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HARASSMENT

Can we please stop throwing around the word "harassment" everywhere? It's been said on this page 150 times. That's not including the archives. No one has said that this ban had anything to do with harassment. The Board barely even mentioned harassment, as an aside to additional training the WMF might be able to provide. What the board did mention explicitly is what's actually important, and we need to understand and acknowledge the lessons being given to us. What the board did talk about:

  • "toxic behaviors"
  • "[working] to make Wikimedia communities safer for all good faith editors"
  • "A safe and respectful environment"
  • "[allowing] for more diverse voices to join our communities"
  • "[the community] should take this as a wake-up call to improve our enforcement processes to deal with so-called 'unblockables'"
  • "those in a position of authority should be held to a higher standard"
  • "projects struggle to effectively address the most difficult and controversial cases. There is a gap between our movement principles and practices. This is an issue we need to solve"
  • "dealing with toxic behavior"

It's naive to reduce this to the community struggling to deal with harassment. The issue is clear, and practically spelled out for us. The WMF wants us start taking behavioral conduct seriously. It's not just about harassment. We need to stop making excuses for "unblockables". We need to stop making excuses for toxic behavior. We need to start enforcing behavioral policies, even (read: especially) against admins. We need to start handling behavioral issues with seriousness and decisive authority. The days of excusing incivility in deference to content contributions are over. The days of log-jamming behavioral complaints with excuses and defenses are over. The days of admins unilaterally unblocking "power users" who are blocked for personal attacks and incivility are over. The reign of the uncivil power user is finished. These editors are a sacrifice that should be made in order to encourage a more welcoming and diverse environment. And the board is willing to side with us on this. They'll tighten the Foundation's leash, and give us a genuine chance to fix this issue ourselves. But fixing the issue is non-negotiable. If we don't want Foundation meddling, we need to start taking this seriously.

As one of the very vocal critics of the WMF in this, I can support this initiative wholeheartedly. I am already seeing it start to play out within the community. These are changes the community's been aching for since before I even registered. I am on board with the board's goals here. I encourage everyone to take this seriously as well. The WMF handled this terribly. They're clearly not equipped to deal with this from the top-down. But they were enforcing the board's will. If we don't want this to repeat itself, we need to learn from this as well. We need to not give the WMF any reason to see the need to intervene. "Harassment" is a chilling red herring buzzword that distracts from the real issues at hand. We've been failing to enforce our very most basic conduct policies since I got here. It's not Arbcom's fault for failing us in terms of harassment. Arbcom's certainly done more to combat chronic issues with incivility than we ever have. It's no secret to anyone. And it has never changed. Unblockables are a thing. Power users get a free pass. And it's not good enough any more. If the WMF is going to dictate that it's time to change, then I will support that, even over my own criticisms of the WMF. I encourage everyone to start doing the same. There's no excuse not to change. It's in everyone's best interests. The "good ol' boy" culture of self-protection from our own behavioral standards is rightfully finished. ~Swarm~ {sting} 04:58, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree with a lot of this. I'd just add that the term "harassment" is more often than not being used improperly here, both in terms of its WP:HARASSMENT definition and in terms of its legal meaning (because harassment may be a crime or a tort in most jurisdictions). I think we need to be more careful how and when we use the term in light of that, given a claim that someone has committed a criminal act may itself be legally actionable. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 05:09, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
@Swarm: Amen. – Levivich 05:28, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
You might wish to read this, at first. ∯WBGconverse 07:20, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
For anyone who didn't click through to that edit of mine, as I discussed in a previous section in this page, we need to examine the motivations for poor behaviour, and do what we can to replace them with incentives for desired behaviour. We've had a lot of discussion about building a better stick, but not a lot on how to build better carrots. Two areas I touched upon are improving content dispute mechanisms so that bad behaviour is not a good strategy to win disputes, and having better ways to identify new editors with potential to improve so it isn't necessary to use rudeness to discourage those who don't exhibit the essential characteristics to eventually become a productive editor. We need to align our processes with the behaviours we want to encourage, so evolutionary pressure will select for them. isaacl (talk) 10:26, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Amen, amen, Swarm. I haven't always agreed with your posts on this subject but I think you've issued a valid challenge to all admins. I think part of the hesitancy to block on civility and behavioral conduct is because an admin thinks that another admin will just come along in a few hours and unblock. Sandstein recently blocked Eric Corbett for violating a topic ban and it seemed to me that admins were going out of their way to get any concession from him so they could avoid enforcing this violation. More admins have to be willing to enforce violations that any ordinary editor would be penalized for. And I think that will not happen overnight. Liz Read! Talk! 03:09, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Hear hear. The Land (talk) 07:51, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Well said, Swarm. The sea-change we desperately require across the Wikipedia movement is one where everyone - but absolutely all administrators, without exception - deal civily and respectfully with every other user, and with one another. And we should be prepared to call one another out on this when our standards slip. That's not to suggest we relax the implementation of our policies and guidelines - we just need to apply them without all the associated testosterone-laden remarks that some think is quite ok to deploy...
...In all civilised societies, if one gets caught for speeding, spraying graffiti, or even major embezzlement, we would expect the police to deal with us and our crimes both fairly and respectfully. We are rightly horrified if we see a video of rogue police officers mishandling or verbally abusing offenders, even if it was something that might have been culturally acceptable thirty or forty years ago. We should be equally as horrified when we see administrators, acting on behalf of the community, being uncivil and disrespectful to those who either maliciously or accidentally break our rules. Wikipedia is now an 18-year old, and has come of age. Users should certainly expect all of our administrators to act like mature, professional adults, not wayward vigilante cops, even in the face of provocation. If they can't do that they shouldn't be administrators on one of the world's most used websites. Nick Moyes (talk) 09:18, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
I think the key point is though, if you get caught speeding or breaking the law, then you can't claim the police are harassing you when they write a ticket. And if the police have to write you a ticket for speeding every day for a month, well then maybe you shouldn't be driving. Mr Ernie (talk) 11:08, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
  • "those in a position of authority should be held to a higher standard"—yet currently they are in important respects held to a lower standard. Tony (talk) 09:20, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
  • It works both ways. There are users who consider admins to be 'fair game' (a person or thing that is considered a reasonable target for criticism, exploitation, or attack) and exploit every opportunity to bait and harass our admins knowing that admins are not allowed to defend themselves. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:44, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
    That's true, but not only administrators, patrollers also face abuse, so do those editing in sensitive areas. An interesting problem that technology appears to not cope with effectively is real (and often illegal) harassment using IP addresses and socks to make threats of harm. No matter how civil, anyone can start getting these for any reason. Manual admin+revdel intervention is necessary and may well occur after the target read the message. Edit filters have helped but appear very suboptimal. Things could help like talk page protection, IP address editing restrictions, making sock creation more difficult, but at the same time such solutions are often considered unworkable. Ad-hoc slowly escalating spoonfed methods are used: a particular page will be protected a few days only after already too much abuse, that immediately resumes as it soon expires. Similarly unless a long term abuse school or hosting range, IP addresses get a 31h block at a time (almost always too late, and the abuser resets the connection anyway)... Added to that may be off-wiki canvassing campaigns. Although less serious, this also affects POV pushing and vandalism in articles. Conversely, if Wikipedia only allowed "pro accounts", it would probably result in its quick death. This implies that it also strives because of this chaos, with much effort needed by "cop armies" just so it doesn't completely collapse... With some editors inevitably getting irritated and echoing the toxicity. —PaleoNeonate – 10:38, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree with Swarm, and I agree with Kudpung. A major change in the culture of Wikipedia is needed. We are supposed to be building an encyclopedia. We have to deal every day with users whose objectives in editing do not agree with our policies. We have to resolve differences in what is put into the encyclopedia within the boundaries of policies (content disputes). We need to address such issues in a civil manner consistently and at all times. We must not tolerate bad behavior from anyone. - Donald Albury 10:16, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
This thread is making me uneasy. The last thing we need is to be making major changes on the back of simple, unqualified declarations like "We must not tolerate bad behavior from anyone.". Unlike "speeding, spraying graffiti, or even major embezzlement" , incivility is not an easily defined in a way that would be broadly agreed on. For this reason, many types of "bad" behavior - e.g. rude words, other aggressive language, etc etc, are invariably tolerated in successful communities, even if they are discouraged. Re-architecting a global communities culture & health is not as simple as some here possibly think. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:29, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
You're uneasy about the suggestion that people deal civilly and respectfully with each other? Personally I'm highly encouraged by this thread. It shows that while many are unhappy with the way WMF dealt with this issue (and I count myself in that number too), there is a solid recognition that we're not doing enough to make WP a safe and welcoming space for everyone. Anyway, like it or not, "major changes" are exactly what is required here. The WMF have made it abundantly clear that if the present status quo remains unchanged, they will have no choice but to carry out more FramBans in future. And, whatever your position on the rights and wrongs of that, such a move would probably lead to the fracture and death of Wikipedia, which would be a disaster for everyone involved in the project. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 10:42, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Wrong on all points. Regarding your first sentence, if I was the type to be easily offended, then Id find the implication that Im adverse to us dealing more 'civilly and respectfully' with each other far more disrespectful than being told to F-off. Im very much in favour of everyone – from the youngest newbie (including ones with strong aversion to aggression), to the most well established power user - being treated with greater respect. My point is that kind of major change is not easy to actualise without doing more harm than good. Swarm mentions sacrifice , which is indeed often a key ingredient of successful change for good. But we don't want the sort of sacrifice that kills the Golden Goose. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:02, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
FWIW, I read your point as being a suggestion that what we don't need is some sort of knee-jerk reaction, but instead a carefully considered and properly discussed way forward. At least, that's my thinking. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:08, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Boing! - you're spot on. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:16, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Ah OK, no issues there then. A considered approach is preferable to a knee-jerk one. I just don't think keeping the status quo is an option any more. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 15:34, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
  • The OP makes an excellent point, in that the best response to Framgate should involve general efforts to enrich community health, not just a focus on anti harassment measures.
Yet if implemented as written, several other strong statements in the OP seem likely to be counter productive. Before we settle on specific measures to reduce toxicity, it would be good to first address the Adler problem - the fact that"toxic" is such an ill-defined word, even more so than "harassment".
For HansAdler, toxicity seems to mean excessive respect for rank. For some users, probably including some of the Board, toxicity seems to be synonymous with aggression, rudeness, & excessive bluntness. Those users might prefer to say 'toxicity is severe incivility' – but incivility also lacks a widely agreed on precise meaning. For myself & quite a few others, the most insidious forms of toxic incivility include passive aggression, excessive carelessness & dishonest manipulation. And positive aggression can be the antidote to these things. Yet the OP's suggestions would seem to make that cure much more risky.
Instead the OP seems to be largely about raising the "decisive authority" of the Block, and a radical change of our culture so that the community is no longer allowed to makes excuses for passionate outbursts. So no recognition of the fact content creators sometimes spend upwards of 300 hours just on one article. So can suffer annoyances which are hard for a non content creator to understand, e.g. having to deal with a newbie persistently wanting to make article changes, without understanding the basics, leaving the only fully civil response to explain their mistakes from basic principles.
And many actual examples where aggression flares up involve political flashpoints where editors on both sides are understandably passionate. It would be relatively easy to remove the checks on the "decisive authority" of the enforcement corps. It would be non trivial to provide admins with the extra attention boost needed to carefully analyse all disputes. Direct aggression is easy to spot. Passive aggression & other forms of superficial polite uncollaborative behaviour are not always, unless you already understand the context & background.
There's a mention of holding admins to a higher standard, but much of the thrust of the OP seems to be on preventing the community from speaking out to challenge a block. For many, the worst form of admin abuse is the handing out of excessively harsh sanctions.
TLDR: Taken as a package, the suggestions above risk radically changing our culture in ways that would discourage many good passionate users, but favour the emotionally cold, civil POV pushers, power tripping admins, trolls and baiters. All this said, moderate changes in the direction indicated by the OP might be beneficial, though perhaps Isaacl's thread (already linked to by WBG) frames the issues in a more reflective way. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:35, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
My comment above (which got lost in an edit conflict - I've put it back) was before I read this, and I can do no more than agree 100% with what you say, FeydHuxtable. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:10, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
  • The only problem with the claimed unblockables is that they attract absurdly escalating blocks that others regard as punishment for insolence. There would be no problem if each incident resulted in a 48-hour block because (nearly) everyone would see that was reasonable. Existing problems have existed for years so a new regime would need time to evaluate—if someone is still causing trouble after a dozen 48-hour blocks something more substantive could be discussed. Another issue is that blocking editors who occasionally melt down means we will only be left with civil POV pushers and paid editors who unemotionally work to achieve their desired outcomes. Outbursts often result from dealing with repeated idiocy. Johnuniq (talk) 11:06, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
This was the core point I tried to make, albeit Johnuiq managed it with far less words, and more collaborative phrasing. Just to clarify I'm all for us reducing these outbursts, as theyre clearly anti inclusive, I just think we need a careful approach if we're to avoid the medicine being worse than the poison. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:16, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
We should be looking for ways to constrain the effects of idiocy, then. Yes, I know this is a really hard problem (otherwise it would be solved already), but it is a better long-term strategy than allowing productive editors to be annoyed to the point where they make outbursts, as ideally they wouldn't be annoyed at all. For example, to manage new user idiocy, perhaps there could be a new user patrol who could redirect editors who show potential but need guidance to active mentors, and weed out those who are going nowhere fast. Because this is an idea I thought of in two minutes, I know it has possibly insurmountable drawbacks such as having to enact additional bureaucracy to monitor the patrolling group and the mentors, and probably having to hire mentors due to the immense amount of time required by active mentorship. Nonetheless, we need to start thinking about new approaches like these in search of a way to minimize as much as possible the incentives for poor behaviour. isaacl (talk) 11:30, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Changes to stop productive editors getting annoyed in the first place would indeed be excellent. Perhaps what you've just suggested might work, perhaps the suggestion on your Arb thread on training for Newbies. Perhaps there's things we could ask the WMF to do such as interface changes. Likely theres all sorts of other positive changes no ones suggested yet. Though enforcement related ideas such as maybe a shift to make it easier to give Power Users short blocks after the outbursts. One thing's for sure, getting consensus for specific changes won't be easy.
Perhaps needed sacrifice is the hard work it takes to achieve this. Just to suggest something positive rather than me critiquing all the time. What might work is to start things off with a balanced 10 person working group, rather than have a unstructured free for all. Everyone involved should be willing to commits at least say 24 hours to the discussion, over the course of the next month. Maybe include someone who is good at structuring discussion for productive outcomes (e.g. Beeblebrox ) to work on the organisation but otherwise be impartial. Perhaps yourself to moderate. Then have at least 2 users to represent the so called "West coast" values & at least 2 to speak for the passionate content creators. Ensure there's a rough balance of admins & non admins. Lean against our biases by making sure at least one person has right leaning sympathies, and ensure at least 2-3 members are female. The rest of the community could submit ideas, to maximise the chance of new creative solutions, but should otherwise mostly keep out of the discussion. First the working group might agree as much as possible on the basics - what is community health, what is toxicity etc. Then develops a set of proposals for change that has broad support. Then with again someone like Beeblebrox structuring a Rfc, it can be opened up for modification & / or ratification by the community. Just throwing this out there, perhaps it's the simplest possible approach that has a good chance to work, at least it's the best I can come up with. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:27, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Uh.... only 2-3 female members out of 10? This is not leaning against our biases. If we are trying to come up with rules in a community where all feel welcome, we need to have working groups that are representative of potential contributors, not existing contributors. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:21, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
  • One concern is that either the WMF (or the Community overreacting just to avoid WMF intervention, which is almost as bad) would make a definition of "toxic behaviour" that is vastly broader than should actually be done. I absolutely agree that a far more even enforcement of our pre-standing rules needs to be the case, and certainly a strong case for holding admins (et al) to higher standards than others could be made. However, we aren't an office or such - our civility requirements should not anywhere near as high. Neither toxic or incivility can be clearly definable. We can opt for either some new bright lines or a generally broader crack-down (some combination is probably possible, too). But going too far will be almost impossible to walk-back. I think the implementation discussions are a great starting place (whether that be private info cases, block usage, mentoring etc), and will make it much easier to have future conversations because the most behaviours should have already been reduced. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:55, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
    @Nosebagbear: Although I agree with you on the need to not overreact, and create a sensible balance, I'm also not sure why the civility level one would expect in an office is not something we should aim for. Wikipedia is a broad church, we encourage participants from all walks of life, young people, women, ethnic minorities etc, and our aim is to produce an encyclopedia of professional quality. It therefore doesn't seem unreasonable to me to aim for something approaching the levels of civility with which people who don't know each other personally would interact in a professional environment. I'm not saying we'll always achieve that, and of course there are occasions when people say things in the heat of the moment that they may regret later (I've been there myself). But if we aim for the stars, we might just reach the moon!  — Amakuru (talk) 15:42, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
    @Amakuru: - except much like too low levels of civility, high levels of civility actually lowers productivity and increases misunderstandings. It's not a case where reaching high comes without negatives. Beyond that, there's also the fact that people want to edit in a comfortable environment, otherwise they won't edit at all (I'd edit on the same level of civility as my first team, but not my current work team - I won't write under formal conditions). Much like comfortable means a certain level of politeness for many, the opposite applies. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:07, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
    Lowers productivity by measures such as the ratio of words on a discussion page to words on an article page, sure. I'm not sure though if all parties are being respectful of each other (including their time) if misunderstandings would increase. (Frustration might with the decreased productivity.) But if we also count the times where discussion would have deadlocked when opposing sides argued aggressively instead of trying to work together collaboratively, where the ratio is basically infinite, then I think there may be still a net positive with all editors exhibiting high levels of respect. isaacl (talk) 18:30, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

HARASSMENT (arbitrary break)

  • I have seen plenty of examples over the years of a POV-pushing editor playing dumb, asking endless questions and raising objections that have been repeatedly addressed in an effort to frustrate the development or acceptance of consensus to protect biased content in article space. So long as the POV-pusher remains polite (because I don't accept that their actions are actually civil), they can consume a vast amount of editor time and will likely provoke uncivil comments from other editors. A focus on civility on its own can see several valuable contributors sanctioned when dealing with the POV-pusher as a tendentious / not here editor is much more difficult. I don't seek to condone aggressive / uncivil remarks, but I do think that sanctioning productive contributors for addressing the tenth ridiculous objection to removing sword-wielding skeletons and zombies in Nazi uniforms conquering Britain at the end of WW2 from our article on swordsmanship with what amounts to "fuck off" because it is uncivil is not a desirable approach. It rewards so-called "civil POV-pushing," which is the exact reverse of what we need.
  • Certainly, some of the editors who Fram has addressed harshly / bluntly may have left and some have been treated unfairly... but some also were never going to be valuable contributors and were not capable of understanding the policy-compliant / consistent information Fram sought to provide. I have observed Fram for years, had disagreements, chosen not to debate at times, and seen comments that I thought were over-the-top... but I've also seen understandable frustration from Fram when any experienced Wikipedian would agree that Fram was correct on the point at issue. A focus on civility first, and worse without considering context, is not consistent with the mission of adding encyclopaedic content. And that's without deciding what is and is not uncivil: Like many others here, I have the writing skill and vocabulary to be exceptionally harsh, critical, cruel, and rude without resorting to swearing. Looking mostly for "bad" and harsh words and uncivil content in pursuit of a safe editing environment and missing the consequences this has for quality of content is not the way forward. I am all for addressing some of the nastier behaviours on WP, but for me that includes editors who bully others, editors who are abusive and refuse to collaborate / compromise, and editors with agendas trying to fill article space with bias, promotional drivel, and fringe nonsense. EdChem (talk) 12:53, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Editors who argue tendentiously or otherwise continue to fail to accept they're fighting a perpetually losing battle are indeed a difficult problem. The "assume good faith" policy is one source of contention; the editors will often lean on this heavily, thereby taking advantage of the good will of others. Another is the "consensus can change" principle, which encourages endless discussion. Introducing some form of binding content mediation/editorial review would help address the second issue. If a content debate can be definitively decided, then discussions can be closed, pending the introduction of new facts. The first issue is not easy because it inherently requires the editor in question to be judged, and that is not easy from either side's perspective. Possibly using active mentorship again may be helpful, where the mentor can try to guide the editor towards productive lines of engagement. Should the editor eventually show no promise at adapting, the mentor would have to tell the editor that sadly they don't seem suited to contribute to Wikipedia. isaacl (talk) 15:48, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
      • I couldn't disagree more with your second point. The idea that some kind of board could just say how a disputed article should be for the rest of time seems deeply antithetical to Wikipedia. If you think content disputes are unhealthy, you may be in the wrong place.—Chowbok ☠ 18:34, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
        • I do not believe content disputes are unhealthy, and haven't said so. I believe that the way they drag on with no definitive resolution is demotivating to editors, though. I agree that setting up a hierarchy is a big change in operation. But as I mentioned in a post in an earlier section, online communities that have tried to do without a hierarchy and instead enact a set of rules interpreted by everyone reach a point where the rules are overly complex. As a result, there is a strategic advantage to using poor behaviour to drive away opposing editors. We don't have to choose to implement binding mediation,(*) but some way of deciding disputes definitively would reduce the incentive to behave badly. isaacl (talk) 19:01, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

          (*) Obviously there'd be a lot of details to work out: the discussion would have to be structured to ensure a clear debate occurs, decisions wouldn't be binding eternally, there'd have to be some kind of selection process and regular review for mediators, and so forth. It's not an easy approach, but I think we've exhausted the easy answers by now. isaacl (talk) 19:01, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

  • Disagree with this entirely. It is basically saying that our goal here is the creation of a community that is in harmony with itself. I thought our goal here was the creation of an encyclopedia. You can pretend that civility is the problem in our controversial topics, but as somebody who edits in one of those topics my own belief is that the civility issues rise out, almost invariably, the ineffectiveness in applying our content policies. Nominally polite editors are able to waste years of people's time through game-playing and otherwise poor editing. If you had some method of dealing with the people who spend years spouting bullshit you might not have as many people get sick of it and say shut the fuck up or stop bullshitting. nableezy - 14:36, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
In my view, it makes content secondary and replaces one set of unblockables with another.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:32, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Nableezy, I don't understand why you disagree with me entirely, given that I am saying that putting the fact of incivility before the context in which it occurs will harm content and I'm citing examples saying that politely gaming content policies in the hopes of provoking a WP:CIV-violating response is a problem. Am I misunderstanding or are we on in the same ballpark? In such situations, if anyone is engaging in harassment, it is the tendentious editor, not the uncivil editor seeking to protect content / removing text that is inconsistent with policy. EdChem (talk) 03:02, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
My comment was meant as a reply to Swarm's post opening the section. I replied prior to there being an arbitrary break, and I very much do not disagree with you, entirely or otherwise. nableezy - 04:03, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, that makes it clearer. :) Adding sub-headings can make meanings harder to follow. EdChem (talk) 04:19, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Katherine Maher's statement did invoke harassment several times. Yes, of course Fram was not actually accused of harassment. It did seem to me, however, that the WMF tried to hint at Fram committing harassment without actually saying so, so they could keep plausible deniability. Of course, this is one of the reasons why being informed of the charges against you is important, to stop this kind of calculated hinting and ambiguity. Ken Arromdee (talk) 15:50, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Keep in mind that whatever behavior Fram might have done, it is specialized, covering about 1% of the unnecessary viciousness of Wikipedia. The vast majority of the viciousness of Wikipedia ISN'T about VIOLATING policies, it's about USING policies and guidelines to conduct warfare against people, as an excuse for acting nastily or viciously, and to POV articles. North8000 (talk) 19:48, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

  • I agree with editors who said earlier that we should come at this issue thoughtfully, and not with knee-jerk reactions. There are several aspects of the issue that I can think of, that are worth considering. One is that there is a difference between losing one's temper versus being chronically incivil. Anyone can lose one's temper from time to time, and that doesn't mean that the person has become "toxic". Indeed, that person may well have been provoked by someone else who is outwardly polite, but genuinely toxic. So I think that we need to evolve away from "that editor used a bunch of cuss words, so let's block them for incivility", to looking more thoughtfully at the overall patterns of interactions between editors. (Earlier in these discussions, there was talk about some really bad software programs that were intended to identify hostility, but which instead gave comically incorrect results. We need to be careful to avoid the human equivalent of that: identifying a momentary outburst as incivility.) If hypothetically someone says to me "Tryptofish, you never cared about presenting this content neutrally", that's more incivil than dropping an f-bomb would be. Also, we should be reasonably sensitive to how editors feel when they complain that they are being treated unfairly. It's a lot less civil to say "Tryptofish, stop clutching your pearls" than to say "Tryptofish, I can see why that bothered you, but I don't think the other person meant it that way". On the other hand, it's equally important to recognize that telling someone that they have violated a policy or guideline is not harassment. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:28, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I tend to agree that we need to be careful of confusing superficial "politeness" with civility. Some of the most absolutely toxic places I've ever been have been corporate type environments. Believe me, no one ever said any of these words, and everyone gave you a nice, friendly smile, even right as they stuck the knife in your back. I'd much rather hear "Hey, you fucked that up, be more careful" than be in that type of environment. And many of the worst, most disruptive editors I've seen were unerringly polite, even as they brought the same damn argument up for the fifteenth time, having not heard the first fourteen times it was rejected. But you better believe the moment someone got fed up and called them a name, they were straight to ANI with it. (In more than one case, they did get a good old-fashioned boomerang, which was rather satisfying at least). I'm much more worried about people like that than the occasional bit of salty language, frustration, or bluntness, and they're the ones I would classify as truly toxic. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:41, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
I endorse everything that FeydHUxtable said above. In Matthew ch.15 Christ compares a foreign woman begging for his grace, to a bitch (dog), asking for something he thought she did not deserve, something reserved only for his kind. The whole episode constitutes a profound moment in the conquest of prejudice, but if one made a diff of that statement, ignoring the rest, and brought him to a tribunal of civility, he would have been duly banned. Thirdly, all this talk of Untouchables and admins worries me - I say that having a solid record of being sanctioned. They have one of the most unenviable jobs around - are hampered by a rule that forbids them to read for context (not interfering in what is generally called a 'content dispute', though those are often just illustrations of WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT by an obstructive party) to evaluate the merits of behavioural claims. All this in the name of an unknown quantity - newbies who may get upset, and find an arbitrator unresponsive to their unhappiness here. No human monument that has been constructed to endure uses the social happiness of its labourers as a criterion for hiring hands. Apprenticeship, if the newbie is to push on to become a journeyman, and then master craftsman, requires a readiness to persist, both in the pursuit of knowledge that is hard won, and, occasionally, in the adversities of circumstance. One should not legislate facile illusions here, that would suggest the aim here is community: the aim is to offer, as a volunteer, to help billions of people who can't, or haven't edited here, to get the essential knowledge they are seeking. Our community is one thing, the squabbling fraternities/sororities of anonymous contributors. The other, global community, those who desperately want reliable information and lack the means to secure it by their own lights, is far more important, and their '(intellectual) health', as consumers of information in a world fraught with the snares of fake news, should be our primary concern. Nishidani (talk) 20:56, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Tryptofish and Seraphimblade you really hit the nail on the head on something that few seem to understand.North8000 (talk) 21:31, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Personally I feel it comes down to respect: are the editors being respectful of each other and the community, including respectful of its time, objectives, and conventions? Editors who are respectful can be worked with. Now this is still a very fluid thing that requires context to evaluate. For example, there are some editors who are dismissive of those whom they perceive to be less experienced, and there is an argument to be made that greater experience carries with it greater weight. Nonetheless, from all sides, any disagreement can be expressed in a reasoned, considerate manner. (As I mentioned previously, we should look for ways to prevent outbursts before anyone feels it necessary to let off tension in that way.) Evaluating respect goes beyond choice of words or adherence to policy: it's looking at an editor's overall approach in engaging the community. isaacl (talk) 22:19, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

