hour if it was warranted). Instead, the WMF puffed up and slapped the community in the face. The issue is how we handle these kinds of non-emergency problems, period. T&S has successfully made themselves a bigger villain than Fram ever was, although it is pretty obvious they don't really care how we feel about their hamfisted approach. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:26, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes and this has been stated something like 100 times on this page, but people continue to defend the WMF's actions with their belief that Fram is a "harasser" (or something to that effect). Enigmamsg 20:31, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I view how T&S handled this and whether or nor Fram harassed someone to be separate issues that can (and likely should) be handled as separate matters. Regardless of the merits of Fram's sanctions, T&S should have at a minimum explained why this was time-limited and why ArbCom was not the appropriate venue. Thus far all we've gotten is vague boilerplate from them, which is spectacularly unhelpful for all involved. Their handling of this is why Fram has been more-or-less allowed to set the narrative and why there's been such a Streisanding. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 21:17, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Enigmaman: And if Fram had engaged in harassment that was serious enough for T&S to intervene, then it should have resulted in an indefinite global ban, not a fixed duration site ban exclusive to the English Wikipedia. Nothing about the official response to this situation makes any sense if not viewed with the presumption that they have committed an overreach of authority in banning someone they didn't like. Kurtis (talk) 02:47, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
With all due deference to @Jehochman:, I find the links provided by Starship.paint to be deficient as evidence of a 'smoking gun'. The last point that Arbcom or some members of same are aware of the issues has been discredited by an Arbcom member here (unless we are to assume that those Arbcom members in the know will not advise other members to that fact.) The other is the method by which JEH determined the degree of 'harrassment' (to a third party - the effect on the recipient should never be ignored) against the totality of Fram's interactions while using semi automated tools to perform wikignoming actions. If he simply cross referenced Fram with another user, using commonly available tools, finding three examples of poorly judged comments is 'not' a basis to construct an argument of a campaign of harrassment. We do not know if this is three from tens, hundreds, or thousands, of interactions - and how many out of all edits over that period. Without simple answers as to the ratio of suspect comment to all actions with 1 editor or all actions within that timeframe, then we do not know how Jehochman derived his opinion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LessHeard vanU (talk • contribs) 21:46, 27 June 2019 (UTC)‎ signing now. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:01, 27 June 2019 (UTC) (thanks Duncan)
Yep. ~Swarm~ {sting} 03:58, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Ahem...

Some weeks ago I happened across Fram's comment to AGK, and thought he was heading for some kind of sanction, and I confess to a feeling of great relief when I heard that he had been banned for a year. However I was also troubled. Traditionally "Office" bans have been for conduct considered so egregious that the idea of ever letting the editor back cannot be countenanced.

Yes Fram has been a thorn in the side of many editors, myself not the least. But this is something completely within community competence. If he is guilty, within the balance of probabilities, of one of the offences, almost certainly rising to criminality, for which we traditionally believed that Office bans are applied, by all means take the necessary steps.

If not, it is a matter for the community. Verb sap.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:11, 25 June 2019 (UTC).

One small bit of possible progress that seems mentioning is that numerous Arbitrators are suddenly mentioning that they are under NDA and have things they can't comment about regarding this. While obviously they can't say any more, this implies that the WMF has in fact shared with them whatever private information is behind this case, which in turn suggests they might be willing to let ArbCom handle cases like this in the future. Of course, not everyone is going to be happy with that - ArbCom saying eg. "Fram is banned and we can't tell you why, but it's for very good reasons" is still going to leave some people upset - but they're at least answerable to the community on some level, and I suspect people trust them more to adhere to our traditional community standards, so people are more likely to accept their say-so that the evidence is strong, justifies a ban under our normal standards, and that that sort of private case was required. (Assuming they can make such an affirmation, of course. But as a general rule, putting aside the details of this case, they'd enjoy more community trust and could be booted at the next ArbCom election if for some reason they don't.) I also suspect that ArbCom would be better about communicating the things they can safely communicate; it's hard to accept that T&S has told us everything they can safely convey, given the near-absence of information. --Aquillion (talk) 19:48, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I think Rich nails it on the head frankly. I think that the arbitrary nature of this act and the potential precedent it sets is disturbing. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 19:59, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Rich, could you post that diff? I want to be sure it's the same one I'm thinking of. Jehochman Talk 20:23, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Probably the one made after the admin security circular. --qedk (t 桜 c) 21:06, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I want to clearly state that the Arbitration Committee has no more information about the details behind Fram's ban than anyone else. The WMF's public statements have explicitly said that they are unable to share those details with anyone, including us, for privacy/confidentiality reasons. That has not changed and I do not expect it to. Rob has clarified in a second comment that his mention of the NDA above was intended to mean that he cannot comment on any discussions that were had on the Arb mailing list, not that ArbCom has more information than anyone else here. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:53, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
The failure to share information with ArbCom, even in confidence, speaks volumes. WJBscribe (talk) 00:03, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
About the extent to which the Foundation is serious about respecting the confidentiality of victims of harassment? Indeed, it does. ~ Rob13Talk 00:12, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
All they had to do was say that there was harassment that happened somewhere we (or ArbCom) cannot see it. They haven't. WJBscribe (talk) 00:14, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Yep. I looked and found harassment. I won’t post diffs because I don’t want to bring further harm to the victim. This is a good ban with a very poor explanation. Hopefully they will learn to communicate better. I think we are done here. Jehochman Talk 00:18, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Jehochman It was the "Fuck ArbCom" comment if I remember correctly. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 12:46, 27 June 2019 (UTC).
@Jehochman: - no no, you got it wrong. This is a very good ban with very good communication! It is the community that must reflect what exactly went wrong and what led us to this point! Hopefully, with the wealth of information provided (did you see how much text we got) we will learn not to harass. /s starship.paint (talk) 01:10, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Jehochman I get why you don’t want to post them here, but would you consider sending the diffs to the ArbCom? —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 01:50, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Pythoncoder: - so you think Jehochman is serious, while I thought he’s joking. Which is it Jehochman? :O starship.paint (talk) 02:31, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Appears to be serious, see below section. Tag Enigmaman. starship.paint (talk) 06:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Starship.paint I read it as clearly a serious statement and replied, but then I realized there was a chance I was wrong, so I reverted myself. I only like to be on record when I'm confident in the veracity of what I'm saying. Enigmamsg 06:16, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Enigmaman: - I understood that. So I invite you to read this. starship.paint (talk) 06:22, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Starship.paint: I did see the section you created below, but with respect, I do not feel this new section adds anything. He says he found something and he doesn't want to disclose what it is. I understood that from his comments. Enigmamsg 06:48, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I had assumed you were working from knowledge of the case we did not have when dismissing Women In Red from it.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:02, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
We removed WiR from the Arb case because the Twitter incident was a sideshow. It occurred after Fram got banned, it was swiftly dealt with by WiR people, and most importantly, WiR had nothing to do with the reversals of the Office actions. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 01:44, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • "the Foundation is serious about respecting the confidentiality of victims of harassment" - Yet again, what harassment? As far as we know, there was no harassment. Harassment was not ever cited as a reason for the ban by anyone. If it was, there would be no controversy at all. Secondly, why are you still acting like accountability and confidentiality are mutually exclusive, and that it's one extreme or the other? If there was harassment, no one's asking for confidential information. We don't even need to know if there was harassment specifically. We just want to know if there was a violation or not. Disputing allegations of blatant corruption, and affirming that your motive was legitimate, does not somehow risk the safety of a harassment victim. On the contrary, failing to dispute allegations of corruption and lack of due process is failing to defend your supposed "victim". If there is a real "harassment victim", they've completely lost any and all credibility and their abuser is being allowed to freely dictate the narrative. That's "respecting the victim" to you? Get real man. ~Swarm~ {sting} 03:41, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Please stop repeating this untruth. The WMF stated that Fram was banned pursuant to the Terms of Use section on "Harassment and abusing others". I have already told you this multiple times on this page, including copying the WMF's exact words at one point. ~ Rob13Talk 04:11, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
      • Let's look at the actual language of the ToU. "Harassing and Abusing Others" includes: Engaging in harassment, threats, stalking, spamming, or vandalism; and transmitting chain mail, junk mail, or spam to other users. In other words we don't know a goddamn thing. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 04:17, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
        • Is your goal knowing that the ban is founded on serious misconduct, or knowing everything? I can understand the former, but not the latter. Or, put another way - which of those enumerated behaviors do you think should not have resulted in a ban? ~ Rob13Talk 04:48, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
It's worth pointing out that the enwiki community is supposed to be enforcing the Terms of Use, for the most part. One of the things that the WMF said in passing above is that they believe we have failed to do so (in Fram's case? In general? Like almost everything in this case, it's not clear.) So the fact that vandalism is banned in the ToS doesn't mean that the WMF is supposed to step in with regular WP:OFFICE bans for vandalism. --Aquillion (talk) 07:03, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

