Hello all,

This is at the same time, news from another wikipedia, and somehow a feature request (or start of discussion, whatever), hence sent to wikipedia-l and wikitech.

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NEWS SECTION

Today, the french wikipedia adopted new rules with regards to sanctions and exclusion (majority of 93%)

To make it simple.

Before : the only action toward a problematic user was banning. It was decided by consensus, with 100% agreement. Two people were banned by this way, Mulot (in august 2002) and Papotages (in november 2003).

This naturally has become unworkable.

Now : a new policy was adopted. This is not a final policy, as several points have to be further discussed, but it outlines the principles.

This policy is rather different from the english one. I guess the difference is due to 1) we are less numerous and 2) we never had a benevolent dictator :-)

The major differences rely here

* There is no arbitration committee. Decisions are taken by the full community (with requirements of number of contributions or length of presence depending on the decision).

* The policy relies on two steps, clearly identified.

The first step is meant to slow down edition by a problematic user, or to restrict his right of edition to some parts of the project for example. It is relying on the *agreement* of the user to respect these rules. The community issues a sort of warning to the problematic user and ask him to voluntarily respect this collective warning.

For example, if a user is unable to collaborate on an article, and starts edit wars on this article all the time, he may be asked by the community not to edit this specific article for one month.

The restriction in edition is automatically lifted after a month.

If the user does not respect the request issued by the community, the second step is reached. Similarly, a user being issued repeated warnings and edition restrictions in first step will meet second step.

The second step is restriction of edition, by technical means. In short blocking/banning temporarily or permanently.

# This means that the entire community will be able to express disagreement to a user, depending on his behavior as an editor.

# Decisions of restriction of edition or banning will not be unilateral but collective

# Restriction in edition should not be necessarily seen as a punishment for the user, but more a warning from the collective, and request for him to behave differently

# Restriction in edition should be respected by the user himself, voluntarily. That means the user actively chooses to behave within community norms or not. If he accepts, his full rights will be reinstated. If he refuses, a vote for banning will be started

# Community answer to problematic behavior is gradual. It allows room for voluntary behavior improvement and general forgiveness.

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FEATURE REQUEST SECTION

You may note that the second step, restriction of edition by technical means, is limited. The only point on which we may act is time. Banning for one week, one month, forever etc�.

I think it would be nice that technical means allow to block people more selectively, such as blocking on all meta space, or blocking on one article specifically.

In the first case (meta space blocking), that means we recognise the right of the user to contribute to articles themselves, but we do not welcome them in the community. In the second case (article blocking), that means we could selectively prevent a user to edit on article or some set of articles which are really �hot buttons� for him.

This has been mentioned a couple of time already, as well as edit throttling, which I think, holds interest as well.

I would give a 100 wiki-kisses to any developer interested in working on that :-)

I would also suggest raising funds for this, 'cause I am not sure I own 100 wiki-kisses. But I promise I am dedicated in making/removing people sysop and bureaucrat status to give developers more free time :-)

Anthere

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