--- On Wed, 3/11/09, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
From: John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 3:49 AM On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 7:05 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
Hello,
I think this is a communety thing. Its to bad that
you lost your
adminship but why should people from other
projects step in?
I mean this is something on the en.source not a
global thing.
huib
--
I have no idea of the en.ws situation, nor do I want
to have any idea, but
I would like to remark that leaving such things to the
community decision
is a good idea only if the community itself is big
enough. Otherwise, it
is easy for a group of individuals, or even for an
individual to introduce
their own rules which may be incompatible with the
general purposes of the
project. In this case, an external help may be needed.
For instance, this
is what happened a year ago on ru.wb when the only
admin has been
desysopped after it has been discovered and reported
on this very list
that he arbitrarily abused and blocked other users and
removed edits.
Again, I am not really aware of the situation on
en.ws, I have no idea
whether this project is big enough to solve their own
problems within the
project, and I do not want to make any statements
about any users over
there. (As a matter of fact, I never logged in to
en.ws). I just wanted to
say that not every project is capable with solving its
own problems.
I agree with this. English Wikisource does not have a mediation framework, and I didnt participate in that desysop discussion as much as I should have, due to time constraints. The next step would be a meta RFC, or something like an offwiki discussion. I am happy to participate in something like that if it would help.
What I will say now is that Eclecticology is a great contributor to the English Wikisource project, and I hope he continues to be. The main project that he has been working on, [[s:Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900]], has been exempt from the structure imposed on the rest of the project, as a way of reducing the tensions.
Sorry but there is no reason to have a RFC on Meta for anything remotely like this situation. And I would say that if were regarding any wiki (I am sure I have said that for similar situations on other wikis in the past). The wikis are autonomous on these issues. If someone has reason why en.WS adminship rules are incompatible with the general purposes of the project, then please share. Otherwise discuss in the proper forum which is en.WS.
Birgitte SB
Birgitte SB wrote:
Sorry but there is no reason to have a RFC on Meta for anything remotely like this situation. And I would say that if were regarding any wiki (I am sure I have said that for similar situations on other wikis in the past). The wikis are autonomous on these issues. If someone has reason why en.WS adminship rules are incompatible with the general purposes of the project, then please share. Otherwise discuss in the proper forum which is en.WS.
I have since the very beginning been a strong supporter of project autonomy, and have usually been very critical of anyone who tries to impose the rules of other projects in Wikisource. Last summer, when another de-sysop process happened, I also spoke strongly against allowing ourselves to be overly influenced by that person's overly bad behaviour on other projects; I conservatively concurred with what happened based solely on events at wikisource.
In the course of the discussion about me, I considered coming here at an early stage, but decided that I would let things play out on wiki first. I did not raise the issue here until a few days after the decision was closed and implemented.
If I had not commented on events here, would you have noticed it, and would it even have crossed your mind to comment as you did above? Given the still relatively small community at en:ws, where does one turn for a calmer and more objective analysis from someone who is not a part of the apparent piling on? If the result of raising the issue here is a fairer discussion on wiki, I can't complain about that. There should always be a place for off-wiki safety valves.
I see that you have asked a question on my talk page, so I will address more specific matters there shortly.
Ec
The people who should be seeing these are on Wikisource, not on this mailing list. This discussion would be much better served there, as it is fruitless to continue it here.
On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 8:03 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Birgitte SB wrote:
Sorry but there is no reason to have a RFC on Meta for anything remotely
like this situation. And I would say that if were regarding any wiki (I am sure I have said that for similar situations on other wikis in the past). The wikis are autonomous on these issues. If someone has reason why en.WS adminship rules are incompatible with the general purposes of the project, then please share. Otherwise discuss in the proper forum which is en.WS.
I have since the very beginning been a strong supporter of project autonomy, and have usually been very critical of anyone who tries to impose the rules of other projects in Wikisource. Last summer, when another de-sysop process happened, I also spoke strongly against allowing ourselves to be overly influenced by that person's overly bad behaviour on other projects; I conservatively concurred with what happened based solely on events at wikisource.
