This is probably a tempest in a teapot, but it seemed like an interesting question. On a local "request for adminship" on English Wikipedia, an editor has stated he will not support anyone who is not Christian for Adminship, and the RFA in question is getting very intense. Would people opposing actions or volunteer positions based on religion, creed, race, or sexuality of a user run afoul of any local United States discrimination laws, or local San Francisco, California ones, where the WMF is housed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Inciden...
And the section immediately above it.
- Joe
IANAL but I doubt it. Such norms, on whatever level tend to focus only on formal employment and access to services aimed at the general public. You're free to cast votes on politicians (and board members, for that matter) based on solely religious (or gender or whatever) grounds. I consider rfas rather analogous, with regards to individual cast votes. If the entire community turns strictly anti-Semitic or anti-LGBT or pro-White or whatever, or if a bureaucrat closes votes on such grounds, that's something else.
Michael
On 9/26/08, Joe Szilagyi szilagyi@gmail.com wrote:
This is probably a tempest in a teapot, but it seemed like an interesting question. On a local "request for adminship" on English Wikipedia, an editor has stated he will not support anyone who is not Christian for Adminship, and the RFA in question is getting very intense. Would people opposing actions or volunteer positions based on religion, creed, race, or sexuality of a user run afoul of any local United States discrimination laws, or local San Francisco, California ones, where the WMF is housed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Inciden...
And the section immediately above it.
- Joe
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The non-discrimination policy [1] says:
"The Wikimedia Foundation prohibits discrimination against current or prospective users and employees..."
I'm not sure what was intended by "users", but I suppose it might be interpreted to include editors, admins, etc.
-Robert Rohde
[1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Non_discrimination_policy
On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 6:24 AM, mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
IANAL but I doubt it. Such norms, on whatever level tend to focus only on formal employment and access to services aimed at the general public. You're free to cast votes on politicians (and board members, for that matter) based on solely religious (or gender or whatever) grounds. I consider rfas rather analogous, with regards to individual cast votes. If the entire community turns strictly anti-Semitic or anti-LGBT or pro-White or whatever, or if a bureaucrat closes votes on such grounds, that's something else.
Michael
On 9/26/08, Joe Szilagyi szilagyi@gmail.com wrote:
This is probably a tempest in a teapot, but it seemed like an interesting question. On a local "request for adminship" on English Wikipedia, an editor has stated he will not support anyone who is not Christian for Adminship, and the RFA in question is getting very intense. Would people opposing actions or volunteer positions based on religion, creed, race, or sexuality of a user run afoul of any local United States discrimination laws, or local San Francisco, California ones, where the WMF is housed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Inciden...
And the section immediately above it.
- Joe
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-- Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 9:03 AM, Joe Szilagyi szilagyi@gmail.com wrote:
This is probably a tempest in a teapot, but it seemed like an interesting question. On a local "request for adminship" on English Wikipedia, an editor has stated he will not support anyone who is not Christian for Adminship, and the RFA in question is getting very intense. Would people opposing actions or volunteer positions based on religion, creed, race, or sexuality of a user run afoul of any local United States discrimination laws, or local San Francisco, California ones, where the WMF is housed?
It's a community thing. On en.wikibooks, our bureaucrats simply won't pay attention to irrational and poorly supported votes. Bureaucrats are able to use their judgement to consider the quality of votes above the sheer quantity of them. As a nice side effect, since we reformulated our policies to make this point explicit, we've not seen any serious amounts of sockpuppeting or vote stuffing (because more votes doesn't help). Of course, giving so much freedom of judgement to a bureaucrat can be a little scary, and the community at en.wb has been very selective about new bureaucrats (from what I understand, WP is a little selective about it as well). I suggest to WP that there is nothing wrong with only allowing "reasonable votes" from "reasonable voters", with some members (bureaucrats?) trusted to differentiate between the two.
Unfortunately, I dont think this really is a problem with discrimination laws. Think about how the Boy Scouts have generally disallowed homosexuals from participating in their programs. The Boy Scouts don't get in serious trouble over these issues, although they have lost access to some specific deals that they had with local governments (lower taxes, lower rent, etc).
This isn't the first issue of RfA discrimination I've heard of over at WP, age-related discrimination has been discussed all over the blogosphere. What's unfortunate is that WP has been allowing such votes to carry the same weight as votes which are made with proper consideration paid to a user's edit history. The community has certain standards when selecting new admins, and users who aren't voting with those standards in mind arne't really participating in the process.
--Andrew Whitworth
The Wikimedia Foundation policy angle may be worth looking into, although I suspect its intended to restrict the actions of the foundation itself (as opposed to editors or projects). It probably would not make sense for the company to have a role in regulating local project processes for determining administrators, 'crats, etc. Once you get beyond determining basic fitness for handling private data it'd be slogging through a quagmire.
As to the legal question - I seriously doubt that any element of the RfA process on the English Wikipedia could give rise to a credible discrimination claim. Anonymous editors, unpaid and anonymous unofficial role, no employer-employee or other legal relationship between the candidate and any other editor or the WMF, etc. It would be interesting to see someone with knowledge of the law try to argue the point, though.
