Benutzer:Mautpreller/Meta

Thank you for your useful comments, you are all invited to continue. The discussion as well on Diskussion:Kurier as here convinced me to try a second attempt to formulate an RfC for Meta. This second draft will be published soon. --Mautpreller (Diskussion) 13:47, 20. Jun. 2019 (CEST)

The m:Trust & Safety Team has executed at least two "partial bans" since February 2019.

The first one was a de.wiki ban against de:User:Janneman, de:User:Edith Wahr and de:User:Judith Wahr on 19 February 2019. The policy for partial foundation bans wasn't even public at this time, it was added to the page m:Office actions the very same day. All three accounts had been blocked on German Wikipedia, User:Janneman since 23 April 2014, User:Edith Wahr since 16 March 2017, user:Judith Wahr since 9 December 2018 following a massive insult against another user. This is a long-time user who has written a lot of featured and good articles. He became bitter because of petty quarrels and petty vandalism and, therefore, tended to become really abusive sometimes. The infinite block implemented by a German sysop was justified (I am sorry to say that because I like him very much and he did extremely much for the project but the gross insult could not be tolerated). The case was closed. There was to my knowledge no online activity by the user since then and offline he had never acted. (I asked him, too.) This is a sad story that had ended by then, sad for the Wikipedia at any rate. So it came as a huge surprise when we learnt that the user had been banned by foundation partial ban on 19 February 2019. First we could make neither rhyme nor reason of it. Why ban a user who has taken his leave and whose accounts are infinitely blocked? Why the WMF? Was this a kind of en:Damnatio memoriae? Had anything happened? And so we tried to make out what had happened. We learned that there was something like an anonymous request to a team called Trust & Safety hitherto unknown. We learned that it is absolutely senseless to ask this team any questions as to its rationale, procedures, reasonings, and so on. They hadn't even bothered to publish their new policy before they applied it. There was absolutely no information, besides quasi-automated mails and postings like that one, totally devoid of any relevant content (those who speak German will recognize the wording if you compare it with the statements concerning the Fram ban). With one exception: it was made clear that we should receive no information at all for (alleged) privacy reasons and because this was a WMF thing and a WMF thing only. We were furious, first because this sad story had already ended and we hated the idea of this extra-punishment, second because of the infringement of WMF upon community matters (since the community had acted and the user had been blocked), third because we were treated like unwanted gazers and querulants and got absolutely no clue what had happened, fourth because this seemed to us a very bad example of trial, secret, without any control from outside, the exact opposite of a fair trial and this could happen again, fifth because speculation which had died down rose again to its full height because the alleged "privacy reasons" invited it, and finally because of the apparent senselessness of the whole thing.

The second blow was a one-year en.wiki ban against an administrator and long-time user, en:User:Fram, from the English Wikipedia on 10 June 2019. As to the Trust & Safety team action, it was, in the beginning, identical. Ban out of the blue, no reason stated, quasi-automated mails and non-information standard statements (wording like in the first case), alleged privacy reasons, no indication whatsoever of any legal or emergency reasons or offline activity or anything that could justify such an action.

But two things were different:

Fram was not a user who had already left, he had no intention to give up his Wikipedia activity for good as Janneman had, he was able to give some, if not much, information. Every bit of information the en.wp users got at all came from Fram. It transpired that he had got two ominous "conduct warnings", one rather general, the other more specific, without any possibility to appeal, explain his actions, or anything. They did not announce consequences and did not order an interaction ban or anything. The next thing was the 1-year ban. He had not been contacted, nor had the ArbCom been informed, nor had he been asked for more information or for his point of view of the whole affair, nor had he been able to defend himself, he didn't know that anything was in the pipeline. The only reason given to him was an edit where he had used two four-letter words in a post on the arbcom talk page five weeks before. This was certainly uncivil, but nothing more than that. It was not directed against a certain person and had nothing to do with the earlier warnings and was certainly not apt to intimidate anyone. It could have been dealt with on the Noticeboard of English Wikipedia or, if necessary, by ArbCom if anyone had requested that, but that didn't happen. Instead, the WMF ban came.

And the English Wikipedia is the oldest and biggest of the whole Wikimedia universe and wouldn't take this infringement both on their rights and Fram's rights lightly. A storm rose (see en:Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram with all its subpages and archives). An admin unblocked Fram and was promptly de-sysopped for 30 days by WMF. Another did the same again. The first admin was re-sysopped locally and the re-sysopper requested an Arbcom procedure against himself to examine if he had been right in doing so. The storm reached the WMF Board and the talk page of Jimmy Wales. In consequence, the WMF acted more carefully. They refrained from actions against the local admins who had reverted the Office action and left this case to the English ArbCom but they remained adamant (also in their non-information) as to the ban they had executed against Fram. At one time it seemed that they made a kind of offer to dispute the whole thing, see en:Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram#Further comments from Jan Eissfeldt, or at least I thought so (see de:Wikipedia Diskussion:Kurier#Update, but according to this latter statement, I see no indication that they are really open to discussion. But we do need to talk about this, which is the reason for this lengthy text.

