Hoi, I have been in a discussion about having swear words in dictionaries. One point is that many people do not know what is actually said in "swear words". In my opinion many of these are not understood as a consequence. Motherfucker is a good example. In my opinion, it is best to debunk swear words, make sure that they are understood as it is the best way to deflate their effectiveness.

Some people have these nice little quotations at the end of their mails ... By the way Chad, are you an only child ? Thanks, GerardM

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:54 PM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 4:18 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:

...

[snip]

There are many motherfuckers, typically they have someone calling them

dad

...

or daddy.

Thanks, GerardM

That last comment was not needed. I politely ask you to either use different words or retract the comment entirely.

Thanks,

-Chad

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Hoi, I have been in a discussion about having swear words in dictionaries. One point is that many people do not know what is actually said in "swear words". In my opinion many of these are not understood as a consequence. Motherfucker is a good example. In my opinion, it is best to debunk swear words, make sure that they are understood as it is the best way to deflate their effectiveness.

Some people have these nice little quotations at the end of their mails ... By the way Chad, are you an only child ? Thanks, GerardM

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:54 PM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 4:18 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:

...

[snip]

There are many motherfuckers, typically they have someone calling them

dad

...

or daddy.

Thanks, GerardM

That last comment was not needed. I politely ask you to either use different words or retract the comment entirely.

Thanks,

-Chad

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Joe's elaboration makes the issue hopelessly convoluted, but what would obviously be useful in this case is an organized way of dealing with inter-wiki problems.

To SUL specifically, usurping a contributor on a project has to be the decision of that project and its policies, so long as they do not outright conflict with Foundation policies. The SUL implementation definitely suffered from some confusion and disorganization in this regard - there was quite a scandal on the English Wikipedia when a steward performed a SUL usurpation on behalf of an active fr.wp user (if I remember the details correctly). The outcome of the discussion on en.wp was clear - usurping en.wp contributors required the assent of an en.wp bureaucrat, who must abide by en.wp rules.

On the second issue, the privacy policy (as you know) governs the Foundation's storage and release of personal information. I don't think there is a global "outing" policy, so its up to the local community to proscribe and police that sort of undesirable activity. A bunch of en.wp users showing up to vote in a checkuser election on another project seems strange and wrong, but again its down to the suffrage policy of that project to control such events.

Its a tough thing, to see conduct on one project that clearly violates the norms you've come to expect through your experience in another community. The structure and ethos of the projects has developed, though, such that we can't impose any but the most basic norms on those communities - or, at any rate, we haven't.

Further policy centralisation is definitely something to consider, and it seems to me to be inevitable over time anyway. Some of the policy changes on meta recently have seemed to represent the views of the "wider community" at the expense of , or without regard to, the views of the "local communities." If you want to further that movement, then the way to start is to propose new and well focused policies on meta.

Nathan

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 4:34 PM, Joe Szilagyi szilagyi@gmail.com wrote:

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 12:57 PM, Cary Bass cary@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

Scenario 2: A user has been banned on enwiki. The user has "outed" psuedonymous individuals via his blog and threads Wikipedia Review by compiling information put together elsewhere on the net. He has taken to another wiki and under the auspices of the local wiki's policy, has put back links to pages which have links to pages (sometimes several pages deep) which "outs" the individuals.

Just an additional note to what Cary wrote--this Scenario 2 in turn then spilled over to a separate third project, where users of the first project arrived in wide numbers to "vote" in an election of a Checkuser whose home project was the first project mentioned in the scenario. En.wiki users arrived on the third project after having in many cases little to no prior involvement in that third project, to actively vote on the election of a user who was primarily active on the first one and who had allegedly taken a side in that initial dispute that had nothing at all to do with the third project. So that scenario #2 actually impacted three projects, not just two...

• Joe

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Gerard, you could easily substitute any other project for "english wikipedia" in these scenarios. Even in scenario two, as Wikipedia Review has a German Wikipedia section. So, this isn't something that can just be dismissed with a "Oh it's an en.wp thing"

-Dan

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 5:43 PM, mike.lifeguard mike.lifeguard@gmail.comwrote:

...

The outcome of the discussion on en.wp was clear - usurping en.wp contributors required the assent of an en.wp bureaucrat, who must abide by en.wp rules.

Luckily, there are many projects which do not have such a policy.

...

so its up to the local community to proscribe and police that sort of undesirable activity.

Luckily, the wiki in question, and indeed most wikis, do not have a rule or guideline on this issue (though I believe it is fairly straightforward).

...

A bunch of en.wp users showing up to vote in a checkuser election on another project seems strange and wrong, but again its down to the suffrage policy of that project to control such events.

Luckily, the wiki in question doesn't have a suffrage policy.

Whether this lack of policy/rule/guideline/whatever is a problem is debatable. For example, English Wikibooks has not suffered for lack of a renaming policy (or blocking policy for that matter!).

