On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 7:41 AM Stas Malyshev smalyshev@wikimedia.org wrote:
- The account was disabled without any indication (except the email to
the person owning it, which is also rather easy to miss - not the admin's fault, but read on) of what and why happened, as far as I could see. Note that Phabricator is a collaborative space, and disabling an account may influence everybody who may have been working with the person, and even everybody that working on a ticket that this person commented once. If they submitted a bug and I want to verify with them and the account is disabled - what do I do? People are left guessing - did something happen? Did his user leave the project? Was it something they said? Something I said? Some bug? Admin action? What is going on? There's no explanation, there's no permanent public record, and no way to figure out what it is.
What I would propose to improve this is on each such action, to have permanent public record, in a known place, that specifies: a. What action it was (ban, temporary ban - with duration, etc.) b. Who decided on that action and who implemented it, the latter - to be sure if somebody thinks it's a bug or mistake, they can ask "did you really mean to ban X" instead of being in unpleasant and potentially embarrassing position of trying to guess what happened with no information. c. Why this action was taken - if sensitive details involved, omitting them, but providing enough context to understand what happened, e.g. "Banned X for repeated comments in conflict with CoC, which we had to delete, e.g. [link], [link] and [link]" or "Permanently banned Y for conduct unwelcome in Wikimedia spaces", if revealing any more details would hurt people.
That proposed solution does not solve the problem you are proposing it for. If a person I'm interacting with on Phabricator or Gerrit disappears, I'm not going to look through CoC ban records, even if I know such a thing exists (which most people wouldn't, even if it's well-publicized). I'll just assume they are busy or sick or something.
If we really feel people trying to interact with a banned users should find out the user is banned, it could be displayed in their Phabricator profile or in the Phabricator calendar (that results in a little notice icon everywhere the username is used), although I'd hope the banned person can opt out of that happening as it feels somewhat stigmatizing.
- There seems to be no clearly defined venue to discuss and form
consensus about such actions. As it must be clear now, such venue is required, and if it is not provided, the first venue that looks suitable for it will be roped in. To much annoyance of the people that wanted to use that venue for other things.
I doubt that would have much effect - the person who is objecting about a CoC action benefits from using the forum that grabs the most attention, even if there's a more appropriate one. People who are considerate enough not to do that are typically not the ones who end up getting banned.