In the course of the discussion about me, I considered coming here at an early stage, but decided that I would let things play out on wiki first. I did not raise the issue here until a few days after the decision was closed and implemented.
If I had not commented on events here, would you have noticed it, and would it even have crossed your mind to comment as you did above? Given the still relatively small community at en:ws, where does one turn for a calmer and more objective analysis from someone who is not a part of the apparent piling on? If the result of raising the issue here is a fairer discussion on wiki, I can't complain about that. There should always be a place for off-wiki safety valves.
I see that you have asked a question on my talk page, so I will address more specific matters there shortly.
Ec
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I have refrained from commenting in the interests of letting this play out but find myself in disagreement with our worthy colleague from Wikisource. The locus of this complaint, as I see it, is that he was unfairly removed from his position. I see no merit in his claims for the following reason and believe this thread should be killed for the following reasons.
We have traditionally allowed each community to set up its own principles. Meta level intervention in a project, barring blatant illegality, is unprecedented and would indicate a significant departure from our bottom up ideology. As administrators are appointed/elected volunteers serving according to project rules, rather than formal employees, it is impossible for there to be any illegality in dismissal. There is therefore a considerable precedent not to interfere, which would be detrimental to our ideological foundation.
Unlike Wikipedia, adminiship is held for terms of one year. Mr. Saintonge has not disputed the validity of this process, therefore I am not going to examine it. However, I do wish to commend the authors of the policy as it is a functional and easily readable document. Upon review of the Restricted Access Policy, I see the following statement, "However, anyone is free to discuss". Therefore, the attempt to strike the comments by John and Pathoschild seem to be attempts at stifling criticism. Each user has the right and ability to present their concerns, no matter how oddball they are. I can only see evidence from Pathoschild, which clearly proves the allegations made. The allegations are without a reasonable doubt, true for pathoschild's case. Since the comments supporting dismissal referenced pathoschild's allegations, there is no reason to consider them misled. For these reasons, there were no errors in the proceeding.
Finally the process is based on whether or not people trust Mr. Saintonge as an admin, not whether he desires to continue. It is readily apparent that there is no trust.
For all the above, I move to kill this thread.
________________________________ From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:03:27 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
Birgitte SB wrote:
Sorry but there is no reason to have a RFC on Meta for anything remotely like this situation. And I would say that if were regarding any wiki (I am sure I have said that for similar situations on other wikis in the past). The wikis are autonomous on these issues. If someone has reason why en.WS adminship rules are incompatible with the general purposes of the project, then please share. Otherwise discuss in the proper forum which is en.WS.
I have since the very beginning been a strong supporter of project autonomy, and have usually been very critical of anyone who tries to impose the rules of other projects in Wikisource. Last summer, when another de-sysop process happened, I also spoke strongly against allowing ourselves to be overly influenced by that person's overly bad behaviour on other projects; I conservatively concurred with what happened based solely on events at wikisource.
In the course of the discussion about me, I considered coming here at an early stage, but decided that I would let things play out on wiki first. I did not raise the issue here until a few days after the decision was closed and implemented.
If I had not commented on events here, would you have noticed it, and would it even have crossed your mind to comment as you did above? Given the still relatively small community at en:ws, where does one turn for a calmer and more objective analysis from someone who is not a part of the apparent piling on? If the result of raising the issue here is a fairer discussion on wiki, I can't complain about that. There should always be a place for off-wiki safety valves.
I see that you have asked a question on my talk page, so I will address more specific matters there shortly.
Ec
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That people on this list can't necessarily interfere or overturn the de-adminship is a point separate from whether or not it can be discussed here. I'm not aware of any hard rules limiting topics of discussion to those issues which can readily be addressed by participants of this forum. Bringing it here may not be all that useful, and further discussion not all that helpful to anyone in particular, but that isn't a justification for killing the thread. I can't see Austin or Michael or whoever else actually killing a civil discussion in any case, so its a moot point really.
Also, you may want to reconsider the logic of posting your interpretation and conclusion about events and *then* asking for the thread to be killed. Mods aren't here to provide you with the last word.