There is also the issue of editors not having respect for the encyclopedia, this great project that so many people have contributed to in its existence. Such disrespect can be shown in various ways, blatantly, as in vadalism and socking, but also in a more subtle fashion: not checking facts, adding unsourced information, attempting to skew articles to a personal POV, writing article text even when the editor's command of English is deficient, refusing to follow the various policies, rules, and standard ways of operating that allow Wikipedia to survive, and so on. It seems to me that many of the disputes and confrontations which lead to claims of "incivility" and "harassment" are engendered by the behavior of editors who do those things and are corrected by others. Typically, the correction doesn't take, and the result is a revert war or a heated discussion on the talk page, leading to transgressive behavior from the editor attempting to protect the encyclopedia. Officially, policy is that being right is not a defense in most cases, but in reality it sometimes is -- if the admin examining the situation is so inclined -- and it really should be the vast majority of the time. Yes, certainly, collegiality and civility are important, but protecting the encyclopedia from damage is arguably more important.
Wikipedia editors are only human, and can take only so much before they loose their cool. Of course, that level is different for different people, and an editor who constantly does so will, eventually, become a net negative and will be harshly sanctioned. But until then, the context and circumstances surrounding claims of incivility and harassment ought always to be considered, especially when one side in the dispute is attempting to protect the encyclopedia from being damaged. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:05, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
BMK, well said. I have far too many times seen good editors attempting to protect the encyclopaedia being sanstioned because of a pile on at AN/I of those who have been POV pushing or committing other "crimes against the encyclopaedia" who were pulled up by the editor being sanctioned. Sure boomerangs happen, but not often enough. Context always matters. - Nick Thorne talk 01:24, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
At the risk of getting off topic, but since you mentioned ANI: emotions often run high there which is why many admins are not interested at working at that coalface, or have given up doing so. It is time to wrest the running of ANI back from all and sundry and operate it as an Administrator Noticeboard which theoretically it is supposed to be. Much of the flame throwing from the trenches could be avoided if commenting were to be restricted to involved parties, admins, and truly experienced users (and 'truly experienced' does not necessarily include those users who simply have a magnetic propensity for hanging out there and policing the project everywhere else). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:29, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Kudpung, we already have AE as a venue where admins, who are supposed to be regular editors with a few extra tools, can freely ignore and even treat with utter disdain comments from non-admin editors. It also allows and even supports the closing / sanction-imposing disregarding the views of other admins and even an emerging consensus – look at the recent EC thread where a one month ban had one supporter yet that's what was imposed, and an appeal would be rejected as "within discretion" even if the decision was excessive in most admin's opinions. We don't need those attitudes spreading any further than they already have. I completely agree that ANI's environment needs improvement and cultural change, but restricting participation is not the way forward on that, IMO. EdChem (talk) 03:19, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
During the arbitration case 2015-10, I discussed the use of the arbitration enforcement noticeboard. With English Wikipedia's tradition of avoiding bureaucracy, it is not necessary for violations of arbitration case sanctions to be posted to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard; individual administrators are empowered to enforce the sanctions based on their own personal judgement. Accordingly, there should be equal treatment of potential violations, whether or not they were reported at the noticeboard. Otherwise, there would be an incentive to rush to file enforcement requests hastily, in order to delay sanctions or other corrective measures from being taken. (In that case, the arbitration committee issued a principle on how consensus discussions may affect arbitration enforcement. In my personal view, though, I don't feel it provided any new guidance.) In the January 2018 amendment request for arbitration case 2015-5, I suggested there be circuit-breaker rules that, if tripped, would require a consensus discussion be held to determine if an enforcement action should be enacted. However I remain uncertain about what would be an appropriate set of circuit-breaker rules. isaacl (talk) 04:42, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
It's why we need better mechanisms to resolve content disputes definitively, before editors lose their cool or resort to other poor behaviour in an attempt to win a dispute. Respect of the community and its time, objectives, and conventions encompasses all the areas you refer to. isaacl (talk) 03:06, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
People need to take more time to review problem editing as well.Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:26, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Are you thinking of a review process where editors actively seek out problematic edits? This is what I had in mind when suggesting active mentorship in earlier comments. The mentor would have the responsibility to review the protegé's edits, either before or after they are made. isaacl (talk) 03:37, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
What I would be thinking of is faced with a poor contribution to an article on my watchlist, it would not have been unusual for me to look at their contributions and do what needed to be done in terms of reversions and talk page comments. In this brave new world, though, I might check to see if they are friends with anyone powerful before deciding to act.--Wehwalt (talk) 07:17, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
About the problems at ANI, I agree with the general concept that it should move more in the direction of a noticeboard for administrators and away from being where the peanut gallery argues incessantly back and forth with one another. Although community input is important, and is necessary when !voting on a specific proposal (such as a ban), there is otherwise little good that comes out of ANI threads that go on for days with minimal administrator input. There are times when it would help a lot for an admin to step in and tell others to STFU. Of course, that takes a certain amount of courage, because of the potential for toxic blowback. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:13, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
As a quick point of fact: I'm surprised this thread has grown to the point of multiple subsections without this observation (maybe I missed it?) - but, in reference to the statement in the OP that No one has said that this ban had anything to do with harassment.: WMFOffice did specifically cite the ToU item on harassment and abuse: What we can say in this case is that 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.”. (Pinging Swarm as an FYI.) Opabinia regalis (talk) 17:17, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
@Opabinia regalis: The problem with that is WMF has also made a statement to the press claiming (falsely) that Section 4 of the TOU also prohibits incivility, and that the ban was levied to maintain "respect and civility". (In a statement to BuzzFeed News, the organization said it had leveled the ban to maintain "respect and civility" on the platform. "Uncivil behavior, including harassment, threats, stalking, spamming, or vandalism, is against our Terms of Use, which are applicable to anyone who edits on our projects," it said. [1]) This statement indicates that the "harassment and abuse" subheading finding may have been one of disrespect or incivility (or any of the other things that aren't "harassment" in either the legal or Wikipedia sense that are lumped under that subheading). That's part of what the problem here is. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 17:29, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, yes, but reporters do miss details sometimes, and probably don't know the locally idiosyncratic usages of terms like "civility", so I'd want to see the original statement from the WMF before judging that one too much. But in any case, it's still incorrect to say that no one has said anything about harassment when in fact it was explicitly cited. There's a huge of volume of discussion about this whole episode, and it's easy to miss stuff, but need to all be working from the same set of facts as much as possible. (Within the constraints of privacy and the like, anyway.) Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:03, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
@Opabinia regalis: You're quite right OR, that reporters may miss things. But this is in quotes, and more than once. I don't think it's likely this person made up the quotations. I find it far more likely that T&S incorrectly believes that incivility is against the TOU than this reporter fabricating a quotation. But also, let's be clear, when we're talking about what the TOU says, we aren't talking about idiosyncratic Wikipedia usage: We're talking about legal usage as it's a legal document. The TOU specifies that it is the entire agreement: Our idiosyncratic usages (which, respectfully, I don't think our definition of "civility" is significantly different than what's used in my profession) aren't incorporated into that document. The relevant meaning is what's reasonable under the circumstances. Again, it's a legal document, not an enwiki policy document; our special words don't apply. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 08:06, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
@Opabinia regalis: On the contrary, I've been arguing over this point the whole time. The WMF cited a clause that prohibits specific behaviors, including harassment. That's all well and good, until Fram creates a narrative that he was actually blocked for incivility, and that the invocation of that clause was disingenuous. I mean, that's the whole issue here. Literally. That's the issue. AFAIK, no one from the WMF ever confirmed that Fram actually engaged in any of the specified prohibited behaviors, nor disputed Fram's notion that he did not do so. I asked a board member directly if he could clarify or resolve this simple discrepancy, and he could not or would not do so. So, I think the assumption that Fram actually engaged in harassment is dubious. We have no allegation that Fram engaged in harassment. We have no confirmation that there is a victim. We a suspected reporter, who was not being harassed, but who had an issue with Fram and connections to the WMF. If she had nothing to do with it, it's a bit bizarre that she vanished her account rather than responding to pings. With all of this context, "the WMF cited X clause" is simply a silly defense at this point. The board, ultimately, did not mention harassment as having anything to do with this. That's telling, because the existence of harassment, or the apparent lack thereof, is the crux of this entire controversy. ~Swarm~ {sting} 01:03, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

HARASSMENT (arbitrary break 2)

In response to the concerns expressed above: first, I do not interpret the way forward as as a radical reign of terror in which we terminate anything that could be called "toxic" with extreme prejudice. Obviously "toxic behavior" is subjective, but in this context it's not confusing. It simply refers to editors who choose not to abide by longstanding policies and guidelines. Obviously "we're all human", and we all lose our shit sometimes. Obviously context matters. Obviously the level of net positive matters. And, yes, obviously, there are very real reasons for the way we do things now. We're here to build an encyclopedia, why wouldn't we err on the side of protecting our encyclopedists in spite of petty incivility? I think this is a bad argument, and I 100% reject the notion that project-building and having a meaningful code of conduct are mutually exclusive. If this is a supposed serious academic project, then rudeness, incivility, personal attacks, and combativeness should not be tolerated to begin with. An academic, humanitarian community should absolutely be civil and courteous and respectful and kind, even in the face of the most bitter disagreements. They're not asking for some idealized utopian society, they're just asking that we stop tolerating behavior that is not decent. Obviously this doesn't mean we start purging every uncivil editor, but it does mean that we need to start changing our approach to them. We can still be forgiving and understanding, but when a behavioral problem is understood by all to be chronic and consistent for years and years and years, then yeah, we should start enforcing our policies rather than continuing to make excuses and protecting them. That's not a radical change. A one-year block is extreme and unreasonable. But a 24 hour block that doesn't get unilaterally overturned by a "good ol' boy" admin is a reasonable step in the right direction. Perhaps we allow a valid behavioral complaint to get closed with a warning, or even a reminder, rather than shutting it down and saying "find something better to do". Perhaps when a power user is being uncivil, we ask them to make a change, rather than heaping excuses on them. The changes that need to be made are not mysterious and esoteric. And they're not radical or unreasonable. And, the guiding principal that doing a better job at enforcing our behavioral standards will improve the project itself is absolutely reasonable. In fact, I think it's horrible to even suggest that sanctioning editors for behavioral misconduct somehow damages the project. We believe in an egalitarian community, not an oligarchy in which the WP:MOSTACTIVE are the only class of people who matter. And while the MOSTACTIVE do matter, asking them to respect the five pillars of our project is absolutely not unreasonable. Yes, there is a burden on literally a few users who want to be exempt to slightly more strict civility enforcement. But this is a small price to pay for a healthier editing community. A serious academic community does not tolerate childish bullying behaviors. If you think the status quo is good enough, you should probably reexamine your own self. Those of you who are afraid of not being excused for incivility (or protecting incivility) know who you are, and yes, you are the ones who need to make the change. And yes, you are in a small minority of self-entitled editors who both want to tolerate incivility and want to be exempted from existing rules. That is not a reasonable or viable position. Not anymore. Your reign has ended. Times have changed—change with them. And, yes, I am one of the people who need to reexamine my own beliefs and behaviors. I am not perfect. But at least I can support these exceedingly reasonable goals to improve. ~Swarm~ {sting} 05:45, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

An academic, humanitarian community should absolutely be civil

Does your experience tell you that academic interactions are 'civil'? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nishidani (talk • contribs) 06:24, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Uh, yes? Basic civility is a general standard in an academic environment. It is obviously a fundamental aspect of academia from primary education to secondary, postsecondary, technical, and/or adult education. Mature, civil professionalism is the standard IRL... Are you implying that it isn't or shouldn't be? Just because we are able to hide behind computer screens? A ridiculous question. ~Swarm~ {sting} 06:44, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, you're way off the mark. That smacks of starry-eyed idealism about academia rather than the pays réel of university cultures. (By the way, the widespread bullying through primary and secondary education in schools in my day may be better regulated but, apart from numerous novels, there are substantial cultural critiques, and academic papers on academic bitching, not to speak of the rise in SBT (Student Bullying of Teachers) now amply documented and recognized now that iphones allow kids to film what goes on in classrooms and dump the clips on social network to mock teaching staff). Here's just one.

A well-known adage in academia is ‘the infighting is so vicious, because so little is at stake . . .Experienced faculty members warn new academics to ‘Remember that every department has at least one axe murderer, but you won’t know in advanced who it is so you’d better be on your guard’. . An idealised university is a place of mutual civility, love of learning and shared knowledge, where debate and differences of opinion are accepted. The reality of the neo-liberal academic workplace is that dissent, autonomy and collegiality are unwelcome . . Workplace bullying proliferates in academic as in other workplace cultures but through more subtle , refined mechanisms such as belittling comments or talking negatively behind the target’s back’. Jane Goodman-Delahunty , Ben Walker Academic, Academic Life: An interpersonal dimension,’ in Robert H. Cantwell, Jill Janina Scevak (eds.), An Academic Life: A Handbook for New Academics, Acer Press, Australian Council for Educational Research, pp.160-180 p.167

No institutional solutions exist for this, and those executives and admins fuss up, for their own reasons or in response to pressures, as often as not just complicate an already complicated working environment. We're doing reasonably well here. Whatever the jagging in the wheels, a huge volume of reliable information is being shared, controlled, corrected daily, making this a world-ranking source of information, notwithstanding attempts to interfere with it by requiring social rather than technical perfectionism as the basic rule of encyclopedic construction.Nishidani (talk) 11:06, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
I think the misunderstanding may come from equating civility with not arguing. Argument can happen with a great deal of civility, and the parties don't have to like each other or even pretend to like each other. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 06:51, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
I dont see how anybody is asking to be exempted from anything. You seem to be mistaking your own views for being the absolute bottom line position of the wider community, and anybody who disagrees with you, on a number of topics on this page and related discussions, is in some small minority. But at the same time you seem to blame these people for our status quo on what is or is not blockable incivility (you know, that thing that consensus actually is). You want to change that? I guess trying to push forward your long held beliefs on how this place should be run under the guise of addressing some emergency isnt exactly a new tactic, but I for one hope that it fails. We have policies on harassment, such as hounding or in more extreme cases off-wiki behavior. We have a policy on civility, and that policy very specifically, and by consensus, says that blocking for civility should only occur in cases of causing disruption. You want to change that? Well then get a consensus for your view. Until then your claims that those opposed to your views are just some small minority whose days have passed are just your own views. Whereas ours are actually the consensus position of the English Wikipedia community. nableezy - 06:49, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, Nableezy. This is a perfect example of the "old guard" or "good ol' boy" behavior that the board seeks to eradicate. I'm not speaking on my personal views here. I'm interpreting the Board's directive as objectively as I can. And, the changes being imposed upon us no longer allow for these excuses. If you want to die on the hill of defending any attempts at improvement, then I am not going to argue with you. If you want to be part of the problem, then have at it. If users such as yourself prevail, then we will be left with nothing but endless WMF enforcement. We, as a community, need to rise against these excuses and defenses of incivility, if we truly want to make an institutional stand against WMF meddling. This is a standard being forced upon us from the top down, and, as I explained, it is not unreasonable. If you want to continue to ignore, allow, excuse and defend incivility ad infinitum, then you can enjoy complaining about disproportionate Foundation enforcement ad infinitum. The WMF will enforce their standards, and they do not care about reasonable community standards of enforcement. If the community should have blocked Fram for a day, the WMF blocked him for a year. If that's the future you want, fine. But I choose to try to make the changes that are being requested from us, so we can encourage the desired improvements on our end. ~Swarm~ {sting} 06:56, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
I have never in my life been a good ol boy. Youre the one with the bit. Youre the one that has the friends here. And to be frank, youre the one that has been uncivil here. And might I remind you, you yourself have lost your cool. You yourself have benefited from our norms of assessing your past contributions and worth to the project before being blocked for making intemperate remarks. Or do you think that a new editor would not be blocked indefinitely for calling an admin here, literally, a Nazi collaborator? I disagree with you on what an improvement is, so I am part of the problem and should be ignored? Explain to me how that is promoting some higher level of civility here. I thought we were here to deal with the actual emergency, that being unwarranted intrusion on our self-governance for en.WP issues. I am not on board with any attempt at forcing through some change on to our community, by the WMF or by you. If that makes me the problem then fine, Ive been called worse. nableezy - 07:07, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
I admitted to my own shortcomings, and my need to work on them. But deflecting blame is not the path forward. Nor is ignoring the conditions the board is offering. Yes, our self governance has been violated, but expecting unconditional reparations is simply not realistic. The board is implementing a new regime of behavioral standards, whether you like it or not. We can either acknowledge this and change with the times, or remain obstinate and refusing to change, which is exactly what I mean by the "self-protecting good ol' boy culture". I get that you don't want to change. But not changing is not an option. This is non-negotiable. This is the expectation set forth by the board. Not by me. So, if you don't want random WMF employees inserting themselves into the community, banning "toxic" users, we need to make the changes, set the standards. Just ignoring the standards is not an option. Maintaining the status quo is not an option. That's the statement the board is making. They're sorry about all this, but they're still ultimately in support of it. Their goals for the project are clear. Denialism is not a viable option going forward. ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:21, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Eh, we'll see. If we implement a new behavioral standard then fine, but I for one am opposed to any outside body imposing one on us. And if and when this becomes a designated safe space then I suppose you are right, there will either be changes or some of us will just have to find another way to spend the hours. nableezy - 07:31, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
"Safe space" is an extreme, politically-charged label that should never be permitted on Wikipedia. Period. ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:58, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
"Safe space" is effectively what the WMF seeks, and they use that exact phrase. It is supported by their embedded enablers, such as the Wikimedia DC chapter. It also leads to bizarre situations, eg: Fae objecting to attendance at a WMUK meetup because it was being held in a pub that forms part of a chain owned by a Brexit-supporting person and therefore they (Fae) would not feel "safe". - Sitush (talk) 09:27, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
You are reading some malicious intent in my comments that are not there. But no, "safe space" is not especially extremist, or you wouldnt find the topic discussed in respectable places. nableezy - 14:48, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I relate to what BMK said before the break, and particularly relate to the frustrations of dealing with editors who are constantly trying to insert a specific POV into articles. These people are not treating the project with the respect it deserves or adhering to the five pillars, and complaints from them about robust language that identifies where they are doing the wrong thing rarely meets the harassment bar in my experience. Where I edit, there are editors who regularly turn up to POV-push, and the project is very bad at dealing with them, so they are sometimes the target of less than civil discourse when frustrations arise. We need to be clear that where long-term POV-pushing is clear, harassment claims are taken with a handful of salt. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:06, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

(←) To the above, I will say: problematic editors have existed, do exist, and will always exist. They should not be used as an excuse for toxic behavior. That's a fabricated red herring. And, in the context of "unblockable power users", completely irrelevant. Stop making excuses for incivility. Stop. Yes, starting now. ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:15, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Swarm, you can see my block log. I am not an unblockable power user. I am however somebody who has dealt with one of the most toxic areas for well over a decade now. People are not uncivil for no reason. They are not uncivil to new editors. The incivility is not what is creating any toxic atmosphere. The toxicity is created by the game playing and what you call the red herring. It is the root of the problem. People get pissed when the same person is running the same game over and over. That is where the incivility happens, and if you spent half the effort you do on fixing these frankly trivial issues on actual addressing those core issues then you could actually promote a more civil atmosphere while not doing damage to the goal of actually creating an encyclopedia. nableezy - 07:25, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Honestly, the perspective of those driven to incivility is equally important. If we're going to crack down on incivility, it should go without saying that we need to crack down on the causes of incivility as well. I can get behind that 100%. This means no more lazy "looks like a content dispute" closes where an editor is obviously being tendentious. I have witnessed this exact issue, I know it is real. I have seen WP:DRN requests rejected as failed in spite of the fact that one party is refusing to even present an argument. I'm not suggesting we ignore the behavior that leads to exasperated incivility! I am all for cracking down on that behavior with extreme prejudice. It should be a two-way street. When I talk about not excusing power users, I'm not talking about users such as yourself, who get pissed off with valid reason. There has to be a counterbalance to civility enforcement. And I see nothing wrong with equally cracking down on baiting or stonewalling or obstructionism. ~Swarm~ {sting} 07:32, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
One more thing is needed: for editors who normally create good content, each burst of incivility should get a 48-hour block (or just 6 hours for first offenders, and that's after a polite and un-templated warning). No escalating blocks for impertinence. Johnuniq (talk) 07:51, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
While improving mechanisms for sanctioning poor behaviour, be it baiting, obstructionism, personal attacks, and so forth, is indeed valuable, we also need to look beyond this to the underlying motivations. Editors bait, for example, because it can succeed in reducing the number of people participating with points of view that oppose the baiting editors, even if they also end up getting removed from the discussion. We need to look at ways of improving process so that collaborative behaviours are rewarded, and not disrespectful ones. isaacl (talk) 17:37, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Hey Swarm, it might have been me that first expressed concerns to your OP. This was as like you I'd seen changes 'start to play out within the community.', specifically an admin issuing an indeff + talk page access removal to an FA writing user, over what seemed to be a relatively minor issue.
Now you're talking about 24 hour, this sounds much more reasonable. I've always been of the opinion that "if we want a truly collegial environment, welcoming to a diverse group of editors" cuss words should "be avoided where possible" Maybe it's an idea to create a template with a message such as: The use of aggressive language and expletives is now strongly discouraged on Wikipedia. While the community accepts that such language is deemed civil in some localities, Wikipedia aims to be a diverse academic project, attracting editors from a range of backgrounds. Some of these editors are distressed and repelled by an environment where swear words are openly used, even when the language is not directed at them. The template could be except from the 'Don't template the regulars' rule, and we could say no one is allowed to argue with it, on pain of an automatic 24 hour block :-)
Until 2013, I was a fan of short civility blocks, even for power users like e.g. Eric, who I very much respect but still wish he wouldn't cuss so much, per the potential effect on sensitive newbies. This is what changed my mind. Not sure if you know User:Scottywong ?
Scotty had outstanding qualities for an admin, he is one of only 2 people I've emailed to offer my personal services as a campaign manager for RfA. Good Kudpung would probably confirm he's an excellent fellow collaborator, as he often used to turn to Scotty for technical assistance. In late 2012 Scotty was himself given a 24 hour civility block after directing the F word at another. (He was an admin at the time, so I guess counts as a power user.) He then immediately retired, and while he returned, to this day he hasn't resumed a fraction of his former activity level.
So if we are going to start frequent use of short blocks, it might be ideal if we also try to have cultural changes so that such blocks are not seen as a mark of shame. Also, awareness that it's impossible to enforce such standards evenly. Probably a few power users would still (semi) retire after getting their first block, but the numbers should be small as long as the blocks are short, and especially if admins avoid the more hard hitting block reasons (like "PA or Harrassment" instead of "incivility"). So perhaps a sacrifice worth paying. That said, as good Nishidani as alluded to the Tax Collector, I'll allow myself to quote Mat 9:13 "I desire mercy, not sacrifice".
Thank you Swarm for starting an unusually productive discussion on ways to make our community more healthy and welcoming for newbies! FeydHuxtable (talk) 08:17, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
"but the numbers should be small"{{citation needed}}.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:47, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) : Yes, many thanks. I certainly agree with what Swarm and Peacemaker67 say above. Maybe some people are fearful of their ability to remain calm or reasonable in the face of others making inappropriate edits. Maybe they feel resorting to profanity-labelled aggression and insults is an OK way for them to behave. I don't believe we need threaten blocks for every minor lapse of courtesy, however. Working in a respectful environment shouldn't be the end point of the encyclopaedia; it should be the starting point. We should still be able to apply all our policies in a firm, non-offensive manner without fear some POV-pusher is going to contact Katherine (WMF) to complain about 'harassment'. Yes, we can all lose our cool from time to time, but we also have the power to apologise or strike our outbursts. Incivility and unprofessionalism in editing/administering the encyclopaedia shouldn't be something that we only worry about in order to avoid being blocked. It should be there right the way through our editing lives, and every one of us should each be prepared to call one another out if we see our fellow editors overstepping the conventional boundaries of real-world civility. Otherwise, we might just as well go advertise our project as "Wikipedia - the encyclopaedia that any fucker can edit". And I'm sure nobody wants that. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:59, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Scottywong's retirement was a huge loss for Wikipedia. If anyone wants the background on Scott's block, just look at the irony of who blocked him - just about the most foul mouthed admin we ever had, both online, on IRC, and in RL at Wikimania, who finally lost his bit but unfortunately was not fired from the warm and protective womb of his precious WMF.
If it hadn't been for this and The Blade of the Northern Lights there would be no ACPERM or NPP as we know it today and they gave me the strength to continue to fight the PA and harassment the WMF threw at us, and see it through years later. Incivility is in the eye (or ears) of the beholder, but many, many people on Wikipedia deliberately look for nuances in the written word to see if they can find just any excuse for claiming to be insulted, and very often admins are the target of their disingenuous attacks. I have never resorted once to the use of expletives or PA on Wikipedia, but where people get me wrong is that I'm a traditional, old, plain speaking Brit who doesn't mince his words, and who does exploit the traditional British English culture of literary devices for which Shakespeare laid the way. I'm a bit like the Doc Martin played by Martin Clunes in the British TV series. I've never got used to that North American fake politeness culture - when I want the toilet I ask for it, I don't want to have a bath or take a nap. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:42, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Ah yes - great programme. Wasn't Clunes also in "Men Behaving Badly"? Don't think Wikipedia existed back then, or they could have based an episode around it! Nick Moyes (talk) 10:43, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm noticing that each of the "arbitrary breaks" has started to evolve into different and somewhat contradictory views of the harassment question. Please don't get me wrong: exploring as many ideas as possible is a very good thing at this stage of the discussions. But I think the concept of repetitive short blocks for what might be called toxic content contributors strikes me as being at odds with what I and some other editors said in Arbitrary Break 1. I'd also like to recommend WP:OGTW as required reading. Ultimately, I think it might be very useful to have a large community RfC in which editors can endorse or not endorse various proposals (such as, for example, repetitive short blocks for toxic content contributors). --Tryptofish (talk) 19:50, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @Swarm: - What experiences led you to conclude that if this is a supposed serious academic project, then rudeness, incivility, personal attacks, and combativeness should not be tolerated to begin with. An academic, humanitarian community should absolutely be civil and courteous and respectful and kind, even in the face of the most bitter disagreements. ? That's so awfully far away from reality. Do you seriously wish to claim that academics are not combative or rude or discourteous to one another? Please drop in by my t/p and I will show you scores of examples of what academic discourse looks like, all duly sourced to high profile academics. ∯WBGconverse 07:21, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I am working in the academic environment (admittedly, natural sciences, nothing ever close to social sciences or humanities), and we have a few bad boys who could show up at a conference, say that a speaker is a piece of shit and not be asked to shut up, but generally it is certainly civil, way more civil than interactions I experience here.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:32, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Although this is purely anecdotal, I'm a recovering academic (also natural sciences), and my experience is that the kind of language used is generally very civil, to the point of being affectedly genteel, but that the level of backstabbing while smiling is way, way, way worse than on Wikipedia (to the point that I kind of regard my Wikipedia hobby as a sort of respite from my past university career). That anecdote circles back to something that I and some others have said before: that incivility is different than losing one's temper, and that it cannot be identified by the presence or absence of curse words. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:21, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I endorse everything Swarm wrote in this thread. As an admin working at AE, I've had a lot of grief when trying to enforce community norms, particularly regarding civility, against the so-called "unblockables". We are now finally, I think, realizing that the attitude of some veteran contributors and admin that anybody who does good work gets to be has the right to be a jerk is a big part of the problem. There is no justification, ever, for not being polite, professional and courteous to our fellow encyclopedists. I support all efforts to help improving our culture in this regard. Sandstein 07:27, 19 July 2019 (UTC) Clarification inserted, Sandstein 10:21, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Although I also want to see significant movement towards everyone here being polite, professional, and courteous to one another, I think that it's important that we be precise in how we articulate these things, and that we not oversimplify. When we say that there "is no justification, ever" for deviating from that, there is a problem if we intend those words literally. Take it literally, and editors will argue that any impolite comment is automatically sufficient grounds for immediate sanctions. And that will turn out very badly. There are times when any thoughtful editor will have a momentary loss of cool, and others who will be looking for an excuse to game it. No one has a right to be a jerk, but everyone has a right to be merely human. Strengthening our civility norms is a good thing, but absolutism is not. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:20, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
The basic meaning of 'jerk' is 'an annoyingly stupid or foolish person,' primarily in wiki contexts someone who makes an art of WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT to win an edit-war, since most people who trouble themselves to edit are neither stupid nor foolish. That is as common a form of intransigently polite discourtesy as the lack of civility complained of here, and it is totally off the radar of concern for a simple reason: to assess 'civility' is a rapid matter: you look at a diff with some variety of intemperate language. To evaluate an obtuse persistence in editing in material that is improbable, without adequate sourcing, irrelevant, etc., requires admins to actually grasp the arguments pro and contra, and judge who is stalling and who is hewing closely to the need to clarify the logical and evidential basis. Technically, there is no obligation on them to do this, and thus all evidence of someone being an obtuse 'jerk' can be rejected as symptomatic of a 'content dispute'. Half of the erratic editing I encounter shows obtusity in refusing to budge from a demonstrably flawed edit suggestion, but there's no civility problem, since admins don't handle 'content disputes'. Therefore, wiki arbitrators' performative code, in systematically excluding from their remit judgments about behavior in these 'content disputes' allows a huge amount of practical, tenaciously obtuse gaming to persist, and that is why I regard the whole language policing priorization as a lazy hoax that frigs around with the obvious, for which we have adequate measures, while turning a blind eye to the other 50% of the discourtesy - persistence in playing dumb against all reason and evidence.Nishidani (talk) 18:04, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Harassment: dealing with it

  1. I think it's a good idea to move toward using neutral language like "incivility" and "severe incivility" because "harassment" is a legal term of art. Within Wikipedia discussions we don't want to accuse editors of committing crimes. Our discussions are not privileged, and we would prefer not to expose Wikipedia to claims of defamation per se.
  2. In the last dozen years I've never seen a finite length block or ban help a user become more civil. A good lesson is here: User:Geogre/Comic.
  3. A better response to incivility has two components: First, provide support to the target by defending them and deflecting the offender away. Second, denounce the incivility and ask the offender to refactor their comments to be more civil. If enough people apply social pressure in this manner, things improve.
  4. At some point user behavior can become irredeemable, such as intentional attacks based on racial hatred. Severe incivility is different from comments reflecting mere ignorance of modern norms, or salty comments due to frustration. When things get that bad, call for an indefinite block and move on.
  5. Polite incivility is particularly challenging to stop. When this happens it is best to request the offender not communicate with the user. This creates a bright line that be enforced. Jehochman Talk 11:37, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Highly agree with you on #1. With this in mind, I'd honestly support moving or retiring WP:HARASSMENT and putting an essay in place of it that warns against the use of the term to describe on-wiki misconduct. Obviously there are going to be cases where on-wiki and off-wiki misconduct rise to the level of harassment from a legal perspective, and in such cases we shouldn't discourage victims from bearing witness against such persons, so some care may be advised in taking that move.
Generally disagree on #5 with respect to unilateral requests not to make contact: I'm of the opinion that this practice itself is uncivil most times it's done. See WP:KEEPOFF for brief discussion of this practice (though it's quite an underdeveloped essay).
As to #2, I also think I've not seen it happen, but I also think that I've never seen civility blocks of short length that nip matters in the bud. In some respects, I think there's an element of needing to understand what causes incivility: Are these people unstable before they come to Wikipedia and simply need to be discovered and excised from the community? Or is there something we can address early? Could short, easily-levied blocks work? Could we be wrong about cool-down blocks? Could we be wrong about punitive blocks? I honestly don't know, but I think to answer the civility problem we do need to ask these fundamental questions and reexamine things we consider fundamental and foundational. We need to be willing to ask questions that many would consider heretical.
I agree completely with #4, there are behaviors that require an indef with no straightforward path to returning. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 12:01, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm fine with #4, too, applied evenhandedly. That is, no one has the right to take pot shots at groups or insult for group membership.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:06, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Nasa is also looking at the problem of harassment. [2]. I've always felt WP is a workspace and that the workers are entitled to "air to breathe" rather than the stench of aggression. From the NASA article: “We’re committed to providing people with air to breathe, that’s literal and metaphorical in mission,” he said. “The air really speaks to the physical and psychological safety, so individuals don’t have to hold their breath. It speaks to, obviously, the literal oxygen, and it speaks to our mission. We’re also committed to providing space so that people are included and feel they belong.” Worth a read! ―Buster7 ☎ 13:40, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Uh, wikispace is virtual. If one needs 'air to breathe', the room one works in needs a mechanic to put in an egg-condishioner. One can also just get off one's chair, step outside, light up a reefer and breathe deep. It will remind people that real life is not here. :( Nishidani (talk) 13:55, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
@Nishidani:Let me make a point that I would never expound on except for the fact that we are discussing Harassment. Hundreds of thousand of words have been said over the past weeks about the "ban of Fram" thing. I've said very little. Extremely little. I've read and reread parts that I thought were pertinent to my understanding and my experiences on WP. I've been an active editor for over ten years. I've spent just as many hours reading about this Fram thing as you have talking about it. So...the conversation drifts to Harassment and Civility and how we treat and respect each other. Something I know something about, something I've thought about and have written about. I finally feel an opportunity to participate in one of the great, important discussions about the future of Wikipedia. So... I share something in the News today that has a direct and specific correlation to the topic. And you make light of it. You, the first to respond, cast it aside as frivolous and having nothing to do with RL. Let me guess. Like you, almost everyday, I chose to spend hours of my real life editing Wikipedia. If I had one of those Temper Meters on my User page it would be in the red zone. I have monitored and managed many a "thiswayandthat" conversation in my time at WER and EotW and it always struck me as harassing when one editor disparages the input of a new member to a conversation. I'm not some tender thin-skinned newbie that runs to an admin. Never have, never will. But I feel harassed. Some harassment is obvious to ALL. Some is more hidden and subtle and most likely unintentional.―Buster7 ☎
Will the WMF provide grant money for reefers? That might help mutual goodwill Nosebagbear (talk)

@Buster7:, a fine example. @Jehochman:, I agree that a useful focus is dealing with forms of incivility. Blocking people from editing seems a bit excessive and counterproductive, now that we have tools and language for interaction bans, or limiting interaction with other users + policy pages in general. We could experiment with temporary statuses such as "mainspace edits only" or "1RR + revertable by anyone on talk pages" for people having an incivil spell. – SJ + 23:02, 10 July 2019 (UTC)


  • Point 5 looks like it will still run into snarling over individuals contesting whether what they were doing is polite incivility. If we could easily decide it was and it wasn't, the current problems with it would be less severe. Just general IBANs risks issues with people being unfairly hit with them. Nosebagbear (talk)
One possible method (depending on circumstances, non-drastic severity etc) would be to use article-blocks rather than short blocks, since many of the non-harassment cases of incivility focus on a volatile article. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:49, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
  • About the idea of retiring the WP:HARASS policy, I think that's a non-starter. What would be more useful would be greater clarity about how the community defines civility, and where the community puts the boundary line between simple incivility and harassment. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:43, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
    I don't actually mean retiring the policy but retiring it from that name or breaking it out into different policies. Perhaps moving most of it to WP:HOUNDING, as a word lacking any clear legal implications, but covering what (I think) the baseline misconduct we're talking about when someone says "harassment". By analogy, consider this: Would it be appropriate if instead of Wikipedia:No personal attacks we had Wikipedia:No defaming or libeling editors or Wikipedia:No assaulting editors? Same general content and same points, but the name of the policy used terms like "defamation" and "libel" or even "assault". That's where I'm going with the use of the term "harassment". It's a term with legal implications; criminal ones in many jurisdictions. That's not to say we shouldn't say "harassment" when there is harassment in the legal sense, however.
    I agree that more clarity in the policy, coupled with hypotheticals, examples of bright-line misconduct, and factors to consider when issuing a civility sanction. This last point—factors to consider—is another huge place where administrative policy is lacking. When admins issue sanctions in their own discretion, they go off normal practice they've seen around the encyclopedia. But in constructing sanctions for unusual cases, it would be useful to have guidance. That way, uninvolved admins need not be so fearful of jumping into a dispute and issuing the wrong block or wrong sanction: All they need to do is determine that there's incivility (which isn't hard to do with a clear definition) and then determine the sanction based on the appropriate factors. Even better, the sanctioning admin should state the determinations he or she makes on those factors in the block message. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 19:56, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
    Honestly, I think you'll never get consensus for any of that, and it's not worth spending time on. Wikipedia defines "notability" differently than the dictionary does, and we can define "harassment" differently from what legal texts do. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:34, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Harassment: what is it

  • 'I wrote an article about the iPad app I wrote. I am very disappointed that you deleted it. I wrote it again, and you deleted it again. Can you stop harassing me?'
  • 'I write an article about myself, I am a well known folk-singer in my village of 500 people. I am very disappointed that you deleted it. I wrote it again, and you deleted it again. Can you stop harassing me?'
  • 'I have added some external links to my company as I am a unique producer of blue apples. I am very disappointed that you deleted all those links. I added them again, and you deleted them again. Can you stop harassing me?'
  • 'I have a PhD in quantum mechanics, and have published 10 peer-reviewed articles and they are cited >200 times by others. I therefore wrote an article about myself. I am very disappointed that you deleted it. I wrote it again, and you deleted it again. Can you stop harassing me?'
  • 'She is the replacement defender that played for 3 minutes in the world-cup final game of <whatever> that her club lost by 10 to 1. I am very disappointed that you deleted it. I wrote it again, and you deleted it again. Can you stop harassing me?'
  • 'I have a large database of newspaper snippets of the last 10 years with pictures. I have scanned those pictures and have uploaded them on en.wikipedia to use in articles. I am very disappointed that you deleted them as non-free material. I wrote it again, and you deleted them again. Can you stop harassing me?'
  • 'I wrote a website about the birds in Zimbabwe. I have added my link to all your articles about the birds in Zimbabwe because my material is of direct interest to the reader and very informative with many pictures. I am very disappointed that you deleted all those links. I added them again, and you deleted them again. Can you stop harassing me?'

