On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 9:01 AM, Scott MacDonald
<doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>
> On Behalf Of George Herbert
>> Right. Merely staying pseudonymous or anonymous is supported, but
>> taking on some other real life person's identity on English Language
>> Wikipedia is clearly prohibited now, and should be. It's bad for all
>> the same reasons that real life identity theft is bad.
>>
>
>
> Woah
>
> Taking on some other real life person's identity on English Language
> Wikipedia IS real life identity theft!!!
>
> Remember, Wikipedia exists in the real world - not just in the one it
> creates.
they are only allegations until proven in a real world court. and
that has not happened.
--
John Vandenberg
On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 10:18 AM, Scott MacDonald
<doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: foundation-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-
>> bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Yaroslav M. Blanter
>> Sent: 03 June 2011 18:05
>> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?
>>
>>
>>
>> > I too would like to see the development of a process for global
>> banning
>> of
>> > users who have created serious problems on either the global or the
>> > multiple-project level.
>> >
>> > Risker/Anne
>>
>> I see your reasoning, but I also see at least two serious deficiencies:
>>
>> 1) Some projects explicitly rejected the community ban after extensive
>> discussion;
>> 2) Any meta-discussion of the community ban would be inevitably
>> dominated
>> by the English Wikipedia users (and thus may be unacceptable for those
>> projects which rejected the community ban).
>>
>> Cheers
>> Yaroslav
>>
>
> These should be surmountable.
>
> First the grounds for a global ban ought to be limited. Where users have
> engaged in activity which goes beyond trolling and disruption towards
> illegality, or the type of harassment that has real-life consequences, or
> endangers vulnerable people, then a global hard ban should be considered -
> which overrides any local agreements to the contrary. In cases where the
> user has simply disrupted two or more projects then a presumptive ban would
> be more appropriate - that is the user cannot participate in any further
> community without specific local consent. (That stops the dumping problem.)
>
> What you need is a mechanism so that one local community, when banning a
> user who meets the criteria, can refer the case to a cross-project review
> group for a global decision. This group needs to be loaded so that en.wp
> cannot dominate - and that other projects can have confidence that this is
> the case. It might simply be a conclave of stewards, or it could be a group
> with each member nominated by a different project.
>
> Scott
I'm glad to see this discussion made more general -- beyond this
particular case, and towards the general process for how and when we
can (and should) globally ban someone. I also think that we need to
have a clear process that can be used -- with care, but also without
requiring debate about *process* for every case. It helps everyone if
there are agreed-upon minimum standards for behavior and a process for
review of problems. More specifically, I think Scott's suggestions
above make a lot of sense.
The stewards do seem like the most obvious global group to enact such
review. There was a lot of discussion about this (and related
mechanisms for dispute resolution) last year among the stewards after
Wikimania, and there's a proposal here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Dispute_resolution_comm…;
perhaps people who know more about this idea can weigh in, and we can
build on it.
Also somewhat related, I have been working on and off over the last
few months (with help from a few folks) to collect information about
harassment policies from across the projects, to see if there's any
community consensus about what to do about this kind of bad behavior;
see the list here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Harassment_policies
(I'd love some help with this, too!)
It might also be a useful exercise to collect and analyze other kinds
of "bad actor" guidelines from many projects, to see if there's any
global consensus currently on what our minimum standards for behavior
are. This could have a lot of useful cross-project application,
including perhaps developing grounds for global hard-banning that
would gain consensus.
-- phoebe
On 3 June 2011 09:17, Scott MacDonald <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
> What does it take for a global ban?
>
>
>
> Do you remember "Poetlister"? Aka Cato, aka Runcorn, aka Quillercouch, aka
> British Civil servant with various anti-social problems. Multiple
> sockpuppeting, manipulation, lies, harassment, identity theft, acquiring
> checkuser and crat status on various projects. Banned from en.wp, banned
> from commons, banned even from wikisource.
>
>
>
> The same user is now opening editing on Wikiversity:
> http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Poetlister
>
>
>
> I'm genuinely shocked.
>
>
>
> I know projects value their independence, but really? Can this user simply
> wander round projects wreaking havoc? It seems that the only person evil
> enough to get globally banned is Greg Kohs - and as annoying as he is, he
> does not reach this level of fuckedup.
>
Even old Greg is not banned everywhere anymore - see
http://toolserver.org/~vvv/sulutil.php?user=Thekohser
His account was globally locked at one point on "word of Jimbo", but
it was decided that this was out of order and that individual projects
should be free to decide for themselves. A few (including en.wikinews)
have unblocked him after some discussion.
I am somewhat shocked at Poetlister though, that was a truly
monumental case of deception and abuse, probably the worst ever seen
on our projects. But if the Wikiversity community wants to let him
continue editing, I suppose it's their funeral.
Pete / the wub
Hi,
As a follow-up to my original question, my brief presentation today at
the all day Wellcome Trust research images workshop went down well and
everyone was happy to see "in perpetuity" as a commitment. Thanks for
the comments made in this thread, they did influence the nature of my
discussions.