(←) @BU Rob13: Is your goal knowing that the ban is founded on serious misconduct, or knowing everything? Neither. Option 3: knowing that a violation of said ToU clause actually took place. WMF says he's banned under a ToU clause. Fine, until Fram says he didn't violate said clause, thus implying that it was a sort of backhanded way of getting rid of him for being too unpleasant or uncivil (which is not covered by said ToU clause). That's an implication of corruption. WMF will not deny Fram's implication. This is literally the only problem. They will not deny that it was an arbitrary and illegitimate invocation of a ToU clause. Neither of us can or will have proof positive either way. But the WMF will not deny the allegation. Can't you see why we have a problem with this? Their refusal to share details is understood. Their refusal to deny corruption makes the allegation seem true. ~Swarm~ {sting} 05:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

  • I'm baffled by your position, frankly. Perhaps you could help me. What would a hypothetically satisfactory statement from the WMF say? "That thing we said before - it's still true." Would that do it? ~ Rob13Talk 05:20, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
"We have reviewed the T&S investigation and we can confirm that Fram did indeed unequivocally violate the "Abuse and harassment" clause of the ToU, and thus was justifiably sanctioned under that clause. He was not blocked for incivility or personal attacks or any reason that is not articulated by the ToU clause we have already mentioned." That's it. That's all that needs to be confirmed. "That thing we said before" was "Fram was banned under the ToU, no further comment". That's meaningless when Fram alleges that he did not violate the ToU and that the ban was corrupt. There is no reason for the WMF to deny such claims if they are baseless. So deny it. That's all I'm looking for. If it's not true, deny it. They have not denied it. Why can they not deny it? I asked Doc James to deny it. He wouldn't deny it. If it's not true, deny it! That's my position. If you can't deny such a blatant accusation of wrongdoing, that's suspicious. Why stonewall and delay? Why be silent? If you've done nothing wrong, just deny the accusation. I don't think that's an unreasonable position, and the situation is exceedingly simple here. ~Swarm~ {sting} 05:30, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I just went and counted. I found six different places that the WMF has stated that their ban was based on the Terms of Use, which itself indicates it was not based on something not in the Terms of Use. Just to be clear, you're saying seven is the magic number for you, right? The WMF has to confirm seven times that their ban was based on the Terms of Use, and then the whole controversy will disappear - poof. I feel like I'm operating within a twisted version of Beetlejuice where the writers got a bit overzealous with the number of times you had to say his name... ~ Rob13Talk 14:27, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
The bottom line is that if all the material was on-wiki, it should be Arbcom's bailiwick. If the material in question is not all on-wiki, then either Fram is lying or WMF is lying. I see no reason for the former who has been as transparent as he can be during this fucked-up process. On the other hand, WMF are all about keeping secrets, but if so, they're now implying that Fram is lying about the warning given and his version of events (ie. that all concerning material is publicly available on en.wiki). This was an Arbcom case in the making, but WMF fucked it all up, and there seems to be some clear indicators as to why, and yet we're now three weeks down the line and still nothing from our "lords and masters" which actually contains any substance. The failure is abject, and the apologists are sickening. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:28, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@BU Rob13: Look around. People aren't convinced by the generic regurgitation of the ToU clause that was supposedly invoked. You act as if corruption is incomprehensible to you. No one cares that you unflinchingly believe the WMF here. We're concerned about the allegation that there wasn't a violation, in spite of the ToU clause referenced. Regurgitating the ToU clause is useless if you won't confirm that there was a violation, which is something that takes zero effort and eliminates all the drama. Your apparent disconnect from even able to understand the simple concern of anyone who questions the conflicting narratives surrounding this situation is highly confusing, and you appear to be defending an all-or-nothing position, in which you refuse to even consider the possibility that there's a legitimate opposing view. I don't think you're an unreasonable person, but it really seems like you're just salty about your recent run-in with Fram, over which you wrote an essay, and resigned from Arbcom. I can totally understand that you like that Fram's banned, but that doesn't mean that the Foundation should not respond to his allegation that the ban was corrupt (again, something that takes zero effort). ~Swarm~ {sting} 04:51, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Summary

I have received permission by email to post any info that's public. Here the chain of incidents that appears to be what the WMF ban is based on. They probably have more, but this is some of what we can see:

  1. Fram hounds LauraHale to the point that she posts this notice in 2018. It's still up as of 2019, apparently still an unresolved problem because the notice is still there: [10]
  2. Lets look at a few examples of the hounding:
    1. 12 Aug 2016 [11][12] [13]
    2. 16 Oct 2016 [14]
    3. 19 Oct 2016 [15]
    4. 27 Oct 2016 [16][17][18]
  3. The user's wikifriend comes to her defense. Note that Raystorm is Chair of the WMF Board of Trustees: [19]
  4. Here's Ymblanter crossing some red lines in support of Fram's hounding. At least Ymblanter had the sense to remove his post: [20][21]
  5. Here's Fram continuing to bother LauraHale in 2018: [22] (several diffs rolled in one)
  6. LauraHale defends herself in 2018: [23] The fact that this has to happen should have been the point where Fram was de-sysopped. We failed LauraHale as a community. Read the notice again, [24] it provides more context and diffs and mentions SlimVirgin, Victuallers and SkyHarbor.

Some evidence regarding @Winged Blades of Godric: [25][26][27] (ping Rosiestep)

I've been told the above was a useful summary, so I'll leave it here for the record. Jehochman Talk 15:15, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