One of the points I cannot get my head around here is that grey area here. Some of us, especially administrators, are working hard to remove material that does not pass our inclusion standards. I myself get a lot of these excuses in my work against spam. Editors feel 'harassed' (or whichever word you want to give to it) because other editors keep material up to standard (the community standards, that is). I get remarks along those lines sometimes. Don't get me wrong, we have cases of real harassment on-wiki, editors stalking/following other editors without 'community control', but this is NOT it. Even if we have editors who just don't get it make series of articles which just don't pass our bars and all have to be deleted it is NOT harassment.

How do you not harass people by removing their material. Do we have to make EVERYTHING a case-by-case community consensus process. No more speedy deletions, no tagging of unsourced articles/material, no removal of spam, until we have a community discussion on that case with consensus and independent closure? --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:50, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Yep, this is a huge problem. What needs to happen is that behavior is only "harassment" if a reasonable person in the complainant's position would feel unsafe or suffer emotional harm, and the person alleged to do the harassment knows or should know this. In other words, (1) the behavioral standard must be objective (i.e., based on a reasonable person's reaction rather than the actual reaction), and (2) intent must be a factor, such that objectively reasonable behavior under the circumstances would make the conduct not harassment. WP:HARASSMENT as it stands accomplishes both of these. Harassment is a pattern of repeated offensive behavior that appears to a reasonable observer to intentionally target a specific person or persons. The phrasing isn't particularly great in comparison to most statutory phrasings, and (in my opinion) as a result, people presume that any conduct directed at an unwilling recipient is harassment (such as disobeying WP:KEEPOFF-type notices). —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 13:28, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree that claims of harassment cannot hang simply on the word of the claimant. The "reasonable person" standard is a good place to start.
    Further, I am somewhat distressed that in the discussion above, "incivility" is being strongly equated with, and used as a stand-in for, harassment. Incivility and harassment are not the same thing, and standards for ridding Wikipedia of harassment simply cannot be based on controlling incivilty - that way lies madness amd the effective neutering of the project.
    Finally (for the moment) although it's been said multiple times above, Wikipedia is decidedly not an "academic" project. We are very much not writing an academic encyclopedia, but a popular one that anyone (hopefully) can use and understand. Starting from the academic premise is another category mistake that should be avoided, along with "incivility = harassment". (And I concur with the comments about the academic world not being an exemplar of civility anyway.)
    If we're going to deal effectively with harassment -- the amount of which I, personally, feel is drastically overstated in a "culture of fear" manner -- then we must start by correctly understanding what it is and is not. If we go into this process attempting to control incivility, we're doomed to failure: like Communism and the profit motive, one simply cannot change and control human nature to that extent. If we begin by accurately defining harassment, and then attempt to regulate that, we have a decent chance of succeeding. Beyond My Ken (talk) 15:44, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Idem with BMK. Since arguments over civility are endless and inconclusive, perhaps we should reason from first principles. The aim is to produce an encyclopedia of first class quality by free voluntary labour on a global scale. Everything is subordinate to this primary principle. The distinctiveness of wiki culture is that it (a) requires hard work from contributors (b) and is not, unlike Facebook, Twitter, and the endless social media, a social community (WP:NOTSOCIAL) or venue for personal interests or identity. Therefore, the fourth pillar, 'civility', is to be defined strictly in terms of what is conducive to creating and maintaining encyclopedic content -articles of quality. This mammoth kerfuffle was sparked off, surely, by a proposed plan to reengineer the social atmosphere of wikipedia by making it wear a cosy communitarian air with a ‘healthier culture of discourse’ where those perceiving themselves as ‘emarginalized’ would feel ‘safer’. Utterly ‘American’, totally provincial and fundamentally disconnected from any idea of a zweckrational work ethic, one that contaminates what has been 18 years of a highly distinctive knowledge enterprise with the spiraling post-modern cultural groaning Robert Hughes dissected surgically in his The Culture of Complaint (Please read it). What that has to do with the hard mechanics of actually producing readable prose syntheses of all major topics on mankind’s radar is obscure. I don ‘t want to be identified with the sniffish hauteur resonant in the ironic lines I will quote below from one of the greatest classical scholars on record,- notorious for the personal acerbity of his attacks on other scholars in his field (mostly spot-on) - but all of this ambitious reengineering of our ramshackle community’s practices to make social comfort rather than hard work the end of being a wikipedian reminded me of it.

If nature, with flagitious partiality, has given judgment and industry to some men and left other men without them, it is our evident duty to amend her blind caprice; and those who are able and willing to think must be deprived of their unfair advantage by stringent prohibitions. In Association football you must not use your hand, and similarly in textual criticism you must not use your brains. Since we cannot make fools behave like wise men, we will insist that wise men should behave like fools: by these means only can we redress the injustice of nature and anticipate the equality of the grave’ A. E. Housman, Marcus Manilius, Astronomicon (1903-1916) Georg Olms Verlag 1972 vol.1. p.xxxiii

Nishidani (talk) 16:06, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, let us be serious. In the short period of time (about a month, in the past) I had (not going to call names now as it is completely irrelevant to the discussion):
  • An editor who was following the articles I edited and edited them with derogatory summaries directed at me (smth like "do not be so lazy");
  • Another editor being highly surprised by which mistake I became administrator;
  • An editor saying that my behavior is so bad I should be happy if I do not get indef blocked (mind you, I never even had a warning);
  • A group of editors claiming I meant something I did not mean and who did not want to hear what I actually meant;
  • An ArbCom case here against me for my actions on Wikidata (rejected, but with a lot of commenters supporting accepting it);
  • On a daily basis, Eastern European editors claiming I am a Russian spy, a Ukrainian spy, a Ukrainian nationalist, a Russian nationalist, an editor paid by Russian and/or Ukrainian government to advance their POV, a jerk, an idiot, a dishonest person etc.
  • And all of this just for my efforts to build encyclopedia. Whereas I have lost my cool several times, which obviously did not help, but I felt myself all the time under constant pressure.
May be we want to discuss this rather than claims of spammers and POV pushers?--Ymblanter (talk) 16:28, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, my mother's reaction to my coming home weeping on the first day of primary school was to get me to learn by rote:'Sticks and stones will break my bones/but names will never hurt me.' I never looked back. Timely advice in childhood.
Well, my advice would be unacceptable. But having a standard link to The No Asshole Rule to direct the harasser to something that might enlighten them would help, as would muttering,Мне насра́ть на твоё мне́ние, while doing so. One should make a simple calculation about the number of dickheads one is likely to encounter in life, and evaluate whether it's worth one's while taking any of them seriously. You might consider feeling sorry for them: arseholes like the above only show, by their outbursts, what a lousy mental life they must live. Nishidani (talk) 17:02, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Sure, Ymblanter. That is quite similar to the comments I have received regurarly over the years (and there are cases which need follow up on a regular basis). Yes, there are users that systematically follow others around, yes there are users that need that. There are users that follow people around with nasty rants, there are users that after a long time do not get things, where the users that follow them around because hey need to be followed around get increasingly irritated because the person that is followed around does not get it. There are people that edit normally, but as soon as they see that someone follows up on 2 of their edits they cry wolf.
You here did not specify in which category your followers fall, and I don't judge in which category you fall (I did not follow you around too much ... maybe I am in one of the other categories). How many of these examples are critisism, good faith misinterpretations, or intentional (i.e. harassment)? They likely all feel like that.
Now, back to Fram. With identifying info removed, how do we know in which category the accusers fall? --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:40, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Sorry you've had to deal with that Ymblanter, and thanks for doing so much for us regardless. The more active an editor is, then especially if they're involved in quality control, the more (mostly or entirely) undeserved negative remarks they get. And the more mountainous the potential pile of "evidence" against them becomes. Similar to what Dirk Beetstra mentions, and likely part of why WMF acted against Fram. So all the more reason why the community should have the chance to weight in & "make excuses". All that said, I still feel Swarm and others have a strong point about it being desirable for aggressive outbursts to be less tolerated. Quite a dilemma, to say the least. FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:50, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Are there any links to 'aggressive outbursts' by Fram over the longue durée, apart from the recent Arbcom expletive? I only went back to some of the earlier Fram/LH 2014 pages like this. As people who otherwise worry about him admit, he did a prodigious amount of dull work very few others would take on and was highly focused on quality control. The precipitating incident was over innumerable stubs which showed high regularity in the mistranslation of foreign language sources (Fr. se foutre de la gueule being posted as 'fuck your mouth' instead of 'take the mickey out of/mock' etc) by the latter. It was a classic quality vs quantity clash, accompanied by very extensive talk page work explaining the problem by the former, and, on the pages I viewed, little response from the latter. What complicated things was third party input, which prized the commitment to high volume page production by LH, and thought Fram's reviews on page after page Javertish. All I could see that, there was very little critical challenge to the gravamen of Fram's evidence. My impression was that supporters of LH thought (a) she writes articles about the disabled, (b) was being highly productive and (c)is a woman, and therefore should be given leeway, whatever the shoddiness evinced by F, whose tenacity in corrective review was, between the lines, taken to be indicative of a certain dismissal of (a) (b) and (c). In the 2014 cases I looked at, there were no outbursts, hence civility was not the question. So the question was, can one infer, rather than find evidence of, a pattern of harassment in what formally looked like a precisian's stickler-for-the-(literal application of the relevant)rules. I state this as an impression from reading limited evidence. I'm extremely bad at using wiki research tools and it just takes me too much time to investigate the background of such issues. I simply do not have the patience to read ANI/AE records, except when obliged to do so when reported for incivility/harassment/lack of WP:AGF and generally as someone who is a net negative for the project.Nishidani (talk) 19:12, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
I think we should leave what Fram did to who to ArbCom who now has as much of a report as T&S is willing to give them. And I personally think until there is some evidence that any editor is involved in any way with this that they should be left out of this. At the very least people we elected are able to make a judgment on Fram, so personally I think the Fram portion of this should be tabled until they perform their review. nableezy - 19:24, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
I wasn't angling to try the case here, Nab. In fact, I have long agreed with your proposal that in ANI, AE cases, the rules should restrict outside input from third parties, and just let the plaintiff and accused thrash it out before arbs. That doesn't mean however that one should not even read up evidence, esp. in a case like this.Nishidani (talk) 19:29, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for your email, notifying me of the utterly disgraceful objectively evil behavior of many users and readers of this encyclopedia in off-wiki sleuthing and harassing of LH. Anyone who comes from here and engages in that, with anyone, should be irrevocably permabanned.Nishidani (talk) 11:32, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
At this point, we really don't need dozens of amateur sleuths raking up and poring over every last diff that an editor has made, and posting their opinions on them. Let's leave this to ArbCom to review the material they've received from WMF in private, if we can, please. Nick Moyes (talk) 19:42, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict)How do you not harass people by removing their material. Do we have to make EVERYTHING a case-by-case community consensus process. Obviously not, for efficiency purposes and since this is evidently not harassment (they are promoting material outside of the bounds allowed by policies, consensus and terms of service already and when it's ambiguous we do use deletion discussions already). Similarly, if legitimate WP:WARN at talk pages were considered harassment, the system would no longer function, unless the alternative was immediate blocking or inability to edit because only WP:CIR-vetted accounts could edit... —PaleoNeonate – 19:44, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
In one sense, if contributing is perceived in an adversarial win or lose mode, it is seen as a means of climbing through the ranks of a hierarchy. cygnis insignis 20:03, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
  • One thing I'd add is that, on paper, our policies set the bar much lower than simple harassment; editors are required to be WP:CIVIL to each other, not merely to refrain from harassing each other. Additionally, I'd argue that civility is an important thing to shoot for because it can often nip problems in the bud before they reach the point of full-blown harassment. That's why I'd tend to say that we should focus on "abrasiveness" first and foremost. It's generally easier to define and identify, and virtually every editor who has been a problem with regards to harassment can be reasonably called abrasive. Obviously everyone has a bad day or can lose their temper in a heated dispute, but it's not particularly hard to identify editors who are consistently abrasive to other contributors and who seem unlikely to change any time soon. That sort of narrow, reasonably clear issue strikes me as a good way to go about implementing the much broader dictate to deal with harassment - cracking down on abrasiveness probably won't solve everything on its own, but it's a reasonable first step and would tend to weed out the editors who have no intention of behaving (especially if, as I referenced above, we make it unambiguous policy that being a major contributor or the like is are never a defense for abrasive conduct - currently that defense comes up constantly, especially in WP:AE, WP:ANI, and ArbCom.) Stricter enforcement of WP:CIVIL would often prevent us from reaching this point in the first place. --Aquillion (talk) 22:00, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
    It's true that abrasiveness can be a characteristic, but it doesn't account for civil POV pushers, and it can also be hard to draw the line between truly being abrasive, and being someone who just happened to lose their temper more than once. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
    I think we all agree there can be poor behaviour without abrasiveness; the question raised was should we start to work on abrasiveness as an initial step, for the reasons listed by Aquillon? Do you think that managing editors pushing a point of view is a more fruitful starting point? The areas I edit suffer more from non-neutral point-of-view edits than abrasiveness, so selfishly I wouldn't mind starting there. However I don't have any good ideas at the moment beyond the active mentorship proposal I raised earlier, which has key implementation drawbacks. isaacl (talk) 22:34, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
    I missed that, so thanks for pointing it out to me. I guess the way I see it is that it will work out the best in the long run if we don't break it down into steps, but rather look for ways to describe and define the problem that are useful in all cases. I'm thinking about it from the perspective of having a policy that can be applied without people wikilawyering about who the policy applies to. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:47, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
    I've been coming at the problem from a different angle—trying to understand what motivates editors to behave the way they do—so I agree with looking for systemic issues to address. The motivations for these two things are quite different: Editors are abrasive to win arguments. Editors who push non-neutral points of view place a higher priority on getting a specific message included in Wikipedia than adhering to Wikipedia's goals, or they lack sufficient introspection to understand their failure to convince others that their points of view are neutral means that the views shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. I do think binding content mediation would help in both situations, though. Providing a final "no" would eliminate further options for engagement for non-neutral editors, and make abrasiveness a neutral or losing strategy. isaacl (talk) 23:19, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
    I don't think editors are abrasive only to win arguments. I think it sometimes comes out of frustration by editors who strive to edit neutrally when interacting with long-term POV-pushers. I am certainly guilty of using robust language with the latter on occasion. I agree with what you've said about them though, and I think we need to work out better ways of dealing with them. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:58, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
    For simplicity, I was being a bit reductionist. Yes, not everyone is deliberately being abrasive to try to drive away non-neutral point-of-view pushers. But regardless of motive, the net effect is the same: abrasiveness serves to discourage editors with opposing views from participating, which helps you win your argument. isaacl (talk) 06:46, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
  • An only partly-formed idea, following on from Tryptofish's comment about looking for ways to describe and define the problem that are useful in all cases. I'm thinking about it from the perspective of having a policy that can be applied without people wikilawyering about who the policy applies to. Turning it around, what about a page like WP:Behavioural Norms describing what behaviour is expected – the first of these is contributing constructively to the content of the encyclopaedia, with others like editing in line with core policy (NPOV, use RS, etc) following as as supporting this goal; a second would be a vibrant self-governing community to ensure high quality content, project longevity, and social interactions, feedback, critique, etc, that support editors in pursuing goal 1, requiring interacting with other Wikipedians in a collegial / civil manner and following DR when disagreements occur, etc. – and include a statement that occasional lapses are understandable but repeated and / or serious breaches can be sanctioned with topic bans, page bans, blocks, etc. A civil POV pusher trying to force FRINGE into article space who manages to provoke an uncivil response is then violating the basic behavioural requirement and warrants a harsh sanction whereas the positive contributor who gets frustrated is recognised as acting for the mutual goal with a one-off uncivil post a comparatively minor matter. Actual harassment / stalking inconsistent with the second goal and also sanctionable harshly as needed. A third goal recognises the necessity of support structures for goals 1 and 2, which is where admins, bureaucrats, functionaries, ArbCom, and even the WMF come in. Necessary for maintaining and building the encyclopaedia but subordinate in purpose. Sanctions are then considered not only based on what happened but on what goals / sub-goals / norms is affected / violated. Thoughts? EdChem (talk) 01:38, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I also like EdChem's idea very much. Having a set of defined "behavioral norms" that have community consensus is an excellent way to go. And about an alternative to "aggression", the best I can come up with is something related to "respect" (whether for fellow editors or for the mission of creating an encyclopedia, or both), as other editors have said above and below. I think that the essay User:Kirill Lokshin/Professionalism does a particularly good job of identifying what I, personally, would want to see as the way we should understand appropriate conduct. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:28, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

"Harassment: what is it" arbitrary break 1

  • I'd like to point out that if the intelligent and thoughtful editors involved in this discussion can't really get together on defining what the behavior is we should be looking to prevent, let along any specific mechanism to prevent it, what are the chances that the community is going to come up with something that's functional, fair to all parties, and, importantly, non-draconian?
    In real life, at least here in the US, we're going through a phase of "zero tolerance" policies, in which officials trade in their ability to evaluate circumstances, reason through a situation, and come up with a solution, in favor of a strict "no explanations" stance. Thus, a kid who brings a butter knife to school is punished as if they brought a machete. I would love it if we could avoid that kind of thing, as well as "trigger words" and "safe spaces" and the other nonsense that currently rules in many places. We are here to build an encyclopedia and the expressed purpose of WP:Civility is to create an atmosphere in which that job can be done. Obviously, we can't do that if everyone is screaming at everyone else, but we also can't do it if everyone is so intimidated by behavioral-control rules that they're afraid to criticize anything or make necessary corrections, for fear of crossing a boundary and being sanctioned. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:42, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
    We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Creating the cooperative environment necessary to build an encyclopedia is hard, because there will be lots of heated disagreement when thousands of strangers get together and try to agree on what The Truth™ is for every single thing that matters. If we choose to build an encyclopedia, then we are choosing to work with strangers, and if I fucking hate you and you fucking hate me, we are not going to be able to work together well. So, it's important that we don't hate each other. We have to each choose to be nice, even when it's hard. WP:Behavioural Norms might only need to list two:
    1. Don't be rude to other editors.
    2. If you see someone being rude, ask them to stop. – Levivich 05:07, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
    The 'cooperative environment needed to create an encyclopedia' is, despite several kilometres of anguish, already in place. That is what the sheer statistics of accomplishment unambiguously attest. What the WMO proposal aims at is based on small surveys about how several hundred wikipedians feel - 40-50% say harassment exists, they've seen or experienced incivility. In any one day, everyone in the world will hae seen or heard in their environment, sharp words, somewhat less than polite behavior. From that, they do not usually conclude life is hell. Face it, a lot of editors who hail from outside of the States find the sharpening of Office focus on this stronger civil policing, imperial, ethnocentric and out of whack with perceptions in Europe and Great Britain, for example. If we have 5,900,000 articles up and running, whatever incivility exists, did not stop encyclopedic development. There is zero proof that incivility has impeded the achievement we already have.Nishidani (talk) 06:43, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
    Want a list of automatic reverts with demonstrably false edit summaries in my specific area? They occur every other day, from experienced editors, are rude for their contempt for due process and other editors, and impede page construction. That is the major abuse of incivility I am familiar with, plus WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. It's not addressable, one has to put up with it. Focusing as the proposal does on simple terminological clues detectable by software in exasperated outbursts, while ignoring the civility issue we all recognize exists as Civil POV pushing, shows the bias at work. Someone in SF wants a regimen of Americocentric Facebook/Twitter cultural norms to be imposed, that will be even more dysfunctional because everything one has to put up with day and night (Ymblanter's testimony) becomes reportable, and the potential for overload on already overworked admins is obvious. It cannot work. It is not a solution, but an incentive to make this place even more bureaucratically distracted than it already is. Despite being endlessly caught up in reports I be sanctioned, I have made in 13 years only one complaint. Had I hewed to the book and practice of those who are at my heels, I'd have made a hundred. I don't. I don't have the fucking time to waste. By the way, most frequent reporters I know off, just sit round, tweak, revert, monitor for their fav POV, and generally are highly visible on talk pages. They don't construct anything.Nishidani (talk) 07:20, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
    That's kind of like saying that the economy of country X is doing so well that there's no proof that it has any social inequality issues. There can still be issues with the community hindering some proportion of it. Paid editing can still be a problem amidst article growth, and can in fact boost that metric. isaacl (talk) 06:58, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
    It's one of the reasons why I talked about respect earlier: as long as everyone is respectful of others, they shouldn't be afraid to be critical. It's also why I'm looking for ways to make poor behaviour neutral or losing strategies. If there is no incentive for poor behaviour, evolutionary pressure will reduce it, without having to sanction it. isaacl (talk) 07:09, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
    I don't want respect. That means, Isaacl, that my sense of who I am or what I do depends on someone else, anonymous, out there. Why not consider self-respect? I.e. getting up late at night because you can't sleep, thinking of some flaw in an edit you made, and fixing it; or going the extra mile to double check and verify in more sources something written and sourced which, nonetheless, doesn't look right? Or seeing an editor in difficulty, and sending a 'thank note' for something they did; a zillion little things like this is perhaps better than creating an environmemt that has you thinking to PC your every word so that you won't provide ammo to the idiots around you.Nishidani (talk) 07:20, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
    No, I disagree. I don't need to depend on someone else's respect in order to have self-respect or a sense of self. If necessary to address me, I would appreciate being addressed using using my user name; thanks. isaacl (talk) 07:25, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Adjusted. But if I protested on every minor misspelling of my handle, I'd have several hundred more edits to my credit, with no visible gain for my self-respect or rthe encyclopedia.Nishidani (talk) 07:55, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I don't generally, but usually editors don't comment on my sense of self. Thanks. isaacl (talk) 08:02, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Oh. I see. I'm sad to see you read it that way. I wasn't at all commenting on your sense of self-respect. I was commenting on the concept itself. I have to fight a strong temptation to write an essay on the concept. My general sense is that the world is structurally organized contemptuously and is intrinsically violent, but that on average people are quite decent. They make do in hard circumstances. I don't like bureaucrats, responsible for managing the structures, meddling in our direct relation ship with each other. Regards.Nishidani (talk) 09:21, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
It's why I asked if it were necessary to address me. By inserting my user name, the following clause appears to be an introspective question being asked internally by the named person. If you had left the name out, it would have been clearer. isaacl (talk) 13:49, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I think it worth clarifying this, if only because we are speaking of monitoring language, courtesies, tone, and address, and our otherwise nugatory hermeneutic contretemps only highlights how even the most innocuous elements of usage can ring differently to one's interlocutor's ears. In English, going back to the earliest period, down to the present, the vocative I employed ('Issac1')), has no other function than to signal attention specifically to the one person one desires to make a remark to. The secondary function is courtesy of recognition: naming a person implies recognition (in Hegelian terms), ergo particular respect in address. The inference you make is totally unfamiliar to me. I can, on checking my books on grammar, find no evidence that an apostrophizing vocative lends itself to inferences that what follows will be an 'introspective question being asked internally by the named person'. All usage I can recall rebuffs that, starting with, what the father tells Joe Lampton in Braine's well-known novel:'The point is, lad, that a man in my position can't get to know a man in your position very well.' John Braine, Room at the Top Houghton Mifflin, 1957 p.268 What follows 'lad' is nothing more than what the person speaking thinks.
Language is a minefield, and the best of us mishear. When corporative bureaucrats, who tend in the round (arbs here excepted) to have tin ears and leaden hands, step in to give us policies on usage, woe betide us. Regards Nishidani (talk) 16:53, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
In an ideal world, everyone would write perfectly, and strict rules of grammar could be used to parse sentences. But people make mistakes, and write imprecisely at times (you've misspelled my user name again, for example; normally I wouldn't point it out but it is relevant to my point). Thus we are left to interpret what may or may not have been inadvertently left out during writing. Your original sentence was That means, to be Isaac, that my sense of who I am or what I do depends on someone else, anonymous, out there. so it seemed you were commenting on what it meant "to be [username]". Regarding address: due to indentation conventions, direct address to someone to whom you're replying is unusual on English Wikipedia. Using shortened forms of usernames, in some cultures, implies a sense of familiarity that is usually granted by the referent. However it's probably best to leave detailed language discussion to another forum. isaacl (talk) 17:54, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
'direct address to someone to whom you're replying is unusual on English Wikipedia.' In 13 years, you are the only editor I have encountered objecting to being addressed by their handle. It's everywhere,and does not imply a presumption of familiarity. In my several worlds/languages, it is a formal courtesy. But, you certainly have a right to snub what you perceive to be an uninvited familiarity, particularly in so far as the solecistic to be in to be Isaacl, came of eliding 'precise' and not the preceding 'to be' (I.e., 'to be precise, Isaacl', and therefore I am partly responsible for your misprision. Regards Nishidani (talk) 20:38, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I did not object to being addressed by my username, nor did I say it implied a presumption of familiarity. isaacl (talk) 22:40, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

That's kind of like saying that the economy of country X is doing so well that there's no proof that it has any social inequality issues