Nathan
On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.plrd@yahoo.comwrote:
I have refrained from commenting in the interests of letting this play out but find myself in disagreement with our worthy colleague from Wikisource. The locus of this complaint, as I see it, is that he was unfairly removed from his position. I see no merit in his claims for the following reason and believe this thread should be killed for the following reasons.
We have traditionally allowed each community to set up its own principles. Meta level intervention in a project, barring blatant illegality, is unprecedented and would indicate a significant departure from our bottom up ideology. As administrators are appointed/elected volunteers serving according to project rules, rather than formal employees, it is impossible for there to be any illegality in dismissal. There is therefore a considerable precedent not to interfere, which would be detrimental to our ideological foundation.
Unlike Wikipedia, adminiship is held for terms of one year. Mr. Saintonge has not disputed the validity of this process, therefore I am not going to examine it. However, I do wish to commend the authors of the policy as it is a functional and easily readable document. Upon review of the Restricted Access Policy, I see the following statement, "However, anyone is free to discuss". Therefore, the attempt to strike the comments by John and Pathoschild seem to be attempts at stifling criticism. Each user has the right and ability to present their concerns, no matter how oddball they are. I can only see evidence from Pathoschild, which clearly proves the allegations made. The allegations are without a reasonable doubt, true for pathoschild's case. Since the comments supporting dismissal referenced pathoschild's allegations, there is no reason to consider them misled. For these reasons, there were no errors in the proceeding.
Finally the process is based on whether or not people trust Mr. Saintonge as an admin, not whether he desires to continue. It is readily apparent that there is no trust.
For all the above, I move to kill this thread.
From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:03:27 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
Birgitte SB wrote:
Sorry but there is no reason to have a RFC on Meta for anything remotely
like this situation. And I would say that if were regarding any wiki (I am sure I have said that for similar situations on other wikis in the past). The wikis are autonomous on these issues. If someone has reason why en.WS adminship rules are incompatible with the general purposes of the project, then please share. Otherwise discuss in the proper forum which is en.WS.
I have since the very beginning been a strong supporter of project autonomy, and have usually been very critical of anyone who tries to impose the rules of other projects in Wikisource. Last summer, when another de-sysop process happened, I also spoke strongly against allowing ourselves to be overly influenced by that person's overly bad behaviour on other projects; I conservatively concurred with what happened based solely on events at wikisource.
In the course of the discussion about me, I considered coming here at an early stage, but decided that I would let things play out on wiki first. I did not raise the issue here until a few days after the decision was closed and implemented.
If I had not commented on events here, would you have noticed it, and would it even have crossed your mind to comment as you did above? Given the still relatively small community at en:ws, where does one turn for a calmer and more objective analysis from someone who is not a part of the apparent piling on? If the result of raising the issue here is a fairer discussion on wiki, I can't complain about that. There should always be a place for off-wiki safety valves.
I see that you have asked a question on my talk page, so I will address more specific matters there shortly.
Ec
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On 3/12/09, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
That people on this list can't necessarily interfere or overturn the de-adminship is a point separate from whether or not it can be discussed here. I'm not aware of any hard rules limiting topics of discussion to those issues which can readily be addressed by participants of this forum. Bringing it here may not be all that useful, and further discussion not all that helpful to anyone in particular, but that isn't a justification for killing the thread. I can't see Austin or Michael or whoever else actually killing a civil discussion in any case, so its a moot point really.
Confirmed. Intra-project interference is an interesting yet controversial matter (think Wikicouncil, think MetaArbcom, think Meta:RFC) and I don't know why I should kill civil discussion. The specific case might not be the best startingpoint but you can't choose your discussion triggers...
Best Michael
Sent from my iPhone
Also, you may want to reconsider the logic of posting your interpretation and conclusion about events and *then* asking for the thread to be killed. Mods aren't here to provide you with the last word.
Nathan
On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.plrd@yahoo.comwrote:
I have refrained from commenting in the interests of letting this play out but find myself in disagreement with our worthy colleague from Wikisource. The locus of this complaint, as I see it, is that he was unfairly removed from his position. I see no merit in his claims for the following reason and believe this thread should be killed for the following reasons.