In practice if WM-UK are able to partner with either the Wellcome
Library (I'm hopeful after my behind the scenes chat with their Head
of Publishing) or some of the sponsored research projects with large
image assets, the WMF may find it usefully pre-emptive to go the next
step and be able to show how this is planned for in operation practice
if it has yet to be detailed (i.e. not just a backup procedure but
strategically planning for perpetuity).
Cheers,
Fae
--
http://enwp.org/user_talk:fae
Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/faetags
On 3 June 2011 21:25, Scott MacDonald <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
> I'm now actually wondering whether there is a structural problem in getting
> lunatics like poetlister banned, or whether it is just the case that one
> community (wikiversity) is seriously messed up.
Note that we had pretty much the same discussion concerning
widely-banned trolls using Wikiversity as a base around March last
year.
- d.
My hospital IT department has become more draconian as of late. Was
attempting to make changes to "breast thermography" an imaging technique for
breast cancer to discover that websense considers it nudity. Had a
discussion with IT and they concluded that they can be off no help.
What sort of measures is the Wikimedia movement taking to address these
sorts of issues? The work around I will be using is the running of TightVNC
Portable Edition off of a USB stick to control my home computer over the
cloud.
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
On 3 June 2011 10:38, Scott MacDonald <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: foundation-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-
>> bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Sue Gardner
>> Sent: 03 June 2011 18:11
>> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?
>>
>> On 3 June 2011 10:00, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > I too would like to see the development of a process for global
>> banning of
>> > users who have created serious problems on either the global or the
>> > multiple-project level.
>>
>> Is there something the Foundation could do to support that happening?
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
> Sue,
>
> The first thing you could do is simply decree that the user known as
> poetlister is not welcome on any project controlled by the Foundation. This
> would be a precedent, but one in fairly unique circumstances (I'm sure
> Newyorkbrad is a better place to update you on them that I am. But I have no
> doubt you'll agree the need for a ban.)
>
> Then, if people don't like the precedent of a decree, charge the communities
> to develop an agreeable mechanism with appropriate checks and balances, to
> handle any future cases - with the caveat that there must be some provision
> that can global ban people such as this.
>
> Scott
Responding to Scott, and also MZMcBride earlier... I don't think the
Wikimedia Foundation could successfully make decrees to permanently
ban editors from all projects. It might be the right solution in some
cases, and many editors might welcome it, but it's not our appropriate
role and lots of editors would oppose it on principle for that reason.
And it doesn't scale. So whether or not it's the right thing to do, it
wouldn't work.
Having said that, the current situation seems pretty bad to me. I'm
not talking specifically about Poetlister, who I don't know much
about, but I've certainly seen a number of situations in which a bad
actor is banned from one wiki and reinvents himself on a smaller wiki
and continues to cause problems (as well as other variations on that
theme). IMO this is a known vulnerability of the small wikis.
But it's complicated, right. Because the small wikis obviously are
autonomous. And yet, all the wikis are interdependent, and their
choices affect each other.
I am wondering if the Wikimedia Foundation could facilitate or support
some kind of multiple-wiki convening (virtual or F2F) to help editors
share information and work towards policy on this. And yes, there is
also the technical piece of work that MZMcBride mentioned.
Thanks,
Sue
What does it take for a global ban?
Do you remember "Poetlister"? Aka Cato, aka Runcorn, aka Quillercouch, aka
British Civil servant with various anti-social problems. Multiple
sockpuppeting, manipulation, lies, harassment, identity theft, acquiring
checkuser and crat status on various projects. Banned from en.wp, banned
from commons, banned even from wikisource.
The same user is now opening editing on Wikiversity:
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Poetlister
I'm genuinely shocked.
I know projects value their independence, but really? Can this user simply
wander round projects wreaking havoc? It seems that the only person evil
enough to get globally banned is Greg Kohs - and as annoying as he is, he
does not reach this level of fuckedup.
(For background see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Poetlister_and_Catohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-09-15/Poetlis
ter )
Hoi,
This is a sad day.
Thanks,
Gerard
On 2 June 2011 18:23, Danese Cooper <danese(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> It is with considerable regret that I inform you of my planned departure
> from the Wikimedia Foundation at the end of July. I’ve really enjoyed my
> time here, and I’m proud of what Wikimedia Engineering has accomplished
> together.
>
> While I tremendously enjoyed helping to build the engineering organization,
> at this point in the development of the organization and the role, Sue, Erik
> and I have agreed that there’s no longer a fit between the identified near
> term needs and goals of the organization, and my own interests. I’ve
> therefore decided to leave WMF as CTO, but I remain a friend of the
> organization and the mission, and Sue, Erik and I talked about some ways to
> work together in coming months.
>
> To allow for an orderly transition, I will stay on as Wikimedia’s CTO
> through July. I'll be representing the Foundation and recruiting talent at
> several tech conferences, as well as engaging in transition activites within
> the Foundation. Erik will assume the title of Interim VP of Engineering and
> Product Development, and we’ll immediately start the transition of personnel
> and reporting lines.
>
> Erik will send a note about the transition shortly.
>
> Danese
>
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