A fair chanced arm at analogy. But to adopt it, I am saying that in country X, despite a booming economy evincing strong evidence that the announced goals of schooling for all and urban housing construction have been achieved or are on target, union reports say that the masons, labourers, architects and furnishers of materials report a sense of less-than-perfect social comfort in their interactions, and that this is a major issue, requiring the hiring of teams of sociologists, psychologists, administrative staff and police to make everyone feel happy. Social engineering has never managed to improve people's personal lives. We are, among other things, biologically predisposed to envy, competitiveness, petty-mindedness, one-upmanship, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur and bureaucratic endeavours to create a community to impose a rigorous set of abstract standards cannot replace the natural arrangements of organic give-and-take, self- and other-adjusrtment of historical societies. To the contrary, all the evidence shows that this behavioural fussiness encourages our worst tendencies, to snitch, bitch, screw, nag, get attention and whinge, things children are generally advised by wise parents to learn to tamp down and, in others, cope with. In short, the Wittgensteinian elephant in the room in this new proposal is that it looks very much like just one more example of a remedy that threatens to induce a worsening of the very symptoms it is designed to alleviate. 'The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.' (Karl Kraus in Thomas Szasz, Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors, Louisiana State University Press 1976 p.159))Nishidani (talk) 07:38, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
The way I read this, isaacl is making some of the most promising suggestions. In terms of ideas that if implemented wisely, could improve community health without alienating existing power groups, like passionate content creators or the quality control crew. The need for respect seems to be a human universal - something we really are biologically / evolutionary predisposed to. (Commonly said to relate to our need to depend on others back in less developed times, per an individual human being a "helpless ape".) Im not aware of any first rank social scientist who's said we have a universal need for small-mindedness, one-upmanship, snitching, bitching etc. Rather, these admittedly common behaviours tend to manifest when our fundamental needs are not being met. @Nishandi - if you don't mind me saying so, you might be being a little too cynical & too clever here. Which is not so say you're not making good points. We have a need for freedom too (self -autonomy, release from the oppression of too strong social oversight, hence WP:DGAF can be most healthy for an individual, if not taken to extremes. It's all in The Need for Roots & much more modern work (though I hope no one asks for sources, may memories starting to fail me for things I've read in the last 5 years.) I hope you still have respect for good Simone Weil :-) FeydHuxtable (talk) 07:59, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Friend. I wrote 'our worst tendencies', not 'need'. I stick by my assertion, which is not book-based (but could be), but won't argue it here. I was profoundly moved by reading Simone Weil's Attente de Dieu, back in the sixties. I have, underlined, a passage you probably allude to:J'ai eu dès la première enfance la notion chrétienne de charité du prochain.(1966 p.40) On the other hand she wrote also, Je crois qu'il ne sert à rien de combattre directement les faiblesses naturelles.(ibid.p.24) Best regards Nishidani (talk) 08:13, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I think Nishidani is talking the most sense here, personally. But I think this whole discussion will become moot when the Foundation moves ahead with the Universal Code of Conduct.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:51, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
About the point made earlier, that some editors might not see themselves as wanting or expecting respect, I can, um, respect that, but I also would contend that those editors, nevertheless, would not actually want disrespect. About whether WMF can make this moot, I think that it is essential that the community demand that we not be dictated to. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:32, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I for one don't want either respect or disrespect, except for the sources used. If you have a high quality specialist source clearly on topic reverted, the offense is to the source (except when the reverter can cite an equally strong source which shows the former one's matter is outdated, or flawed*), the disrespect for the source lies in the reverter. Our personal feelings have little to do with it.
*To illustrate. Many important sources, based on the victors' original figures, numbly repeat that 254 Palestinians were killed at the Deir Yassin massacre. The figure established with meticulous groundwork by the local historian Aref al-Aref was around 117. The mirror of this are the figures for the 1929 Hebron massacre, 59 for contemporary reports, 65-67 for many later RS accounts. No one will budge from the highest murder figure there, despite complications.Nishidani (talk) 15:57, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I thought you value Segev as a good source? In any event, the problem is that people don't like being talked down to, or uncivil language. Being rude is not a sign of being intellectually superior. I am not sure why people here believe that being nasty to people is proper, just as long as they edit otherwise correctly. Being civil is one of the five pillars and needs to be respected. Sir Joseph (talk) 17:05, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
The page section I linked to has not the slightest skerrick of rudeness or talking down to anyone. It politely begs reverters repeatedly and at painful length to examine multiple sources, evaluate their conflicting claims, and find a prose synthesis adequate to cover the dissonance in reports. On every occasion, the request was ignored. Asking editors to read the sources they have excised from an article, (when they won't or don't care) is not a sign of being 'intellectually superior'.Nishidani (talk) 19:24, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I understand. Perhaps editors differ in how we feel about that. I, for one, have acquired over time a high tolerance for disrespect directed at me, but I still think that it's wrong, and I also believe that less experienced editors (as of course I was when I first began to edit) can have their experience of Wikipedia very badly harmed if they feel that they have been treated in a disrespectful manner. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:25, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I agree 100%, I have seen that first hand where new editors are "chased away" by more experienced editors who are abrasive. I am also not confident at all that ARBCOM can deal with behavior issues as they laid out in their open letter to the WMF. Sir Joseph (talk) 17:05, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Not that it is an excuse, but why is it always the established editor who has to be civil. When you get into the field of POV pushers, sockpuppets, and spammers, you can expect disrespectful language being hurled at you by complete newbies. And that comes then back to the opening of this 'what is it' thread - it is completely understandable that you lash out on a newbie who is hurling insults at you. It is even understandable that that happens after said newbie only has a severe case of IDIDNTHEARTHAT. We don't all have a thick skin or a duck's back. And then, what is fucking uncivil to me does not fucking need to be fucking uncivil to the fucking rest of the fucking world (100% aggression, 100% attack), it is very cultural. Where I am from, 'how are you' will be answered with a genuine answer ('I have a headache and my stomach is upset'). In other places you have to give the standard answer 'fine' regardless of your status, and in yet other places any answer will be met with surprise 'did I ask you something'. I would have considered the answer 'fine' while one of your eyeballs is dangling on your chin rather rude/offensive. And whether it is harassment or civility, my view of the Fram situation remains the same: it is not child pornography. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:35, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Well said. Civility is not just about turpiloquy and shouting, moreover. One of the unstated premises in civility claims is that even straightforward language can be hurtful. 'Disingenuous' is one of the default euphemisms for describing other editors on wiki, accepted unblinkingly. The word is defined as a synonym for 'dishonest', 'sneaky', hypocritical etc. So I consciously try to avoid using it. I have used 'prevarication' ie,. ‘Look up the word prevarication.' (i.e. read If you prevaricate, you avoid giving a direct answer or making a firm decision. (2) to deviate from the truth, equivocate) only to find shortly afterwards that my remark, perfectly innocuous, provided one of the diffs that had be suspended for a month. The person reporting that as an attack post is not a native speaker of English. There are literally hundreds of examples of this kind of lethal misprision, of misreading, in complaints. What I thought was perfectly civil was proof, for others, of my contempt for people. I'm sure numerous editors have had the same experience. Nishidani (talk) 19:58, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I agree, and I think it's an important point. I've seen, all too many times, a good-faith experienced editor get trolled by someone with ulterior motives, and the good-faith editor momentarily loses their temper. Then the troll takes the editor to ANI. Editors there recognize the troll for who they are, and the troll gets a boomerang block. But then somebody says that the good-faith editor should get a civility block as well, and there are arguments about it. Eventually, an admin who believes that someone must stand up for civility goes and blocks the good-faith editor. This is a prime example of something where we need to be careful going forward. It's easy to say that experienced editors should not have "a higher status" than inexperienced ones and that civility needs to be enforced more. But we have to recognize that there are times when losing one's temper does not equal sanctionable conduct. Even if we make a strong effort to be forgiving to newbies, and we should, and even if we resolve to enforce civility more resolutely, and we should, we still need to take context into account, and not treat "angry outburst" as always being incivil. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:47, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
See for example here (an extreme example to be sure) where a so-called newer editor (in fact a sock of a multiple times banned user) successfully goaded an admin who had put up with racist abuse for years into losing his shit and his bit. That user was "warned" as a result of that thread. And that led directly to the downward spiral of one of our best editors and admins into his eventual retirement from the project. Deal with the problem editors earlier and you dont have these civility issues later. nableezy - 17:54, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
And I'm not naming names, but I was thinking of a specific recent event when I wrote that. In a slightly different sequence of events, we also lost that editor, and we should not have. And I took a lot of abuse for defending that editor, to the point that I nearly quit Wikipedia. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:59, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Absolutely: we should keep experienced editors from becoming upset in the first place, so there's no need to police outbursts. Some way to steer editors into productive paths, and weeding out those who are unable to make the transition is needed. isaacl (talk) 18:22, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) You don't have to answer in kind (at least, you can try to avoid that to the max). I feel that Wikipedia often approaches problems from the wrong end (Jimbo mentioned top-down, WMF taking away Fram, WMF's MediaWiki upgrade implementation program (my version of Isaacl's comment that I here edit conflicted with), ArbCom is also good in removing the symptom, and the community, through AN/I, does their share as well). I am afraid that people count on that (see Nableezy's example). It invites Joe Jobbing. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:36, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
It's true that one need not answer in kind to a troll, and it certainly would be preferable. But conversely, I would not want us to make it mandatory to not answer in kind. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:52, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
On a related note, it's always the collaborative editor that has to accommodate rudeness... because that's their nature: to put up with rudeness and look for a way forward. Nonetheless, it's a low-level irritant to them to hear others argue for leniency for strident outbursts, when they never permit themselves that luxury. It's an instance of how selective pressures are against collaborative editors. isaacl (talk) 18:19, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
re-adding my comment; I guess "my version of Isaacl's comment that I here edit conflicted with" was supposed to be a placeholder? isaacl (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
@Isaacl: Sorry, very unclear of me. No, I meant that I read your we should keep experienced editors from becoming upset in the first place, so there's no need to police outbursts in the same way as that I mean my WMF's MediaWiki upgrade implementation program. The whole set makes material for a next subsection about bottom-up vs. top-down approaches. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:43, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
That's what I thought at first, though I was unclear how either of the potential edit conflict candidates were related. Then I saw my comment had disappeared and wondered if there were a different explanation.isaacl (talk) 20:08, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Isaac, you can say that again. @Tryptofish: I have similar recollections, and would agree with your assessment of the situation if it is the one you were thinking of, and if it was an isolated incident. I recently asked you about Jytdog, who I had many conflicts with. I greatly admired when he decided to leave because of his mistake(s). Civility or the lack thereof is much less important than improving the encyclopedia, which often involves making sure that people are permitted to improve the encyclopedia. The problems are worst when civil, helpful, well-intentioned editors get caught in the crossfire between two well-heeled paid editing campaigns. That's objectively worse than sexual harassment, the pinnacle of incivility. And yet the paid editing campaigns often are paid to abide by Wikipedia's rules. EllenCT (talk) 18:25, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm not clear on how paid editing campaigns is objectively worse than harassment. Do you mean in terms of impact on readers? isaacl (talk) 18:34, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes. When faced with a choice between civility and the accuracy of the encyclopedia, we should err on the side of the readers. Importantly, those choices are almost non-existent. Anyone who is unable to remain calm is exposing the inability of their cerebral cortex to assert dominance over their own reptile brain. Paid editing conflicts can cause this, as can contradictions in the head of the person who is arguing about something and realizes too late that they were mistaken, for example, or contradictions in the policy documents. EllenCT (talk) 19:45, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
EllenCT, we may not be thinking of the same events. What I referred to had nothing to do with Jytdog. (I know you asked me that, and the discussion got closed before I could answer. I'm not eager to discuss any of that, but if you really still want to, it would be better to do that at my user talk.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:57, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I am still interested in your opinion, but only at least a week after Katherine comes back from vacation, and then only on WP:AN so that everything stays well within the letter and spirit of policy. EllenCT (talk) 22:15, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

"Harassment: what is it" arbitrary break 2

In brainstorming about these issues, some of us have discussed how good-faith editors should not always be considered to have been incivil after losing one's temper in response to a troll or the like. As I've been thinking about various possible repercussions that should be considered as we gradually work towards conduct expectations, it occurs to me that there is also an issue of personal responsibility that comes into play, that we haven't yet addressed.

Let's say a not-here troll goads a normally good editor into a loss of temper. One could, perhaps, say that the editor should be cut some slack under the circumstances. But I can also readily imagine someone saying that we should hold everyone to high standards of civility, that everyone can (in principle) be in control of their own conduct and demeanor and take personal responsibility for their actions, that two wrongs don't make a right, and so on – and conclude from that that the good-faith editor has nonetheless been incivil and should be sanctioned for it. And I can see merit to both sides of that argument. At some point, "I was baited" stops being a sufficient excuse.

But at what point does that happen? I don't really know. I think it's worth figuring that out. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:07, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, I think this is a good reason to bifurcate the decision on wrongfulness and sanction. The fact that someone was goaded or is normally a good actor shouldn't have any bearing on deciding whether what he or she did was wrongful, but it should have a bearing on the sanction. The mere declaration that some act was wrongful is itself a sanction in many ways, and so that may be enough in certain cases. In others, such as repeating certain acts after being clearly and unequivocally told they were wrongful in a previous discussion, stiffer sanctions may be necessary. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 19:29, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I partly agree that something that boils down to "you shouldn't have done that, but it doesn't rise to something blockable" is a useful way to think about it. But I still think we need to figure out something that helps delineate the point at which it goes from not-blockable to blockable. Part of that is, as you note, recidivism, but I don't feel that that is the whole thing. Someone can be a repeated target of goading, and that should not turn that user from victim to villain. I think there also needs to be some aspect of the nature of what goaded the reaction. There's a big difference between reacting negatively to serious differences in opinion about content, and reacting negatively to frivolous but malicious nonsense. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:57, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

One of the most common forms of wiki-harrassment is enforcing wiki-rules in a stricter and more categorical way than the norm, and in a way that is more focused on one particular editor than the norm. (actually, enforcing the operative part of the rule while ignoring the softening qualifiers). Then they can claim immunity with "just enforcing the rules". North8000 (talk) 20:47, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

The fact that someone’s getting their wrong acts picked out more than average is crappy, but it doesn’t make those acts okay. In fact, our refusal to call sanctions punishment—instead calling them protective—makes this even more important. Why should we not protect the encyclopedia from someone doing something wrongful once it’s been pointed out? As to the reporter being dinged for “wiki-harassment”, doesn’t that kind of ring wrong when you consider WP:TIND and the fact this is a volunteer project? —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 20:58, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
The details of the wording of my post was important and I don't think that your post addressed the type of situation that I described. For example about half of everything that everyone writes in Wikipedia is unsourced, unchallenged "sky-is-blue" statements and such is the norm. If you followed someone everywhere that they went and challenged, tagged or deleted all of those on all of their edits, it would be an example of my post. North8000 (talk) 21:48, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
That's a very valid thing to discuss, but I just want to make clear that it is a different issue than the one that I raised. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:50, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
On you original topic, I think that that's a pretty tiny/rare part of the topic. Wp:civility only deals with a less-severe 20% of mis-treatment of editors. As you have expertly pointed pout in previous posts. North8000 (talk) 00:46, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

As I discussed in an earlier post, we should look at an editor's overall approach in engaging the community. If the editor otherwise engages well, then it may be fair to overlook a single blowup that is followed by sheepish/remorseful behaviour. If there is another blowup, a quiet word from an admin may be helpful. If the behaviour continues, then perhaps a request to voluntarily withdraw from the area of concern would be a good next step. If the editor doesn't show any remorse and keeps escalating, then maybe more firm action is warranted sooner. I think we can lay out a few sample scenarios in order to help administrators extrapolate proportionate responses for specific situations. isaacl (talk) 00:58, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, so perhaps there is a combination of overall approach (whether it was a one-off or recidivism), the nature of the provocation (whether it was severe trolling or just heated discussion), and the evidence of remorse, that affects the degree of significance of personal responsibility. Although it's always wrong, conceptually, to respond in an incivil manner, the decision as to whether responding that way is sanctionable depends on that combination of factors. We should cut some slack for users who are normally civil, who were goaded by something that would pretty generally be regarded as objectionable, and who indicate that they don't intend to make a habit of it. But as each of those things moves along a scale towards recidivist incivility, overreaction to normal discourse, and defiance, the situation progresses towards where a civility block is increasingly appropriate. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:42, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I had a look at what constitutes harassment under UK law and was somewhat surprised to find that it refers to a set of behaviours (bullying) which are otherwise legal, but become harassment wben they are related to some particular listed trait, e.g. age, gender, sexuality, race etc.[3] I suspect the that definition doesn't match the more common usage of the word, or definition in other countries. If the WMF want to make harassment a crime, then they actually do need to give it a much more precise definition.  — Amakuru (talk) 08:01, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
    It doesn't look like that's a criminal definition either, but a workplace regulatory definition. But you're right, if WMF want to do local enforcement, they need to give proper definitions that we can understand and (if they're outrageous) protest. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 08:05, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
    Ah OK, that's a good point. Although it's not limited to the work place (it's apparently defined by the Equality Act 2010), this formal "harassment" of protected groups is a civil-only offence. There are quite a few cases where the police and the press describe someone as having been "jailed for harassment", but when you dig deeper they are actually convicted of other crimes such as breach of a restraining order.[4][5]  — Amakuru (talk) 08:57, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
    I think we are looking for a workplace regulatory definition, not a criminal one. This is a volunteer workplace, and workplace harassment definitions are very relevant. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:27, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

STOP!

I'm exceedingly disappointed that people have so quickly degenerated into musings about the word "harassment" in this very thread. The whole point of this thread is that we need to stop using this inflammatory, chilling buzzword that was never specifically confirmed or even alleged to be the issue behind this ban. Continuing to suggest that it is the relevant issue, without any such confirmation, is making up excuses for the WMF, and arguably committing unapologetic libel. That's not the goal here. I'm literally just asking that we stop reducing this debacle to "harassment" and start focusing on what the board actually said in their statement, which was a great many things, harassment not among them. These are the issues we need to focus on. We will never make progress if we ignore the points they're trying to make in favor of mindlessly bumbling around exclaiming "harassment! harassment! harassment!" Knock it off, please. I'm trying to get serious about the actual issues articulated by the board, and this alone is difficult enough as evidenced by the above pushback to simply moderately respecting civility policies to begin with. Crowing on and on about the word "harassment" is counterproductive to the simple, achievable goals that the board is explicitly asking for. ~Swarm~ {sting} 01:16, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

According to the WMF, harassment or abuse was the cause of the ban: What we can say in this case is that 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". – Anne drew 01:26, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
also according to the WMF, incivility was the cause of the ban: In a statement to BuzzFeed News, the organization said it had leveled the ban to maintain "respect and civility" on the platform. "Uncivil behavior, including harassment, threats, stalking, spamming, or vandalism, is against our Terms of Use, which are applicable to anyone who edits on our projects," it said. WMF have falsely stated that incivility is prohibited by the subheading of Section 4 which they quote in their statement to this page. So, no, there was no harassment, by the WMF's own confirmation. There was incivility. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 01:33, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Given that the various official statements (even by ArbCom) are peppered with the word "harassment", it beggars belief that anyone would think the WMF doesn't consider harassment was involved. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:35, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
The only places I can see that WMF have used the term "harassment" is in reference to the section of the TOU which they falsely claimed forbids incivility. The statements they've made have not been in reference to the conventional English meaning of the word "harassment", but in reference to what the TOU—a contract—says. You need to stop thinking like a normal human being when parsing what they're saying and start thinking like a lawyer, because that's exactly what they're doing when they're applying these contract terms. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 03:11, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

WMF states that the ban was in relation to section 4 of the ToU, specifically 'harassing and abusing others':

Harassing and Abusing Others

  • Engaging in harassment, threats, stalking, spamming, or vandalism; and
  • Transmitting chain mail, junk mail, or spam to other users

if sanctions are handed out on such a basis we'd better be discussing it. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:28, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Not only the WMF, but Jan and ArbCom have made reference to harassment. We need to discuss it, try to define what it means on en WP etc, and how it can be determined to have occurred, because it has clearly been raised in the context of the office action regarding Fram. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:52, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
It should be understood by now that "harassment" was not the issue. We have yet to receive any sort of affirmation, beyond vague "references" invoking the word, that Fram actually engaged in any of the specific behaviors prohibited by the ToU clause referenced. It's silly to even act like the mention of that clause is the answer after all the controversy, directly caused by the inability of the WMF to actually refute the suggestion that Fram did not breach that clause. It very truly appears that Fram's interpretation, that he was actually blocked for incivility, checks out. The board's statement is telling in detailing problems with incivility and "toxic" behavior and "unblockables" that led to this ban. They did not mention harassment however. So quit with the baseless invocation of harassment, until such claim is made directly. Seriously, it's an aspersion at best, libel at worst to make this accusation without evidence or cause. You can't just say these things without being able to demonstrate truth, and the WMF has given us no reason to believe that any allegation of harassment is true. I do not think that Fram was banned for harassment, and the board just so happened to not mention that by mistake. Get real. ~Swarm~ {sting} 04:46, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
And I've been arguing this point ad infinitum. This whole time. Nobody has refuted this notion. I even went to a board member, begging to be refuted, and he refused to do so. So quit acting like you have some strong case to back "harassment" allegations. No case has been made, beyond vague implications. No one, involved, uninvolved, subjective, objective, has substantiated such a notion. So knock it off. It's not credible. And, like I said, it's libelous to make these claims in spite of the complete and utter absence of any sort of rationale. ~Swarm~ {sting} 04:49, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
And hey, I'm not the libel police. If you want to make baseless accusations, go for it. Obviously that's the narrative the guilty party wants to perpetuate, not the board. If you don't think that's telling, then you're naive. But you do you. Just please, keep it the hell out of a thread that's trying to be objective. ~Swarm~ {sting} 04:53, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Exactly this, and it dovetails perfectly with WMF's explicit statement to the press that the ban was due to incivility. Everything else WMF has said other than that has been evasive because every other claim using the term "harassment" has either been generally (i.e., "we need to address harassment on wikipedia") or in reference to the TOU clause (i.e., "harassment includes spamming"). WMF has had two full weeks to correct the record if their statement to the media was incorrect. They have not done so, despite being fully aware of that specific story (in addition to the fact that WMF made a statement to the author, Ms. Maher's tweet disparaging the coverage as a "pseudo-thinkpiece" makes this clear). We are being led up the garden path. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 04:56, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
My good Swarm. Being guilty of the H word doesn't mean you've committed a heinous crime. It represents a range of behaviours. At the mild end, some of those behaviours are seen as positive by many who value quality and accuracy.
With this edit, this is the 3rd or 4th time I've criticised one of your statements in this past month. I know you have exceptional strength of character and are good at taking criticism. But if you were a more average editor, you might reasonably think Im starting to harass you! This is the same sense in which Fram is "guilty" of harassment. He used to notice people making edits he objected to, and then keep pointing out their mistakes over & over again.
Please trust me at least a little on this. I've opposed Frams excessive criticalness of good content builders going as far back as 2012 ( Decided to delete diffs as don't want to risk sparking more off site targetting of potential complainants ) So I know what he's like. Unlike when he was "punching up" to Arbs or the WMF, when Fram was talking to regular editors, AFAIK he never cussed them. He was very accurate, fair, and generally always had sound policy reasons for his criticisms. But he'd keep making his critical points at the same people over & over. Hence it would have reasonably felt like harassment to folk less thick skinned than yourself, even if it is allowed by policy.
In the 3rd para of the Board statement, they linked to their "2016 Statement on Healthy Community Culture, Inclusivity, and Safe Spaces" ( Which they called a "strong statement against toxic behaviors" ) The 2016 statement is less than 300 words, but it repeats the H word 8 times. Harassment is far and away the most specific type of toxicity / incivility which the board & core WMF would like us to address. Albeit some in the WMF are clearly working with a broader definition of the word than would many in our community. All this said Swarm, thank you for showing such passion in the cause of justice, and for your efforts to get the Board to be more specific with us. FeydHuxtable (talk) 06:19, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I do not buy that incivility is the same thing as harassment. Harassment is an exceptionally heinous crime. Yes. It is. It's bizarre of you to suggest that it isn't, actually. They are not the same thing. Obviously. Not by literal definition. Not by traditional interpretation. Not by conventional wisdom. Not by standard practice. Not by subjective interpretation. You're attempting to equate two different concepts, and it's not credible by any measure. Now, if the WMF wanted to start equating incivility to harassment, that would be a radical and unprecedented move. It would be justifiable, in accordance with the reasonable goals. But if that was the case, they would articulate that. Don't attempt to twist the word "harassment" into a buzzword applying to anything short of "civility". As I've repeatedly said, this would be a fairly extremist stance that would obviously alienate those who are already skeptical of moderately stepping up civility standards. There is simply nothing reasonable or logical about it. If it were intended, it would be unreasonable, but it was clearly not intended. It was rather a false pretense. ~Swarm~ {sting} 06:25, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
You're right they are not the same thing, and I’m not trying to equate them. Incivility is the broader term. In its widest sense, it essentially means any behaviour that's not helpful to a civil community. So includes straw manning other peoples positions, not listening, being overly harsh, excessive pushiness, lack of consideration, passive aggression, harassment & many other things. As said before, you make a most valuable point that our efforts to improve community health should ideally go well beyond addressing the "H" word.
In fairness, many do use the term 'incivility' in a sense where it means only 'mild impoliteness', and would effectively exclude most/all Harassment. And yes, many use the term Harrassment only to designate serious abusive behaviour. I agree with yourself &Mendaliv there is a strong case for us to be very cautious about using the H word, and that "hounding" would often be a better alternative. Im starting to think it might be a waste of time for anyone less than board member or WMF staffer to try to explain this. FeydHuxtable (talk) 06:48, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Is not part of the problem of definitions the fact that Board statements are vetted, and thuds tweaked by lawyers who have uppermost in their minds the need to tune language to cover cases that are potentially actionable in a court, whereas we are trying to establish clear cut parameters in English for what constitutes legally non-actionable behavior deemed deleterious to encyclopedic construction (by the way 'hounding' is a grey area, since it can ber likened to 'stalking', which is a serious civil offense)?Nishidani (talk) 07:03, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Just for the record, Swarm. In the section immediately above this one, editors had managed to turn the argument away from 'harassment' in order to focus on the concept of 'civility'. Thus the former word is just 4 times, while 'civility' is mentioned on 17 occasions.Nishidani (talk) 06:29, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Harassment is a crime in some jurisdictions. In others it can be a tort—i.e., a civil cause of action. By saying "X is harassing me" you can't go and hide behind "I meant harassment in this specialized sense that doesn't mean harassment!" when you get taken to court for defamation. That's what Swarm is saying by talking about libel, and it sounds reasonable to me.
The big problem is that WMF are indeed trying to force us to consider incivility as the same as harassment by equating them in how they apply the TOU. Just look at what they said to BuzzFeed News: "Harassment and abuse" includes incivility for the purposes of the TOU. Nevermind that the TOU doesn't actually say that—that's an entirely separate issue that I'm sure WMF will fix in the near future by amending the TOU. And what's going to happen is they're going to ram it down our throats through the TOU. We're going to get reactions like what we're seeing in this discussion, that they're making "reasonable demands", and that we should consider fixing our civility problem. And through the magic of doublespeak, we're not talking about civility, but harassment and toxicity, which have been expanded to encompass basic incivility. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 06:35, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Good comment. And yes, the overwhelming response has been positive and reasonable. With that I am pleased. However, attempts at falsely redefining the issue as "harassment", even in spite of all the evidence and challenges, grow more and more egregious and disruptive. Thankfully one of the editors who has been pushing this narrative has vanished his account, but this narrative continues to be pushed. It appears to have been falsified by the WMF. No direct allegations have been made by the WMF. However, editors are defaming a living person in violation of BLP on-wiki. This is an exceptionally serious offense and I will not stand for it. ~Swarm~ {sting} 06:38, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Swarm It is not libellous to point out that WMF, Jan and ArbCom have all made references to harassment in their official statements, despite the potentially contradictory reportage by BuzzFeed and the enlisting of that report by those who want it not to be about harassment but civility. It is a fact that all these official statements have used the word harassment in reference to this case. In fact, on the official statements page there are only three mentions of incivility, and two are from Fram and one is from ArbCom. None are from WMF or Jan. There are 22 mentions of harassment on that page of official statements, from WMF, Jan, and ArbCom (with a few from Fram quoting and responding to Jan). I doubt they used the word harassment accidentally. I am not saying Fram has harassed anyone (which could potentially be libellous if it wasn't true), I'm saying that the official statements about this case all make several references to harassment. Given that, we should be discussing what constitutes harassment on en WP, how it is determined to be such, and what should be done about it, not limiting ourselves to a discussion of incivility, which frankly is a much lower level behaviour. We don't have all the facts, but the official statements are using the word harassment a lot more than incivility. The ArbCom case will make findings of fact about what actually occurred, and whether it was harassment or incivility, not anyone here. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:04, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm sure the official statements also use the word "the" more than the word "incivility". That doesn't make the statements about that word. Please shelve this argument, it's neither intelligible nor helpful. The fact is, the only statements we have that say what Fram did say he was banned for violating the TOU provision, which WMF falsely claims covers incivility. WMF has also claimed that Fram was banned for incivility. What more information do you need? Fram was banned for incivility and WMF has tried to put lipstick on that pig by claiming it's permitted in the TOU and using the word "harassment". None of those statements say Fram harassed anybody and as such are probably not legally actionable. What is concerning are all the other statements casting aspersions as well as potentially false light on Fram by claiming he harassed people without providing any evidence of harassment other than the ban as some sort of res ipsa loquitur. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 07:14, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Harassment is mentioned in ToU. There will be always people who perceive being harassed. If they file a complaint with T&S, T&S has to investigate whatever we agree here on. Now, if we agree not to use the word harassment - and indeed I see arguments what we should not - than everybody complaining to ArbCom (or, well, to ANI, however useless this is) about harassment will get the answer "harassment does not exist, have a nice day". And they will go to T&S. Instead, the answer must be "We are going to investigate this, but probably we talk about more specific ToU violations, which could be personal attacks, or could be threats, or it could be smth else. Or it might also be a legitimate concern over your editing or communication style, but we will be looking into it anyway". I think this is the only way forward from where we are.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:22, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Swarm. I'll make whatever arguments I see fit, I see no reason to adopt your line of argument, which I find without solid basis. You are making all sorts of assumptions about what the WMF is trying to do, but have advanced no evidence supporting your assumptions other than a BuzzFeed article. You have clutched hold of a statement to BuzzFeed to hang your argument on and ignored the evidence from the official statements, which clearly included the word "harassment" many times for a reason. You say they are trying to equate incivility with harassment. I don't, I think they included that word for a reason, and I imagine they had legal advice about it. To ignore the need for en WP to layout what harassment means (given it is in the TOU, as Ymblanter points out above), how it is determined, and what to do about it, ignores the clear message we are getting from WMF. As a community we need to address harassment (as well as incivility), whether Fram harassed anyone or not. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:33, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
It's a BuzzFeed News article. Completely different editorial staff, completely different reporting quality. It's legitimate journalism. And on top of that, WMF MADE A STATEMENT TO THEM AND THAT IS WHAT HE'S QUOTING. If you're trying to disparage a point by pooh-poohing the source, you need to be pooh-poohing the WMF itself, because they are the source of that statement. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 07:47, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I know what BuzzFeed is. We have them in Australia, and they are ok, but not outstanding. The WMF is also the source of the official statements I am referencing, but without a journalist in between. Why ignore the official statements and rest your argument solely upon the wording of a BuzzFeed article? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:20, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm going to try to restate what I said in my previous remark: (1) BuzzFeed News is a different division than BuzzFeed. They are a legitimate source of journalism. They are not "BuzzFeed" and cannot be dismissed as derisively as you appear to be attempting. (2) WMF is the source of the statement I'm referencing. It is quoted by the BuzzFeed News article. It says explicitly that the reason Fram was banned was because of incivility, and goes on to say that it is a violation of the "harassment and abuse" subheading of the TOU to engage in incivility. That is 100% compatible with the earlier statement; it does not contradict it in any way. You do not get to dismiss this statement because there's a "middleman", and neither does WMF. If it was incorrect, WMF has had two weeks to correct the record in some way. They have not. Therefore, we should consider it all the more without error. So, no, my argument does not rest on third-party evidence—as though that would be a valid objection! My argument is barely even an argument. It's more a restatement of fact: WMF said they banned Fram for incivility. Did they lie about that? To borrow from the other argument above, do you think they didn't vet that media statement? Make an actual argument instead of pooh-poohing sources (which, again, you're pooh-poohing the wrong source: WMF is the source here). —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 08:28, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Stop ascribing motives to my posts. I know it is BuzzFeed News, we have that in Australia. You choose to completely ignore the official statements to en WP. That's your choice, but don't go around suggesting that a BuzzFeed News article has more weight that official statements made directly by the WMF to en WP. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:38, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm not ascribing any motives to your posts, I'm pointing out exactly what you are doing. You're trying to minimize the importance of a public statement of WMF that is completely compatible with their on-wiki statement. The idea that their on-wiki statement is somehow more powerful or more true than one that's been quoted by a member of the press is preposterous and frankly extraordinarily naive. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 18:58, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
We need to remember that there are three "classes of offence" in play here. The WMF perception of problematic behaviours on the English Wikipedia, the classes of such behaviour that the WMF considers that T&S should be empowered to enforce with the new temporary bans, and the specific reason why Fram was sanctioned. It is entirely possible that T&S would be using such bans to sanction those who harass or who are incivil and that in the case of Fram they think Fram was incivil. If the WMF considers that Fram was incivil but not harassing then that would be difficult for them to say when they were trying to sanction Fram whilst not disclosing who had complained. Which goes back to one of their mistakes being to make their first 12 month sanction be on someone whose known actions were entirely on wiki but where the WMF didn't want to identify the complainant. ϢereSpielChequers 07:36, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
It is also muddled by the unclear message sent by the fact that Fram has a long record of butting up against the Foundation, its board members, and their associates. The difference of opinions whether Fram is a poster child for incivility or a poster child for being on the wrong side of influence will continue to affect the discussion. Certainly I would not lightly support some of the more extreme proposals above, such as the winnowing of editors who will not sing Kumbaya loud enough.--Wehwalt (talk) 07:44, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict)(edit conflict)... In a similar manner as with the H and C words, I can very similarly write the opening section of '<H-word>: what is it' into 'Toxic behaviour: what is it', or even 'Impoliteness: what is it'. It doesn't matter. None of these terms are anything close to black and white. With child pornography you can argue 'I did not know that it was a 12 years old kid, they told me they were 21' but that is rather unlikely to hold in court, it is rather black and white. A sentence I once wrote in an AN/I discussion where I identified that person A = person B because that was disclosed in the past on wiki (but I did not know that the person had clearly indicated that they did not want to be, on wiki, be named B even while everyone knew or could readily figure out that their real name was B) WAS outing (whether the block I received for it was punitive or preventive can be argued about). That is rather black and white. Toxic behaviour/impoliteness/incivility/harassment is NOT like that. To rewrite my first statement: "I wrote an article about the iPad app I wrote. I am very disappointed that you deleted it. I wrote it again, and you deleted it again. I find that very impolite of you, can you please stop' Now I can see that you get 50 people complaining about you to T&S because of your impoliteness, but that makes the ban even more preposterous. 

