[Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness

[Milos Rancic]

On 04/08/2011 10:16 PM, Dror Kamir wrote:
> This resolution is a very positive step. I hope we will soon be updated 
> about practical steps to implement it.
> 
> Two such practical steps that are easy to implement and would make a 
> significant difference, in my opinion:
> 
> (1) Administrators' decisions about bans, sanctions etc. should be made 
> more public. They are, of course, accessible to anyone as a policy of 
> all projects, but they are often "hidden" in many pages with 
> non-intuitive titles (for detailed analysis of the problem, see Ayelet 
> Oz's presentation in Wikimania 2009 
> http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:149). Had someone 
> followed the administrators' decisions on the biggest projects, and 
> publish a monthly newsletter with copies of the most prominent decisions 
> about bans and sanctions, it would increase transparency and make 
> administrators much more careful about checking cases and providing 
> justifications for their actions, especially in what concerns treatment 
> of new users. It would also give a better picture about disruptive 
> behaviors of users.
> 
> (2) Appealing sanctions should be made much easier. I would even go as 
> far as opening a special small wiki for such complaints. Reply should be 
> provided within a limited period of time, and refer specifically to the 
> new user's arguments. This may sound trivial, but projects often fail to 
> do so.

Besides that, there should be limits on sanctions. For example, I think
that we should limit all non-spam as well as some troll-like behavior
blocks to, let's say, two years.

All civilized places on Earth have restrictions on punishment system if
it is about minor offenses. And our system is dealing with minor
offenses, as all major offenses should be handled by judicial systems.

And that's Board's job, too.