This is highly unlikely to be the basis of the ban, because the ban occurred after a reminder of a conduct warning in early 2019. All of this conduct is before that. Investigations by T&S take about a month, not half a year or more. Please, for the love of God, let's not redirect even more vitriol toward Laura when she likely had nothing to do with the most recent enforcement action by T&S. ~ Rob13Talk 15:23, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Fram received a conduct warning in March, 2019 for the October 2018 edits to "Blind football in Australia" and "Deaf football in Spain". There has been no further crossover instigated by Fram with LauraHale since that time.[28] It is unlikely that this is the basis for the ban. Mr rnddude (talk) 15:25, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, we did fail LauraHale as a community, but probably for a different reason than Jehochman thinks. I won't go into detail for the reasons that BuRob13 mentions above. In the meantime, I'll just restate that I don't think the LH issue was behind Fram's ban anyway. Black Kite (talk) 15:28, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I think it generated the two prior warnings Fram mentioned. Check the dates. Do they line up? My theory is that the "Fuck ArbCom" comment got somebody angry (probably an arbitrator) who reported it to WMF and that was the final straw. The ban is the LH incident plus that final diff. I assume you think WMF is nuts for issuing the ban on that basis, and I agree. Jehochman Talk 15:33, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Jehochman, I see no reason to assume a complainant at all. Once Fram was on WMF's radar, they may have started automatically monitoring his contributions, and his use of certain words or what the program (hopefully more advanced than the one now offline) deemed an excessively hostile tone, generated a report for review by a T&S team member.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:30, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
That's scary. Jehochman Talk 18:38, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
There is no way that the WMF could have been that stupidly reckless and devoid of clue. No way. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:41, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Is it in any way technically unfeasible?--Wehwalt (talk) 18:47, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
There is a denial somewhere on here by Mr. Eissfeldt that T&S did not and does not use the other tool. I think it would be pertinent to ask what analysis methods they use in general. There is absolutely no rational reason for them to be secretive about that. We're not talking about law enforcement methodology or matters of national security here. If they're just doing old-fashioned detective work, that's honestly fine. If they're using automated or semi-automated tools, machine learning or AI algorithms, or dowsing and Ouija, we should know what they're doing, how they think it works, and how it actually works. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 19:00, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@Wehwalt: as all contributions are public (here's yours) anyone could scrape them and do whatever processing they want on them. — xaosflux Talk 19:02, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
T&S seems to be working in that direction, Xaosflow, see here, the purpose of which is to enhance T&S's tools. Presentation on it given yesterday here. (both the second and the third presentations were of interest. I wonder who might be #1 on the list spoken of?--Wehwalt (talk) 20:05, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, repeating my ping because I can't edit what I wrote and have the ping go through, Xaosflux--Wehwalt (talk) 20:08, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I agree that the question of what happened between the 2018 warning and the 2019 ban is a crucially-important missing piece, but I found this useful because I don't remember the conflict from when it occurred, and I haven't known where to look.
Something I find very interesting is the fact that these interactions illustrate two failings - one is that LH felt harassed and the other is that (by the look of things) Fram felt the obligation to clear up LH's edits (and scold them about the quality). I feel like I can related to both sides of this - I've felt harassed enough to ban at least one editor from my talk page, and I've (more than once) wanted to pull my hair out over a long sequence of bad edits by another editor.
We don't have good mechanisms for dealing with either type of problem. Guettarda (talk) 15:47, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I have been involved in several incidents involving on-wiki actions by Fram and off-wiki complaints about them. I don't feel comfortable about reproducing them on-wiki here; if Arbcom want the information supplied in private, I can do that. A principal reason they were off-wiki is, as I have already said, Fram has a tendency to reply to every thread in a conversation he doesn't agree with and argue the case until everyone else drops out of exhaustion. I agree with Guettarda that the community does not have a good handle on balancing civility, competence and diversity. It's been often said a thick skin is necessary to survive here, but that means Wikipedia becomes biased towards those with thick skins. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:16, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Ritchie333, i support this assessment. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:08, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
(ec)I think it is wise not to comment on this in too much detail - it's a side show, and it feels like a minefield to me. But let me say that these diffs have been known before, and have given raise to different kinds of concern about more than just the two primary users involved. And essentially nobody thinks they justify what has happened. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:22, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
That's ok. I'm not very entertaining. Jehochman Talk 18:34, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Jehochman, I can't believe this was posted for several reasons. There's nothing new here, and it is rehashing exactly what many people did not want to rehash. The summary is very poorly written. I'd like to know who wrote it so I can privately share my concerns, rather than picking the scab openly. It defies credulity that this was the basis for the ban. The info posted appears to be the basis for the old IBan, which was largely honored (subject to two exceptions, possibly inadvertent). Speaking only for myself (but I'll be surprised if I am alone), tempers are a bit short - it has been a long time since the action and communication sucks, to be blunt, and I fear we are filling the vacuum with nonsense. Why are we repeating painful material that everyone who has been following alreay knows? What purpose is served? S Philbrick(Talk) 18:36, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Enwiki certainty has a lot a problems... too much clever nastiness and clever viciousness is tolerated, too much poor behavior by or poor handling of behavior issues by admins occure, innocent nastistness is punished too harshly, and in general it is a very mean and chaotic place for editors. And maybe that contributed to this, but WMF mishandling of this is a far bigger, more serious and more damaging problem. North8000 (talk) 17:02, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

(my humble view as an outsider) Enwp has by far the best content of all versions, both in substance and quality, an envy and inspiration for us working on other versions. Enwp has by far the highest number of editors and has evolved the most advanced set of procedures (inluding ArbCom) to handle this in a controlled way, an inspiration for us working on smaller versions, even if we do not, as being smaller, always need the same level of complexity. You have an amazing set of competence in your editing and discussion related to articles, far better than I am used to meeting on other versions. But in the area you state above you are not better nor an inspiration to other versions, and in my view has you have not evolved in this area as other versions have over time. So while I agree the process around T&S seems to be in need of an overhaul, I do believe you really need to focus on improving your handling of these type of issues, which will be the surest way of not being involved in any similar case in the future.Yger (talk) 18:19, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, but on the other hand I could say that svwiki is known for being overly harsh with the block tool (especially in terms of bots). Every wiki has their own problems, and I'm not trying to brush off that there are issues with civility on enwiki, but still. --Rschen7754 18:34, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
For what it is worth, per Headbomb he's 95% certain LauraHale isn't the reporter, and I likewise find it fairly unlikely LauraHale reported Fram here, mainly because Fram has abided by the interaction ban between the two of them, and if the "Fuck ArbCom" post or edits surrounding it on either side were the reason for the ban, LauraHale doesn't show up in any of them that I can find. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 22:36, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
At this point, I'm reasonably sure that I have figured out who the reporter was, based entirely on what is public and in plain sight here on en-wiki (no, I'm not going to say – of course!). And it's just a matter of time before more people connect the same dots that I did. This is what happens when the community is left to wonder for so very, very long without a meaningful engagement in discussion by the WMF.
But Jehochman's supposedly important new evidence is all old news. I think it's been clear for a while that Laura was indeed the target of Fram's supposed harassment leading to the ban (and yes, she was not the reporter). But it's also clear that, although Fram was being a bit Javert-like in his pursuit of her, he wasn't harassing her. WMF took the action they did because they got a report that dramatized and framed the situation in a way that made it sound like hounding. Then, they were just waiting for the trigger for them to pull the gun. And they got it from something that had nothing to do with Laura: the now infamous cursing at ArbCom. That was their excuse. And they got to that point because no one at WMF really evaluated the situation in a clueful way. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:16, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @Jehochman: If this is the evidence, it is shit poor. For example, if [29] is held as 'harassment', I'd have expected more than 1 of the 6 pages nominated for deletion to be kept (the first 3 bluelinks have been redirected/merged). It's also from 2016/2018, way before the WMF issues an interaction ban (which I find problematic to begin with). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:20, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    You don’t get it. Hounding means following somebody around in a way that causes them distress. It doesn’t mean the criticism is incorrect. Moreover, AfD is often thinly trafficked. A popular admin like a Fram can usually get their way through the process. Jehochman Talk 03:27, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    Jehochman I hope that's sarcasm. If that's the definition of "hounding", then the Foundation is clearly guilty, and should ban itself. (Not entirely sarcasm.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
    So, wait. If I revert someone's vandalism, and that makes them upset, I have to quit reverting them or I'm "hounding" them? That is absolutely not a workable definition. When someone keeps causing the same damn problem, it's reasonable to expect that people will check to see if they did it again. If that upsets them, the remedy is to stop causing that problem, and then no one will have a need to criticize them for it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:46, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
The definition is at WP:HOUND. Fun fact: I coined the term "hounding" back in 2008.[30] Durova was updating the harassment guideline and asked me what to call this behavior. Jehochman Talk 17:11, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
What dogged dedication. EEng 20:17, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Any interactions between Fram and Laura (who unfortunately went dark just as this broke) were addressed with an IBAN. Regardless of whether Fram "harassed" Laura in 2018, he was banned from interacting with her. So, that exchange is immaterial to the current ban. ~Swarm~ {sting} 03:51, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Eh nothing new there. Thing if you find someone making one mistake its pretty common to go looking for others (indeed the software explicitly allows for this possibility with special:nuke). Yes fram was insufficiently diplomatic while doing so but again we already knew that.©Geni (talk) 04:56, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

The press

A little while ago a user suggested we go to the press, maybe someone has

[[31]] "...in the event of administrator abuse.", interesting timing. Then we have this [[32]].

