I don't believe we can presume everyone who hasn't participated in the
discussion would like to disagree but is afraid to.
Among all active contributors, I suspect non-participants are mostly a mix
of unaware of the issue, don't have a strong opinion about the issue, don't
understand what's happening and don't want to devote the time to
understanding it, or don't care. Given the WMF's actions, there may indeed
even be some who do not like what they've done, but are afraid to be seen
speaking against them--look what happened to the last guy! And of course
some people on both sides might be hesitant to enter a discussion that's
rather heated and very fast-moving, not to mention the sheer size of the
page to read just to catch up on what already happened.
So, pretty much every discussion is decided by those who choose to
participate in it. I don't know any way around that; we can't force people
to participate. At some point, if you don't stick your hand up, you don't
get counted.
Todd
On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 3:10 PM Rebecca O'Neill <rebeccanineil(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Just you reply to your point on how many people are
speaking out against
this decision, I'm a relatively active and interested editor and I have no
interest in voicing my opinion there as the atmosphere is so toxic. There
is always a danger of the tyranny of a vocal and motivated minority
appearing to be the dominant opinion of the community as a whole. I would
proffer that that is a deeply flawed premise, if we were to take into
account the number of people engaged in this discussion and compare it to
the number of regular contributors.
On Wed 12 Jun 2019, 22:01 Yaroslav Blanter, <ymbalt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Just to summarize the difference between WMF and
ArbCom, in view of the
majority of the en.wiki community:
We elect ArbCom, and if they do not do what they should be doing, they do
not get re-elected in two years, which happens on a regular basis
We do not elect WMF and in fact we have no means of influencing WMF
(apart
of the three Trustees we elect every three years
who are themselves
typically alienated from the community). Short of taking down the
fundraiser banner or of organizing a Wikipedia blackout.
This is the difference, and this is why virtually everybody who had to
say
smth about this episode was unhappy with the
process. Without looking at
the diffs, I only remember three users who were perfectly happy with what
happened, out of hundreds who said smth.
One unfortunate consequence of the whole episode was, whoever is right
and
whoever is wrong, the general opinion about WMF
in the community is
all-time low, with people generally not prepared to believe to anything
communicated to them. If WMF is not interested in getting very unpleasant
surprises, they should start working towards building the community
trust.
Cheers
Yaroslav
On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 10:48 PM GorillaWarfare <
gorillawarfarewikipedia(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 8:36 AM Fæ
<faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Any Arbcom approved sanction against Fram based on the evidence would
not
> > be controversial for anyone.
>
>
> Sorry for coming in late to this conversation; I've mostly been
following
the
sicussion happening on-wiki. But I wanted to pipe up to say that I
absolutely do not believe this is true (see also my comment here
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Commi…
).
To repeat my comment somewhat, the English
Wikipedia ArbCom has in the
past
> had to place similar bans: that is, ones against long-term contributors
> with many supporters, and ones in which the full details behind what
led
to
> the ban cannot be revealed publicly. The reaction has been quite
similar
to
the one the WMF is currently
experiencing—"star chamber" accusations,
claims that we've abused our power or the process, and assumptions that
the
ban is unwarranted unless everyone is allowed to
scrutinize the private
evidence. The ArbCom is empowered to take action based off of
privately-submitted evidence and private discussion, but in practice it
is
extremely poorly-received when we do, basically
across-the-board.
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GorillaWarfare
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