In other cases, a user may feel their hands are tied because there is no policy which says "This is the right thing to do." In cases where policy is lacking, good judgment must be used.

When good judgment does not prevail, there is a problem. Those who whine about wikis not having a certain policy should realize that that situation is not in and of itself a problem. This applies as much on a single project as on multiple projects. We simply do not need a global policy for everything - efforts to do so will largely fail.

That said, the issues raised by Cary are real, and we need to discuss how best to deal with them. My point here is to warn that writing a global policy for every niche where no policy lives may not be the best way forward.

Mike

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 5:44 PM, Al Tally majorly.wiki@googlemail.com wrote:

On smaller wikis such as Meta and Simple English Wikipedia, we more rely on "good judgement" than strictly following policies. I don't think a global policy is needed. Local projects should make their own decisions, for the best interests of what we're all here for: the content, not ourselves. If the user in question ever wanted to edit Wikiquote, he or she can create another username and contribute in that way. All this "me me me" attitude is bad - it's the content that's our number one priority.

Alex, I agree that a "me me me" attitude is bad. But in one of the cases Cary talked about, all that happened was that someone had created an account on Wikiquote in the name of an admin on the English Wikipedia, one with an unusual name. The new user had 47 edits on Wikiquote (all or most minor); the admin had around 12,000 on the English Wikipedia, most of them substantial content contributions, going back to May 2006.

Common sense and courtesy would have told the folks at Wikiquote to impose a name change on the new guy, because he was probably trolling. Instead, there was a big kerfuffle (including from the bureaucrats there) about how dare people on the English WP turn up to dictate, and maybe the identical names were a cooincidence, and all that really mattered was the new guy's 47 outstanding minor edits. So the admin who's had the name for over two years is expected to jump through various hoops now, including creating a temp account there to request his name back, even though he doesn't want to post there and give away his IP address -- the reason is that at least one of the bureaucrats is an administrator with Wikipedia Review, and has been actively involved in outing people.

With autonomy comes the need for some common sense. I've had people impersonate me on other projects, and it has always been sorted out quickly by the bureaucrats; indeed, it's usually sorted out before I even notice it. But things seem to work very differently on Wikiquote.

That would be odd. And how does creating a temp account give away one's IP to a local bureaucrat? If there are checkusers on any project that are sharing private data, that's another matter.

SJ

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 7:35 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:

A Wikiquote bureaucrat has been actively involved in outing people on Wikipedia Review? Really?

Nathan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

You know, as an aside: a general rule that I've found works pretty well is that legislation should deal with the norm, and not the exception, which seems to support Slim's hypothesis below (with autonomy comes the need for common sense).

I tend to think that over-legislating is as much of a danger as under- legislation. We can't make rules for each of the details. Let's trust bureaucratic/sysop/staff/community member judgment.

I trust Cary to know the broad framework of what we as a community stand for. Then, I trust Cary (and Delphine, Tim, Mike, Sue, etc...) to interpret that in a way that's relevant to our community values. I appreciate that Cary asked what the community thought about particular issues, but I believe the community is of sufficient size and scope that it's almost impossible to get meaningful direction or guidance in these issues.

Cary is in the position he's in because we as a community trust him (rather, Cary STAYS in the position that he's in because of that; there's no doubt in my mind that the community could exercise sufficient input to cast a vote of "no confidence" if we lost trust in him... although I think it VERY unlikely since he has proven himself a good arbiter of our values and goals). I have no issue with empowering him to make decisions that are in the best interest of the community based on his substantive experience.

We as a community should provide the framework... the "norm"... and let our staff and established governance deal with the exceptions. Otherwise, we get bogged down in details...

...much like this email.

Philippe

On Aug 12, 2008, at 6:14 PM, SlimVirgin wrote:

With autonomy comes the need for some common sense. I've had people impersonate me on other projects, and it has always been sorted out quickly by the bureaucrats; indeed, it's usually sorted out before I even notice it

Unfortunately, you've misunderstood the situation. Since discussing real situations is normally preferable, here's a hopefully quick, hopefully neutral description which names names. For your consideration:

Moulton is indefinitely blocked (or maybe banned?) on enwiki, and has since moved to Meta, then to Wikiversity, where he is working on http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Ethical_Management_of_the_English_Language_Wi kipedia - until recently it contained links to his blog, which apparently outs Wikimedians. SB Johnny is a CheckUser there, and an admin at Commons (among other stuff) & was recently nominated for CU at Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators/Requests_and_votes /SB_Johnny_(checkuser) with the aftermath located at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators/Requests_and_votes/ SB_Johnny_(checkuser)/Bureaucrats_discussion and the talk pages of both). Due to his involvement with Moulton and his project, several enwiki users came to Commons to voice opposition. There are some privacy issues involved, but that much should clarify what we're talking about.