It maybe that these kinds of stories are why WMF have acted now. Its about forestalling a future publicity scandal. What we do now will impact upon the perception of Wikipedia (and as I suggest above may have already done so). If (and it an if) it is a case that Fram harassed another user (who was female) how is it going to look if we victim blame or even try to defend Frams actions (let alone go for an unblock)? Now to be fair, this may not be what happened, but is any one 100% sure that is not the case? Because if you are not the damage this could cause (to my mind) outweighs any potential injustice. We already have an image problem, and that is a far more serious issue then one admin.Slatersteven (talk) 15:48, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

I.e.80% of Wikipedia volunteers are male. Ergo, parity is missing, and that is due to widespread harassment based on gender, accounting for why only 20% of volunteers are female. Has anyone published that theory in a respectable peer-reviewing sociological journal?Nishidani (talk) 16:38, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Your stats are approximately correct, your analysis is — at a bare minimum — [citation needed]. I would argue that it is a completely wrong conclusion. For example, when I did a pop-punk record label in the 1990s, I kept close track, and 85% of my customers were male. The reason for this was not a "hostile environment" for women — it just was that way. I believe there is a similar reason for the gender mix editing WP and this explains why for all the focus groups and seminars and papers and scholarships and initiatives, the mix of WP editors remains more or less what it was five years ago. Carrite (talk) 03:41, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@Carrite: I think that was Nishidani's point. Just because more males contribute does not mean that females are prevented from doing so. SmartSE (talk) 15:00, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
There's been writing about this for some time. But I agree, because of the character of Fram's actions (many of which are indefensible) there's a real risk of people posting here in defense of procedural fairness being mischaracterized as the good old boys circling the wagons. In fact, there have been several high-profile comments here and elsewhere to that effect. Considering the comments above that WMF have screwed up by failing to control the narrative on WP, the people on this page have screwed up by failing to control the narrative outside of WP. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 16:46, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Where is the procedural fairness for the victims? Why does no-one seem to care about that? That is why the community is coming across as "good old boys circling the wagons". You're focusing on witch hunts and protecting harassers without even considering that our deficient processes for reporting and dealing with harassment have led to this WMF action. ~ Rob13Talk 16:51, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Rob.I know nothing of Fram (b) I don't know who he (she?) is alleged to have harassed (c) I don't know with precision precisely the terms of what civility policy were (repeatedly) violated or how civility was defined (d) or what the evidence was. I only know that this desperate attempt to use a comic metaphor with a very good editor who got angry and looked like he was deliberately helping, by aggressive or over-sensitive ripostes, those who were provoking him (one a sockpuppet) to get him banned, was interpreted as proof I was 'taunting, teasing, attacking or harassing other editors.' This was immediately recognized as a radical misreading of the diff used to suspend me for a week for harassment, and my sanction was cancelled. I wrote to the admin who both misread my edit and sanctioned me that I did not hold the error against him. Seven weeks later that diff was cited by Arbcom as key evidence of incivility for which I earned a permaban.
What I did learned from this back in 2009 was that diff reading without, in each case, pulling up the talk page to examine the context and get the overall picture, may ( I don't think it the norm) prove disastrously unfair. I can evaluate what I see in arbitration here, where this kind of misreading is not uncommon. If arbs here can err sometimes seriously, then the point is, what technical competence, what methodology, what process ensuring verification, is in place in a handful of busy people looking into complaints in SF? Have they papal infallibility, or are they human. Do they trust A1 to make their case, or do they, as scrupulous admins do, go back and forward 10 or 15 diffs to look at the context of a dispute between editors in which one complains of harassment.
Knowing this, but not knowing whether there is a victim, or the nature of the harassment, all I for one do is consider the principle. The principle is one of rebuffing as parlous any procedure conducted on secret evidence, obliging blind trust in people constituting an ultimate authority whose reading competence cannot be assessed, but whose assessment is beyond appeal. Everyone is appalled by Kafka's narratives - but it has no traction here.Nishidani (talk) 17:42, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
"You are focusing on ... protecting harassers" is a serious accusation using a loaded word. Could you please frame your perspective, which is often valuable, in a less hostile manner? Haukur (talk) 17:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Any procedural fairness to the accused is an attack on the victim? —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 16:59, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
No, that is obviously not what I said. Identify for me a single on-wiki process that allows a victim of on-wiki harassment to make a report without facing the mob that has attempted to identify and attack victims here. (And no, ArbCom isn't such a process, since ArbCom will not hear private cases on public evidence.) When you can't, explain to my why you haven't been at all interested in working toward such a process, even though if such a process existed, the WMF likely wouldn't have needed to step in here. ~ Rob13Talk 17:06, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Nice strawman (and deflection). The fact is that this is not about harassers or victims. This is about process for everyone. As Justice Frankfurter once said, "It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people." A culture of process and fairness protects everyone. Even victims. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 17:11, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Is Rob unblockable? He can spread insinuations and innuendo attacking numerous editors without any comeback? Maybe his continued presence is a sign that you can be a bully and get away with it. DuncanHill (talk) 17:04, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@BU Rob13: some direct questions (since no-one seems to have really got the points I raised here). Do you think public figures, elected to positions of responsibility, should be able to make anonymous complaints to a body such as T&S about their treatment while working as part of that elected body? Do you think WMF employees should be able to complain anonymously to T&S about editor conduct that affects their work? Do you think editors in general should be able to use T&S as a 'weapon' in disputes and feuds? What checks and balances are there to prevent that sort of thing happening? When you have a secretive process such as this, that is what people will perceive as happening, unless you have a system that is far removed (and vastly improved) from what we currently have. Carcharoth (talk) 17:05, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I believe that any victim of harassment should be able to make an anonymous complaint in some way, given the community's penchant for going after the victims in response to reports. It shouldn't be to the WMF, ideally, but what choice have we left them when we refuse to set up such a system of dispute resolution that is community-based? Be the change you wish to see in the world. If you dislike the WMF having to step up to the plate here, put forward or support proposals to develop a community-based system of private complaints of harassment or elect arbitrators who will tackle that problem. ~ Rob13Talk 17:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Procedural fairness should apply to the accuser and the accused. So far, it appears that the preponderance of the fairness has accrued to the accuser. Also, we're still waiting for any validation of the rumor that Fram actually harassed someone. So far: only flowcharts, evasiveness, and "we're discussing it".- MrX 🖋 17:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Ugh. That first article Slatersteven links to makes a serious mistake, confusing the ArbCom with arbitration by a professional third party. And the second refers to a UW study that will be a lion in the road for a long time. So the Foundation has decided to solve this problem of gender inequity by going after a few "troublemakers" on the assumption this will end harassment & women & non-binary people will flock to Wikipedia? At best, this is treating the symptoms while leaving the cause unidentified.

This is something of a tangent, but I'll repeat something I've wondered about for years: why hasn't the Foundation done a study of Internet communities where there is not such a serious gender imbalance -- or where women outnumber men? They exist, I was active in one recently -- Websleuths. What do these communities do differently? Is it the rules, or something in the community's culture? Can it be exported to Wikipedia? After all, banning those who engage in harassment won't solve the problem beyond a short-term period, if that. -- llywrch (talk) 17:20, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

