Erik (Eloquence) has called for a 'return to vigilantism'. I oppose this. Let's vote.
How many people want admins to have the Authority to temp-ban any user who (in their opinion) has violated a community rule? (Confession: This is precisely what I did myself with Wik a couple of weeks ago, so there is, er, "blood on my hands").
How many people want to decisions on banning (except for clear-cut "simple vandalism" or "emergencies") to be handled Only By The Arbitration Committee?
1. Please clarify whether you agree that these are the two alternatives. 2. Please indicate which alternative you want.
If enough of us on the mailing list have strong feelings about this, I will create a policy polling page on the English Wikipedia, and we can see if a consensus develops that merits a change in policy.
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
P.S. I'm trying to be impartial about this, even though I have an opinion.
"Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com writes:
How many people want admins to have the Authority to temp-ban any user who (in their opinion) has violated a community rule?
Yes, please.
Troublemakers (like Wik, Iriskook and Plautus) only have to show a slight bit of subtlety and we bend over backwards to please them, frequently alienating actual, useful contributors.
On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 16:10, Gareth Owen wrote:
"Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com writes:
> How many people want admins to have the Authority to temp-ban any user > who (in their opinion) has violated a community rule?
Yes, please.
Troublemakers (like Wik, Iriskook and Plautus) only have to show a slight bit of subtlety and we bend over backwards to please them, frequently alienating actual, useful contributors.
Gareth Owen
Oh, please no.
The dangers are more salient than the benefits. We can afford to lose any number of users to exasperation with vandals and trolls. What we can not afford is to create (even with the best of intentions) a insular culture of obeisance and initiatory progression through the ranks. Sysophood is already too often withheld from unpopular users(/users holding unpopular views). Openness is the jewel of wikipedia, and it should be protected at nearly any cost.
I understand the will to prevent useful users from leaving in frustration, but we must be more concerned about the whole of wikipedia, than any one, or even several users. "The law created before me, shall outlast me." As much as it pains us all, it is _most_ important to lay down rules which can be justified without reference to current cases, and personages.
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen jheiskan@welho.com writes:
The dangers are more salient than the benefits. We can afford to lose any number of users to exasperation with vandals and trolls.
No we can't.
What we can not afford is to create (even with the best of intentions) a insular culture of obeisance
You call it obeisance, I call it following the community rules and norms of behaviour. If you don't like the rules, campaign to have them changed but don't tolerate the breaching of the rules.
There are many ways to introduce new ideas into articles, without getting involved in edit and reversion wars.
and initiatory progression through the ranks.
Theres no progression to sysophood, except for those with copious free time. Its not a promotion, its a voluntary duty. There are many, I'm sure, for whom it holds not appeal.
As much as it pains us all, it is _most_ important to lay down rules which can be justified without reference to current cases, and personages.
We have rules. The question is, what do we do to people with no apparent desire to work within them? Waste man-hours attempting rehabilitation, or prevent them from causing any more trouble.
It strikes me that the only (partially) succesful rehabilitation of a troublemaking user (Lir) came through a ban, rather than any "arbitration." The addition of a layer of committees and bureaucracy has not, as far as I can tell, achieved anything of any note.
Gareth Owen wrote:
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen jheiskan@welho.com writes:
The dangers are more salient than the benefits. We can afford to lose any number of users to exasperation with vandals and trolls.
No we can't.
"We can afford this!" - "No we can't!" - No offense, people, but some rational arguments would probably go a somewhat longer way...
Theres no progression to sysophood [...] Its not a promotion [...]
It certainly felt like a progression towards a promotion to me.
And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone there. Sometimes, what most people perceive something to be is more important to consider than what you perceive it to be (a.k.a. what you think it actually is).
Timwi
Actually I think you're wrong. It has accomplished something. It's accomplished a lot of frustration and the withdrawal of many good editors, and left the asylum in the hands of the inmates.
RickK
Gareth Owen wiki@gwowen.freeserve.co.uk wrote: It strikes me that the only (partially) succesful rehabilitation of a troublemaking user (Lir) came through a ban, rather than any "arbitration." The addition of a layer of committees and bureaucracy has not, as far as I can tell, achieved anything of any note.