Per Ymblanter: I encounter a serial spammer and I revert and warn them. They go to AN/I and get the reply "We are going to investigate this, but probably we talk about more specific ToU violations, which could be personal attacks, or could be threats, or it could be smth else. Or it might also be a legitimate concern over your editing, but we will be looking into it anyway" .. the community is likely going to concur that it was a legitimate concern over their editing. And if the spammer continues he knows that AN/I did not solve his perception and will go to T&S. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:48, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Rather than spend a lot of time disputing past events, I suggest we can just move forward with looking at all the areas we'd like to improve. After all, the whole point of the kerfuffle was that the community wanted to set its own direction for managing interpersonal issues. If one set of persons wants to look at civility with high priority, great! Let's do it! If another set (potentially overlapping) wants to look at broader editor engagement issues that go beyond civility, great! Let's do that too! There's a lot of thinking and discussion that need to happen, and eventual convincing of the editor population at large. The sooner we get started, the better. isaacl (talk) 08:56, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Step one- office action to remove the sanction while Arbcom investigates: that now in itself is the outstanding problem.- That is the signal we all need. ClemRutter (talk) 12:07, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

"In the 3rd para of the Board statement, they linked to their "2016 Statement on Healthy Community Culture, Inclusivity, and Safe Spaces"..." Well, yes. They made a lot of statements that juxtaposed words such as "harassment" and "Fram". They claimed that Fram violated rules that included, but weren't limited to, references to harassment. But they were careful to not actually say that Fram committed harassment; all this juxtaposition and indirect reference was there so that they could make you think Fram committed harassment, but could deny having actually made the accusation.

Personally, I think that there was some attempt at a social justice coup here. The reference to Gamergate, the harassment insinuations, and the list of groups to which the user reporting system was announced look too suspicious. Ken Arromdee (talk) 14:58, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Safe spaces, etc

I see a lot of angst being expressed above, including by many users I have a lot of respect for, that an effort to improve our handling of behavioral issues, as Swarm suggests, amounts to designating Wikipedia a "safe space", or unleashing the civility police, or some such. With due respect, I think this suggestion is at best an expression of justified frustration with users who attempt to play the civility police, and at worst a red herring, that may have serious consequences for our governance.

It's easy to dismiss attempts to create better behavioral standards as tone-policing, or the equivalent. As others have pointed out, the language we have seen from the WMF has tended to reflect US West Coast corporate culture. Our editor body is geographically and culturally diverse, and therefore enforcing an arbitrary professional behavioral standard is misguided. But for the same reason, arguing that something is acceptable on Wikipedia because it's acceptable at your workplace is similarly misguided. Editors on Wikipedia don't share the longstanding personal relationships and shared cultural backgrounds that allow many professional settings to have a casual "shop floor" culture. What we need is for every contributor to edit as though they were on a professional assignment with colleagues they had never met, with whom they may not share a first language; and with whom they may need to work for years. That behavior isn't about avoiding specific words, or avoiding giving offence because others may have delicate sensibilities; it's about basic civility, in the sense of treating every other editor with respect. It's a philosophy many of our regulars already subscribe to, but which many others don't.

So, let me reiterate that I agree completely with Swarm that we need to take behavioral issues a lot more seriously, but with the proviso that "bad behavior" needs careful definition. A code of conduct formulated by the WMF may amount to tone-policing, but we, as a community, are quite capable of focusing on genuine behavioral concerns instead. We've done it in this very thread; even those of you above disagreeing with Swarm (Nishidani and Sitush, among others) have identified a number of very genuine behavioral issues, dealing with which would significantly improve our ability to write an encyclopedia. These include "civil" POV-pushing; chronic disparagement of other editors; chronic personalization of disputes; irredeemable incompetence with respect to core policies; and several others. We have the capability to deal with these, by articulating behavioral principles more forcefully, enforcing them more forcefully, and being willing to deal with the fallout.

If that not sound like sufficient inducement to explore behavioral standards as a community, consider this; we have behavioral standards coming, whether we like it or not. Faced with a WMF code of conduct, we have three options; 1) Leave, 2) Live with it, or 3) Create, (of our own accord, or in collaboration with the WMF), a robust code that addresses our needs better. There isn't a fourth option. Speaking for myself, 1 & 2 are not real options. We need to move from discussing the need for more scrutiny of editor behavior to discussing what we want that scrutiny to look like. Vanamonde (Talk) 02:33, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

I personally want to thank you for that excellent piece. I think you went to some effort to be fair to all sides in this contretemps. I speak only for myself, obviously, but for myself I can't see investing time in coming up with a code of conduct at this point. Even if we had Hammurabi, Nelson Mandela and a dozen of the great lawgivers from all cultures and times, it is still meaningless if it can be got around through influence, especially at the WMF. There are also other questions of fair application, but I'll stick to the influence. When the Foundation convinces me that they have sufficiently good ethical practices, including regarding conflict of interest, so that it doesn't matter who you are, or who you know, or how well you know them, there is no getting around the code for your own benefit, or to call in airstrikes on others, maybe I'll be more enthusiastic about a code. They will have some convincing to do.--Wehwalt (talk) 04:02, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93: Also I thank you for this. The problem is the option 3. It is my strong believe that the option should be 3. WMF seems to have unilaterally chosen their route into option 3 where (if you allow me to rewrite) '... 3) Create: enforce <civility/harassment/toxic behaviour> policies in such a way that volunteers will have only options 1 and 2'. WMF is here top-down. That is clear with MV, that is clear with VE, it is clear with Superputsch, it is clear with their complete negligence of maintaining old extensions, it is clear with this ban of Fram, it is clear from the language of User:Jimbo Wales. 1 & 2 is the only things we have, and, as for you, for me they are not real options (but I don't think that WMF really cares about that). --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:12, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks @Vanamonde93:. Coincidentally, I had my Fram moment yesterday, in the sense of finding my edits focused on technicalities in sources being consistently read as arsehole behavior, as one edityor succumbed to the temptation to read beyond what I wrote neutrally to think in terms of pop psychology about the putative motives driving my source analyses.
I agree with option 3, while concurring with Beestra's analysis. My overall feeling is that, while we (those who actually work daily on articles here and have the necessary experience of conflict) should certainly tinker with the civics code, the whole point of the WMF proposal about what they would do appears to be modulated by recruitment and retention of relatively new editors (from disadvantaged communities esp.) If that is the case, rather than worry to death the problem of defining more precisely what constitutes civil/uncivil behavior, we should perhaps concentrate more effort on rewriting some policy guide for newbies. Long-term editors have on average far tougher hides and can take the flak without anxiety. That is why, in facing insinuations I'm an arsehole, as yesterday, I didn't press the panic button, and didn't report it. But I'm sure newbies can't be expected to react that way. We are eloquent about how to behave nicely to newbies, but say little (?) directly to them to encourage them to be more detached, i.e., make them understand that the world here is structurally different from the general norm of social media, where contributors appear to fully invest themselves in identifying with their and others' online identity (and don't go there to write up encyclopedic articles).Nishidani (talk) 08:44, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@Nishidani: Thanks for the response. I agree that better guidelines for newbies, especially for newbies editing in contentious areas, might be part of the solution. Something that has bothered me for a while is that our templated warnings are better suited to vandalism and other low-grade disruption, and not very sophisticated when it comes to educating newbies about NPOV, NOR, and the like. Also, I think newbies tend to first interact with our huggle brigade, an unfortunate number of whom leave basic templated warnings that don't address the specific behavioral problem. That said; I think our behavioral issues extend to experienced contributors. The unremitting hostility I and many others experience in writing about WP:ARBIPA topics has come largely from editors who have been here a while (take a look at WP:CUOS2018, or my RFA, if you're looking for an example of what I'm talking about; but I think you know. MS was not pushed into retirement by clueless newbies). We need to be better about dealing with these folks. Conversely, we have many experienced editors who have performed yeoman service in our contentious topics, but who keep getting provoked into rudeness by the constant stream of nonsense they have to deal with, and who thereby paint a target on their own backs as far as the WMF are concerned. We need to have a conversation about this, too; civility blocks are not the answer, but we need to foster recognition that harsh language is frequently counter-productive. Finally, we have a number of long-standing contributors with what I would consider a genuine tone problem; editors who are not just lashing out in anger, but rather whose modus operandi is one of unremitting hostility and contempt. The number is not large, but I can think of at least a half-dozen who fit this description. So in sum, I take your point about the need to improve our newbie education, but I think there's more to the problem than that.
@Wehwalt and Beetstra: Thanks for the kind responses. I am not very optimistic about how the WMF will handle this, so I understand any reluctance to invest time and effort in a community-built behavioral code. I still think we have very little option, though, because the alternatives are just not acceptable to me. The way I see it, even if the WMF pays scant attention to our efforts, we may at the very least be able to make the community's response to interference in its governance more coherent; of all the resignations and retirements that framgate has provoked, a not-inconsiderable number were because some editors felt the community was enabling harassment. If we want to be able to make a strong case for keeping our governance autonomous, I think we need to be able to firmly state that we've done what's reasonable in terms of dealing with bad behavior. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:07, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93: You say that [you are] not very optimistic about how the WMF will handle this, I am afraid I would say that I am not very optimistic about how the WMF is handling this. I see that there is value in investing time in a CoC, but it is just going to result in more pointing fingers. I do not believe that will give a shift that is sufficient. We have already basically that, a CoC, we just formalize it. The way I see it, we do what is reasonable in terms of dealing with 'bad behaviour', people get globally banned by the community due to their behaviour, that means that people have shown behaviour which is unacceptable on multiple wikis. Do you really think that if we would get here on en.wikipedia an editor who is clearly harassing someone else that that editor would not be banned? People may at first be reluctant with a long-term established editor, but I don't believe that we (ArbCom) will let it go. Editors who do not follow our 'code of conduct' do get banned, de-sysopped. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:33, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@Beetstra: I think we are good at dealing with egregious harassment and disruptive behavior, but not as good at dealing with chronic low-level hostility and aggression, incompetence, and "civil" pov-pushing. I can think of a considerable number of editors who are a decided net negative in our contentious areas, but who escape sanction because individual edits are never that bad, and because we are unwilling to look at the effect of their contributions in toto. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:41, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Then I invite you to continue with User:Jehochman's excercise and collect all that information on-wiki and present a new case to ArbCom based on full evidence of that. Fram and I have had our disagreements and agreements (I am not a FramFan), but what I have seen presented until now does not pass any on-wiki bar that we have on a regular basis (and I have not examined the other side of it). And again, the global ban I am talking about was of a similar nature (in part, and in your words 'chronic low-level hostility and aggression, incompetence, and "civil" pov-pushing' and likely other things could be added to this list to make it more specific) was a case where the GLOBAL community (without ANY WMF interference) handled that behaviour. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:13, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@Beetstra: with respect, I think you misunderstand; I am not saying Fram was responsible for the types of misconduct I have outlined above. I was frequently unhappy about Fram's tone, but based on the edits I have seen, I would have felt that no more than a warning was justified to Fram specifically. I am making a more general point, as, I believe, was Swarm. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:25, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93: my apologies, indeed, you were not alluding to Fram. However, ArbCom does look at those things over a long term. Noone is bringing the case (there must be a long list of AN/I complaint for each user then... ). The global ban was also for a long term situation, where editors of multiple wikis saw the pattern after they overstepped a line. That we did not have such a case (or did we?) does not mean that we cannot handle it, or that we don't have the rules ... --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:42, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, the principles on which any rules would be based are on the books, and we have enforced them in the past; but generally only after the problem had persisted for longer than it should have, and still, I think, only in the worst cases. I don't think our behavioral guidelines are fleshed out enough to make enforcement in difficult cases tractable. Also, I think engaging in the exercise of fleshing out our behavioral standards would also encourage us to enforce them better. I don't know how often you patrol AE, AN, and ANI; but I've lost count of the number of times we've elected not to enforce existing behavioral standards because those standards were deemed unrealistic, or because the editors involved were otherwise too valuable. Vanamonde (Talk) 19:42, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
I steer away from AE as I am not an ArbCom fan, but AN and ANI I have been (on both sides). We also 'lost' quite some 'valuable' volunteers through AN/I, AN and AE, just because they did fail our cultural norms. 'Banning' is a hot topic an AN/ANI anyway, currently the word 'ban' is 65x on AN and 71x on ANI (ignoring the mention of this page in the centralized discussion box), which suggests to me that we do have quite some people banned and/or are banning quite some people. I will steer away from the suggestion that we only ban editors without value.  Editors are valuable on both sides, long established and newbie, and unfortunately, there are on both sides also editors that .. should not be here. Banning is not something that should be done too lightly on long-term editors, and with some exception, newbies are not banned (blocked) on a first offense either. Yes, a newbie that does some rather good work, but slowly collects warnings does at some point get blocked, though that may very well be at the 10th warning. An editor that does 5 times the same thing and gets 4 warnings .. will likely get blocked without. An established editor was not one of those that got blocked at their 5th edit, hence will collect more than 4 warnings. But they will go eventually. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:23, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
  • A lot many people seem to be quite excited about developing some kind of CoC and apparently deem that to be a magic pill in remedying the woes of the community in the areas. Any ideas on what exactly does they presume it to contain, more than WP:NPA (which is a policy and linked from WP:5P4)? ∯WBGconverse 08:53, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
    • That, combined with a caveat from Jimbo, is what worries me here the most. What WMF did with Fram fits in with the larger concept of 'editor retention'. Making our rules clearer to newbies is not in their (their! not necessarily our) concept of editor retention. It is not going to be a magic potion, the answer is not there. And I doubt that they can be convinced otherwise. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:11, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
  • In the recently arxived thread at the Talk:Arbitration Committee Noticeboard I proposed to open a ceries of RfCs (which seems to be consistent with the ArbCom supervising the civility one), and one of them should be on CoC. WMF seems to be fine negotiating what exactly should be there. I do not think we have much of a choice, since CoC is just (supposed to be) a codification of ToU, and we should either decide how we interpret it and have it as a policy, or let WMF decide on the intepretation, and we probably are not going to like the result.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:03, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Also, I reject that "bad behavior" needs careful definition. It's already well-defined and I challenge you to find me one longstanding editor who thinks that "civil" POV-pushing or chronic disparagement of other editors or chronic personalization of disputes or irredeemable incompetence with respect to core policies is good behavior.
    There is not an iota of doubt in the broader community about the badness of the mentioned behaviors but there is not any objective standard to evaluate the same. What seems like POV to me might seem like perfectly NPOV to you. What might be felt as incivil to an editor from the Indian subcontinent can be easily considered as common parlance in USA.
    A CoC cannot ever develop these objective standards. Read this or this and tell me a point, that is already not contained in the stuff linked from WP:5P4 (apart from enforcement mechanisms, which will obviously vary).
    If you wish to fight in-civil behavior, you (or anyone else) already have all the tools that you need and need to merely use them. It is upto the interpretation of the community to enforce these policies or the new CoC (super-policy). And, it will remain so, as long almost all the aspects of wiki is governed directly/indirectly by the community.
    I though think that the upcoming WMF-proposed-CoC will be an attempt at mollycoddling newbies, because the sole metrics they consistently care about is related to quantity:- article numbers/number of wikis/editor retention/active editors; quality comes much later. ∯WBGconverse 13:02, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
I disagree that there is no objective standard to evaluate this. There is, similar to e.g. murder#Degrees of murder (and add to that different forms of manslaughter, and, if you wish, accidental death). Point is, that is, way, beyond Wikipedia, ArbCom or WMF. WMF's goal is different, though, they do not have 'degrees', there is no objectivity, there is no defense, there is no appeal: someone left Wikipedia, therefore someone in the community is at fault. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:41, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@Winged Blades of Godric: Do you really think the community is unanimous about what it considers bad behavior, then? Not too many would explicitly consider the problems I outlined good behavior, but there's plenty who don't recognize them as problems, and plenty of people who consider occasional cussing to be just as bad. I'm not naming names, because this isn't about specific editors, it's about a cultural shift that needs to happen among admins and other experienced editors. Defining these troublesome behaviors isn't trivial, but I agree with Beetstra that it's quite possible; indeed, arbitration enforcement is in general quite good at recognizing a battleground attitude and sanctioning it. Similarly, yes, I theoretically have the tools to intensify enforcement; but a one-person crusade would end very badly. Again, we need a culture shift; admins need to be willing to examine and sanction editors for the problems I listed above without worrying that every action is going to result in another big argument about civility blocks. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:27, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
There are (a) problems you can wear, and (b) problems that wear you out. Most social relations are of type a. To focus on b in such a way that the ostensible fix will cover, have fallout on, the order of known disturbances in a, is dangerous. Nishidani (talk) 15:52, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@Nishidani: I'm not sure I follow you, and I don't want to advance an argument based on misunderstanding; could you clarify what you mean? Specifically, if we're agreed on what constitutes "problems that wear you out", in what way do you think addressing them is dangerous? Vanamonde (Talk) 16:11, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
I have read this page nearly daily and have vacillated between commenting or not, mainly because my experience of policy discussions on WP is that they tend to be a walled-garden. I agree with those who say that if we do not address the issues they will be addressed for us. There are very definitely objective standards that transcend cultural differences. There seems to be a lot of blaming going on for why incivility exists in the comments above. We are each responsible for our own actions and reactions. No one makes us behave in any fashion; we choose how we interact with others. If someone behaves poorly, that is on them. Sure, people do annoying things, but that does not mean that we must react negatively towards them. The professionalism we should have for working with others on WP is often lacking. Treating others with respect, dialing back the levels of aggression, operating in a collaborative spirit do not mean that one is not passionate about the work we do to write an encyclopedia and keep standards high. Instead, it reflects our core values of neutrality and improving the whole by the input of many. Shifting the way that we have operated isn't dangerous, if we are the ones collectively designing the policies. SusunW (talk) 16:00, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@SusunW: The thing is, I believe strongly that the community does address this. People get globally banned, by the community, due to behaviour which is counter the norms on multiple wikis. The community, and ArbCom, are regularly banning editors for behaviour that is counter to our en.wikipedia norms (our en.wikipedia code of conduct, if you wish). Still, the WMF stepped in and did it 'for us' on a case where we are clueless about which en.wikipedia cultural norms (if any) were overstepped. We may with our babbling about our code of conduct still very well be barking up the wrong tree. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:41, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Beetstra I have no interest in discussing Fram's behavior. We were not "clueless" about the way he behaved, as illustrated by numerous discussions over many years by many respected editors. The issue on the table is not about one editor, it is about an environment that allows bad/poor/incivil behavior to be overlooked/ignored/justified and how we can change that environment to prevent future overstepping into our self-governance. SusunW (talk) 17:50, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
That's kind of the point. If it is indeed true that nothing Fram did was off-wiki, then yes, what he had done was open to anyone to look at. There was not consensus that he should be sanctioned for it, and that is our right, not WMF's, to decide. That can be either directly in the form of community sanctions, or via the community-elected ArbCom, but not by fiat from San Francisco. The right to ban or otherwise sanction editors includes the right to decide not to do so. Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:02, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@SusunW: (edit conflict) As I said, I don't believe that. The case I am thinking of where an editor got globally banned by the community (WMF had NOTHING to do with that) was because of (and I am using fragments of your sentences) bad/poor/incivil behavior over many years as noted by many respected editors. WMF can not tell us which cultural norms were overstepped. Yes, there may have been many complaints by many respected editors, but even when now tried by User:Jehochman, there was no clear pattern of consistent misbehaviour over years, and with that they apparently did not overstep our cultural norms as we describe them on-wiki. You can argue that our cultural norms are too weak, but that is not something to ban someone over now, nor is that the case that if we now sharpen our cultural norms that you then can say that Fram overstepped those new norms 2 years ago. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:06, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Discussing individual cases is not a particularly helpful method of evaluating a "system" and as i said above, I am not interested in that type of discussion. If a system requires many years to lapse before addressing problems, it is quite literally broken. What we have done in the past is irrelevant. If we want prevent situations where the WMF steps in and overrides our self-governance, we must reassess and re-evaluate what changes could be made to address problems more effectively. SusunW (talk) 20:05, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
A production line system is not broken if, unceasingly, it ratchets up article after article over 18 years, and now is close to the 5,900,000 mark, with the volume of article edits massively outweighing the number of complaints of faulty work practices or unhealthy atmosphere made. Whatever the defects in the mechanisms of arbitration, there is, to my knowledge, no evidence that it has impeded the consistent drive towards qualitative article improvement.Nishidani (talk) 20:14, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
This is actually a false premise. There are many areas which depend on one or two users. For example, I happen to know that all Russian political geography articles were for many years dependent on Ezhiki and Greyhood, then on Ezhiki and myself, and now entirely on myself. I have most of them on my watchlist, the there is virtually zero improvement by driveby editors. If smth happens to me, they will stay dormant for many years until somebody else would show interest. This means the magic number 6M articles will definitely be achieved, but I am sure there are areas which suffered a lot from loss of editors who found it too stressful to work in this environment. (And I am not even starting about gender gap etc, though it might be highly relevant to this discussion).--Ymblanter (talk) 20:22, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
And am enormous amount of that growth has been in areas where there really shouldn’t be separate articles, like consumer products where the sourcing is entirely review articles (i.e., primary sources). But try to stem the tide in those areas, you’re accused of harassing the editor that’s creating them. As the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 21:21, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
If you would see our monument, look around you. Or, to put it another way, don't tamper with a working system or it may not work.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:35, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of depends on it not being "broke" in the first place. And ignores the possibility of something still "working" even though it's broken. A gun with a broken safety still fires, an axe with a loose handle still chops, and a chipped tooth still chews. It's still a good idea to fix those things. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 22:07, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Sure. But this is not as obvious as that given we are highly successful and the money is pouring in. And the fault is somewhat more debatable given we are five weeks into this and there is no clear consensus on that point.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:17, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
I'll concede that WMF is making money hand over fist, and we're still in a growth period of article creation. But I argue that either of those being metrics of success are questionable. It's a bit like Twitter posting daily active user (DAU) growth figures that include uncontrolled bot account activity. Sure those figures are good for drumming up investment, but in terms of a metric indicating health of the platform or success, it's not as clear. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 22:25, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Cash will do as a metric until something else comes along. And even then, it's a really good metric. I think it was Heinlein who said that one of the best types of applause comes in the form of folding green.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:28, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Nishidani My observations are that the WMF has for many years been monitoring content gaps, which editors have not addressed. We aren't just talking about the gender content gap, but huge diverse topics of content on the global south, indigenous peoples, etc. To my knowledge the WMF has not stepped (yet) into policies on article creation, but it might do so, if we continue to ignore these problems. I agree with Ymblanter that we definitely have lost editors due to the environment and are not likely to attract editors to work on major areas of content gaps if the attitude is to ignore our problem areas. We should constantly be proactively addressing how we improve, otherwise, we become obsolete or crumble away to dust. SusunW (talk) 21:47, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, a coincidence. I happened to note that there was no significant coverage of Australian 'tribes'. I sat down, and wrote 660 articles, one for each known group. I don't say this to blow my trumpet. It took two years of hard reading and work, with just one (magnificently discreet low profile-highly focused) wikipedian who actually developed software to help create a unified format. It matters little that they have yet to be expanded, for every article has a bibliography, fairly thorough, which links to where the relevant academic and historical sources can be consulted at a click. Do that, and some day in the future, editors stumbling on the page will find it formatted, referenced, and, by clicking, see every text every statement is made from, and reading on, harvest fromn the refs details I didn't have time to fill out. So even if the articles give the bare bones, they are so organized that the labour of finding material has been done, and all editors need do is read, excerpt, paraphrase and finesse. One doesn't need the WMFD to meddle in these things, other than say asking the community if it can organize a group to coordinate under one unified template+format system all articles on, say, Siberian tribes, Eurasian tribes (e.g. along the model of Khazars) or Amerindian tribes. A suggestion is enough. I was harassed no end in thoroughly rewriting the ignoble Khazar stub because numerous editors had a fixation about putative anti-Semitism issues, and read every other edit paranoiacally as if it were a subtly, demonic attempt to give credit to the old meme that Jews were Khazars. Well, who cares. In the end, enough editors looked in and saw the end result was solid, and stopped the POV-rot. Nota bene that in these cases, one doesn't have to come from Australia, be of Aboriginal background, or Eurasian background, to 'fill the gap'. Ethnicity and cultural background have nothing to do with good article creation. As often as not, too conscious a sense of one's minority origins can lead to a POV-sleuthing obsessive defensiveness and cherrypicking spin utterly disrespectful of what counts, mastery of the available academic literature on the relevant field. If the WMF's idea is to recruit minorities to such an end, you can say goodbye to any pretence that the result will be encyclopedic. Hailing from a minority or a periphery is, in the history of civilization, a net positive in terms of creative abilities, so I am not saying being a minority is a disadvantage. But writing articles requires more a willingness to comprehensively master the RS, whoever wrote them, rather than an eagerness to defend one's community, and use its spokesmen as the source for interpretative authority. Nishidani (talk) 22:18, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@SusunW:, I doubt the Foundation will ever step in to direct editors to "content gaps", for one very simple reason. As long as they have as little to do with content on Wikipedia, they can keep themselves immune from liability due to the principle of common carrier: since they have no editorial input, the Foundation can't be held responsible for defamation. (Removing content due to copyright infringement, libel, or threat of violence is not editorial input. It's required under the DMCA.) As long as I've been around, Foundation staff have always run the other way when issues about content have arisen. Besides, pointing out content gaps in Wikipedia's coverage would be too much work & might cut into their travel itineraries. (I meant to comment earlier on that, but my off-wiki life has kept me busy & I've been trying to avoid this page.) -- llywrch (talk) 21:54, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
SusunW, my read of communications from the WMF is that if they have learned anything out of this debacle, it is that "stepping in" is something which should never be repeated. The English Wikipedia is self-governing and editorially independent, even from the WMF, and that is absolutely not negotiable. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:51, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Seraphimblade I don't think we agree that the WMF agreed they would not repeat intervention, nor on the "absolutely non negotiable" part. What I took away from their documents was that they wouldn't take action without informing us. But statements like Katherine's "Working closely with the community to identify the shortcomings of current processes and enforcement mechanisms, and to support the development of appropriate solutions" indicate to me that they do have an interest in project policies and whether those align with their broader goals. SusunW (talk) 22:39, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
It is no problem for them to work with the community. (They should have been to begin with.) Our goals are to write an encyclopedia. If that's theirs too, great. If it's anything else, including to right any wrongs, then any "stepping in" will result in them being frog-marched right back out again, just as happened here. WMF does not run this project, it provides certain services to it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:47, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
I hate to rain on your parade, because ideologically I agree with you. But speaking realistically, the WMF is the legal entity that owns this website and dictates the Terms of Use which are non-negotiable and legally binding. I don't know if you noticed, but at the end of the day, Fram is still banned without any explanation or accountability. No one resigned in disgrace. No one was fired. The ban is still being whitewashed, in spite of the obvious fact that it was not issued in good faith. And both the Board and the WMF are getting away with putting the blame of the whole situation on improvements we need to make going forward. This was an obviously corrupt move from the WMF, and all of the backlash has been justified. And even still, we haven't made a dent in the Foundation's armor, because at the end of the day, the Foundation can do what it wants. If we were shareholders, you'd damn well better believe things would be extremely different. But the WMF is making the statement that we serve their demands. They do not serve us. No amount of admins resigning will even make them budge. ~Swarm~ {sting} 02:45, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
^^This. This, this and this. Nothing has changed, only how we perceive it. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:48, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

This talk thread began with a mention of "safe spaces", and I'm going back to that, because it does have relevance to how the community might want to interact with WMF. In my opinion, we should in fact work harder to make editing here "safe" in the sense of safe from being treated with disrespect. But no editor should be made "safe" from being held to account for adhering to policies and guidelines, or from having to discuss content issues with other editors who may disagree with them, or from being expected at times to justify the edits that they have made, or from being exposed to ideas that make them uncomfortable. Now as far as I'm concerned, all of that is just common sense, but I think it is prudent for editors here to come to some consensus about what we do and what we do not want to be "safe" from, because we may very well have to deal with WMF defining that differently than we would. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:10, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

  • +1 Deor (talk) 00:02, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
  • That's a very concise and eloquent way of saying what I've been trying to say above, so thank you for that. Vanamonde (Talk) 02:08, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes, let's do this! The situation with WMF isn't clear enough to be sure that this is a problem. But this problem has come up as speculation, so it seems prudent to note this down. I think it shouldn't be so hard to get consensus on this. Hans Adler 02:26, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Well said, Vanamonde. The argument that making a minimal effort to enforce our longstanding behavioral standards rather than perpetually turning a blind eye to them equates to some dystopian "safe space" regime is silly at best, disingenuous at worst. Perhaps that's what we will get from the WMF if we fail to act, but that's not remotely the standard being asked of us. Our system of enforcing behavioral standards is ineffective. We all know it. I've both had legitimate blocks overturned by it, and I've joined the mob in perpetuating it. It's not right. Pushing for a more honest enforcement of ideological standards that already exist is a reasonable goal. The self-defending "old guard" that stonewalls legitimate behavioral complaints needs to end. ~Swarm~ {sting} 02:35, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Exactly Tryptofish, Vanamonde93 and Swarm. SusunW (talk) 16:13, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Longtime editors are not often blocked because they know the rules and since they know the rules, they are not often found on the wrong side of them. Longtime editors are also usually willing, when caught running out of bounds, to give assurances they won't do it again and have that accepted by the community, as AN/I participants are for the most part not there to right great wrongs by showing a longtime editor can be blocked. And this dovetails with what AN/I is there to do: to separate those who are scuffling and get them back to work on the project. This probably will not change as long as such prevention is the goal of the blocking policy. If you want another goal, that's a matter for community consensus, not for emotion-driven change or for something to be imposed on us from above.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:17, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

None of what you describe is an issue. No one's suggesting we start blocking established users who provide a voluntary resolution. That is not what WP:UNBLOCKABLES are. I find it hard to believe that you are unfamiliar with the concept. ~Swarm~ {sting} 00:23, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • To me, the problem is not about defining what we need to be safe from. We already have long-standing policies on civility, NPA and blocking, that, if robustly enforced and applied to all editors, regardless of length of service etc, would reduce the incivility and personal attacks. I know there are problems with civil POV-pushing and other insidious issues that are not as hard to define or deal with, but let's deal with this first. It is not ok to to tell another editor to "fuck off" or call another editor a "bitch", and there needs to be consequences for editors who are uncivil or who make personal attacks. As admins, we need to respond to breaches of the first two policies more robustly and stop unblocking editors who have been blocked for incivility and personal attacks, and I think we need to deter editors from incivility and personal attacks by making deterrence blocks more common with editors who are repeating this behaviour after being warned not to. Once people get the idea that their behaviour will no longer be condoned by admins, they will behave better. Failure to robustly enforce existing policies is at the heart of dealing with incivility and personal attacks, and improved enforcement of our key behavioural policies would make this place safer to a significant degree. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:25, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
I know there are problems with civil POV-pushing and other insidious issues that are not as hard to define or deal with, but let's deal with this first. It is not ok to to tell another editor to "fuck off" This was addressed in an RFC at WT:CIVIL last year. The vast majority of editors who said "Yeah, block anyone who says fuck off" were themselves either civil POV-pushers, supporters of civil POV-pushers, opponents of those who were being harassed by civil POV-pushers, or people who showed up too late and weren't aware of the context in which the RFC was opened. Context always matters, and saying things like there needs to be consequences for editors who are uncivil or who make personal attacks while also saying "we'll get to the civil POV-pusher problem at some later date" is counterproductive. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:38, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree with User:Vanamonde93's statements re: no shop culture and this may have contributed to some editors leaving. User:Mmyers1976 cited this in his statement why he left: "and an admin's response is "X makes those kinds of comments at ANI. Everybody knows it, and now you do too. He's being snarky, not uncivil. Stop paying attention and it won't bother you". I don't know whether this was indeed the case, but the perception of what the user did as being uncivil was enough to make Mmeyers1976 leave. See also User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_211. WhisperToMe (talk) 20:39, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

So...