I think that may be my point in a way. There is a perception (not without some merit, but massively exaggerated, by the way I found a wholly different reason to dismiss the first article, I merely posted it here as an example of how we are perceived) that there is an imbalance in Wikipedias treatment of the (historically) socially excluded. When they see this amount of effort on behalf of one admin, they look at the amount of time taken to dealing with the communities apparent inability to deal with certain kinds of harassment (and indeed some peoples attempts to change our polices to make it even harder to complain about harassment) they are going to ask why. But maybe the reason other sites do it better is just that, there is not such a huge imbalance, so the lads cannot drown out the ladies. And that may also be commented on in relation to the amount of effort put into this. We need to tread carefully, otherwise we are going to find ourselves the subject of some very negative publicity.Slatersteven (talk) 17:45, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, all of these "gender" metrics elide a crucial point: Editors aren't required to specify a gender at all, and most don't. Any actual count of editors' gender would be mostly "Unknown/unspecified". I suspect well over 90%. We do not know the gender of most editors, including Fram. Any study that excludes unknown factors when they exist is at best careless and at worst deliberately dishonest. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:34, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
That is a really good point. These metrics may simply be interviewing people who are willing to announce what their gender is; that will likely result in bias. Come to think of it, no one knows my gender on here either, even though I am 100% my birth gender in real life, it's just never come up. Because of that, I'd be "unknown" too Rockstonetalk to me! 17:38, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Ditto on User:Seraphimblade's point. I was called a "she" at WIR and I am called a "he" otherwise, even though I have used "they" to refer to myself on the userpage. All these so-called studies have an inevitable sampling bias. That said, an error in a proof of a proposition is not an automatic proof of the counter. There is surely gender disparity on editor composition but studies giving a number is just junk science. Usedtobecool ✉️ ✨ 17:50, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Seraphimblade This was actually discussed on this very page by Risker. Risker pointed out that there's no basis for the absurd statistics people throw around. It appears what was done is that any registered account that did not specify a sex/gender was assumed to be male, thus skewing the data. Even if everyone who did specify was being honest, the number is still wildly inaccurate. As I discussed here and here, this is an anonymous website, like many others, and no one knows what percentage of the editors are men, women, old, young, racial background, etc. It is thus absurd to claim that Wikipedia "harasses" women or "non-binary folk". As I've said many times, unless someone specifically comes and tells me (which no one ever does), I have no idea of anyone's gender or race or origin. Enigmamsg 19:00, 26 June 2019 (UTC) ‎
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Or whatever. Jonathunder (talk) 19:06, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I always thought this was well-established, and yet the media as well as the Women in Red (on twitter and I'm sure in other places as well) push the narrative that Wikipedia is over 80% male and that women/non-binaries are persecuted. It is possible that Wikipedia is "85% male" as they like to claim, but they have zero evidence to support the statement. Some of the "evidence" often used to "prove" that Wikipedia is misogynistic is that there are far more biographies of men than women. I'm sure you can see the problem with that "evidence". Enigmamsg 19:42, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
If you assume all undefined-gender accounts are male, that skews the results, but if you take the undefined-gender accounts out of it altogether, it still begs the question why so many more defined-gender accounts are male rather than female. 576,000/116,000 male-female ratio suggests a major problem: either there are 5x as many men as women here, or the women here don't want to publicly identify as women by setting their account's gender flag to female. Either way, it's a problem. On this page, the gap is wider. As of June 13 (admittedly early on), 135/17 is the male-female split, which is almost 10:1. You gotta ask yourself: why aren't women editing WP, and/or why aren't women identifying themselves as women on WP? (Because toxic bro culture, that's why.) – Levivich 19:52, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Levivich, regarding the 135/17 male/female split, I was amused to note that one of the self-identified females is MusikBot ;) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:47, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
'Toxic bro culture' is probably not the answer. Gender imbalances are mostly not due to offensive attitudes. [33] Haukur (talk) 21:41, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I don't identify myself as any gender on WP...I am tired of being pigeonholed because of my gender in the world outside of these pages. I cut my internet teeth on Usenet, I want to be judged on my writing and my conduct, not on my gender. I LIKE being judged solely on my contributions around here. If people...people don't want to identify themselves online as being any particular gender, that is our business. If people...people want to identify as being male or female online then that is their business too. And why have we been assuming people are telling the truth (whatever "the truth" might be) at all when they check off those boxes? Maybe some people just don't want to identify themselves. Maybe?..maybe some of us just want to be Editors. Shearonink (talk) 20:15, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Five times as many people...people identify themselves as male on Wikipedia than female. This suggests there are more men than women here. – Levivich 23:02, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Lev Since I am merely an account and not a real person, I do not have a sex or gender. Nevertheless, to show solidarity with any non-male individuals who feel oppressed by the "bros", I am going to set my 'preferences' to female and I intend to leave it there until this WMF incident is resolved. If it never is resolved, I probably won't be back to return it to its correct genderless state. Enigmamsg 20:03, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • (ec)The 15%-20% figure might be slightly off, but only by a few percentage points. Here is a paper that analyzes the self-response bias in the gender survey; their estimate is 16.1% female overall, and 22.7% female among adult editors. You can read the paper for more details on how they reached that number, but at the very least it's a lot more solid of an argument than just a random unscientific poll. Yes, editor self-identification has flaws, but there's still vastly more information available about Wikipedia editors than most of the other groups social science studies, so it's not a surprise that they'd manage to put together a decently-grounded estimate. --Aquillion (talk) 19:54, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • One related thing that has been troubling me when people talking about "going to the press" - I am not sure the public at all understands (or would be sympathetic to, if they did understand) the idea that enwiki moderates itself. To most of the public, the idea that Wikipedia is moderated the way Facebook or Twitter is moderated (that is, in an anonymous fashion, handling anonymous reports, by the company that owns it, with no real explanation or transparency or community involvement with their decisions and no serious option for appeal) would be the presumed default. I think that we might want to consider how to keep people better informed about how we do things here and how to highlight the advantages - our community definitely has its flaws and areas in need of improvement, and has become a case study for many things precisely because it is so open, but I strenuously reject the idea that eg. Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube are anywhere near as good as we are at handling harassment or incivility. They regularly allow and ignore things that would get a sharp and rapid response here, in part because that sort of moderation cannot possibly scale up to really keep a close eye on a community of that size. I feel like the constant use of Wikipedia as a case study and our extreme openness has made it very easy to overemphasize our flaws and ignore the things we get right. There's still definitely a lot of room for improvement (and I'd be happy to get some guidance from the WMF on how they feel we need to improve), but the idea that a Facebook / Twitter-style approach is superior seems absurd even if it were feasible to get the community to accept it. --Aquillion (talk) 17:44, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I really see this discussion, in the meta sense, as determining those things, Aquillion.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:02, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Of course, these are general audience articles. The "Swaddle" article seems to be based on this paper (full PDF courtesy of ResearchGate). I'm not qualified to judge all the social science parts of the paper, not do I have time for a really deep dive, but I do see a significant potential for misunderstandings. For one, the paper is purely anecdotal. It relates information from interviews (performed 5 years ago) with 25 experienced female Wikipedians. There is no comparable control group (nor, indeed, any control). It's also interesting that "Wikipedia" in the paper not only comprises the Wiki, but also mailing lists, meet-ups, Wiki-related facebook groups, and so on. I particularly noted complaints about the WMFs handling of trolling/harassing on its mailing lists - something beyond the reach or even the experience of most Wikipedians and the Wiki-Wikipedia community. Overall, the paper provides an interesting and even instructive view at some experiences, but it does not (and does not claim) to present typical or representative cases, and it is silent on comparable experiences of male editors. What the paper also does not do is ask for or suggest a punitive approach. The Swaddle article, on the other hand, seems to be a shallow trawl looking for horror stories, not a fair summary of the underlying academic paper. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:19, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. I recommend that all those commenting here download it and read it closely. There is apparently quite a lot of 'research' establishing gender bias on the basis of calculations of female participation rates in wikipedia which, as I thought myself, and which Seraphimblade now notes, is very odd since most of us have no inkling of who is male and female. Yet several papers assume (see the bibliography) or assert that despite the anonymity of editors, statistics can establish the proportion. It's important because that kind of research is the kind of thing that may feed into WMF proposals, notwithstanding the fact that the premise is doubtful: anonymity cannot engender the statistical breakdown several papers assert as an established fact,-unless AI can twig with precision u ndisclosed gender identities- and yet this hypothesis, taken as ascertained fact by virtue of such papers which repeat the meme- can affect policies designed to remedy a perceived imbalance which is not scientifically established.Nishidani (talk) 20:22, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I haven't followed this thread too closely, but every time I do look at it I'm amazed by how everyone keeps missing the core issues. This discussion is another case in point. It triumphantly pokes holes in those two articles' methodologies in order to avoid engaging with the underlying arguments. To me 80% male sounds like a very plausible estimate, no matter how they arrived at that number. Does that composition of the community have any effects? Of course not, everyone claims, because many (or most?) people don't disclose their gender, gendered dynamics can't affect us, can't affect the way we deal with each other, and can't affect the kind of content that we produce. That's obviously bogus.--Carabinieri (talk) 20:14, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Decisions made as a result of knowingly flawed or incomplete data tend to cause more problems than they solve. Unless you have actual information about those who are unwilling to disclose their gender it's bad science to extrapolate from those who are. It's the same reason why I would not trust any study that claims that X% of Wikipedia editors are on the spectrum since that's something people generally don't *want* to disclose. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 21:33, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
If the proportion of male editors is actually, say, 65%, does that really undercut what those articles are saying? Of course not. So pointing to possible inaccuracies in the statistics is just a way of deflecting the issue, namely that gender and the gender composition of the community affect the way Wikipedia works.--Carabinieri (talk) 22:05, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I agree that disputing the exact percentage (and I think 80% is not implausible) does not undercut what those articles are saying. What does, however, undercut it is that they tend to assume as given that any gender imbalance is due to mistreatment of women. But there are good reasons to believe that gender differences in the things that people spend their time on are mostly caused by other things. Haukur (talk) 22:15, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
To be fair, I think this is getting a bit off-topic. I really don't understand the relevance of the gender gap and reasons for it to the issues of how we handle harassment and what WMF's role in on-wiki enforcement should be. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 22:21, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I wish this were off-topic but the WMF appears committed to a narrative tying the ratio of male to female editors to issues of 'sexism', 'trolling' and 'harassment'.[34] [35] Everyone seems to acknowledge that it is important not to have only men contribute because men and women tend, on average, to have somewhat different perspectives and interests. I certainly agree. But this difference in interests and priorities between men and women is also probably the most important factor in explaining why we have more male contributors to begin with. Anyone who thinks the relatively high ratio of male contributors is primarily caused by mistreatment of women might be inclined to resort to harsh and radical measures to address that - perhaps including arbitrary bans of people who are deemed undesirable. Haukur (talk) 12:03, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Worse case scenario, Fram is a serial harasser of female users because they want to "female up" Wikipedia. He has been able to do this because there are so few female admins and arbcom members that they get shouted down whenever they try to punish him. We unblock him and tell hum "there there its OK, no harm done" and the first hying he does is go after his last couple of victims.
How will that play out do you think, in the press?
That is (I think) one of the concerns raised more then once in the media, the gender imbalance meaning that female edds have a very "unpleasant" time here.Slatersteven (talk) 08:42, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Slatersteven - that Swaddle article is concerning. It criticizes Wikipedia for deleting the entry on Donna Strickland before she won the Nobel Prize. It seems to imply we got it wrong for deleting her article for lack of notability. This is expanded in this piece. [36] The author complains that Gerard Mourou, Strickland's coworker (and later Nobel prize recipient), has a page since 2005. Then they list two obscure male academics. Perhaps these men are notable, perhaps they are not. Perhaps the author of that article should nominate those men for deletion instead of just complaining about the gender gap. starship.paint (talk) 08:30, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

