Hey John,
Thanks for starting this discussion. I appreciate the efforts.
I don't have the impression that the exact height of the soft limit will solve any problems. It's fighting a sympton, rather than the cause of the issue. I'm fine either way, although I fear that having it at this level would discourage WMF employees to engage in active discussions when needed. As long as sensible exceptions are generously applied, I don't mind though.
Proposal 2,3 and 4 seem fine to me, but they come across as trying to find a very objective way to approach a subjective problem. They are fine approaches, but will never get to the core of the problem - they will cut down on some excesses though.
What I'm missing, is a proposal 5 that would have to tackle the more subjective question: how to handle contributors that are consistently unconstructive. I would personally appreciate a tighter control on civilty and constructiveness by the moderators, which could be covered by that. I don't know a good wording for that either, but would appreciate someone trying to make a proposal for that :)
Best, Lodewijk
On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 2:44 AM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
The 15 limit is busted regularly by normal active posters. I disagree with that one.
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 22, 2017, at 9:03 PM, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com
wrote:
Hi list members,
The list admins (hereafter 'we', being Austin, Asaf, Shani and I, your humble narrator) regularly receive complaints about the frequent posters on this list, as well as about the unpleasant atmosphere some posters (some of them frequent) create.
It is natural that frequent posters will say specific things that more frequently annoy other list members, but often the complaints are due to the volume of messages rather than the content of the messages.
We are floating some suggestions aimed specifically at reducing the volume, hopefully motivating frequent posters to self-moderate more, but these proposed limits are actually intending to increasing the quality of the discourse without heavy subjective moderation.
The first proposal impacts all posters to this list, and the last three proposals are aimed at providing a more clear framework within which criticism and whistle-blowing are permitted, but that critics are prevented from drowning out other discussions. The bandwidth that will be given to critics should be established in advance, reducing need to use subjective moderation of the content when a limit to the volume will often achieve the same result. --
Proposal #1: Monthly 'soft quota' reduced from 30 to 15
The existing soft quota of 30 posts per person has practically never been exceeded in the past year, and yet many list subscribers still clearly feel that a few individuals overwhelm the list. This suggests the current quota is too high.
A review of the stats at https://stats.wikimedia.org/mail-lists/wikimedia-l.html show very few people go over 15 in a month, and quite often the reason for people exceeding 15 per month is because they are replying to other list members who have already exceeded 15 per month, and sometimes they are repeatedly directly or indirectly asking the person to stop repeating themselves to allow some space for other list members also have their opinion heard. --
Proposal #2: Posts by globally banned people not permitted
As WMF-banned people are already banned from mailing lists, this proposal is to apply the same ‘global’ approach to any people who have been globally banned by the community according to the https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_bans policy.
This proposal does not prevent proxying, or canvassing, or “meat puppetry” as defined by English Wikipedia policy. The list admins would prefer that globally banned people communicate their grievances via established members of our community who can guide them, rather than the list admins initially guiding these globally banned people on how to revise their posts so they are suitable for this audience, and then required to block them when they do not follow advice. The role of list moderators is clearer and simpler if we are only patrolling the boundaries and not repeatedly personally engaged with helping globally banned users. --
Proposal #3: Identity of an account locked / blocked / banned by two Wikimedia communities limited to five (5) posts per month
This proposal is intended to strike a balance between openness and quality of discourse.
Banned people occasionally use the wikimedia-l mailing list as a substitute of the meta Request for comment system, and banned people also occasionally provide constructive criticisms and thought provoking views. This proposal hopes to allow that to continue.
However people who have been banned on a few projects also use this list as their “last stand”, having already exhausted the community patience on the wikis. Sometimes the last stand is brief, but occasionally a banned person is able to maintain sufficient decorum that they are not moderated or banned from the list, and mailing list readers need to suffer month after month of the banned person dominating the mailing lists with time that they would previously have spent editing on the wikis. --
Proposal #4: Undisclosed alternative identities limited to five (5) posts per month
Posting using fake identities allows people to shield their real life *and* their Wikimedia editing 'account' from the repercussions of their actions. This provision to allow fake identities on wikimedia-l is necessary for whistle-blowing, and this mailing list has been used for that purpose at important junctures in the history of the Wikimedia movement.
However it is more frequently abused, especially by some ‘critics’ who have used incessant hyperbole and snark and baiting to generally cause stress to many readers. Sometimes this is also accompanied with many list posts on various unrelated threads as the ‘critic’ believes their criticism is so important that all other discussions about Wikimedia should be diverted until their problem has been resolved to their satisfaction, which is unlikely anyway.
Note this explicitly does not include anyone posting using their real world identity, whether or not they have a Wikimedia account.
Where a poster does not clearly link to either Wikimedia account, or does not appear to be using a real identity, and only after it is exceeding the five post limit, the list admins will privately ask the poster to either verify their identity or stop posting until the end of the month. Very frequently a whistle-blower is able and even prefers to be documenting the problem on meta, but needs the high profile of this list to spark the discussion and draw attention to their meta page.
The five post allowance for proposals 3 and 4 are to ensure that anyone who has not been globally banned can post criticisms without repercussions, which is vital for whistleblowing and transparency generally, but they need to use their five posts per month wisely. Once they have used their five posts, community members can reply with less concern about being drawn into a direct argument with the poster. It aims to force the poster to listen to others in the community once their limit of five posts has been reached.
If there is support for these proposals, the list admins would not immediately add moderation or bans, but would implement them as needed, when we notice someone has exceeded one of these limits, and we would make a note on a meta page where the community can review these actions without allowing moderation meta-discussion to dominate the discourse on the mailing list. Refinements to the list moderation limits can then occur organically as we see how these rules plays out in practise.
The RFC is at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/
wikimedia-l-post-limits
However please also feel welcome to reply on-list if you wish to express explicit support or opposition to any of the four proposals above (please identify them by number, to ease counting). We will count votes (here and on the meta RFC) after two weeks, and post a more refined final version back to this mailing list.
The list administrators will default to *enacting* all four proposals, but will refrain from enacting any proposal receiving more opposition than support.
-- John Vandenberg
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