We have traditionally allowed each community to set up its own principles. Meta level intervention in a project, barring blatant illegality, is unprecedented and would indicate a significant departure from our bottom up ideology. As administrators are appointed/elected volunteers serving according to project rules, rather than formal employees, it is impossible for there to be any illegality in dismissal. There is therefore a considerable precedent not to interfere, which would be detrimental to our ideological foundation.
Unlike Wikipedia, adminiship is held for terms of one year. Mr. Saintonge has not disputed the validity of this process, therefore I am not going to examine it. However, I do wish to commend the authors of the policy as it is a functional and easily readable document. Upon review of the Restricted Access Policy, I see the following statement, "However, anyone is free to discuss". Therefore, the attempt to strike the comments by John and Pathoschild seem to be attempts at stifling criticism. Each user has the right and ability to present their concerns, no matter how oddball they are. I can only see evidence from Pathoschild, which clearly proves the allegations made. The allegations are without a reasonable doubt, true for pathoschild's case. Since the comments supporting dismissal referenced pathoschild's allegations, there is no reason to consider them misled. For these reasons, there were no errors in the proceeding.
Finally the process is based on whether or not people trust Mr. Saintonge as an admin, not whether he desires to continue. It is readily apparent that there is no trust.
For all the above, I move to kill this thread.
From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:03:27 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
Birgitte SB wrote:
Sorry but there is no reason to have a RFC on Meta for anything remotely
like this situation. And I would say that if were regarding any wiki (I am sure I have said that for similar situations on other wikis in the past). The wikis are autonomous on these issues. If someone has reason why en.WS adminship rules are incompatible with the general purposes of the project, then please share. Otherwise discuss in the proper forum which is en.WS.
I have since the very beginning been a strong supporter of project autonomy, and have usually been very critical of anyone who tries to impose the rules of other projects in Wikisource. Last summer, when another de-sysop process happened, I also spoke strongly against allowing ourselves to be overly influenced by that person's overly bad behaviour on other projects; I conservatively concurred with what happened based solely on events at wikisource.
In the course of the discussion about me, I considered coming here at an early stage, but decided that I would let things play out on wiki first. I did not raise the issue here until a few days after the decision was closed and implemented.
If I had not commented on events here, would you have noticed it, and would it even have crossed your mind to comment as you did above? Given the still relatively small community at en:ws, where does one turn for a calmer and more objective analysis from someone who is not a part of the apparent piling on? If the result of raising the issue here is a fairer discussion on wiki, I can't complain about that. There should always be a place for off-wiki safety valves.
I see that you have asked a question on my talk page, so I will address more specific matters there shortly.
Ec
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Posting during breaks is a bad idea. I meant kill as in we should stop discussing this as there is no effective remedy, no mod kill intended.
________________________________ From: Nathan nawrich@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 9:29:01 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
That people on this list can't necessarily interfere or overturn the de-adminship is a point separate from whether or not it can be discussed here. I'm not aware of any hard rules limiting topics of discussion to those issues which can readily be addressed by participants of this forum. Bringing it here may not be all that useful, and further discussion not all that helpful to anyone in particular, but that isn't a justification for killing the thread. I can't see Austin or Michael or whoever else actually killing a civil discussion in any case, so its a moot point really.
Also, you may want to reconsider the logic of posting your interpretation and conclusion about events and *then* asking for the thread to be killed. Mods aren't here to provide you with the last word.
Nathan
On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.plrd@yahoo.comwrote:
I have refrained from commenting in the interests of letting this play out but find myself in disagreement with our worthy colleague from Wikisource. The locus of this complaint, as I see it, is that he was unfairly removed from his position. I see no merit in his claims for the following reason and believe this thread should be killed for the following reasons.
We have traditionally allowed each community to set up its own principles. Meta level intervention in a project, barring blatant illegality, is unprecedented and would indicate a significant departure from our bottom up ideology. As administrators are appointed/elected volunteers serving according to project rules, rather than formal employees, it is impossible for there to be any illegality in dismissal. There is therefore a considerable precedent not to interfere, which would be detrimental to our ideological foundation.