What should be discussed?

In my opinion which is shared by a lot of people, the whole way of Trust & Safety's handling these cases is the paradigm of unfair trial. It has been compared to en:Star chamber justice and to the en:Committee of Public Safety and to Kafka’s famous novel Der Process. All of these comparisons have their merits but they don’t hit it precisely.

Some minimum standards of a fair trial are, as I see it:

• Trust & safety must not be self-empowered to decide if it's their scope or the communities' scope. This has to be shared with (at least: representatives of) the communities. I admit there may be emergencies or legal liabilities that require immediate action to avoid immediate dangers, but this must be the absolute exception.
• A clear procedure has to be published and discussed before any such actions are taken, including clear criteria why cases could justify a WMF action at all, how investigations are conducted, who decides on what and for what reasons, which reasons are acceptable for an Office action, and so on. This is particularly true for a new policy that expands the scope of possible actions, as it is the "partial ban" policy that infringes on the communities' instruments by a kind of "flexible response". Whereas emergencies and legal liabilities that require a global ban might be accepted, this means trespassing into the everyday self-organization of the communities without any notification, let alone discussion.
• Non-publication must be restricted to privacy issues. Allegations, case accounts, verdicts and reasonings have to be made public, with the sole exception of things that could infringe on privacy in the specific case. This is possible as it has been done in Arbcom cases for years (and, incidentally, in RL court cases, too).
• The persons accused of wrongdoing must have full possibilities to defend themselves and plead their cause. If this is not fully possible because of specific privacy reasons, they need a representative to protect their rights (a kind of an advocate). This person may come from a relatively small number of trustworthy users. (Maybe the other side could also need such a representative.)
• An appeal has to be possible. It has to be decided by a different gremium, or a committee.

I add that in my view, Trust & Safety has lost so much trust that it cannot be regained. The whole team should resign and a whole new body should be created with different persons and different rules — and these rules have to be extensively discussed with the community before they are put into force.-- Mautpreller (Diskussion) 10:14, 19. Jun. 2019 (CEST)

Mautpreller - some factual corrections according to my summary at [1]. The WMF actually has given some information, even though they have always refused to publicly disclose details of this or any particular case and cannot tell you what specific behaviors by Fram brought about this action. (Jan's 4th statement) [2] Starship.paint (Diskussion) 14:39, 19. Jun. 2019 (CEST)

• The 1st WMF statement [3] said they acted on complaints from the community.
• The 2nd WMF statement [4] said that Fram was banned because they were harassing and abusing others. ArbCom was one primary target of Fram, so they did not ask ArbCom to take the case as this could put volunteers into a very difficult position and create the appearance of a conflict of interest. Fram was only banned for one year because there was reason to think time might change behavior, or where disruption is limited to a single project.
• The 4th WMF statement [5] says that criticism of ArbCom should also remain strictly respectful in tone towards others.
• Jan from WMF's 4th statement [6] says that we give conduct warnings prior to any action being taken. In Fram’s case, as noted on Commons, we did send more than one of those warnings/reminders before the most recent step. Starship.paint (Diskussion) 14:31, 19. Jun. 2019 (CEST)

Thank you, I will try to reword the text in these points. What do you think about the draft as a whole? --Mautpreller (Diskussion) 14:25, 19. Jun. 2019 (CEST)

Mautpreller, I would support it but I don't know how much of en.wiki will. I think at least 25% of en.wiki commenters will reject it straightaway. Starship.paint (Diskussion) 14:40, 19. Jun. 2019 (CEST)

Why? Is it because they think WMF should act like they did? I met this kind of reasoning before on de.wiki. The gist is that Janneman (or else Fram) acted wrongly and you need a higher independent body from WMF to put it right because the communities won't do that. The problem is that in this way you get an unaccountable group who doesn't comply with basic requirements of fair trial, which is, in my view, far worse than the shortcomings of communities that indeed may exist. Or is it because they say it's useless since WMF is the master and legal owner and can do what they like? In this case they are simply wrong. But I am not so much interested in getting endorsements but open discussion.--Mautpreller (Diskussion) 15:00, 19. Jun. 2019 (CEST)

Have you read this yet, Mautpreller? Jéské Couriano (Diskussion) 21:59, 19. Jun. 2019 (CEST)

Yes, but just half an hour ago. Not a pleasant thing to read but something worth thinking it over. After that, I read the Mailinglist of July 2018 as to the incident that was at the root of this new thread. I must admit that this was kind of a shock because there are already all the things that I am criticizing. No fair procedure, nothing should be public, nothing should be answered for, rather trust, trust, trust us.--Mautpreller (Diskussion) 22:52, 19. Jun. 2019 (CEST)

Mautpreller, I think at least 25% of the en.wiki editors think either (1) WMF was within their rights to enforce the Terms Of Use of the website as they see fit, (2) they believe the privacy of the accuser should be respected to protect them from retaliation, (3) they believe en.wiki cannot handle harassment properly and thus the WMF should do it. Starship.paint (Diskussion) 02:35, 20. Jun. 2019 (CEST)