As I said the first source has problems. It was (as I said) there to illustrate how this may end up playing out. We either reinstate an admin who even many here seem to agree was an issue (and where there are accusation of harassment), with all the potential damage that could cause to the project. Or we do not reinstate them, and accept the decision, with all the damage that could cause. So my question is simple, which has the potential to cause more overall and long term harm? Ultimately our interest should be to protect the project.Slatersteven (talk) 08:37, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@Slatersteven: - while the decision not to reinstate might not seem damaging in itself, I think the real damage may happen down the line, if more bans that are not appealable and not fully explain happen. Your logic can be applied to every single ban after this (because we won't be given much details): "Hey, maybe this person harassed women (or some other group)! Think of our reputation!" starship.paint (talk) 08:49, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
It might even be me next. Sure, I don't really edit articles on women. But hey, maybe I looked up some of our female editors on-wiki and harassed them off-wiki? You'd never know! starship.paint (talk) 08:52, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
It might be @Slatersteven: next - and by what they have posted here they don't appear to want any of us to come to their defence, however innocent they are. Nobody is safe in a system that uses secret evidence in secret processes, with no defence and no appeal. DuncanHill (talk) 09:00, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Of course, if that is what happened, as we do not in fact know. It was secret to us, that does not mean it was secret to the accused, nor that they were not given an opportunity to explain. I am led to believe that military justice often operates in a similar way. So it all hinges on who did what, which goes back to my OP, is any one here 100% sure there was no smoke without fire?Slatersteven (talk) 09:11, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@Slatersteven: - are you sure that it wasn't secret to the accused and that Fram was given a chance to explain? I think it really was secret, and Fram wasn't given a chance to explain. WMF wants to protect the privacy of the accusers. Had WMF told Fram who the offense was committed against, they risk Fram exposing the secret to everyone. Thus, they cannot reveal to Fram who accused. Then, they cannot specify exactly what went wrong either, because if they did, Fram can possibly figure out who accused him, and then expose the secret. So, I don't think your above argument is valid. starship.paint (talk) 11:33, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. So arguments based on "secret tribunals" or "conspiratorial plots" or whatever are as equally invalid. This whole debate is based upon assumption and innuendo. Its why I say we are wasting far too much time over this, rather then trying to tackle the basic issue, harassment of users.Slatersteven (talk) 12:05, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@Slatersteven: - I must disagree with you. This whole affair does not boil down to basically harassment of users. Another key issue is the way this case was handled - no appeal, possibly no defense by Fram, no trust in the community (not even ArbCom, perhaps due to confidentiality) and thus no communication. Did you know WMF only said Fram was banned under the ToU provision "harassing and abusing others", [37] which might even have been spam or vandalism? Do we know that Fram was not banned for spam or vandalism? We don't, because WMF never said. WMF has not even acknowledged to us that Fram's quoted emails are 100% accurate. If they at least confirmed that, then yes, we would know, from WMF, that they were saying he harassed people. starship.paint (talk) 12:17, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
"possibly no defense by Fram", so its not that he could not defend himself, its assumed he might not have been able to? They said they banned him under rule against "harassing and abusing others", yet this not boil down to harassment of users? Now to be fair maybe it was spam, or some such. Oddly not one user has suggested it was, yet we have a few saying they have evidence of harassment. It seems to be that yes this all boils down to harassment and what you define it as.Slatersteven (talk) 12:53, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@Slatersteven: I said "possibly no defense by Fram" in case Fram is lying. From what Fram told us, Fram was informed of zero diffs in the first email, two diffs in the second email, and one diff in the third email. These diffs do not appear to be the whole story. If they were not the whole story, and Fram wasn't informed, how can Fram defend himself? If I say "you harassed me", but don't give you evidence on how you did, can you defend yourself? Now, Fram may have lied to us. (a) Maybe, WMF gave him 500 diffs, but Fram only provided to us 3. But, WMF never told us what they told Fram. (b) Maybe, WMF gave him the chance to defend himself. But, I do not remember WMF telling us - we gave Fram the chance to defend himself, but his defense was not valid. In fact, WMF told us, Fram cannot appeal, which is as good as telling us, Fram cannot defend himself. Do you see the problem? starship.paint (talk) 14:10, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
No, because we do not know they did not give him evidence, and more then we know hew did not harass anyone. Nor do we know what those diffs were, but the fact diffs were provided means evidence was presented to him, and whatever explanation he gave was not accepted. The fact there was more then one e-mail implies a back and forth process, where they did indeed say "well here is the evidence".Slatersteven (talk) 14:21, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Military justice? We are not soldiers, and Wikipedia is not in a state of war! We do know it was secret, we do know there was no defence, and we do know there is no appeal. And if I started insinuating "no smoke without fire" about you I would rightly be blocked. You do not have the right to come here and keep attacking someone who cannot defend themself. It is positively indecent. Stop it. DuncanHill (talk) 09:17, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I am pointing out that there are examples of where "justice" can be done out of public gaze. My point is we must be careful about what we do so as not to damage the reputation of the project even more then it is now over issues of harassment and sexism. Now maybe Fram is innocent, I even said they might be. The problem is they also might be, thus the question becomes about harm to the project (that is what bans are meant to be about, they are not punitive, they are preventative). What outcome produces the least overall harm, guilt or innocence are ultimately irrelevant, this is not a court of issue. This is why I ask about no smoke without fire, its not about implying he might be guilty, its about saying that even if he is not it may still do massive damage if he is unblocked, if there is even a scintilla of doubt about that. As I said this is not a court of law, thus "not guilty" is not going to wash with those who see the system as fundamentally (and institutionally) sexist. Even if Fram is unblocked they will have lost a lot of confidence, and every action they take will be monitored. Rightly or wrongly they will not really be able to act as an admin, and maybe not even as an editor, simply put every action will be judged as partisan to the "patriarchy" of Wikipedia. And every action that is seen as falling short will get reported. I suppose that is what I have been saying all long, the changing demographics of Wikipedia.Slatersteven (talk) 09:29, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
If we ban everyone about whom there is even a scintilla of doubt then we ban everybody. And if we allow our decisions about who is allowed to edit, or be an admin, to be based on bias or misperception or ignorance then again, we're all sunk. "We can't allow him back if he's innocent because others will call us names" is both cowardly and nasty. DuncanHill (talk) 09:35, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
"he is Innocent" is not the same as "he may be guilty, but". This is what I am talking about the attitude of "well he might be guilty, but better to ere on the side of caution, after all we do not want him to suffer".Slatersteven (talk) 12:00, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I for one would not like cries of "sexism! sexism!" to shield unsourced or erroneous content from removal, or to protect editors who chronically write this bad content. Unfortunately, that seems to be the reality now. Reyk YO! 10:03, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Indeed, if women's articles are being deleted, we must first see whether they are up to standard. If people point out, "hey, this man's article is not up to standard," then by all means, nominate that for deletion too, to help the project. Not everything is sexism, just because the article is about women. starship.paint (talk) 11:37, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Neither would I, and I have been involved in at least two such debates. The problem is that there is also the counter argument that has been made that without such anonymity accusers cannot safely come forward. Its a very difficult area, and concentrating too much on the accused is not helping. This effort should be being put into solving the problem.Slatersteven (talk) 12:00, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