Commons does indeed have an active community - the issue was what to do about an influx of new users voting on an RFX. Commons doesn't have a suffrage policy, so there was a small amount of hand-wringing over that issue, and much drama surrounding the whole affair.

So the situation is not that some outsider had requested CU, and the folks from elsewhere were largely opposing the nomination. And Johnny is not banned elsewhere - he is not the problem user.

However, I think your prescription stands. It was appropriate to give light weight to new users' votes (actually, they were disregarded entirely; CheckUser uses a straight-up vote :\ ) and with the situation at Wikiversity, it is up to that community to reign in problem users or not as they see fit. Certainly past experience of other projects should guide & inform them though.

Further discussion should not flog the horse described above, but should please look at the general issues raised.

Thanks, Mike

-----Original Message----- From: Birgitte SB [mailto:birgitte_sb@yahoo.com] Sent: August 11, 2008 9:39 PM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] "Wikidrama" and autonomy of Wikimedia projects

This is a problematic situation, but I don't understand why there is such a breakdown in communication between the project that it would get to this point. I certainly think that it out of line for a non-local community member to run for checkuser without the local communities blessing if that is indeed what has happened here. If there no local community to speak of it should be a steward issue, and no election of checkuser should be necessary. If there is a local community and this report is accurate, I cannot imagine more insurmountable error that could be made in good faith. I cannot even imagine how to overcome the cultural gaffe of trying to get checkuser rights within a local community that is not supportive of the idea. Now it could be the local community is supportive of checkuser and the difficulties in having 22 local voters is leading to crossover support from other wikis which the local communities is accepting of. But if the local communities did not invite the situation, I think the non-local editors need to back off let some people who are untainted by this gaffe try and salvage the situation and broker some kind of compromise and cooperation. If this is worse case, it is not the sort of situation which will work out on it's own to anyone's satisfaction. But this is all described so vaguely. Please make it clear about how substantial the local community is and if they are truly concerned.

Birgitte SB

There are two separate issues bright ou here:

• the issue of communicating a guideline or rule of thumb to all projects

(ways to have a cross-wiki discussion, about vandalism or checkuser or other; which can be discussed on Meta as a starting point), and

• the issue of having cross-wiki policies (we do have a few, but it's not

that easy to figure out what they are or to propose new ones)

Some form of WikiCouncil would probably be the way to resolve those issues. The council could have a committee with the task of acting as a go-between for projects on issues of cross-wiki vandalism, etc. Individuals can handle it on their own in most cases (language barriers may be an issue, but there are already ways of finding translators), but a committee might be more efficient.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

Thomas Dalton wrote: |> Does the user have any other option than editing the smaller wiki and |> adding the Username Change request, which basically subjects the user to |> his/her IP information being revealed to additional individuals, not of |> his/her own wiki? | | A trusted user on the smaller project that is also present on enwiki | could forward the request. I don't really see the problem, though. A | few checkusers on another project finding out your IP address is | hardly a serious issue. We can't always cater to people's unreasonable | paranoia (where possible, sure, but it often isn't). I don't see what | the foundation has to do with it - they could be the one to forward | the request, but so could plenty of other people. | |> Scenario 2: |> A user has been banned on enwiki. The user has "outed" psuedonymous |> individuals via his blog and threads Wikipedia Review by compiling |> information put together elsewhere on the net. He has taken to another |> wiki and under the auspices of the local wiki's policy, has put back |> links to pages which have links to pages (sometimes several pages deep) |> which "outs" the individuals. |> |> Is this a violation of our privacy policy as it exists? If not, how can |> we best address the needs of the local projects? We have to assume the |> user is sincere about his project, because AGF is a core principle. If |> he is sincere, can he not contribute in a fashion that doesn't create so |> much hardship on other contributors? | | Was the banned user a checkuser? If so, then I don't see what the WMF | privacy policy has to do with it - they only had access to public | information. If they are a checkuser and have published information | gained through their checkuser privileges, then it's a pretty cut and | dry case. | | As for the other project - it's common for banned users to be given a | second chance on another project. The other project can be warned by | anyone familiar with the case if they deem it necessary, there is no | need for WMF involvement. Whether or not to take action on that other | project is, of course, up to that project's community. | | I really fail to see why this mailing list is being asked about these | scenarios, they seem pretty simple to me. Cary, some advice: It seems | the real issue here is that you see a problem and want to help but | feel restricted by the foundation's policy of non-interference. | Remember, you are still a member of the community and can offer advice | in that capacity. Just make it clear that it's not anything official, | and there shouldn't be a problem. |

I do feel the need to clarify, since the user in Scenario 2 called me out on it. The hypothetical user is presently "indefinitely blocked" on on enwiki not banned.

- -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator

Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://donate.wikimedia.org Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Phone: 415.839.6885 x 601 Fax: 415.882.0495

E-Mail: cary@wikimedia.org