At 14:44 26/02/2004 +0000, Gareth wrote:
It strikes me that the only (partially) succesful rehabilitation of a troublemaking user (Lir) came through a ban, rather than any "arbitration." The addition of a layer of committees and bureaucracy has not, as far as I can tell, achieved anything of any note.
I don't think the committees are supposed to be achieving anything new, really, so if they achieved anything of note, it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing...
Think back to 18 months ago: if there was a very serious dispute that was causing a lot of trouble, then Jimbo would talk to the involved parties and try to resolve it. If it couldn't be resolved and the problem really was serious, then he might ban somebody. I think this system worked well.
Now Jimbo has said that he wants to slowly withdraw from having such a big role in these sorts of decisions (him doing everything wasn't scalable in any case). So we have the mediation committee which exists to amicably resolve disputes between arguing parties, and the arbitration committee which exists to consider bans or other binding solutions in serious cases. They're just doing the same job that Jimbo used to do on his own.
The past couple of months have been a bit rough. We've had some dodgy users come along and cause some upset, and those people they've upset haven't seen any clear way to complain and get something done about the situation. Hopefully the committees will give them a way. Yes, it's another layer of beaurocracy, and yes that's awful, but we've got to deal with these problems somehow, and I'm not sure there's a credible alternative at the moment (vigilantism may solve one problem but it creates another).
We've got to remember that the nature of the Wikipedia is such that there will always be conflict to some degree, and there will always be trouble. There's no magic way to stop it altogether. We're in the business of damage limitation really, and that's no easy task either.
Lee (Camembert, off to write some articles)
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote
Sysophood is already too often withheld
from unpopular users (/users holding unpopular views).
Hang on - I haven't observed enough of the process to contradict this statement; but why have votes if you don't want to expose people as 'unpopular'? A recent VfA candidate had written some remarkably silly things about British spelling on a talk page - I didn't vote either way, and in the end it didn't matter, but this wasn't 'holding unpopular views' so much as not giving a damn about opinions of a 'minority'. People who wear their opinions as a badge of honour obviously do risk not being taken seriously for an admin job.
Charles
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
|Oh, please no. Agree completely.
The dangers are more salient than the benefits. We can afford to lose any number of users to exasperation with vandals and trolls. What we can not afford is to create (even with the best of intentions) a insular culture of obeisance and initiatory progression through the ranks. Sysophood is already too often withheld from unpopular users(/users holding unpopular views). Openness is the jewel of wikipedia, and it should be protected at nearly any cost.
Also agree. People do vote for political reasons. I can see the start of political camps forming in Wikipedia which worries me. There is also a fair amount of obedience to sysops which is wrong as well. I guess these are the dynamics of groups.
I understand the will to prevent useful users from leaving in frustration, but we must be more concerned about the whole of wikipedia, than any one, or even several users. "The law created before me, shall outlast me." As much as it pains us all, it is _most_ important to lay down rules which can be justified without reference to current cases, and personages.
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)
It's far too open to abuse. There is an element of popularity contest about it. No-one seems to object to banning unpopular users.
The truth is, I don't trust some sysops not to ban people for political reasons, or to ban people they've previously been fighting with. Therefore a definite no.
Caroline / Secretlondon
Caroline Ford caroline@secretlondon.me.uk writes:
It's far too open to abuse. There is an element of popularity contest about it. No-one seems to object to banning unpopular users.
The question is *why* are those people unpopular.
You have opinions which are undoubtedly unpopular with many wikipedians, but I've not seen calls for your banning because you express those within the confines of norms of Wikipedia behaviour.
No-one called for RK to be banned, until he started hurling abuse at people, even though he was in in frequent disagreement with people from the other side of the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
The present set of people are being banned *not* because they have unpopular opinions, but because they behave in an antisocial manner, and refuse to cooperate with others.
Gareth Owen wrote:
Caroline Ford caroline@secretlondon.me.uk writes:
It's far too open to abuse. There is an element of popularity contest about it. No-one seems to object to banning unpopular users.
The question is *why* are those people unpopular.
You have opinions which are undoubtedly unpopular with many wikipedians, but I've not seen calls for your banning because you express those within the confines of norms of Wikipedia behaviour.
No-one called for RK to be banned, until he started hurling abuse at people, even though he was in in frequent disagreement with people from the other side of the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
The present set of people are being banned *not* because they have unpopular opinions, but because they behave in an antisocial manner, and refuse to cooperate with others.