Did WMF T&S ever even acknowledge being in the wrong? Did they promise not to do it again? All I read afterwards was Jimbo saying they won't do it again. Sorry, that's not good enough. Jimbo is the co-founder but the reality is that he currently does not run the show. He's a board member. That's all. I fail to see where there was any real remedy of the situation, and with the current Ritchie situation, it seems that the troubling aspects of the Fram case are becoming the new norm. Just to quell the inevitable comments, I am not a Fram supporter (I was not even familiar with him or her before this ruckus began), and I do not support "harassment" (if that's what Fram is/was accused of). I am merely an editor troubled by the current environment. Enigmamsg 23:44, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

The Board, in a unanimous resolution, instructed the WMF to have T&S only work within their previous scope ("legal issues, threats of violence, cross-wiki abuse, and child protection issues"...), "until consultation and agreement between T&S and the community are achieved". The Board is the ultimate corporate authority of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Executive Director also suspended the new powers T&S gave themselves (temporary and partial bans). I doubt T&S thinks they did anything wrong, but they're not in charge, so... --Yair rand (talk) 00:18, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
IMO we should wait for Arbcom to finish, and only then start talkiung about what T&S has and has not said. For all we know they have a heartfelt apology -- or a clear assertion that they were 100% right -- in the can waiting to be published, and they are for now staying silent so as not to compromise the Arbcom case. Or perhaps they are waiting to see if Arbcom will do what they want done and plan to step in and override Arbcom if they don't get the answer they want. No matter what is in the future (where did I put that crystal ball?) it is too soon to make demands such as the one above. This is not going away. We have plenty of time. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:35, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
Agree with Guy - there is no point going over anything until arb case is published and we can see how it plays out then. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:54, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
I agree too. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:56, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
Also agreed. So long as they do keep their noses out, I'm not interested in demanding an apology or admission of wrongdoing from anyone. The main thing is that this doesn't happen again. If they just want to quietly keep out, that's fine by me—and if they don't, well, then that's a problem regardless of what they may have said. The only thing I'm interested in is their future actions (or, preferably, lack thereof). Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:17, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

All of this agreeing with me is making me lightheaded. Would somebody please call me a betwetting Marmite-eating pedophile Nazi so I can get back to the Internet I am used to? --Guy Macon (talk) 21:43, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

As you wish. And you misspelled bedwetting (unless it's something else that you wetted).[FBDB] --Tryptofish (talk) 21:45, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
I'd avoid the pedophile part - we don't want you know who showing up. :-) — Ched :  ?  — 21:49, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
Too late. I've already denounced reported him. But that's top-secret, so nobody here knows. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:52, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
Does this mean the strike is over? Can I leave the picket line? This sign is getting heavy! ―Buster7 ☎ 05:23, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes, the strike is over, since Fram is in good hands now. Κσυπ Cyp   08:45, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
I had thought he had written "pedalophile" and was preparing to stake him out in the Gobi Desert with dried pasta shapes... LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:31, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
(Sighs with relief) now that's the Internet I know and love! Not only did I get a snarky spelling comment, but I even got a snarky comment about a spelling error I didn't make! Thanks, everybody. All is right with the world...   :)   --Guy Macon (talk) 17:35, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Enigma refers to a "Ritchie situation". What is this about? Can you help out with a link? ---<)kmk(>- (talk) 15:52, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

That would be Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration_motion_regarding_Ritchie333_and_Praxidicae.Nigel Ish (talk) 15:57, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. -<)kmk(>- (talk) 16:02, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
  • There is an important new piece of information that has emerged, and it will likely be of interest to editors following this discussion. At the talk page of the ArbCom case about Fram, one of the Arbs has stated that the documents from T&S indicate that there apparently had never been any issue of misconduct by Fram off-site. In other words, it appears that all of the conduct in question has always been what editors can see here, on-wiki. (There are off-wiki communications that ArbCom cannot reveal from the T&S document, but the conduct about which the complaints were made was all on-wiki.) --Tryptofish (talk) 16:05, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
    Hmm. That makes Jan's statement on behalf of T&S rather questionable since it very clearly implied off-wiki conduct was a concern… --Xover (talk) 16:17, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
    Is that new information? My impression was that the whole matter was about offwiki complaints about onwiki behaviour. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:39, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
    I know that numerous editors, including me, have said that we don't see much evidence of ban-worthy conduct on-wiki, but that we were willing to AGF that maybe T&S were aware of things that could not be seen on-wiki. And until now, the issue was left unanswered. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:42, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
    @Jo-Jo Eumerus and Tryptofish: It's not a matter of AGFing. In "Jan Eissfeldt update (06/21/2019)", Jan wrote … despite efforts … to scrutinize the contributions …, the community does not and cannot have all the facts of this case (emphasis and elisions mine). The only reasonable inference from the assertion that community scrutiny of edit histories cannot uncover "all the facts of this case" is that evidence relevant to Fram's ban is not actually present on-wiki. That is, Jan is here pretty much outright asserting that the case involved off-wiki conduct by Fram; and asserting that Fram was lying in their plain statement—posted prior to Jan's statement, and brought to their attention several times—that this was not the case. Fram (and others) had also repeatedly asked T&S to confirm (or deny) whether the case was only regarding on-wiki behaviour or not.
    Ever since that statement it has been clear that either Jan or Fram was lying (feel free to insert a euphemism, the net effect is the same under the circumstances). If ArbCom's evidence does not involve off-wiki behaviour—or redactions mentioning off-wiki evidence that can't be shared—that means either it was Jan who was lying, or T&S is withholding crucial evidence from them (and, by extension, us). --Xover (talk) 18:36, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
    Xover, there are other possibilities, depending on what evidence might be considered relevant. If, say, some contributor is so upset about my scrutiny of their edits or my block of their account that they attempt suicide, or if somebody talks to the press about what I did to them, then these things are off-wiki, but not related to my off-wiki behaviour. Even if everything I did is onwiki, the effect my onwiki behaviour on others may be only visible off-wiki. So maybe neither of Jan and Fram has been lying, Jan just has other information about the alleged offwiki effects of Fram's onwiki behaviour. —Kusma (t·c) 19:20, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
    That may be true, but then, any such "off-wiki" effects are strictly irrelevant to the case. We sanction people for what they do, not for how other people react to what they do. Jan implied that there was off-wiki information relevant to the judgment of Fram's case. The only evidence that could possibly be relevant to the judgment of Fram's case is evidence about what Fram did. So he clearly – and deliberately – invited the inference that there must be evidence about problematic off-wiki behavior of Fram, and that was a lie (even if hidden behind a smokescreen of semantic ambiguity and "plausible deniability"). Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:31, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
    It's pretty clear that the conduct by Fram that is relevant here was entirely on-wiki, regardless of off-wiki complaints about it. The discussion to which I'm referring is at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Fram#Update to timelines. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:46, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

I am trying to think of a scenario, no matter how unlikely, where the claims "the community does not and cannot have all the facts of this case" and "ArbCom's evidence does not involve off-wiki behaviour" could both be true. The only ones I can imagine are somebody (either Fram or his accusers) using an undisclosed sockpuppet account, or on-wiki evidence that has been oversighted or otherwise removed from the history. Can anyone think of a third possibility?

As for the first possibility, it is hard to imagine T&S suddenly becoming skilled at SPIs. As for the second, has anything Fram ever posted been removed from the history? If so, could someone with appropriate rights to view the deleted material please give us a general description (without revealing too much) about what was deleted and why? --Guy Macon (talk) 21:13, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

I think this is implied in your question, but it seems to me that the only plausible scenario is that T&S were hiding behind there were complaints submitted privately to "justify" their saying the Wikipedia community cannot know all the facts, and that implied, at best, that there might have been off-wiki harassment, something that Fram has denied all along. Now we know what it really was: innuendo. Shameful. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:27, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
"You want the facts? You cannot handle have the facts!" ... "Oh, hi, Mr Jim? Hand it over?" ... "Oh I see, yes you are Sirius, not Shirley. Of course." (Apologies for the levity. Maybe the only undisclosed fact was the identities of the complainants [not meaning that in a necessarily bad way; can't think of a better term - litigants? supplicants?]. If all the interactions happened on-wiki and can be examined by whomever cares to comb through Fram's contrib's, then the only unknown is which were the specific things he wrote that were so bad as to attract the one-year ban.) Pelagic (talk) 13:56, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes, like Guy, I was wondering if maybe there was something that has been super-deleted. Pelagic (talk) 13:56, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Pelagic, This theory was posed before, and others with advanced permissions have said there's nothing that was deleted/oversighted that could conceivably have precipitated this. Enigmamsg 21:45, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, Enigma, I hadn't seen those posts. Pelagic (talk) 12:31, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

"...tensions might emerge..."

Tensions might emerge.

"Q4a. Could this Recommendation have a negative impact/change?

Some editors might not agree on the need of content diversity and continue deleting articles based on notability reasoning and tensions might emerge."

Source: The Wikimedia Foundation

Tensions might emerge? You think? Just because the WMF is proposing that we throw Wikipedia:Notability in the trash? What other policies will have to be discarded? --Guy Macon (talk) 06:17, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
My reading of the various bits about "marginalized knowledge" says to me that they aren't the biggest fan of WP:RS.--Wehwalt (talk) 06:31, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Wehwalt, there was a question in the original survey; about whether RS policy shall be broadened and redesigned :-) ∯WBGconverse 06:56, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Online translator from Newspeak to English says that "broadened and redesigned" means "gutted".--Wehwalt (talk) 07:27, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Indeed. This clearly echoes the kinds of ideas that were explored in, for instance, the "Whose Knowledge" project, which aimed to promote Wikipedia coverage of "marginalized" communities such as the Dalit in India. In one of their reports, they bitterly complained about how "toxic, long-term Wikipedians" attempted to hold them to Wikipedia policies such as Verifiability, when they tried to source their articles to "oral citations, non-peer-reviewed Western academic journals, websites, videos, or traditional knowledge". Doing that apparently meant making them "re-live the trauma of [their] offline lives online". In an on-wiki version of that report, they omitted the bit where they admitted actually trying to circumvent verifiability policy, but still voiced the same complaints about experiencing "harassment" and traumatization. That project was funded with 48,000 USD by the Wikimedia Foundation. It's an organized, systematic assault on our Verifiability policy. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:34, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Anybody interested about the aforementioned "Whose Knowledge" circus (who seem to have influenced this strategy-recommendation) can read this thread followed by this report. ∯WBGconverse 09:06, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Hey, why they are trying to shut-off the WP:Verifyability? This is the core policy of Wikimedia! It applies to every person, whatever gender,color,tribe,religion he is. DO they mean that the poor written, advertising articles that minimise a gap must be kept, and the other with the same problems that do not minimise it must be deleted? I don't want to say that we must delete all the articles that minimize that gaps (by god!), but i want to say that 1)the verifiability policy must be kept, and 2) ALL ARTICLES MUST BE TREATED WITH THE SAME WHAY, REGARDLESS THEIR TOPIC! Eni vak (speak) 12:57, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
I think this is a positive change. We have a very western centric contract of verifiability and notability. Now go ahead and hate me :P --[E.3][chat2][me] 14:12, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
For More info on my developing opinions about these changes see my user or rewritten commons essay. Feel free to chat about them. I really think its difficult to have a diverse, worldwide project with such strict sourcing guidelines. --[E.3][chat2][me] 15:48, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Your linked essay has nothing to do with verifiability that I can see and indeed seems to be mostly serving no purpose at all. - Sitush (talk) 15:52, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Commons essay about inclusion in commons for images and warning templates for new uploads. "No purpose at all" isn't very nice. Sourcing guidelines essay to follow for enwiki, after I have more time and network more. But I in general agree with the WMF, and decolonizing the project. As per User:Ocaasi (WMF)If we are to take our mission seriously, we have to look outside of what comes naturally to us based on our demographics. We have to ask harder questions about – not just who made Wikipedia, but who didn’t. Who’s been excluded? Who’s been pushed to the margins? And how we fix that? --[E.3][chat2][me] 16:14, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
E.3, the issue you cite on Commons has nothing to do with whatever a buzzword like "decolonizing" anything means (if, indeed, it means anything). It had to do with Russian copyright law, mainly the freedom of panorama. I will agree that copyright law is absolutely hideously complex, but unfortunately there is nothing Wikimedia can do about that—it's literally law. Now, it is entirely possible that WMF could help with things like advocating for simplification and liberalization of copyright law, and I'd support them 100% in doing so. But unless Russia's government decides to provide for FOP of sculptures in Russia, there is literally nothing anyone on Wikimedia could have done to change that outcome. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:45, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
yeah maybe a bad singular example I didn't want to link to every single warning (about 20+, all good faith, most often of my own images published elsewhere on the net). with minimal to no welcome on enwiki, and a lot of WP:UNCIVIL. just gave that one example and suggested to make the warning template nicer. And there was a solution for that image, just moving it to Wikivoyage, years later. Ancient history but there's many ways to think about inclusion, coming as an editor priviliged in some respects but marginalised in other domains. I have a few thoughts. Sourcing needs thought. I dont have the necessary political nous, I just support the general WMF direction. --[E.3][chat2][me] 17:01, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
But decolonisation isn't a buzzword, I agree 100% with this statement: the internet doesn’t represent our diversity. The knowledge of marginalized communities is the knowledge of the majority of the world. Yet most online public knowledge still skews towards white, male, and global North knowledge. It is a hidden crisis of our times.--[E.3][chat2][me] 17:04, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes, we all agree that this is a problem, and we all support reasonable attempts to solve the problem. Scrapping our policies on notability and reliable sources is not a reasonable attempt to solve the problem. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:21, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Exactly. For example, one proposal in this lot suggested starting a separate WMF project to host spoken content, with an especial focus on preserving oral histories from smaller languages and cultures. That type of thing is an excellent idea, and I'll support it all day long. It could even be done under WMF auspices; it just wouldn't be on Wikipedia, since that is beyond Wikipedia's scope. And the whole point of this project is that there shouldn't be "white" knowledge, or "male" knowledge—there should just be knowledge, and knowledge should belong to everyone. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:25, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes, Seraphimblade! Oral histories with volunteer transcription and translation. Could be machine-aided (if AI services are available for the relevant languages), or could form corpora for training machine-learning efforts on under-represented languages. Just like how Wikibooks works with human-reviewed OCR. And, like Wikibooks, a separate project with its own rules about what qualifies for inclusion. There would already be academic groups using oral recordings in ethnology, history, and linguistics, but if WMF wants to try a crowd-sourced repository, then they should go for it. — Pelagic (talk) 11:30, 12 August 2019 (UTC) [I hope that boldface strong emphasis is not too heavy.]
Decolonization, in the genre of historiography, alludes to the postcolonial (and/or subaltern) school of thought. It is a highly reputed discipline and I am personally acquainted with a few many leading scholars in the domain.
But, I am vague as to what decolonizing knowledge means from a generic perspective barring a non-feasible and selective extension of the above school to Wikipedia (WhoseKnowledge version); need to read this and other relevant scholarships. ∯WBGconverse 19:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

In its essence Diversity recommendation #2 is that WMF establish metrics to measure content by identity group attributes like LGBTQness: "This would guide and help them cover the unrepresented concepts and points of view, whether they are related to gender, countries, LGBT+, culture, historically marginalized communities, among others." The best thing about Wikipedia is that we don't know anything about the identity group of any other editor, so each idea and edit must be judged on its own merits, without regard to whether it is written by a man, woman, woman posing as a man, a cis man, a trans woman, etc. In essence, recommendation #2 seems to contemplate people self-identifying as certain identity groups and then in some manner to be determined in the future, measuring the extent to which the editorial content of the NPOV encyclopedia reflect the views proportionately of the various identity groups. This is very troubling. Perhaps the WMF could explain, because it seems to me that my sexual orientation is none of the WMF's business. Hlevy2 (talk) 17:39, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Maybe for you, I'm happy to flag as LGBTQ with ADHD, but with white privilege. I think that should count when discussing controversial issues. I noticed with another editors unblock request, a comment, I strongly suggest that you focus on something else as your mental problems are irrelevant to any unblock request or your edits at Wikipedia - there's opportunity for inclusion and respecting of various views but consensus process as it stands favours a privileged status quo. Also my main problem with sourcing includes well-established news outlets is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact... BBC News, Reuters, Interfax, Agence France-Presse, United Press International or the Associated Press also Questionable sources are those that have a poor reputation for checking the facts... determined by consensus, which favours and entrenches the global north status quo. --[E.3][chat2][me] 17:51, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
E.3, it has always been a fascinating thing to me that many people who claim to care about other cultures, casually insult and denigrate them in the process of "caring" so much about them. I do not for a second believe that caring about accuracy is limited to the "global north status quo" and that other cultures are somehow not capable of that. (Of course, one would expect most editors to be from the "global north", as 90% of all human beings are from it.) But I think other cultures are entirely capable of also caring about accurate information, and the policies of using only reliable sources is how we have ensured that for coming up two decades. Does that mean some things get excluded, even though they are true, because they can't be verified to be correct? Yes, it does. But that was not to do anything except to allow us to be certain that the information we are presenting, to a large worldwide audience, is correct. And we have a fundamental duty to do everything in our power to ensure that what we say is indeed accurate. If we accept unverifiable information, we will have failed our readers in a very fundamental way. Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:40, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Seraphimblade I am not intending to denigrate or insult at all, I sincerely apologise for any offence felt by anyone reading, this is an evolving discussion, and I again note my white privilege. What I'm stating is that the bulk of editors (being from high income English speaking countries - a better term than global north) will have unconscious bias towards the reliability of sources that are established in these countries, particularly in enwiki. So while any editor for any culture can and should advocate for reliability of international sources, the consensus process, especially in WP:AfD, in my limited opinion will inherently favour the reliability of established well known sources from the anglosphere, or Western Europe. As it states in WP:RS well-established news outlets is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact... BBC News, Reuters, Interfax, Agence France-Presse, United Press International or the Associated Press. For a simple but not the best example, in my humble opinion, see this current deletion discussion. --[E.3][chat2][me] 03:15, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
E.3, okay? It was in pretty rough shape when it was nominated. Non-English sources are okay, so long as they meet the normal criteria for reliability. (Though at least one had so much godawful flashing crap on it I could barely even stand to look at it). But that's not anyone picking on some poor Iranian institution for sinister motives. Various divisions and branches of American universities get found to be non-notable all the time, and are merged or redirected to the parent institution. I've closed a whole lot of discussions that did exactly that. So, it's not exactly unusual for a university branch's notability to be challenged, even for very well-known American and British institutions. That's just normal article curation; it's nothing sinister, and in this case it looks like it may well wind up being kept anyway. But really, there isn't a conspiracy, and those who go looking for some problem will often find it whether it actually exists or not. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:12, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
I'm not saying its a conspiracy just unconscious bias. Check out Template:New_York_University - the whole university system has 51,848 students, how many articles? cf. the nominated deletion. I struggle to see it any other way. I am not looking for a problem, it is an obvious problem, that the WMF are entirely correct to attempt to address. Same with the Framban. We can argue about methods until the cows come home, but their overall direction has my strong support. --[E.3][chat2][me] 04:38, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Same thing is true of recommendation #4 which would impose a 40%:40%:20% quota on "all governing bodies of the Foundation and its stakeholders" so that 40% are male, 40% are female, and 20% are " community members from various age groups; with disabilities; of varying language groups; from indigenous communities, the LGBT community, various racial and ethnic communities; of different socio-economic levels, etc." This would hold true even if the population sought to be represented is no where near this distribution. How about instead, having all members of the body being democratically selected based upon their leadership skills and their commitment to a NPOV reliably sourced encyclopedia? Again, since nobody knows what the identity group attributes are of any editor, this could not possibly work. Hlevy2 (talk) 17:54, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Hlevy2, they also propose to introduce this quota upon admins, crats and ArbCom. Given that admins and crats are elected on an individual basis, how shall we enforce quotas upon them? If two male admins get elected in succession, throw all prospective male admins into a wait-list unless we get a competent female admin to run and get elected? Or shall we shift to some annual election for admins?! ∯WBGconverse 19:20, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Winged Blades of Godric, I think that we have similar positions. As I understand it, WMF would force en:WP to adopt a rule to put a 40:40:20 quota on admins. Since admins are probably more than 40% male at the present time, no further male candidates could be considered at a RfA unless they claimed that they had some special attribute, like social-economic status, or a grandchild of an immigrant or Asperger's that would add to the "diversity" of the admin corps. Once 60% of the admin corps identified as male, then no further candidates could be considered at RfA unless they claimed to be female or non-binary. If existing admins refused to self-identify as male, then the rule would be unenforceable, because we would never know if we reached 40%. Please explain to me how this would not constitute discrimination on the basis of sex. Hlevy2 (talk) 17:37, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Diversity recommendation #6 seeks to destroy editor privacy: "That user pages are not plain text but contain parameterized self-declared characteristics and roles so that 1) we can so we can assess diversity in user types and incentivize it and 2) editors can search more easily for other users according to roles and affinities." Do editors have to report their "affinities" and "self-declared characteristics" truthfully or at all? During World War II, Jews had to wear a designation on their clothing, and some non-Jews wore the same symbol to show solidarity with the Jews. This is all too Orwellian. The simple way to prevent discrimination based upon race, religion, gender, nationality, age or gender expression is to have everyone edit under an assumed name and then DO NOT ASK or TELL about your "affinities" or "self-declared characteristics." Hlevy2 (talk) 18:35, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

the internet doesn’t represent our diversity. The knowledge of marginalized communities is the knowledge of the majority of the world.

Unless that sentence is unpacked, no one can respond to it because it can be read as meaning two different propositions. So if you want input, explain which one represents your opinion.Nishidani (talk) 19:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

In the above discussion, Seraphimblade correctly points out "We have a fundamental duty to do everything in our power to ensure that what we say is indeed accurate. If we accept unverifiable information, we will have failed our readers in a very fundamental way." Actually it is even worse than that. If certain material is included despite failing our notability and reliable sources policies, it won't just be some oral history from an indigenous tribesman that gets presented as fact. Western capitalists wishing to advertise their products and services will do whatever it takes to meet whatever requirements we create. Subverting rules is a time-honored tradition when doing so is profitable. Create a preference for female-owned businesses? Suddenly a bunch of white guys transfer ownership to their wives. Minority-owned businesses? Suddenly a black guy "owns" the business even though the white guy calls the shots and keeps the profits. Make a rule that we only allow refugees from a particular country if they are children, female, or gay adult males? Suddenly over 90% of the males applying are gay. As one famous pirate said, "The last three ships we took proved to be manned entirely by orphans, and so we had to let them go. One would think that Great Britain’s mercantile navy was recruited solely from her orphan asylums." --Guy Macon (talk) 21:14, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

  • I'm reasonably confident that dispensing with our sourcing requirements would be reversed after the inevitable Seigenthaler incident. I suspect, based on various past incidents such as my experience as a volunteer doing QA on the Visual Editor all those years back is that the WMF, in their habitual punching down style when dealing with volunteers, will blame the volunteers when the inevitable happens. The difference between this scandal and Framgate, is that I think we have a good chance of getting a viable fork for the project if the reason is to maintain sourcing standards. The difficulty is over SUL. But if the WMF really wants a gender balanced community, maybe they'd let us fork away in an amicable split and have a separate wiki within SUL? ϢereSpielChequers 21:18, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm tense already. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:47, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Commons would almost certainly fork over the license issue, and I suspect several projects, like es.wikipedia and de.wikipedia, would as well. Many editors here would leave over the power grabs in other areas, especially if they try to force changes to the notability and verifiability policies—our editorial independence, even from the WMF, has always been sacrosanct, and I suspect even many of those who favor WMF intervening in behavioral matters would draw the line at them mandating content decisions. If they actually, in one stroke, destroy the verifiability and licensing requirements, I think that just might alienate enough of the community to make a fork viable. That would perhaps be one of the most breathtakingly destructive acts of incompetence I've ever seen, and I've seen people bring down million-dollar machines. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:05, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
    • I’ve always rolled my eyes over the idea that anything could actually cause WP to truly fork, but those recommendations, if they came to fruition, might just do it. Many of them depend on editors giving up privacy to be part of any consensus process or even be admins. They actually call for the creation of advocacy groups that can wield some kind of policy based powers to push POVs. The one smart thing they suggest is the WMF to stop wasting money and actually put it towards an academic pursuit in digitizing primary documents before they are lost. That’s a great use of money for a foundation that purports to wanting to spread knowledge by making more documents accessible to researchers. They then blunder in suggesting that these primary documents can then be used by editors to create articles. Pretty much the antithesis of an encyclopedia. Random editors playing at being academic researchers and synthesizing primary sources is already a problem. These recommendations seem to seek to enshrine synthesis as policy. It would be an utter shit show. Capeo (talk) 23:11, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Is anyone aware, really? I just lurk these days, but I have a bunch of stuff on my watch list and I wouldn’t have noticed it if Guy hadn’t posted on Jimbo’s page. You’d think that the WMF recommending such fundamental changes would be a bit more visible. Capeo (talk) 00:46, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I do speak Spanish but am not familiar with the structure of es.wikipedia, but I'll take a look over there. (I don't speak German, any German speakers here who want to check out de?) Here's the notice left on Commons, though: [6]. Very anodyne, made to look like just the regular WMF dicking around with about half a million "surveys", and looks very deliberately constructed for no one to care. Absolutely nothing to indicate that such massive changes are proposed (and no mention of the licensing changes, which one would think Commons, especially, would certainly take interest in). This seems like an attempt to pull a Hitchhiker's Guide style "But the plans were on display...". Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:02, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Not unlike this FRAMBAN thing, with T&S pointing to Meta discussions and decisions that extended T&S’s purview, that were apparently considered announced and accepted, when 99% of editors don’t even touch Meta or have any idea what’s happening there. Capeo (talk) 01:32, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
  • You'd think they'd've learned by now that barely anybody gives a shit about Meta-Wiki, and that they should have cross-posted something like this to the major wikis before doing this shit. I'm starting to come to the conclusion the WMF needs to either be disbanded or its headcount drastically reduced to those who have no interest in quite blatant powergrabs and an innate interest in actual community discussion. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 01:35, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't give a damn about Meta either. The only reason I happened to notice is because I saw it float by on the mailing list, and wondered idly what they're wasting their time on generating valuable reports and data for this time around. I mean, I'm damn glad I did look, but it's an absolute fluke that I did. I notified the editor on the German Wikipedia who left a comment at this discussion. Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:37, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Most of these dunderheaded recommendations have a ten year plus implementation period (and ridiculous spelling errors) but the idea that the WMF should set universal policies, taking them out of the hands of individual wikis, looks to be quicker. Set by a bunch of unqualified ladder climbing editors. Look whose in those recommendation groups. It’s impossible to take anything the WMF does seriously until it can escape its own nepotism. How it’s survived this long boggles the mind. Capeo (talk) 02:01, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
@Jéské Couriano: Thanks to this discussion, I found about it and just wrote an article in the german Signpost equivalent about this. Now dewiki is aware. --Tinz (talk) 14:15, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Tinz, thanks. It seems the notification process has been...suboptimal, to say the least. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:10, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Glad to have helped, even if it was in a very minor manner. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 00:44, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Strategically and practically I don't think tensions mean anything to this WMF. As with most current power/control idealogues, only removal from their joysticks works...that's it. And you better do it quick because they are only going to get worse.
In case you haven't noticed it, nonsense and confusion are already the norm in most organizations. You need to castrate and/or fire the current WMF ASAP, imo. There's no reasoning with people off their rocker, even if they are becoming more the norm...they are still not thinking straight. Nocturnalnow (talk) 03:55, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
  • some oral history from an indigenous tribesman that gets presented as fact - I suspect this is the major issue, in terms of inclusion. As Westerners, myself included, if something is published in Nature or The Guardian or the New York Times, I subject it to less critical analysis by nature of the brand. Why? It's just a brand. I was raised like that, and other's weren't. Thats the point. The very nature of what is a "facts" is extremely subjective, always subject to fallible humans interpretation. Having said that, I don't advocate presenting fringe theories at all, simply expanding who we consider to be reliable, especially in terms of history. The winners write history. Perhaps we shouldn't defer to the winners, especially in marginalised cultures.[1]m
  1. ^ Oct 2018, Patrick D. Nunn / 18 (2018-10-18). "The Oldest True Stories in the World". SAPIENS. Retrieved 2019-08-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Using high quality sources is the foundation of Wiki Project Med. It is our strongest and most essential guideline in this topic area. It is how we not only deal with undisclosed paid editors pushing their clients products but also those pushing links between vaccines and autism etc. If there is an attempt to remove such requirements it will not go down well. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:06, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

    • yes User:Doc James but the whole debate is what is a reliable source. In medicine I accept WP:MEDRS, as the best we have despite the flaws such as the replication crisis. However in history, philosophy, society, etc, we can become more inclusionist. We can certainly deal with undisclosed paid editors and the like, exactly the same way, whilst expanding what is a reliable source. That's the fundamental debate as far as I understand, and its an exciting debate worth having, and why I am supportive of the WMF approaching this from this perspective. --[E.3][chat2][me] 08:26, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
I know what you are alluding to. Let me enlist a concrete example. The gifted historian Niall Ferguson is, for all of his prodigious learning, a moral moron, a psychological illiterate,- defects which ruin his quest to be a writer of the first order in his chosen field- thinks whatever devastation modernity and globalization wrought on 10,000 traditional societies, it was to the good, because people eat more within the Western global system of production than they did as pre-colonial 'primitives'. Civilization is essentially the finacialization of everything from resources to human needs, and the only rationality that ensures it is a short-term return on invested capital.