Nathan
It's a community thing. On en.wikibooks, our bureaucrats simply won't pay attention to irrational and poorly supported votes. Bureaucrats are able to use their judgement to consider the quality of votes above the sheer quantity of them.
In theory enwiki is the same. It doesn't really matter, anyway - presumably it's just one vote, enwiki RFAs have high enough turnout that one vote is rarely going to make much difference.
On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 11:19 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It's a community thing. On en.wikibooks, our bureaucrats simply won't pay attention to irrational and poorly supported votes. Bureaucrats are able to use their judgement to consider the quality of votes above the sheer quantity of them.
In theory enwiki is the same. It doesn't really matter, anyway - presumably it's just one vote, enwiki RFAs have high enough turnout that one vote is rarely going to make much difference.
Obviously no sane Bureaucrat is going to count a vote that says, "Opppose- we shouldn't let in any sysops who can't RSVP with St Peter and the Heavenly Choir for that great Wikimania in the sky".
I think this is a non-issue.
Thanks, Pharos
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on 9/26/08 11:36 AM, Pharos at pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 11:19 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It's a community thing. On en.wikibooks, our bureaucrats simply won't pay attention to irrational and poorly supported votes. Bureaucrats are able to use their judgement to consider the quality of votes above the sheer quantity of them.
In theory enwiki is the same. It doesn't really matter, anyway - presumably it's just one vote, enwiki RFAs have high enough turnout that one vote is rarely going to make much difference.
Obviously no sane Bureaucrat is going to count a vote that says, "Opppose- we shouldn't let in any sysops who can't RSVP with St Peter and the Heavenly Choir for that great Wikimania in the sky".
I think this is a non-issue.
Thanks, Pharos
At last sanity prevails!
(Although I would be interested in talking with a person who would base their vote on a totally non-religious issue, on strictly religious grounds. I can't help it, I was born curious :-))
Marc
On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 11:55 AM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.netwrote:
on 9/26/08 11:36 AM, Pharos at pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 11:19 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com
wrote:
It's a community thing. On en.wikibooks, our bureaucrats simply won't pay attention to irrational and poorly supported votes. Bureaucrats are able to use their judgement to consider the quality of votes above the sheer quantity of them.
In theory enwiki is the same. It doesn't really matter, anyway - presumably it's just one vote, enwiki RFAs have high enough turnout that one vote is rarely going to make much difference.
Obviously no sane Bureaucrat is going to count a vote that says, "Opppose- we shouldn't let in any sysops who can't RSVP with St Peter and the Heavenly Choir for that great Wikimania in the sky".
I think this is a non-issue.
Thanks, Pharos
At last sanity prevails!
(Although I would be interested in talking with a person who would base their vote on a totally non-religious issue, on strictly religious grounds. I can't help it, I was born curious :-))
Marc
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You'd probably enjoy talking to those who believe global warming is just God hugging us closer.
-Chad
On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 6:38 PM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
You'd probably enjoy talking to those who believe global warming is just God hugging us closer. https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Well, you could just go to any town-hall meeting featuring Sarah Palin. But we *are* getting a bit off-topic now ;-)
Michael
On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 4:36 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.comwrote:
Obviously no sane Bureaucrat is going to count a vote that says, "Opppose- we shouldn't let in any sysops who can't RSVP with St Peter and the Heavenly Choir for that great Wikimania in the sky".
I think this is a non-issue.
Thanks, Pharos
You're assuming we don't have any insane bureaucrats :-) Seriously though, some bureaucrats do actually read the RfA and try and read the consensus.
Others, well, they look at the tally at the top, get out their calculator, if it's <75% it's a fail, if it's >75% it's a pass.
There's too many of the second kind of bureaucrat.
As said, it is a community matter and no need WMF get involved, in my humble opinion.
As for racial discrimination, I know an editor who was once opposed by some editors in his first RFA on a certain language project. He is not of the race of majority editors of that project and faced a contest not directly based on nationality issues (at least claimed so) but "his political POV" in regard of some political issues of his own country and theirs.
Fortunately, while he lost his first request, later he was promoted. Insanity seems sometimes to take advantage, and hence community is not infallible - as well as a certain Wikipedia article at a certain moment may carry wrong information. But Wikimedia community seems to have more flexibility which redeems past wrong communal decisions, and hopefully it goes not so worse as trend.
On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 1:57 AM, Al Tally majorly.wiki@googlemail.com wrote:
On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 4:36 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.comwrote:
Obviously no sane Bureaucrat is going to count a vote that says, "Opppose- we shouldn't let in any sysops who can't RSVP with St Peter and the Heavenly Choir for that great Wikimania in the sky".
I think this is a non-issue.
Thanks, Pharos
You're assuming we don't have any insane bureaucrats :-) Seriously though, some bureaucrats do actually read the RfA and try and read the consensus.
Others, well, they look at the tally at the top, get out their calculator, if it's <75% it's a fail, if it's >75% it's a pass.
There's too many of the second kind of bureaucrat.
-- Alex (User:Majorly) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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