Well, what's "abuse" versus "unpopular political opinions" seems to vary depending on the particular dispute. In the Germany/Poland and Israel/Palestine disputes, for example, there've been more than a few calls for various people to be banned primarily because they were seen as an "anti-Polish activist" or "right-wing Israeli apologist" or whatnot, rather than because of any particular abuse (though sometimes abuse is also alleged, but it usually seems to not be the primary issue). Three examples that come to mind are Nico for his pro-German-names advocacy, Srpska for his pro-Serbian-nationalist advocacy, and OneVoice for his pro-Israeli-right advocacy (none of whom I personally feel should be banned, temporarily or otherwise, but all of whom at least one person has asked to be banned).
-Mark
Gareth Owen wrote:
"Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com writes:
How many people want admins to have the Authority to temp-ban any user who (in their opinion) has violated a community rule?
Yes, please.
Troublemakers (like Wik, Iriskook and Plautus) only have to show a slight bit of subtlety and we bend over backwards to please them, frequently alienating actual, useful contributors.
Funny, if you asked Wik, he'd argue that he's the one keeping Wikipedia free of troublemakers, and that we should perhaps give him ban authority to keep things happy. And some people even agree with him (his most frequent edit-war opponent is [[User:Anthony del Pierro]], who hardly has a stellar record here himself).
So are we just supposed to ban everyone who some number of people dislike or thinks are "troublemaker"s? By that criterion, the following "troublemakers" would be banned by one person or another: * Lir, * Wik, * 168... * Plautus Satire * Irismeister * RK * 172 * BL * OneVoice * Anthony del Pierro * Leumi * Vergina * etc...
Which I don't think is really a great idea.
-Mark
I vote for admins to have the authority to temp-ban any user.
RickK
"Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote: Erik (Eloquence) has called for a 'return to vigilantism'. I oppose this. Let's vote.
How many people want admins to have the Authority to temp-ban any user who (in their opinion) has violated a community rule? (Confession: This is precisely what I did myself with Wik a couple of weeks ago, so there is, er, "blood on my hands").
How many people want to decisions on banning (except for clear-cut "simple vandalism" or "emergencies") to be handled Only By The Arbitration Committee?
1. Please clarify whether you agree that these are the two alternatives. 2. Please indicate which alternative you want.
If enough of us on the mailing list have strong feelings about this, I will create a policy polling page on the English Wikipedia, and we can see if a consensus develops that merits a change in policy.
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
P.S. I'm trying to be impartial about this, even though I have an opinion. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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I vote against
It is not one admin who should decide that The community should In case of urgency, there should be a poll, and if say 80% agree, the guy is temp banned by a sysop
A sysop is not there to take decision for the rest of the community, he is there at the service of the community. If the community widely wishes a temp ban, a sysop will appropriately act as the community wishes.
If a sysop is allowed to unilateraly, temporarily ban of user, free of any later accusation, I ask that
* from now on, no person is made sysop with less than 100% agreement from the community * that any sysop time is temporary, let's say 6 months. After 6 months, the sysop should be reconfirmed. If any user oppose a vote to his nomination, he should not be a sysop any more.
The sysop voice should not hold more weight than another user voice. The sysop position does not allow to take decisions unilateraly. The sysop is not a cop, allowed to pull out a gun whenever he feels like it, and get out of it free.
Rick a écrit:
I vote for admins to have the authority to temp-ban any user.
RickK
"Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
Erik (Eloquence) has called for a 'return to vigilantism'. I oppose this. Let's vote. How many people want admins to have the Authority to temp-ban any user who (in their opinion) has violated a community rule? (Confession: This is precisely what I did myself with Wik a couple of weeks ago, so there is, er, "blood on my hands"). How many people want to decisions on banning (except for clear-cut "simple vandalism" or "emergencies") to be handled Only By The Arbitration Committee? 1. Please clarify whether you agree that these are the two alternatives. 2. Please indicate which alternative you want. If enough of us on the mailing list have strong feelings about this, I will create a policy polling page on the English Wikipedia, and we cansee if a consensus develops that merits a change in policy. Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed P.S. I'm trying to be impartial about this, even though I have an opinion. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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