Five years ago, members of the Nukak-Makú unexpectedly wandered out of the Amazonian rainforest at San José del Guaviare in Colombia. The Nukak were a tribe that time forgot, cut off from the rest of humanity until this sudden emergence. Subsisting solely on the monkeys they could hunt and the fruit they could gather, they had no concept of money. Revealingly, they had no concept of the future either. These days they live in a clearing near the city, reliant for their subsistence on state handouts. Asked if they miss the jungle, they laugh. After lifetimes of trudging all day in search of food, they are amazed that perfect strangers now give them all they need and ask nothing from them in return. Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, 2009 p.15

This would be comical in its proud insouciance to the available ethno-historical records on the Nukak, were it not tragic, since it underwrites their continued dispossession. It is a wonderful evolutionary leap in the quality of native Amazonian life to lose one's rights to 500 sq.miles of forest, one's culture, language, and traditions in exchange for an opportunity to panhandle in rags for a daily piece of grub as afringe-dweller in a modern slum. Feruguson doesn't know they'd been hunted out of their realm for 200 years, shotgunned by chain-sawing carpet-baggers and syphilitic golddiggers. Irrelevant. They can now beg in some broken creole instead of learning how to fish and forage, and singing immemorial songs in some extraordinary rich native idiom over a campfire.
But from that crap, issued by the foremost theoretical spokesman for the hidden hand of positivist history, to the reality of ethnography is a huge step, long taken by generations of scholars, not infrequently in close dialogue with members of the very cultures one would call marginalized.
I.e. Your argument embodies the 'expressivist' view of cultural relativism. All cultures express themselves: western civilization expresses itself while also engaged in the delusion that it is describing objectively its colonized 'others. There is, the thesis holds, no qualitative difference between the results (always provisory and subject to both peer-critique and the informant community's feedback) of an anthropological work, and whatever a marginalized modern member of any community may say. They must have equal weight.
It doesn't matter that they are engaged in two different forms of discourse. The professional method of the former long stressed 'salvage anthropology and linguistics'. One went out to the elders, those still fluent in the indigenous language(s) and with memories of ritual, cosmology, myth and survival craftlore, to get down knowledge that was threatened with extinction as the people and their traditions suffered the massive inflections of devastating loss from genocide, land 'expropriation, forced 're-education', adaptation to the exigencies of the global economy, conversion to some national language and Eurocentric religion.
The latter, more often than not, belong to different historical societies, frequently marked by fragmentation, fragility, abuse, intermarriage that melds two radically distinct cultures, in which the children's language conserves only a few words of either speechform, by disruption of contact with the rich myth-invested landscape of their forefathers, which they must abandon to work in factories, or as deracinated illegals for vast agricultural combines. Each family will have different memories of the past, a community is a mosaic of such memories, which are then, rightfully, galvanized in modern political movements to regain rights, and retrieve the lost integrity of the whilom past.
Both realities, the reconstructed idealtypus of a pre-contact culture and the highly mobile, ever oppressed, communities of the dispossessed, are the object of extensive research. Neglect one, and you will find a young PhD candidate out there pursuing the documentation, if only, the cynic will say, to get tenure as a white in a white knowledge structure. Anyone who actually reads the literature knows that a vast assortment of journals, monographs, articles, books are dedicated to taking down, when not describing or theorizing about, what marginal communities think, make political struggles over.
Any emarginalized groups has my instinctive sympathies and support. The internet, activist associations, whatever provide numerous outlets to document their realities. An encyclopedic vision of this radically innovative kind has other ends. Its fundamental principle is distant from advocacy, lobbies, social forums, sites to redress wrongs. It has a primary obligation to provide instant access to highly reliable informed neutral material in every known field of human endeavor and accomplishment - it is an alternative school available to anyone, from Terra del Fuego to Inuit Land, from the Chukchee to the Sotho, who can dial up an internet connection. The volunteers who do this don't normally junket around, attend conferences to mend the world. They sit on their arses trying to ensure that whatever the infinite audience out there will read is not anecdotal, autobiography, personal ranting, deft political pamphleteering, but verifiable by communities of scholars or people who have taken on board the methods set down for wikipedians, of whatever persuasion, gender, class. That is difficult because strong knowledge of anything is hard-won. Grievance that requires redress - we all have grievances - (even the rich manorial lords of my forefather's Ireland found the visibility of villagers trudging up to the backdoor of their residences to work in the scullery a blight on their landscape and disruptive of a good breakfast and its digestion) have the vast internet at their disposal. Don't contaminate this small island of sanity with it. The solution here already exists. Ignored? Roll up one's sleeves, sit down and reads deeply on whatever is missing, and write a comprehensive article on the topic, adequate to the best criteria we have. It's called work, and is far more practical than endless cantankerous whining or office politics to force others to come round to one's private view of the world Nishidani (talk) 10:52, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi @Nishidani: I think your comments on this subject here and elsewhere could be very valuable input into the overall discussion on Meta, in my view - would you care to express them there as well? Thanks, The Land (talk) 09:53, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. That is kind of you. I scarcely have the spare time to read through the one or two discussions I follow on wiki, let alone glance over anything beyond, such as meta. All I can say is to advise discussants to familiarize themselves with the relevant anthropological and sociological literature n(even the sociology of anthropological knowledge) which is vast, and which my remarks only reflect a tiny tip of the iceberg. All of these issues have been intensely analysed for several decades. My worry was that the two or three papers, in part sponsored by the WMF, showed no awareness of the this, but circled around commonplace generalizations about 'white epistemic hegemony' I heard or read every other day, in books, articles or technical discussions by, yeah, 'white(wo)men.' Regards.Nishidani (talk) 12:16, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

  • I strongly disagree about this "straying a bit out of the scope of this page". This was never just about Fram. This is about the WMF flexing its muscles and trying to take over aspects of running Wikipedia that have been in the hands of the community from the start. It is about the WMF blocking editors without revealing why. It is about the WMF threatening to impose diversity quotas. It is about the WMF threatening to scrap some of our basic policies. In other words it is the WMF deciding that they know better how to run an encyclopedia than the community does, and about the WMF ramming their vision down our throats. And, I might add, the follow-up strategy of claiming that something published on WMF-controlled meta and written by people with "(WMF}" in their user name who collect paychecks from the WMF -- all with no disclaimer -- are somehow "not really" the WMF is transparent and laughable. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:00, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I was following you until "It is about the WMF threatening to impose diversity quotas", which has no relation to banning Fram as far as I can see. – Teratix ₵ 02:28, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Framgate is essentially about a precisian's obsessive concern for quality and verifiability. The ban arose in the context of off-wiki managerial proposals to abolish both, by opening up the encyclopedia to anyone self-identifying with a minority grievance. The section theme is knowledge and marginalized communities. My bit may be WP:TLDR, but anyone can always exercise the option of giving it the flick pass.Nishidani (talk) 12:13, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
I read it and disagree. Work is overrated. Einstein credits his accomplishments to thinking rather than working, "thought experiments". His contributions clearly prove that there are absolutes, even when it comes to relativity, and that's what the encyclopedia does, identify absolutes. Now the absolutes may change, but for the moment they are absolute, and any attempt to "diversify" an absolute only serves to prop up people who can not or will not deal with the absolute of the moment. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:14, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
I mean if we're setting up wishlists for WP:V, I'd like to see for-profit news media sources no longer allowable. Simonm223 (talk) 17:17, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps a quota assuring fair representation of content creators would be more valuable than a gender-based quota. If the goal is to encourage content creation and minimize tensions between management and editors, an alternative step would be to adopt a quota on all boards, committees, admins and 'crats that would make them reflect the editor base. Approximately 86% of account holders create content, so the WMF and all affiliates should adopt a rule that at least 86% of all office holders, committee members, admins and 'crats be active content creators. In this manner, by 2030 the allocation of resources and policies would be much more friendly to content creators. Of course, we would need to establish a good definition of content creation that would excluded low level administrative editing. There is no demonstrated connection between the number of women in these positions and filling the gender gap. In contrast, the assertion that a content-creator governance structure would enhance content creation is beyond doubt. Hlevy2 (talk) 18:02, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

This year's Wikimania ought to prove to be interesting. -- llywrch (talk) 20:42, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

@E.3 — WP:Verifiability is a bulwark against the poison authoritarianism wishes to spread across the internet to make it a repository of fake knowledge and a conveyor belt for the ideology of white supremacy. Some of the backers of such hold state power and nuclear weapons. Choose very carefully the protections we can do without. — Neonorange (Phil) 23:36, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

I dont think anyone is suggesting to do away with verifiability its just expanding the definition of reliable sources. --[E.3][chat2][me] 01:38, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Many state-funded propaganda machines would love Wikipedia to expand its notion of reliable sources to them. If they hear that pretending to represent some underrepresented minority is a ticket to ride, doubt not, this is what they will do in no time. 24.222.124.179 (talk) 19:38, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Gender survey. Time for the tin-foil hat?

Gender survey, seen at Domestic yak.

After clicking through a few of the links above, I was helpfully presented with a survey asking about my gender. (?!!??) Or are they only trying to understand the demographics of yak-lovers? I'm just yak-curious, I swear!

Sure, the answer is private, so it's not like setting my gender in Preferences. I'm not saying the survey is inappropriate, just that the timing is weird. (Actually, given their stated aim of forcing some volunteers to reveal their gender and sexual preferences, maybe it is the start of something inappropriate.)

I'll be off soon to look for the userbox that says "This user is yak-curious". Ciao!

— Pelagic (talk) 12:36, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

"Other, please describe..." – somewhere in that box I need to include "supremacist cis-heteropatriarchal", thanks Sitush for that gem of a quote. Pelagic (talk) 12:36, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Lol@yak-curious. My yak rant is just (probably incoherently) saying that its increasingly difficult to work out commons & wiki-rules even as an educated native English speaker, and you need to have such thick skin (happy to admit I didn't at the time). Many dont bother, because of the complexity of the rules. There's billions of more smartphone images out there, and tens and tens of thousands more potential wiki-text contributors, esp from the other languages. Many ways to think about inclusion, I can only talk about my experience, and I resuggested perennial proposals, which are not considered as high priorities. Hence my general support of the WMF's thought bubbles. Its better they do it in public, even if they are just ideas. These quotes shouldn't be taken out of context as plans, AFAIK.--[E.3][chat2][me] 14:14, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

"The classic notion of an encyclopaedia and 'universal knowledge' needs to be discarded".

"The classic notion of an encyclopaedia and 'universal knowledge' needs to be discarded".
"The idea of encyclopedic knowledge feels problematic".
Source: The Wikimedia Foundation

Please comment at Meta:Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Working Groups/Diversity/Recommendations/2. Give them fair warning that the shit will hit the fan if they try to impose this on the community. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:28, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Just a quick note to point out that it is highly contensious and misleading to label that quote as if it comes from "The Wikimedia Foundation". It does not. It's a recommendation by a community working group - a recommendation that isn't likely to go anywhere because it's just wrong.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:14, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
You're not kidding there. My jaw about hit the fucking floor when I read that one. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:31, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
How much (if any) funding have these groups received from the WMF? I can understand sometimes the desire to encourage blue-sky thinking but this type of thing, of which there is a lot, is ridiculous. - Sitush (talk) 10:27, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
This shouldn’t have even been published. Especially not by (WMF) accounts, which have at least apparent authority. It should have been kept purely internal until the things that are “just wrong” were properly winnowed. And there should have been big red disclaimers everywhere if this wasn’t intended to be WMF position statements. In fact, I’m not sure the disclaimer here is good enough. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 23:03, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
I assume there was no funding. I actually applied when the process was announced (and my application was rejected, following by an immediate statement that they do not have enough applications and extend the deadline, which brought me to the obvious conclusion that I am not going to believe a single word they say), there was nothing about payment in the announcement, and I would never have applied for any paid position with WMF.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:30, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
Ymblanter, Wait... what? Does this mean that I could start my own Working Group along with some like-minded colleagues and and have our recommendations enshrined in a working group recommendations page? Where do I sign up? Who is with me? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:46, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
I do not see how what I have wrotten can be interpreted in this way. WMF (or, to be more exact, WMF-appointed Strategy Committee) decided on what groups would be installed, issued a call for volunteers to apply (one could indicate two groups in the application), and then decided who would be in the groups. After that, the Board decided that every group will also have one Board member.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:16, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Say what?! —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 21:57, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Working group members (anonymous), appointed by? ~Swarm~ {sting} 00:16, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Exactly. If stuff's being posted by WMF employees in their official capacity these are statements of the WMF. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 00:18, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
This is absurd! I haven't faced so untrue and creative statement since I finished watching video about flat-Earthers. Working group members are not anonymous and their names are made public on Meta. They were appointed by an independent committee, which members are also listed on Meta. The committee... There are chapters, user groups, external experts involved... Point at any WG member, but the entire WMF has nothing to do with that. Tar Lócesilion (queta) 00:32, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
What's absurd is your disgraceful response. You could've been honest and up front with us and informed us of who you were. Instead, you edited from an alternate account to evade scrutiny. I suppose you learned thus from your work with the WMF. Dishonesty. The WMF is of course responsible for the working group. Husounde (talk) 18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

If the members of the working groups (who have "(WMF)" as part of their username and have titles like "Process Architect for Wikimedia Movement Strategy" and "Movement Strategy Process Meta Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation") are not speaking for the WMF and the things they post are simply personal opinions, I want to see a printed disclaimer saying so, and I want them to stop putting (WMF) in their username when posting personal opinions that do not speak for the WMF. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:03, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Guy Macon, it's somewhat ironic given that Tar Locesilion is User:SGrabarczuk (WMF) who is the community-liaison for this strategy process and is violating relevant policies by using his volunteer account instead of the staff account. ∯WBGconverse 05:11, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Oh, great, so it's actually a WMF staff member who's comparing our good faith volunteers, who are actually here to contribute to a neutral, reliable academic project, to flat-earthers. What a good look! Tar, you may be out of the loop since you're not active on this project, but this community is in the middle of an unprecedented crisis of confidence with the WMF, to the degree that the WMF Board has gotten involved. This isn't just about one editor getting banned. So when we see deranged proposals like abolishing the notion that we're an "encyclopedia" and imposing gender quotas being posted by official WMF staff accounts, that's a legitimate cause for concern. From what I can tell, this project was developed by a team of WMF staff and staff from an outside consulting firm, and the "Core Team" in charge now is still 100% made up of paid staff. I think it's a bit bizarre that you'd even claim that this has nothing to do with the WMF. This project is clearly representative of the WMF, not this community. But, if you know who wrote the proposal specifically, please, do share, so we can take it up with them directly. ~Swarm~ {sting} 05:38, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
To be fair, staff intervention has been there during the development-sessions to some extent but the material(s) were mostly developed by a subcategory of active 'pedians - folks who flock around Meta for grants and/or attend Wikimania(s). The members-list is over here. Regards, ∯WBGconverse 06:13, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
I would love to hear the specific name(s) of the author(s). ~Swarm~ {sting} 06:34, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Anyone keeping a list of this? Maria X calling everyone gamergaters and Tar Locesilion comparing the community to "flat earthers". Husounde (talk) 18:24, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Note that Tar Lócesilion's user page says Our great potential requires more management on many levels and We need a clear, well communicated and widely internalized vision, boldly executed by risk-tolerant leaderships. A Big Brother wannabe, perhaps? Deor (talk) 18:42, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

This is some of the most odious 1984 woo I've ever read. Reyk YO! 19:16, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

So I think the conversation has largely moved on, but just in case people come back to this page: This recommendation is really not in any sense from the WMF. It's from the Diversity Working Group, set up as part of the movement strategy process. (I'm involved in a different working group, but not this one!) While the WMF is funding this process, it's really been remarkably uninvolved in developing the content of the recommendations. The Diversity WG has I think one WMF staff member and one WMF board member, and about 10 other people. Indeed, it's pretty hard to imagine a Wikimedia strategy process that has actually less involved the Wikimedia Foundation in developing recommendations. The Land (talk) 22:03, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't buy it. You are claiming that something published on WMF-controlled meta and written by people with "(WMF)" in their user name who collect paychecks from the WMF -- all written with no disclaimer -- is somehow "not really" from the WMF. If that was true, it was their responsibility to make it crystal clear that they do not speak for the WMF. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:09, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
It's pretty clear that these come from the WMF, but I disagree that Meta is controlled by the WMF. My experience is that the WMF typically refuses to come anywhere near Meta (despite the best efforts of a lot of people), except to occasionally post some pages and ignore all responses. Presumably the primary reason they keep moving things off of Meta into their own spaces is because they don't want to interact in any space they don't control. --Yair rand (talk) 00:59, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
I think you're confusing "the person editing the Meta page" and "the person writing the recommendations". The recommendations were written in Google docs by the working group members (I know because I was involved in the Roles & Responsibilities recommendations). They were then transferred to Meta by Szymon. While the format of the recommendations comes from the strategy core team, the actual content comes from the group members. The strategy process, working group composition etc is all fairly well documented on Meta so I don't imagine anyone would have thought that having a WMF contractor copy-pasting things into a coherent structure on Meta meant the WMF had agreed the recommendations ;) The Land (talk) 11:34, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Either way, WMF is incompetent. Nocturnalnow (talk) 00:45, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
  • There are a thousand and one things to not agree about the recommendations. But, WMF wrote them ain't one of it:_
    There are very few staff-contractors, involved in the working groups and a cursory glance at the various WG_members_list will verify that.
    The core problem is that there is a highly disproportionate presence of affiliates/user-group members; as is amply clear from their application process report which states:- The 24.4% of non-organized applicants is not proportional to the actual size of the non-organized part of the movement ... FWIW, it might be worth mentioning that WMF staff had very little role to play in the appointment of these members out of the total pool of applicants, either.
    Obviously this disproportionate representation stems from a neat communication-failure of WMF; nearly nobody from en/de-wiki (apart from organised groups) knew about all these stuff until quite late but at the same time, it's also worth mentioning that most of the longstanding members in smaller wikis are almost-always involved in local user-groups/affiliates and chances of this disproportionate representation affecting them, is feeble.
  • I also believe that User:Tar Lócesilion is taking some undue heat. Whilst I was the first one to point out of his (seemingly) brightline COI; he is not a WMF staff/contractor and was merely recruited as a consultant, for helping out with strategy-consultation (and as an effective liaison), solely in meta-wiki. Obviously, he's still conflicted to some extent but in my opinion, as a longstanding admin of pl.wiki (and an ex-arb), (who has never been employed by WMF in a staff/contractor-role), he can genuinely understand and identify with the community viewpoint well enough; having already supported the community response to Framgate. Someone liasioning with the concerns, generated over en-wiki is much better than nobody paying any heed and I feel that Tar shall be allowed to engage w/o his' being branded as a WMF mouthpiece. ∯WBGconverse 06:47, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Well, that's... special. Substitute quackery for diversity and it could be a manifesto written by the lunatic charlatans. Guy (Help!) 07:29, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Near the top of this section, there's a brief comment by Jimmy Wales, disavowing the stuff we are discussing here. Although I usually avoid Jimbotalk like the plague, it's worth looking at now, because there he disavows it in greater detail. Pretty much all of the nonsense that editors have been noting here are, according to him, just things from some volunteer working groups, and not officially from the WMF, that are never going to happen. (Nevertheless, I do have to question why the WMF is even bothering with hosting this stuff.) But I think we can safely assume that most of this stuff really isn't gonna happen. The one real thing that is going on is at #It's happening: The community "consultation", below. That will eventually lead to what happens with the ever-popular temporary and local office actions, but for now, they are just asking about how to word the RfC that will come in September. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:46, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) We all thought that T&S blocking an editor without telling the community or the editor what the evidence is was something we could safely assume really wasn't going to happen. We all thought that T&S (after the shit hit the fan and admins started resigning) telling Arbcom that they could decide whether to uphold the block but could not tell the editor what the evidence is was something we could safely assume really wasn't going to happen. The community is -- with some justification - afraid that the WMF is going to take over decision making that has always been in the hands of the community. So we are making sure that various proposals for taking over our decision making die a quick death. This is like having a rattlesnake in my bedroom. You can say that the snake is unlikely to hurt me, but it can hurt me, so I am going to kill it before it has a chance. I want the WMF to take a quick look at any future proposals from working groups and [A] nuke them if they go against everything we believe in, and [B] put a big disclaimer at the top of such pages saying that this is the opinion of some users with no more authority than the opinion I expressed and the changes I proposed at WP:CANCER. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:55, 13 August 2019 (UTC)


And even that is confusing, as it was quickly made apparent that bringing up issues with the policy as written is not what’s expected, but instead the formulation of questions... regarding issues with the policy. It’s like Jeopardy or something. Just start every sentence with “what is” and I guess you’ll be okay. It’s not like the issues with T&S stepping in on project level enforcement decisions have been discussed at all in the last few months... Capeo (talk) 23:51, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

"For an article in which An indigenous historian/scholar has provided 'authoritative' input ... it would be semi or fully-protected from drive by editing"

Keeping with our theme of WMF employees thinking that they know better how to run an encyclopedia than the vermin Club cough basket of deplorables cough, cough existing community of volunteers, I present for your edification and education:

meta:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Working Groups/Diversity/Recommendations/9#Q 3 What will change because of the Recommendation?

"We propose modifying the ToU..."
"Present licensing for both text and photographs should change to allow restrictions for non-commercial use and no derivative works..."
"As an example, for an article in which an indigenous historian/scholar has provided 'authoritative' input and marked with distribute only through GNU, it would be semi or fully-protected from drive by editing for those sections marked... Likewise, photographs, which are marked ND (No derivative works) or NC (No commercial works) could be made available for use."
"On a governance level, another statement that should be clarified in the ToU is that of the relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation and the community... In the event conflict with the mission goals occurs or if the policies of any project fail to further the mission or thwart the goals/mission of the Foundation, the Board should have the right to ... hire experts/specialists to evaluate policy and recommend change [or] implement change at the foundational level."

I fully agree with one thing. We really do need to clarify the relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation and the community. Who decides what our content will be? Who decides who is allowed to edit? Who decides what parts of the encyclopedia are to be edit protected? --Guy Macon (talk) 01:39, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

As an example, for an article in which an indigenous historian/scholar has provided 'authoritative' input and marked with distribute only through GNU, it would be semi or fully-protected from drive by editing for those sections marked... That's absolutely outrageous. So much for "the encyclopedia anyone can edit". Even our featured articles, carefully vetted by the community and considered representative of our best work, are typically free from editing restrictions. But the WMF is proposing they grant themselves the ability to unilaterally declare a single source "authoritative" and prevent the community from altering it in any way. No, you may not add alternative published perspectives on the topic. No, you may not edit for clarity or coherence. No, you may not request further information to verify a claim yourself. That is just about every core policy on this project thrown out the window. That is a fundamental change to what Wikipedia is. Unbelieveable. Triptothecottage (talk) 02:42, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Allowing Attribution Non-Commercial material (Wikipedia uses Attribution ShareAlike) opens a huge can of worms. See [ https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC ]. Among other problems, thousands and thousands of websites that re-use our content with our blessing will suddenly find themselves in violation of the new license. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:55, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
The fact the diversity working group even thought that was worth publishing as a draft is proof they should be disbanded. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:13, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
You never know what folks are up to with their airheady abstractions until you translate the proposals into real instances, which for this abound. The reliability of key matters Ogotomelli told Marcel Griaule about regarding Dogon beliefs has been questioned by scholars, who can cite Dogon from different clans challenging the old hunter's reconstructions. But that is too complex to go into, other than to note that informants of the same group ('marginals') often have decidedly different opinions of what their traditions were. You can hardly have exponents of these disagreeing 'native' viewpoints, neither documented outside of claims on the internet, arguing the merits while editwarring on Wikipedia.
Decades ago, Dorren Kartinyeri, a Ngarrindjeri woman led a movement to oppose the construction of the Hindmarsh Island bridge on the grounds it was a sacred site, the island being a fertility zone, perhaps connected with its formation, which resembled female pudenda. This was, it was maintained, ‘secret women’s knowledge’ handed down orally. Such lore undoubtedly exists, and cannot be made public, but it does affect significantly land claims in Australia. Well up popped several Christian Ngarrindjeri saying there was no secret knowledge, this was all fabricated by the other women of their 'tribe' for political ends. The ‘white man’s law’ concurred, until a review raised suspicions about this legal judgment, suggesting it was itself questionable, that no evidence existed such stories had been invented for the occasion, to block bridge development.
So you have two different ‘indigenous’ versions. Whom to believe? Ultimately one cannot document such things by in inviting both groups of Ngarrindjeri to edit-warring over their traditions. You go to the scholarship of review, which is substantial, and has been produced by ‘white’ and ‘non-white’ scholars, using the same evaluative criteria, though they may differ in conclusions. In the latter case, you read up how Irene Watson, Vice Chanceller at Adelaide University, intgerprets the issues. She is a distinguished legal scholar of mixed Tanganekald and Meintangk descent, and weighed in on behalf of the secret knowledge women. Does Jake Orlowitz, who appears to be associated with this cultural crap crusade have any solid credentials in the affected areas. Has he read deeply in anthropology, has he read extensively in anything? Nishidani (talk) 08:56, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure everyone's getting that these aren't fully fledged proposals AFAIK just working groups. Discussions, ideas, think-tank stuff. I'm pretty sure --[E.3][chat2][me] 13:37, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Well, if unfledged proposals that will never happen are the order of the day, I do hope the people concerned will consider my proposal that all Wikipedia contributors must bathe in a mixture of porridge and baked beans daily and provide evidence of such. I mean, these things are so off-the-wall that they go beyond "blue-sky" thinking and represent something more akin to a black hole. They're a useless, pointless waste of time and money seemingly put forward by a collation of unrepresentative groups who would probably be better advised to spend more time actually improving articles etc. On the basis of this stuff, they're not Wikipedians but self-interest groups. I'm actually astonished we're not seeing the equivalent of a "dissenting report" for a lot of this stuff, generated by people within the process. - Sitush (talk) 13:46, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Thankyou thankyou Sitush for finally curing my embarrassing skin condition. Who would have thought that porridge and baked beans was so efficacious? As for the latest strategy process, I took part in the 2009 one, still some good ideas there that we should revisit at some point. But we also managed to filter out some of the less realistic ones. It is easy to get Wikipedians to brainstorm, but it helps to have a process of filtering out the perennials and the ones which aren't going to get consensus. Not every bright idea is actually a good idea. Though I like to think that my suggestions from the 2009 strategy process would be a good trade for the 2019 strategy process. ϢereSpielChequers 21:48, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

I have this mental picture of someone on the working groups reading what we are writing and concluding that we don't value diversity and that they need to redouble their efforts to control our behavior. To any such working group member reading this, let me be clear: everybody here realizes that Wikipedia should not be edited by 90% white male rich hetro college graduates from industrialized western countries. Diversity of editors and diversity of sources is a real problem and we would welcome suggestions for solving it that don't destroy the encyclopedia. Alas, what you have proposed amounts to "we all agree that something needs to be done. Scrapping multiple Wikipedia policies is something. Therefore scrapping multiple Wikipedia policies needs to be done". --Guy Macon (talk) 13:55, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Diversity of content (=representing all known significant views) is not guaranteed by engineering diversity among editors. Diversity of content is already thoroughly diffused within academia, with abundant 'queer', 'indigenous,' 'minorities' chairs, faculties, study programmes. The problem is, getting editors to read that material and harvest it for articles. You don't need to be homosexual to write one of the outstanding works on Japanese homosexuality (Gary Leupp). You don't need to be a pederast to write a great survey of the practice in classical Greece (Félix Buffière); some of the best works on Christiantiy have been written by Jews (Géza Vermes); some of the most powerful documentary indictments of the genocide of Amerindians were written by colonizers like Bartolomé de las Casas; the besat accounts we shall probably ever have of the Barasana are the two volumes by the Cambridgean scholars Stephen and Christine Hugh-Jones, who have conserved an immense amount of the lore and life of that 500 strong community that will be invaluable to those who survive the predictable destruction of their traditional world; no one looks to a Nazi to understand what Nazism is, or a card-carrying Communist to understand Communism, or to Billy Graham's screeds to understand evangelism, etc.etc. Rednecks think of themselves as a discriminated minority. To do you have be a Republican to grasp Republicanism? This idea that the authenticity of an account is vouchsafed only by legitimate origins is devastatingly dangerous.
Little of what I read in fields I have some knowledge of, gets in except by dribbles. Often minority groups are not aware of the foison that is sitting in library stacks about their traditional cultures, and the general tendency is to google for web information, newspaper reports, rather than sit down, read, and cull data from often exuberantly detailed monographs. So, in my view, the problem reflects a changeover from older reading habits. Everywhere I go, even in libraries, I see people thumbing phones or searching data bases, rather than sitting down and reading attentively, and making notes on sources that have a vast diversity of information. Nishidani (talk) 18:47, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Be careful with the conclusions you draw. 18 months ago I was consulting a reference work at my alma mater when my pen ran out of ink. For a moment I thought my research had come to an abrupt end, & it might be weeks before I could return & continue my research. Then I realized I could use my phone & photograph the pages I needed -- which I promptly did. (FWIW, I still have the photos on my phone. Far more accurate than any set of notes.) -- llywrch (talk) 19:37, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
My apologies. I've nothing against that technology. I choose not to use it simply because I don't want to have the world wire itself and its algorithmically calibrated focusing on this rather than that, second after second, into me, as happens to most phone users. While looking after someone in hospital this last week, I was surprised how many people attending relatives in an emergency ward kept glancing at their phones by the bedsides of the dying or critically ill. Tom Reedy who, on the basis of a stub I wrote, essentially did the FA Shakespeare Authorship Question found precisely the function you allude to invaluable in (you never quite know about the absolute reliability of some books) going through English libraries to photograph the relevant archival documentary records. But, in the week we spent together in Rome, I can't recall him ever using the device. Yahweh forbid that a dinosaur in the great extinction should envy the minute mammals squirreling at their feet:) They would be the future, of which we are late heirs. Nishidani (talk) 20:25, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
E.3's thought bubble ideas for inclusion that won't destroy the project AFAIK collapse
E.3's thought bubble ideas for inclusion that won't destroy the project
  1. An incremental yet important change, reform WP:AfD. top to bottom. Then WP:AfC won't have such a backlog, I suspect. I propose naming it WP:Proposed article retraction with a friendly, welcoming template for new editors. retract,draftify, keep, merge in discussions. Articles are not for deletion when nominated, complete historical misnomer from WP:Votes for deletion. The WP:AfD is emotional, argumentative and WP:BEFORE isn't being used appropriately. For new editors, it wont be as disheartening when an article is proposed for retraction rather than nominated for deletion. That wont destroy the project at all, just take a bit of adjusting from long time editors and a lot of technical backend work.
  2. Improve commons upload, especially from smartphones. When uploading, clear technical auto checks (as currently from Flickr), an auto tineye and google reverse image search, then auto suggest OTRS if its is elsewhere on the net. Request the location, and auto link to FOP for the country if it may be an issue. Less prominence to possible copyright violation warning templates, escalating with repeat violations.
  3. Banning untemplated warnings on enwiki, less prominence to critical templates (we dont need red exclamation marks for good faith edits and uploads), of course retaining escalating templates for repeated violations.
  4. reform linguistics of non-vandal warnings (caution, etc). Perennial proposals, but a lot of make work.
  5. Test user experience in marginalised groups with smartphones. The WMF has the resources to test this and provide data.
  6. WP:RS can give specific examples of many news sources across the world considered to be reliable, in each country.
  7. In terms of oral histories and preservation of language, I in principle support the pie in the sky ideas floating about, but am far from an anthropologist and have limited understanding of the issues. However this needs significant input from these fragmented cultures, and some kind of edit-protection, for example the en:History wars in Australia are toxic.
    I don't have the political nous to push these, other to comment when I perceive issues in WP:AfD, and if this is not an appropriate place to comment, please refactor with my permission. Thats what I mean by c:User:E.3/Networks of complicated rules.
Yes, lots of people from the working groups are reading, and noting the intense conversations about two of the dozens of recommendations :) It would also be great to hear peoples' views on the others. Also, genuinely, if you have views about increasing diversity of editors and sources then I think people would be delighted to hear them. The Land (talk) 14:01, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Maybe because those two are more controversial and worthy of attention? I mean, nobody debates the Third Amendment, either, but that doesn't mean it needs more attention. Grandpallama (talk) 16:41, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
The Land, are they reading and are they noticing? Because there seems to have been a total lack of any response to those criticisms from any of those people, even just so little as an acknowledgement. Which just makes it worse; it certainly seems much more like dictation if they just throw it out there and then don't show up to the discussion surrounding it. So, I don't know how you know what the rest of us don't, but if they are reading the conversation, maybe you could encourage them to stop by and join it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:37, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
I think the answer to that is a qualified "yes" - I think probably a majority of working groups have read at least the most relevant parts to them of the the conversations on Meta, and at least some members of all working groups have probably seen this specific page we're talking on now. Responding, however, is another matter. The debate has focused quite heavily on two recommendations from Diversity and one from Community Health - people outside those WGs are going to be reluctant to weigh in on those in public, and more focused on developing the other few dozen recommendations. In some cases, people will be waiting to touch base within their working groups before doing or saying anything else - the process is set up to work on a feedback cycle of a couple of weeks, not a couple of days, so it's entirely possible that there won't be any public statements from some groups until the next iteration of recommendations, which are due on 9 September. Also, it may surprise you to hear that the English Wikipedia does not have a great reputation in the rest of the movement as a wonderful place for open, constructive dialogue, which is probably holding back some other people from commenting in their personal capacity. The Land (talk) 20:25, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
If then, as you claim, "a majority of working groups have read at least the most relevant parts to them of the the conversations on Meta", why have exactly zero of them engaged any of us in a back-and-forth discussion? We could have quietly dealt with this on those talk pages, with working group members and Wikipedia editors discussing this as colleagues, possibly followed by clarifications and rewording as needed. But no. Discussion is beneath them. They won't even lower themselves to discuss the way they use quotation marks, much less discussing outrageous proposals like "For an article in which An indigenous historian/scholar has provided 'authoritative' input ... it would be semi or fully-protected from drive by editing". --Guy Macon (talk) 00:11, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

"the English Wikipedia does not have a great reputation in the rest of the movement as a wonderful place for open, constructive dialogue"

Does anywhere these days have 'a great reputation . .as a wonderful place for open, constructive dialogue'? The last I heard, that kind of thing died out with the closing of Aristotle's LyceumNishidani (talk) 20:33, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
The Land, so two things. First off, normally, where I find people complaining "The English Wikipedia is not a good place for open, constructive dialogue" means "The English Wikipedia is not a good place to get everyone to agree with me." Well...sorry, but works that way sometimes. I have found that the English Wikipedia is actually a brilliant place for open and constructive dialogue, but I have also found that sometimes I lose the argument. And in all but a couple of cases, I have to admit that I should have lost it, and was wrong to begin with. But besides that, I was referring to the discussions on Meta. Is that not a good place for them to talk either? I'm sorry, but you don't just get to "dump and run". If you're going to put forth a position, you better be ready to discuss and defend it if someone disagrees. Otherwise, you're just pontificating and should be paid no mind at all. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:51, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

"The English Wikipedia is not a good place for open, constructive dialogue" means "The English Wikipedia is not a good place to get everyone to agree with me."

