Meta as a government?, Still just a website. Options

[Abd]

Discussions on meta are, with some opposition, heading toward support for "global bans" as being something that either could not be locally overridden, or that might require 80% local support, with a minimum of 50 users supporting, to allow a globally banned user to edit locally.

Given that when there is a ban discussion of an user who is unpopular on Wikipedia, on another wiki, Wikipedians pile in, in significant numbers, even though they never edited the smaller wiki, that basically means that Wikipedia Rules. Even if most users of a small wiki want the editor to edit, even if there is no local disruption at all, other than the attempt to prevent the editor from editing.

The only case behind this is Poetlister. As I feared would happen, Poetlister is the poster boy for a campaign to strip local wikis, most notably Wikiversity, of their right to make local decisions about who can edit and who can't. The reality is that meta is dominated by Wikipedians, which alone can muster hordes of users to comment in ban discussions. Wikiversity would be setting records if 50 users commented in a process. That's nothing on Wikipedia.

The principle of local autonomy was well-established. Global blacklists and global blocks have mechanisms built-in for local override, any admin can do it. Global locking was new with SUL and the local tool wasn't created to override, but the renaming trick was discovered, and used on a number of wikis in the case of Thekohser.

In discussing this on meta, it's pretended that Poetlister -- and another obscure user -- are the first global bans. In fact, there were Moulton and Thekohser before, those were declared bans, and they were -- and still are -- what Wikipedia calls "defacto bans," i.e., nobody unwilling to lift the lock.

The Empire Strikes Back.

Poetlister is about as unpopular as I could imagine, but the bottom line is that Poetlister is not really the issue. That's a smokescreen. The issue is the right of one wiki (meta) to decide affairs for another (Wikiversity in this case). It's a crucial case, in my opinion, because my view has been for some time that the future of the WMF lies with Wikiversity, just as the future of encyclopedias lies with academia, which is always freer and far more open than an encyclopedia, which is necessarily very limited.

The proposal, because of the political realities at meta, is like putting the non-academic editors of an encyclopedia in charge of a university, able to eject professors and whole subjects based on their opinions.

And SBJ is leading the charge, carrying water for these forces, blocking Poetlister on Wikiversity per the global ban, in direct and flagrant disregard of Wikiversity blocking policy, which is quite clear on the topic. And which is the consensus he thinks is necessary. It's obviously personal, because with Thekohser, he was clearly on the side of "blocks require consensus, not unblock." And Wikiversity policy absolutely doesn't allow blocking without disruptive behavior. With Thekohser, there were, at least, allegations of disruption. There weren't any for Poetlister, the guy has been nothing but a positive contributor on Wikiversity, and that could really be said about his sojourn as Longfellow on Wikisource. On Wikiversity,though, he's been open as to his identity from the beginning.

And his enemies turn that into an accusation: he's only there to "worm his way into the confidence of the community." Isn't that what half the admins have done on Wikipedia? It's a crime?

This post has been edited by Abd: Mon 7th November 2011, 2:56am

[Michaeldsuarez]

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?titl...1&oldid=3063243

Global bans may be overturned when a broad community consensus to do so can be demonstrated. If a local agreement develops on a project that a global ban was unwarranted, then this decision should be brought to the attention of other communities where the editor was active by public notification. Since a global ban is the product of a cross-wiki discussion, it is important that the communities previously invited to comment are made aware of a request to overturn a ban.

Abd, is this addition satisfactory?

[Abd]

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?titl...1&oldid=3063243

Global bans may be overturned when a broad community consensus to do so can be demonstrated. If a local agreement develops on a project that a global ban was unwarranted, then this decision should be brought to the attention of other communities where the editor was active by public notification. Since a global ban is the product of a cross-wiki discussion, it is important that the communities previously invited to comment are made aware of a request to overturn a ban.

Abd, is this addition satisfactory?

Satisfactory for what?

Properly, a "global ban" is a decision to apply a global lock.

A subtle shift has occurred. In theory, if true and present consensus is to rule, for a ban to be maintained, there must be consensus *for it*. For efficiency, though, communities don't re-discuss everything, and "consensus communities" have a tendency to become rigid. The rigidity arises when a past consensus is considered to bind the present, requiring consensus (i.e., supermajority) to overturn it.

The real problem is the lack of a reliable decision-making process.

Practically speaking, discussions at meta will always, at least for a long time, be dominated by Wikipedians (from the various languages, but especially en.wiki).

This is the real problem, and the idea of overturning global bans assumes that it's necessary to do so, in order for a user to edit a local wiki. Global locks protect the small wikis from encountering users considered disruptive elsewhere. However, the wikis offer differing conditions. Wikipedia is a floating opportunity for dispute, with this rather vague concept of "neutrality" as if neutrality were an absolute, when, in fact, the only reasonably reliable way of assessing neutrality is through a measure of true consensus. Which is largely prevented at Wikipedia, "POV pushers" being readily banned. Get rid of the people with strong opinions, does the expertise, the ability to understand issues, in the remaining population increase or decrease?

Wikiversity, on the other hand, by the nature of the project, does not need to make decisions about neutrality as commonly, because forking is allowed. (Spooning, too, off in the corner there. Knifing seems to be de rigeur lately, but none of this has to do with content. Rather, fulfilling a major function of the wikis, and, yes, it's true: it's about Ottava and Poetlister.)

So it's entirely possible that a user may be unable to cooperate on many WMF wikis, but might be able to work collaboratively on one. Why should the one have to overturn a global ban in order to allow the user to edit there? The idea that this is necessary would be entirely new. Up to now, local wikis had autonomy. The edges of that were frayed with Thekohser's ban, but, in fact, the wikis ended up being quite clear. Nolo me tangere. Mind Your Own Business.

The global ban for Thekohser stands, it's still in effect. It's highly unlikely that it will be overturned. Yet, Thekohser *is* allowed to edit on certain wikis. Where is he disruptive? Not there!

Does anyone notice that bans create ongoing disruption?

[thekohser]

The global ban for Thekohser stands, it's still in effect. It's highly unlikely that it will be overturned. Yet, Thekohser *is* allowed to edit on certain wikis. Where is he disruptive? Not there!

Does anyone notice that bans create ongoing disruption?

This much is true these days... on the wikis where my global lock has been overturned, I've presented zero disruption. On the wikis where the global lock is enforced, I do seem to cause disruption, at least how they define it.

[SB_Johnny]

This much is true these days... on the wikis where my global lock has been overturned, I've presented zero disruption. On the wikis where the global lock is enforced, I do seem to cause disruption, at least how they define it.

Right, but you were "banned" because Jimbo said so, and he said so because he doesn't like you. I don't think it's necessarily a bad sign that teh communiteh decided to ban the poetlister.