The press releases are about this report published in May: People Who Can Take It How Women Wikipedians Negotiate and Navigate Safety. I glanced through for dates of when the research was conducted and found this: "The first author conducted interviews (N=25) using a semi-structured protocol over the course of 14 months spanning 2014-15." So the report is reflecting on a Wikipedia around 4 - 5 years ago. All reports are valuable, though I would have welcomed if this report had included experiences from a wider range of users to see where and how much gender difference there is in the experience and perception of harassment, and what can be done to make all users feel safer here. One of the things I kinda like about the internet is that people can be classless, raceless, genderless, and ageless if they wish to be, and are judged on what they say and do rather than pre-conceived ideas about them based on age, race, gender, etc. But for people to have to remain gender or ageless, in order to avoid any bias in how what they say is treated, is not the way forward. I have - I think from the start - had myself down as genderless on Wikipedia because I didn't think it should matter what my gender is here (or indeed in most places - why is it a standard part of filling in forms? Why does it matter to a bank, for example, what gender I am?) But, I don't know, is hiding my gender here helping or not helping? SilkTork (talk) 10:20, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

LOL, you mean at the time that many users are saying Wikipedia was so well run?Slatersteven (talk) 12:00, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Please contact WMF

I'm repeating here some of what I said above, as I feel it may have got lost in the quick flow of words that appear on this page.

I am not sure how much the WMF are monitoring this page. Nor am I sure how effective or helpful gestures of civil disobedience would be, though I quite understand the passion that propels such ideas. I feel the same passions and frustrations. My suggestion (as an individual member of this community, not as a member of ArbCom) would be for folks to communicate directly to WMF. Not rudely or aggressively, but in the same spirit of creative humanist endeavour that propelled this community to make Wikipedia in the first place. If everyone, instead of posting here, wrote a polite email to people in WMF explaining how they feel about this situation, and how they feel that what is needed right now is open dialogue between the community and WMF as to how we can better work together, that might achieve something. From various things I have read recently that have been linked here about the Foundation's proposals for our "toxic" community, I suspect that there has been a fix in the Foundation on the negative aspects of the community. I think it is time we showed that we are not entirely toxic, but that we are people who care passionately for creating a free encyclopedia that is comprehensive, trustworthy and reliable. And that, above all, we welcome open and honest discussion. If there is evidence of toxicity in our community we would welcome that being pointed out so we can deal with it. Openly, honestly, and fairly.

I would suggest using this page [38] as a starting point. It might help to cross-reference with the flow chart - File:Trust and Safety Office action workflow.png - to better target those who may have some influence or interest in the matter. This page gets something like 7,000 daily visitors; if everyone of those wrote a polite and pleasant email to the Foundation CEO, Katherine Maher (contact page here) saying something like how they would welcome greater open dialogue between the enwiki community and the Foundation so we can work together to make Wikipedia an even greater place, then I really think we could achieve something. SilkTork (talk) 22:24, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Although admittedly it's not specifically focused on the controversy here, there is also this: [39], where this controversy has been discussed by en-wiki editors, and I sure would hope that WMF are at least paying attention to that. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
@SilkTork: Some members of ArbCom have, as I understand it, held a discussion with T&S. Should editors here understand your suggestion to imply that you feel that the message did not get through to WMF from that discussion? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:51, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
I commented above on that phone call. I'll repeat it here for convenience: "People here are aware that there was a phone call discussion between some members of the Committee and Jan - as reported above, the contents of that discussion are still being chewed over. As it was a private meeting, at this stage we cannot indicate what was discussed without agreement from those involved in the discussion. When I looked at the email list a few minutes ago, there are proposals for summarising what was said, but no agreement as yet."
I was not at the meeting, but it looks like only three members of WMF were there, and none from higher up the organisation. As the flowchart of responsibility for Office Actions includes the CEO, I should imagine she is aware of this situation, but how detailed her awareness is I couldn't say. The Foundation tend to put their messages and notices on Meta and assume that enwiki people will go there to be kept up to date. I don't know how many do, but I suspect it's a fraction of those who are looking at this page. In the same way, we cannot be putting our messages here and assuming that the Foundation, particularly the CEO, are paying close attention to our every word. But those who do contact Katherine Maher directly, will at least know for sure that she knows about the situation from them, and how they feel about it. Indeed, it may be helpful for people to report back here that they have emailed so we have some kind of record that somebody here did make her aware of it. SilkTork (talk) 01:21, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply, and in fact I had already read what you reproduced here. My reading of your reply is that there are still some things that ArbCom are thinking over, but overall that discussion ArbCom had with WMF was not all that productive, in terms of what en-wiki is looking for. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:09, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm pretty skeptical that they'll listen to anything anyone here has to say, but what do I know? Sometimes it's time to stop being a pessimist. I guess at least nobody can accuse us of not trying to escalate this. Maybe an old-fashioned letter-writing campaign is a good idea. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 22:57, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Well—it can't hurt. I don't know if it will do any good either, but I see no harm in giving it a try. Let's please just all remember to remain civil if you do; I'm as pissed off about that as anyone, but yelling and swearing will just get you ignored. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:14, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

I feel, this page is not so much about telling the WMF but more about establishing a consensus on the position of the community. In a sense, it is also about community building. There is a distinctive lack of discord. There are quite a few gems in the pile of comments up there. (I specifically appreciate some of the arguments by Seraphimblade). ---<)kmk(>- (talk) 23:36, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

SilkTork, Katherine Maher almost certainly doesn't personally monitor her WMF mail. What reaches her is probably filtered out by her many secretaries and trip planners. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:00, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