Precisely this. It’s only ENWP, you know, by far the largest, most active, most experienced community and the only reason the WMF exists, but apparently it’s scary because people here may state, in plain terms, that they find something to be preposterous. Capeo (talk) 22:32, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
So here we have a case study in miniature. I put a fair amount of effort into writing a good-faith answer to what I think is a good-faith question. Then 4 people respond complaining that the answer is not the answer they wanted, none of whom show any sign of engaging with what I actually wrote. Good day, gentlemen. The Land (talk) 06:53, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
The Land, you are saying that we shall not expect WGs to respond immediately and that en-wiki is not a widely appreciated place for constructive discourse. Anything more? There's actually nothing much to engage with these statements, to be fair. ∯WBGconverse 07:06, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @The Land: Excuse me, did you not "actually" write the following sentence? Also, it may surprise you to hear that the English Wikipedia does not have a great reputation in the rest of the movement as a wonderful place for open, constructive dialogue, which is probably holding back some other people from commenting in their personal capacity. I think the above were directly and incisively engaging with what you actually wrote. I am saddened to see Seraphimblade's prediction of a "dump and run" being proved accurate. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 07:11, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
@The Land:I guess if you want to pretend that's what happened, no one can stop you. Just to be clear, no one else sees the interaction the way you do. Husounde (talk) 18:50, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
@Husounde: - Right. No-one else sees this the way I do. The people who I have asked to come and participate in these conversations, and have expressed reluctance to do so - they are lying to me, are they? Thank you for letting me know :) The Land (talk) 19:10, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
If they exist, then I suppose they are lying, yes. No one on Wikipedia agrees with you and you don't seem to be operating in good faith. Dump and run, as Mendaliv stated. Husounde (talk) 21:35, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
I think anyone unwilling to engage with Wikimedia shouldn't attempt to be involved in its governance. Nor should anyone who opposes almost everything Wikimedia stands for. Thank you for the useful information in any case. It's very disappointing information, but it's still much better to know what we're dealing with than not. --Yair rand (talk) 19:40, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi @Yair rand: - oh, there has been a truly IMMENSE amount of engagement with the Wikimedia movement in this process. It has been a real delight to read and hear thoughts about the movement strategy from discussions originally in dozens of languages, in dozens of places, from all continents apart from Antarctica. Then I come here, to the project I've edited for fifteen years, and get shouted down when I state simple facts. The Land (talk) 19:51, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
I don't see anyone shouting you down. Though a do see a bunch of people disagreeing with you. Perhaps its just not with the cordiality to which you are accustomed. Someguy1221 (talk) 20:57, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
I don't see anyone being "shouted down" on this page. Husounde (talk) 21:35, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
The Land, good faith answers generally are free of dismissive snark about enWP. Perhaps I could’ve taken the high road and responded with less snark myself, but it’s pretty tough when already discussing preposterous proposals that you don’t seem to recognize as preposterous. I mean, geez, Jimbo is playing damage control here and on his TP saying there’s no way in hell these proposals would ever happen. When asked why there wasn’t more direct engagement, here or elsewhere, you outright said it’s not unlikely that there won’t be any direct engagement. Instead possibly some new iterations in a couple of weeks based on, I guess, these WGs watching us talk to ourselves? Do you see this page and its archives and are aware of everything going on the last few months? It should be fairly obvious that implications of yet more lack of prompt and direct engagement wouldn’t be received well. Even if there’s no chance these proposals would be adopted it comes off as dismissive.Capeo (talk) 23:29, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Land. I feel the response to his attempts at discussion here has been hostile and derisive if not downright hateful at times. If this is the attitude one can expect for making good faith policy suggestions, no wonder English Wiki has the reputation that it does. 107.77.215.38 (talk) 11:32, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Said the anonymous IP whose short editing history is mostly vandalism. Extreme positions are going to be met with extreme reactions. If people aren't prepared to defend those positions by discussing this with the community, or if their version of discussion is to say "my fifteen years of editing means no one is allowed to criticize anything I say," then we're going nowhere but down a drain. Grandpallama (talk) 15:06, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Hello, The Land. Husounde (talk) 17:56, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
We’ve long ago reached the point that strong disagreement equals “hostile and divisive” when it comes to anything regarding WMF sanctioned initiatives. It doesn’t matter which venue you try to engage in. These particular proposals were going nowhere from the start but the dismissiveness isn’t unfamiliar. Capeo (talk) 00:50, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
I don't even think it is a matter of strong agreement= hostile and divisive. The impression these comments, in favour of some rule change ostensibly to accommodate diverse voices, make is that their authors wish to enact discursive tip-toeing, a mental reset every time one is poised to comment, to take into account possible 'offense' in one's interlocutor, and reformat one's remark so that various imagined 'hurts' will not be read into what is meant. You cannot get anywhere thinking, analyzing, or writing if your primary concern is intuiting preemptively what possible impscts these ideas might have on extremely sensitive spirits who are looking for a comfortable niche, amiability, consolation, support, readiness to listen to complaints. This place is not a fucking nursing centre for people with chips on their shoulders. Gotta view that your particular world is underrepresented? If you are 'afraid', then ask someone to help out. I for one, would be willing, once Fram's suspension ends, to work on any article regarding a defined 'ethnic' group to improve it according to the best available scholarship. At a minimum I can provide a linked biography to all the relevant articles and books that throw light on the topic, if the plaintiff hasn't mastered that technique.Nishidani (talk) 10:18, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
I'll put it bluntly. I find this whole intolerance of Engwiki by two cliques in cahoots, one as management group out of touch with the hard grind of real unpaid labout, and obscure 'working' (ha!) groups full of vapid, airheaded dysfunctional yatterings about some ostensible 'diversity' gap, utterly smug. I'm reminded of the following exchange. Spandrell and the Rampions are described as having sat all evening 'in the privacy of quiet conversation', one in which however, in an amiable ambiance, the two take each other apart, trusting that they are all adults and can stand strong language. A group joins them, and a wordsmith among them exclaims:
What an agape!'Willie Weaver simmered on, like a tea kettle. The spout was now turned towards Lucy.'What a symposium! What a-' he hesitated for a moment in search of the right, the truly staggering phrase -'what Athenian enlargements! What a more than Platonic orgy!'
'What is an Athenian enlargement?' asked Lucy.
Willie sat down and began to explain. 'Enlargements, I mean, by contrast with our bourgeois and Pecksniffian smuggeries'. (Aldous Huxley,Point Counter Point, (1928) Penguiin 1957 p.127.
Engwiki is indeed a place of Athenian enlargements. Those bitchy about its shortfall in good manners are indulging in 'bourgeois and Pecksniffian smuggeries', notwithstanding the pretense that all this has something to do with 'minorities'. The real minority, threatened with oppression, are those who, unpaid (thank god) have worked their guts out to build an encyclopedia only to find themselves threatened with strongarm tactics by people with no noticeable record (with a few exceptions) of similar dedication.Nishidani (talk) 22:46, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
This is largely the fault of the WMF for not providing appropriate guidance/support at the time these recommendations were being discussed. If the WMF had one of their legal team embedded in the working groups explain exactly why a large number of these proposals were never going anywhere, they wouldnt have been published to start with, they wouldnt have been justly ridiculed, the people who came up with them wouldnt have wasted a lot of time and effort, and there would be less bad feeling all on sides. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:32, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
  • This is the natural product of an effort to find out "what the community wants" by forming poorly-advertised working groups which then conduct poorly advertised conversations among the relatively narrow set of Wikimedians who enjoy networking. You'd think that Wikimedians were a notoriously quiet group that never wants for anything, for the Foundation to have no idea how to secure feedback. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:39, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Unbelievable! I'd facepalm, except that that would be too mild a reaction. I've just posted a very strong criticism there, and I encourage other editors to do so too. The point isn't to change these imbeciles' minds, or to prevent the proposals from actually being implemented (they won't), but to send WMF a loud and clear message that they need to stop creating these kinds of time-wasting brainstorming sessions inhabited by the brainless. (Now, Tryptofish, tell us what you really think!) --Tryptofish (talk) 17:59, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Your Trust and Safety Team

Just in case anyone wants to know who "they" happen to be ! Necromonger...We keep what we kill 13:30, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, we know. And the only one of those who I have interacted with in any meaningdful sense, I would trust absolutely. Guy (Help!) 13:44, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
I have on several occasions interacted with four of them that I know of, and I would entirely agree with the assessment by Guy. Normally, T&S does a very good job, and that includes dealing with some people and situations who you really wouldn't want to. The fact that someone made one bad decision does not make them a bad person. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:40, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
  • It doesn't give me much trust if people who are in a trust function show us a picture of an empty office. (and yes I understand that you don't want to be recognized). --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:59, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
@Seraphimblade — I doubt the count is one mistake or T&S the original source. — Neonorange (Phil) 20:20, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
Here are how long each member has had a WMF account and how many edits to all projects they have made in that time from their official account. At least some of them have another username that they use for non-WMF business, so this only measures official interaction with the community, not total edits. Also you can't expect someone who has been on the job a few months to have as many official edits as someone who have been here many years.
  • CSteigenberger (WMF) -- 2 years, 226 edits.[7]
  • JEissfeldt (WMF) -- 6 years, 1,184 edits.[8]
  • JSutherland (WMF) -- 5 years, 16,279 edits.[9]
  • Kalliope (WMF) -- 4 years, 3,871 edits.[10]
  • Kbrown (WMF) -- 3 years, 6,313 edits.[11]
  • NNair (WMF) -- 2 months, 18 edits.[12]
  • PEarley (WMF) -- 6 years, 4,428 edits.[13]
  • SPoore (WMF) -- 2 years, 1,275 edits.[14]
  • Samuel (WMF) -- 2 years ago, 7,786 edits.[15]
  • THargrove (WMF) -- 13 months, 5 edits.[16]
Does anyone want to take the time to figure out
  1. Total edits using all accounts, or
  2. Official edits that are signed (which would indicate being part of a conversation on a talk page or noticeboard as opposed to editing articles or info pages on meta), or
  3. Whether they respond to questions on their own talk pages?
--Guy Macon (talk) 20:28, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
I think most of them have real accounts, not just this role accounts. I know the CSteigenberger has: [17][18]. So don't compare apples and oranges. On the other hand, the head of T&S has proven his enmity towards the community with his participation in the war of some putschists in SF against the community in the superputsch-scandal, where he acted with might and brutal force against deWP and enWP. I really don't see, why User:_JEissfeldt (WMF) is still alive and kicking within the WMF, as he has proven his complete unsuitability, complete untrustworthyness, complete lack of providing safety for the community with his participation in that war against the community by some wackos at the WMF. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk) 21:00, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I fully understand the intent here, and to some degree I even agree with parts of what has been posted. Still, I am hesitant to lump single users into one group and pass judgment. (I have in the past been VERY critical of Arbcom, but I always tried to separate the user from the position). I do recognize 2 names on the list above, and I will say that both Kbrown and SPoore have very clearly noted their better known usernames on their WMF user page. FloNight and Fluffernutter have both contributed positively to our en project. Since they're both admins., I'm sure we can all find places to disagree with them, but they are both well respected members of our own group with well respected reputations. JEissfeldt I can't say much for, I haven't seen anything positive throughout the entire "WP:FRAM" issue, but then I'm not on the German wiki either.
One part of this that I do agree with is that perhaps interacting with the community a bit more might help bridge the HUGE gap between WMF and community. I know that the directive of separating WMF business from personal postings might seem contradictory, but I don't think it's meant to separate us as it has. I think a happy medium could be found for the people who want to rule over the community. (<-- Not the best wording I agree, but it is how a lot of folks feel right now) — Ched (talk) 05:05, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
I can vouch for JSutherland (aka Fox). —A little blue Bori v^_^v Fram was railroaded! 07:22, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
if Fox is who I think - then yes I knew them years ago, but I didn't know they had gone on to a WMF role — Ched (talk) 09:05, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
User:Jan eissfeldt has as well another account[19][20]. He got de-sysopped by the deWP-community for his actions against the community in the superputsch-scandal. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk) 11:35, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
It's remarkable how few alternatives have yet been proposed for the foundation's self-protection against individuals who are determined to force a particular point. Guy (Help!) 01:01, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
  • It appears that some people are having trouble understanding
"At least some of them have another username that they use for non-WMF business, so this only measures official interaction with the community, not total edits."
Interacting with the community as a regular editor is important (but apparently not important enough so far for anyone to post a count of how many non-WMF edits each T&S team member has made...) but I was counting OFFICIAL INTERACTIONS WITH THE COMMUNITY.
If you have been a paid WMF staffer for over a year and you have made exactly two one talk page comments[21] on all wikis, then you are not doing a good job of communicating with the community in your official capacity. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:52, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Guy Macon, you can revert back to one: this is not an edit to interact with the community. —Dirk Beetstra T C 12:24, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Done. Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 14:02, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
WOW - that is one of the most horrific post I've seen yet by anyone affiliated with T&S. If that doesn't scare people, I have no idea what will. I'm going to have to think on this one a while. .... and TY for posting by the way. — Ched (talk) 17:19, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Facepalm Facepalm Okay, well, that certainly makes another bad decision (though I don't know the individual who put that up). But yeah, that header should've had a panopticon icon attached with it, or perhaps the All Seeing Eye. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:46, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Yours are of course much more accurate as they do exist in the real world - still, I thought of Eye of Sauron even though it's based in fantasy. — Ched (talk) 18:50, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Meta has admins and civility policies. Why couldn't those have been used? --Rschen7754 18:52, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
I'd also say there, in his case, the other one [22] reflects poor engagement at best. He THargrove says I will go ahead and look to see if this is still something that providers are offering. Once I receive an update on the current state of DNS lookup subscription I will leave an update here to continue the discussion with the hope that we can work towards addressing the concerns around spam. on 11 February 2019. As of more than half a year later, there's still apparently no followup. If you tell someone "I'm going to check on something and follow up", you need to actually, you know, do that, within a reasonable period of time. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:24, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Not saying it affects your point at all, but I'm pretty sure THargrove is a "she".—Chowbok ☠ 12:16, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

who are supposed to feel safe and trusted? Because, well, I don't. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:24, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in DOUBLETHINK. For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely. –xenotalk 12:00, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Best to be careful Xeno - the Thought Police may show up and convert you into an unperson. — Ched (talk) 22:52, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Oof! xeno, for a moment I thought you were referring to a book by Orwell... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:39, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
With my foreign eyes - I see that it might be a misunderstanding in the meaning. English is an analytic language with a high level of "compactness" of different meanings in the same word. So what does it really mean - often depends on the entire context and even on the current mind set of a particular reader. So I see trust here not as "How can I trust you?" etc. - but as in trustee so overall "an arrangement whereby a person (a trustee) holds property as its nominal owner for the good of one or more beneficiaries".
This way Dirk Beetstra comment would be more correct as: "We don't trust you to trust us" or something. --Neolexx (talk) 14:25, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Letter to the WMF Ombudsman as emailed

  • Moved here from Proposed Decision talk page per suggestion from SilkTork [23]
This is a copy of the email I sent to the Ombudsman's office. The only difference will be the time stamp on the signature. The original timestamp on the email is 05:56, 16 September 2019 -- collapsed due to length (UTC) Jbh Talk 18:13, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

meta:Ombudsman commission
cu-ombuds-l(at)lists.wikimedia.org
16 September 2019

To whom it may concern;

As you may or may not be aware there has been quite the kerfuffle going on at the English Wikipedia. One of our administrators was banned by a new authority Trust and Safety arrogated itself - the ability to ban editors from a single WMF project and for a defined term. In this case one year.

This Partial Temporary Ban differs from the Global Ban which has historically been reserved for long term disruptions of multiple projects or where legal considerations are in play in that it was used to punish behavior which has historically been left to the purview of the English WP community and its Arbitration Committee. Because of this the community vocally demanded that the ban be reviewed. Jimmy Wales said OK and T&S provided the Arbitration committee a, we are told, a pre-redacted copy of their case report but refused to allow them to discuss it in any was or to provide any information to the community about its contents. Not even the number of complaints.

However, it has been repeatedly said by members of the Arbitration committee that there was no behavior by Fram which was not openly and publicly visible on Wikipedia yet they still claim that T&S is preventing them from discussing this publicly known information even in generalities because of the meta:Access to nonpublic personal data policy and specifically the meta:Confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information. (Collectivly herin called 'confidentiality agreement')

I believe this to be a assertion to be incorrect on its face:

  • Without an unacceptable failure on the part of OVERSIGHT and T&S none of the behavior/diffs, after scrutiny by a T&S member, can be reasonably thought to have the potential to be nonpublic personal data.
  • By virtue of being publicly visible on-wiki the agreement expressly excluded is from its terms Exceptions to nonpublic personal data. Nonpublic personal data does not include any information which (a) was publicly available at the time of disclosure;.... IANL but I can read and reason and assume a two part test when for determining whether material is within the purview of the confidentiality agreement:
  1. Was it ever something which could legitimately be described as nonpublic personal data? In No then agreement is not germane; If no:
  2. Was it publicly available at the time of disclosure? If yes it is explicitly excluded by the terms of the agreement.

In the event I am incorrect in this or, as I believe is the case, you require a potential violation of the agreement before you investigate I draw your attention to SilkTork, an Arbitrator with access to the dossier provided to the committee by T&S. He has been carrying on a conversation with Fram on meta:User talk:Fram in that discussion he has openly and flagrantly been violating the claimed embargo on this information, yet is concerned enough to harshly criticize Fram for "speculating" about editors who he has had prior conflict with. The specific instances where SilkTork has presented information he represents as being from the embargoed source:

  1. This thread titled 2019 report to T&S:LouisAlain] where in he clearly states

    "The first piece is one of the reports submitted to T&S. I gave the impression earlier ("The complaints in 2019 all relate to ArbCom") that the reports were all about attacks on ArbCom or related to ArbCom cases - this is not actually so. In the Appendix of the T&S document are letters and reports, one of which links to the ANI report on your interaction with LouisAlain. "

  2. In the thread Deleting Rama's uploads on Commons where he says

    "There is a report (not from Rama) about you going through Rama's uploads on Commons and deleting them."

  3. We also have

    "I'm looking again closely at the T&S document for incidents after the 2018 warning. The Foundation received two complaints in late 2018. The names are redacted, but looking at the dates and the incidents and the wording, it is clear that the complaints were from two different people, though both were about your attention to one particular user. T&S examined the complaints and while there was some concern that you were continuing to breathe down the neck of that particular user, there was both sufficient justification for your concern about that user's edits and sufficient doubt that you hadn't deliberately targeted that user that the complaints were logged but no action taken." and "The complaints in 2019 all relate to ArbCom. Four complaints." [24]

  4. ...and finally

    "[I[t would have been inappropriate for us not to look into the concerns raised in the document… Incidents such as those ...the refocus of attention on a contributor who had requested that another admin should look into their behaviour if there was a concern,.." [25]

I believe it commendable that SilkTork is attempting to address these matters with Fram in an open and public way but, he should not have had to. and having to use his kindness and candor in this way is repugnant. However, secret evidence is abhorrent and evidence which is openly and publicly available yet is called "unknowable" by even the person subject to sanction based on it is a sickening perversion. Nothing less.

I request that you obtain a copy of the redacted dossier from a member of the Arbitration Committee and review its contents with respect to the WMF Confidentiality Agreement. Should it be found in part or in whole not to be subject to the agreement I request that you do all and/or any of the following:

  1. Promptly inform the Arbitration Committee of what they may and may not discuss openly. Either specific material or classes/kinds of material.
  2. Publish to the community or provide to me the advice, in such detail as is permissible, provided to by you Arbcom
  3. Issue a public statement or a reply to me stating your findings and conclusions.
  4. A reply directly to SilkTork stating your findings and conclusions.
  5. Prepare or order the preparation of a copy of the material in the report which is not subject to the confidentiality agreement and publish it on English WP or provide it to me.

Should you find that all the material and specifically the material revealed by SilkTork to be subject to the confidentiality agreement then, please provide to him, me and publish on Wikipedia your findings.

Thank you for your prompt and attention to this matter. If you have any questions or require additional information please contact me preferably on my talk page, or should the matter require discretion via the Wikipedia email interface.



I remain.
With kind regards,

Jbh Talk 06:31, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
en:User:Jbhunley

A copy of the request posted at User talk:Jimbo Wales when the weakness of Wikimedia's ombudsman system became aparant.

Copy of note on Jimbo talk asking if Wikimedia has a traditional Ombudsman function that is at least neutral as opposed to the Foundation's. -- collapsed due to length
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

WMF Ombudsman commission

I had occasion to write a letter to the Ombudsman to address some inconsistencies between the plain reading and current interpretation and application of the WMF's meta:Access to nonpublic personal data policy; specifically how meta:Confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information is being interpenetrated to apply to information which, on its face, is either not covered by or explicitly excluded from the definition of non-public personal information (being the only information germane to the agreement) Since dealing with that policy and agreement is within the purview of meta:Ombudsman commission I figured I'd write them a letter. I mean this is what an Ombudsman is for, right?

Turns out it seems that is not the case here. According to their authorizing board resolutions (foundation:Resolution:Ombudsperson checkuser and foundation:Resolution:Amending the Scope of the Ombudsman Commission) it is not even a real Organizational ombudsman. They are chartered to "investigat[e] cases of privacy policy breach or checkuser abuse for the board in an official manner"(emp. mine) but only charged to "offer a sympathetic ear to those reporting an abuse of the Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy on any of Wikimedia project" later amended to "mediate between the complainant and the respondent (e.g. CheckUser, ArbCom member, Bureaucrat, Oversighter or Sysop)". Not one mention about independently handling complaints or what to do when the WMF is the respondent. They are even tasked as agents of the Foundation "When legally appropriate, the Ombudsman Commission will assist Wikimedia Foundation..." That is not the description of an ombudsman function it is a description of a checkuser/oversight complaints window dressed up with a grand sounding name.

So, my question is: Is the WMF Ombudsman commission equipped and authorized to act as a neutral party with respect to questions relating to the behavior of Foundation staff and their apparently incorrect interpretation and application of this policy and the associated legal agreement which gives it substance and effect? If not, does the Foundation have someone with such a function, for instance by making use of their outside council to address the substance of my letter and more generally for matters relating to what a WMF ombudsman should deal with -- disputes where the WMF and its agents are party?

(Pinging the C-Suite because... why not? They are the one's who should know and might even answer: @Katherine (WMF) and TSebro (WMF): and the Community elected board members because addressing issues like this is the duty they were elected for and should answer: @Pundit and Doc James:)

Jbh Talk 17:55, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Here's how it's looking ArbCom-wise

So far, here's what the Arbitrators appear to be passing:

  1. Fram's ban was unjustifiable/disproportionate and is therefore vacated/lifted (Both the "vacate" and "time served" remedies are thus far unanimous)
  2. ArbCom will be hosting an RfC on correcting our policies with regards to harassment and private complaints (also unanimous)
  3. Fram's op tools are formally revoked by ArbCom.

And finally, what's dead on arrival:

  1. The WMF ban was justifiable and will be retained (The Arbs are unanimously against this one)
  2. A restriction of 500 words or less in a given post on any of the usual dramaboards (1/6/0 and thus mathematically defeated)
  3. Fram should receive the bit back upon conclusion of the case (All but 2d are DOA or one vote away from failing; 2d passes as noted above)

Figured I'd drop this here for people who are not watching Fram/Proposed decision like a hawk. So far, 6 of the Arbitrators (out of 9 active) all active arbs have opined. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Fram was railroaded! 19:16, 6 September 2019 (UTC) (Edits made 00:59, 8 September 2019 (UTC))

That's swell. Which office does Fram go to, to get his three months back?--Wehwalt (talk) 19:24, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
Ultimecia's or Alexander's, maybe? —A little blue Bori v^_^v Fram was railroaded! 19:41, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
I just hope Fram doesn't feel so harassed by T&S and WMF that he still feels able to return having been roundly bullied off the project. The Rambling Man (Staying alive since 2005!) 19:47, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
If however he does, I trust that some anonymous individuals will write confidentially to T&S to draw their attention to the hounding of Fram by... oh, wait a minute. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:58, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
I see what you did there. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:46, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
Update: None of the sections on Fram's sysop-status are currently passing. The Arbs seem be struggling with with the question, and significant input on the subject is rolling in. Hypothetically if none of the sections were to pass I believe that would leave the de-sysop as nothing but technical action to enforce the ban[26] and an Arbcom decision vacating that ban. I believe re-sysoping would then be routine housekeeping of the vacated ban. Alsee (talk) 00:20, 11 September 2019 (UTC) Update update, as of a few minutes ago the de-sysop again seems to have just enough support to pass. Alsee (talk) 00:24, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Motion to immediately put remedy 1a into effect

There is now a motion to immediately put 1a into effect; 1a being the "Ban of Fram is unjustifiable and thus vacated" remedy, and it's currently passing at 2/0. GorillaWarfare's argument for making the motion (which SilkTork agrees with) is that this would allow Fram to participate at the PD talk page directly rather than people reporting on what he's been saying at Meta.
I think it goes without saying that this motion wouldn't even be considered if not for the frankly craptastic way that the ban was handled from the word go. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Fram was railroaded! 21:56, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

And it has passed, so Fram is now unbanned. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Fram was railroaded! 18:09, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
And thus we now have an answer to the question "CANSANFRANBANFRAM?" --Guy Macon (talk) 03:56, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
Apparently they can, because they did. SHOULDSANFRANBANFRAM doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. --Mojo Hand (talk) 14:34, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
CANSANFRANSFRAMBANSTAND?   :)   --Guy Macon (talk) 15:46, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Is it over?

So, it's been 3.5 months. The ArbCom case has closed, and the WMF seems to be making no effort to overturn. With the RFA closed, it seems Fram's status is settled for the near term: unblocked, but de-admined. There are still ongoing/forthcoming community discussions such as the ArbCom civility RfC, and the community consultation on Meta about partial office actions. But it seems in terms of the direct effects, there are no shoes left to drop, and no further appeals remaining. Can we now consider ourselves to be in Wikipedia's post-FramGate era? MarginalCost (talk) 21:30, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

The WMF:FRAM ARBcom case of recent months is more a beginning than an end. Lots of effort by Arbs and other community members turned a train wreck into a chance for a reset. No one received a fair shake. Until all such complaints can be heard fairly, there is no over. — Neonorange (Phil) 22:30, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
Agreed, and the next steps are to participate in both the harassment RfC and the office actions RfC that's due to take place on Meta on Monday. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Fram was railroaded! 04:02, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
As a matter of Restorative justice, a group should review all of the editors which Laura Hale harassed starting with User:Bill william compton and make amends. Hlevy2 (talk) 18:20, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
Considering Laura Hale has more-or-less formally retired, this would be virtually impossible and even if it weren't there isn't any serious evidence that Laura Hale was involved other than their interactions with Fram being the basis for a warning. As much as people have been wanting to beat on her due to the Wikipediocracy allegations and Raystorm's (not to put too fine a point on it) disrespectful and counterproductive responce, continuing to act as if Laura Hale had anything more than a minor role in it absent more credible evidence is not fucking helpful in the slightest and only lends credence to T&S' position that we don't take harassment seriously. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Fram was railroaded! 19:48, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
If en:WP takes harassment seriously, the community would go back and address all of the editors who Laura Hale harassed. By "vanishing", Laura Hale evaded the scrutiny that would have been an integral part of an Arbcom case where both Laura Hale and Fram would have been parties. That is the fundamental flaw in having a anonymous T&S complaint procedure. It allows T&S complaints to become weaponized by aggressive editors seeking to take out their on-wiki enemies. Hlevy2 (talk) 22:27, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
If I believed in restorative justice, T&S (the aggressor) and Fram (the victim) should have a frank discussion.
It's not going to happen. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:28, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
People have alleged that the COI regarding the WMF Board Chair was handled properly. Could someone please disclose the date that the Board Chair notified Legal of her recusal in this matter and how many days before or after the date of the complaint to T&S? Many thanks, Hlevy2 (talk) 13:42, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
She posted here after the T&S block and said she was not aware of the complaint, and that she recuses.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:49, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Could someone please provide a link to that forthcoming RfC at Meta? I'm sure a lot of editors here would be interested. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:59, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Ched, that's it. I hope that, when it opens, lots of en-wiki editors will take part in the discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:26, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
Thank you Ched. I had been expecting a banner on my watchlist. I, too, hope, as Tryptofish states, schools of editors join in. — Neonorange (Phil) 07:18, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
No problem - it should probably be listed at WP:CENT and maybe WP:AN as well come Monday. At least I think that's when it goes live. — Ched (talk) 19:33, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, Sept. 30. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Fram was railroaded! 19:42, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
Is the collective noun for editors a "school"? A Wiktionary comment page suggests "an erudition of editors". — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:31, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
I think "a squabble of editors" might be more appropriate in the context of Wikipedia. Deor (talk) 08:23, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
As for me, it's a school of fish. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:45, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
A skoll of e-diseurs.Nishidani (talk) 08:26, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
Cabal? --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 21:23, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
There Is No Cabal (TINC). We discussed this at the last Cabal meeting, and everyone agreed that There Is No Cabal. An announcement was made in Cabalist: The Official Newsletter of The Cabal making it clear that There Is No Cabal. The words "There Is No Cabal" are in ten-foot letters on the side of the 42-story International Cabal Headquarters, and an announcement that There Is No Cabal is shown at the start of every program on The Cabal Network. If that doesn't convince people that There Is No Cabal, I don't know what will. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:23, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Guy Macon, We could make T-shirts that say there is no cabal. LakesideMinersMy Talk Page 15:25, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
available in 15 colors (no clue on the reputation of this external link) — xaosflux Talk 15:30, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
Flipflops, wonder if they work on wet concrete. ϢereSpielChequers 22:26, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
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