Wikimedia-l June 2011

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

147 participants
123 discussions

Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?
by John Vandenberg 03 Jun '11

03 Jun '11

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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?
by phoebe ayers 03 Jun '11

03 Jun '11

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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?
by Peter Coombe 03 Jun '11

03 Jun '11

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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request: WMF commitment as a long term cultural archive?
by Fae 03 Jun '11

03 Jun '11

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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?
by David Gerard 03 Jun '11

03 Jun '11

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.

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[Foundation-l] Blocking of Wikipedia Pages
by James Heilman 03 Jun '11

03 Jun '11

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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?
by Sue Gardner 03 Jun '11

03 Jun '11

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

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[Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?
by Scott MacDonald 03 Jun '11

03 Jun '11

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_Cato http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-09-15/Poetlis ter )

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[Foundation-l] New Language proposal policy draft and first change
by Milos Rancic 03 Jun '11

03 Jun '11

During the next month or two Language committee will work on new Language proposal policy [1]. You can watch the changes. If you have your own ideas, please use talk page [2], not the new policy draft. The first change agreed among all LangCom members is about allowing projects in macrolanguages on case by case basis [3]. [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy/New_policy [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Language_proposal_policy/New_policy [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Language_proposal_policy%2FNew_…

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] CTO Leaving Wikimedia Foundation end of July
by Gerard Meijssen 02 Jun '11

02 Jun '11

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 > > _______________________________________________ > Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately > directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia > Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ > WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list > WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l > >

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Wikimedia-l June 2011