Unlike Wikipedia, adminiship is held for terms of one year. Mr. Saintonge has not disputed the validity of this process, therefore I am not going to examine it. However, I do wish to commend the authors of the policy as it is a functional and easily readable document. Upon review of the Restricted Access Policy, I see the following statement, "However, anyone is free to discuss". Therefore, the attempt to strike the comments by John and Pathoschild seem to be attempts at stifling criticism. Each user has the right and ability to present their concerns, no matter how oddball they are. I can only see evidence from Pathoschild, which clearly proves the allegations made. The allegations are without a reasonable doubt, true for pathoschild's case. Since the comments supporting dismissal referenced pathoschild's allegations, there is no reason to consider them misled. For these reasons, there were no errors in the proceeding.
Finally the process is based on whether or not people trust Mr. Saintonge as an admin, not whether he desires to continue. It is readily apparent that there is no trust.
For all the above, I move to kill this thread.
From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:03:27 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
Birgitte SB wrote:
Sorry but there is no reason to have a RFC on Meta for anything remotely
like this situation. And I would say that if were regarding any wiki (I am sure I have said that for similar situations on other wikis in the past). The wikis are autonomous on these issues. If someone has reason why en.WS adminship rules are incompatible with the general purposes of the project, then please share. Otherwise discuss in the proper forum which is en.WS.
I have since the very beginning been a strong supporter of project autonomy, and have usually been very critical of anyone who tries to impose the rules of other projects in Wikisource. Last summer, when another de-sysop process happened, I also spoke strongly against allowing ourselves to be overly influenced by that person's overly bad behaviour on other projects; I conservatively concurred with what happened based solely on events at wikisource.
In the course of the discussion about me, I considered coming here at an early stage, but decided that I would let things play out on wiki first. I did not raise the issue here until a few days after the decision was closed and implemented.
If I had not commented on events here, would you have noticed it, and would it even have crossed your mind to comment as you did above? Given the still relatively small community at en:ws, where does one turn for a calmer and more objective analysis from someone who is not a part of the apparent piling on? If the result of raising the issue here is a fairer discussion on wiki, I can't complain about that. There should always be a place for off-wiki safety valves.
I see that you have asked a question on my talk page, so I will address more specific matters there shortly.
Ec
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Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
We have traditionally allowed each community to set up its own principles. Meta level intervention in a project, barring blatant illegality, is unprecedented and would indicate a significant departure from our bottom up ideology. As administrators are appointed/elected volunteers serving according to project rules, rather than formal employees, it is impossible for there to be any illegality in dismissal. There is therefore a considerable precedent not to interfere, which would be detrimental to our ideological foundation.
That's not really true at all--- *actual*, direct, overturning of local community decisions is rare, but meta- and foundation-level discussion of general principles and management issues, with a view towards encouraging change on specific wikis, is common and constitutes probably the majority of this list. For example, after the relicensing debate, probably the second-largest debate here is a lengthy "meta level intervention" in the English Wikipedia's handling of biographies of living people.
-Mark
Biographies of living people bring up legal issues, this matter does not.
________________________________ From: Delirium delirium@hackish.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 5:05:14 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
We have traditionally allowed each community to set up its own principles. Meta level intervention in a project, barring blatant illegality, is unprecedented and would indicate a significant departure from our bottom up ideology. As administrators are appointed/elected volunteers serving according to project rules, rather than formal employees, it is impossible for there to be any illegality in dismissal. There is therefore a considerable precedent not to interfere, which would be detrimental to our ideological foundation.
That's not really true at all--- *actual*, direct, overturning of local community decisions is rare, but meta- and foundation-level discussion of general principles and management issues, with a view towards encouraging change on specific wikis, is common and constitutes probably the majority of this list. For example, after the relicensing debate, probably the second-largest debate here is a lengthy "meta level intervention" in the English Wikipedia's handling of biographies of living people.
-Mark
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