This is true, but I can say from experience that writing the head of a company does sometimes produce results. It can take time, but someone reads the mail, and things that seem important do get put on the boss's desk even if only in summary form. In one case, a relative complained to the CEO of a major regional groceries retailer, the result being a personal phone call from the company president, an executive VP of some kind, and the store manager, all of whom apologized for the issue (the tldr of the issue was that it dealt with the changeover of sale prices by the overnight shift and which prices were supposed to be honored during that overnight period). Said relative also received a personal letter apologizing for the inconvenience and a rather substantial gift card. He actually felt rather embarrassed by all the fuss one letter caused.
I'm still ruminating over whether to write myself. Not so much because I'm concerned about whether anybody will read it, more because I don't know if I want to spend all that time writing something. That and I know my letter would probably get kicked directly to Legal given my letterhead, probably delaying any response.
I will say that the alternative idea I've been kicking around is to suggest that people start writing letters to the editor and guest columns anywhere that'll accept and print them. I honestly feel like that might be a better use of my time, but it's obviously not for everybody. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 01:37, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Letters to the editor? Something like this? "Dear newspaper editor, I am an unpaid volunteer Wikipedia editor and I am really pissed off! You see, there is this Wikipedia administrator called Fram with a reputation for hounding and harassing people, and he also said "f#"k ArbCom", which is the highest elected conflict resolution body on Wikipedia. Well, anyway, the evil Wikimedia Foundation unfairly banned him for a whole year!!! How unjust! Please publicize this injustice! Sincerely, Randy from Boise." Yes, see how that PR campaign goes. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 04:36, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
"Dear newspaper editor: There appears to be a serious issue of conflict of interest involved with the Wikimedia Foundation's actions on June 10, 2019, and the Foundation seems to be refusing to discuss any of it in public (while some of it is for legitimate privacy concerns, not all of it can be explained this way). I would especially look into the actions of Jan Eissfeldt on this matter. Sincerely, Cullen." —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 04:55, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Way to mischaracterize the position of everyone here and denigrate the position of someone with whom you disagree. I would never have expected this kind of behavior from you, Cullen. Really, really low. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 04:44, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Cullen328, some of your comments in the Geshuri fiasco were very close to expressing something around these sentiments. Also, the snark about unpaid volunteer is unnecessary.∯WBGconverse 04:54, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Winged Blades of Godric, I have never received one penny for editing Wikipedia, thank you very much, and your link is to an essay where I was highly critical of the WMF and its leadership at that time. So, I struggle to understand the point that you are trying to make. The point that I am trying to make now is that Fram is a mediocre poster boy for current claims of "conflict of interest" and calls to pillory a specific WMF employee. This strategy is totally counterproductive in my opinion, but I am well aware that many people believe otherwise. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:21, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
The point that I am trying to make now is that Fram is a mediocre poster boy for current claims of "conflict of interest" and calls to pillory a specific WMF employee. I see nobody calling to "pillory" anybody, and there are a substantial number of people who don't know or don't give a damn about Fram or what happens to him (myself included). This is about the governance of the website, and your mischaracterization of the argument and frankly disingenuous and insulting hypersimplification of the situation at hand is probably the best case I've seen on this page of actual toxicity. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 05:28, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Mendaliv, for nearly two weeks now, there have been repeated calls for firing Jan and various members of his staff. The most recent call went down in flames, much to the credit of the more thoughtful members of the community. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:00, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The Fram ban has brought matters to a head, but that is not the real issue here. The way the ban was done reveals the extent of the lack of an appropriate relationship and effective interface between enwiki and WMF. The ban was intended to reduce toxicity on enwiki, but appears to have increased it. And it has blocked an opportunity to discuss Fram openly in an ArbCom case and to examine if his conduct is a net negative, or just needs adjustment. Some people think he is a negative, some people think he isn't. But without the evidence before us, and the opportunity for Fram to put any evidence of misconduct into context, then neither Fram nor the community will learn anything. I was hearing concerns about Fram during the GiantSnowman case and the Rama case which was making me aware that people found his approach unnecessarily harsh. That he used his admin tools to edit through full protection to revert a sitting Arb on an ArbCom page, made me think that it may be appropriate to request a case to look into that and other incidents, and I was considering opening a case as an individual, rather than as an ArbCom member. The Office Action terminated that consideration, so we have been denied the opportunity as a community to openly examine Fram's conduct and see what we can all learn from it.
I am not advocating that the community write to WMF to complain about Fram being banned. I'm not sure that would achieve anything, and is a distraction from the real issue which is the relationship between WMF and our community. If the relationship had been more open and effective, then I don't think the Office Action would have happened. I think T&S would have allowed the community to deal with the concerns about Fram in our own way. And if the concerns about harassment and toxic atmosphere on enwiki, that have been discussed both by the WMF and by the community, could be shared, I feel we would make more progress toward finding a solution.
So what I am advocating is that we write to WMF saying we would welcome open discussion on creating an effective dialogue between enwiki and WMF so that together we can solve problems and prevent anything like this happening again. I think once the channels are open, we can use those channels to discuss the possibility that ArbCom take over the ban, and conduct a case looking into Fram's conduct in general. SilkTork (talk) 08:53, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
SilkTork, who complained about Fram during Rama's case? In-private or am I not spotting anything? ∯WBGconverse 09:37, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Fram's action was discussed on the list, but due to particular logistical reasons, such as low levels of activity of the Committee members meaning it was difficult to get consensus, the matter drifted. The longer it drifted the more difficult it seemed to appropriately respond to the action. SilkTork (talk) 10:06, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I have sent my email:

Hello Katherine Maher

I am Steve Pereira - User:SilkTork on en.wikipedia: a user, admin, and member of the English ArbCom.

You will be aware of Trust & Safety's Office Action on en.wikipedia in which User:Fram was locally banned for one year as you will have seen the report that T&S compiled, and will have signed it off. I'm not sure, though, how much you are aware of the response of the enwiki community to that Office Action - some of it may have been brought to your attention, including the actions by two admins and a 'Crat, and the resignations of several admins, though you may not have read through the many thousands of words written at Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram and at the ArbCom case request to look into the actions of the two admins and the 'Crat: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case

It is difficult to sum up the community's exact feelings about this matter as there have been varied responses, however what appears to be emerging as a consensus is that it would be helpful for the enwiki community and the WMF to have an open dialogue on how Office Actions are handled and announced, and for the community and WMF to have an effective permanent interface on en.Wikipedia where notices could be placed, queries raised, and an open and productive dialogue on a range of issues could take place so the WMF and the community can work together to improve the project.

The Office Action has created unrest and tension on enwiki which has not been helped by the low level of communication enwiki has received from WMF representatives regarding the matter. It would be helpful if there were some acknowledgement from yourself that you are aware of this issue, and that you would consider looking into how a permanent interface could be set up on en.Wikipedia (similar perhaps to the 'Crat Noticeboard and the ArbCom Noticeboard), and to opening a dialogue on the talkpages of such an interface where representatives of WMF and the enwiki community could look into issues such as harassment on enwiki, Office Actions, and perhaps this particular ban on Fram.

While WMF do make announcements on Meta, the bulk of the enwiki community do not look there, so those announcements would be going to a very small audience. Announcements of projects and plans which directly impact enwiki would have greater readership and feedback if done on enwiki itself.

With regards

Steve (SilkTork)

I will report back if I get an acknowledgement. SilkTork (talk) 09:39, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Steve. Any updates we can get the better: much of the anger and division at the moment is because of the perceived lack of response from the WMF (yes, we get it's difficult having people all over the place, but we're getting anodyne non-comments from Jan, and stonewalling elsewhere. Any news of forward steps is most welcome. - SchroCat (talk) 10:24, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. This is a very good letter. Jehochman Talk 12:42, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I have now contacted them.Slatersteven (talk) 17:24, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I have sent Maher e-mail with the following text:

Dear Katherine Maher.

I write to ask you for help in resolving the issue of the English Wikipedia administrator Fram who was banned from the project by the Trust & Safety team for unclear reasons. This unexplained and sudden ban has shaken the confidence of many editors in the Wikimedia Foundation and harmed its relationship with the English Wikipedia community.

I have contributed to Wikipedia since 2003 and I hope to continue doing so for many years to come. It is important to me that contributors to Wikipedia should not be subject to unexplained arbitrary bans without pressing legal necessity.

A very satisfactory resolution to the current issue would be for Fram to be unbanned and restored as administrator. Any concerns the Trust & Safety team has with his conduct could then be forwarded to the community-elected ArbCom for further investigation. I ask you to please help in resolving the matter so we can move on from this vexing energy sink and get on with building the encyclopedia.

Best regards,

Dr. [etc.]

I think the more Wikipedians send letters, the greater our chances of having an effect. Haukur (talk) 18:05, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I sent an email early this morning (Pacific time). I have made allusions/analogies to material under NDA, so I cannot post the full email. I suppose I could redact it like the Muller Report but I am not sure it is worth it. --Rschen7754 18:21, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I won't be posting it because I don't want to risk accidentally leaking something I shouldn't. But I don't have a response yet as of now. It was a fairly long email though, so I suppose a response might take some time. --Rschen7754 00:16, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

If any editors who sent messages to WMF have gotten responses, it would be very interesting to find out whatever of the response you are able to reveal. Are they engaging with you substantively? Or are they just stonewalling with canned answers? The answer to that is likely to influence what the community here will do next. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:02, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

No reply so far. --Rschen7754 01:38, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
No reply so far, and no acknowledgement that the email has been received. SilkTork (talk) 08:43, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
No reply and no acknowledgement. Haukur (talk) 11:48, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Update: Maher has now replied in a friendly manner to an e-mail I sent her a couple of hours ago, responding reasonably positively to some specific suggestions. Haukur (talk) 01:27, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks very much, all of you! Needless to say (but of course I'm saying it anyway) please keep all of us informed of anything new that emerges. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:38, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Good idea. Note left. SilkTork (talk) 13:22, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I think that is a good place to leave messages, as it appears that page is monitored, and gets replies. Also, everything there is in the open, and a record is kept. So, perhaps instead of emails, people could write to her there. SilkTork (talk) 13:25, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
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