On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 12:53 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Amir Ladsgroup wrote:
I disabled the account and now I disabled it again. It's part of a CoC ban. We sent the user an email using the "Email to user" functionality from mediawiki.org the moment I enforced the ban.
We rather not to discuss details of cases publicly but I feel this clarification is very much needed.
Ah, I found the e-mail:
Subject: Temporarily ban from phabricator
Hello,
We received reports about your comments in phabricator. While we encourage criticism and productive comments to improve the software, comments like "What the fuck" do not contribute to the discussion and turns the discussion from respectful criticism to folks swearing at other folks.
We asked you to stop making such comments that do not contribute to the discussion. We have no choice to issue a temporarily ban from phabricator. We hope you notice this type of behaviour is not welcome in our technical spaces.
Please read Code of conduct in depth: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
Best
This email was sent by TechConductCommittee to MZMcBride by the "Email this user" function at MediaWiki. If you reply to this email, your email will be sent directly to the original sender, revealing your email address to them.
This is re: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T200742.
Greg Varnum created a mess, inappropriately closed a valid bug, and removed its parent task because he didn't want to even acknowledge the bug. I expressed exasperation with his actions, particularly gaslighting volunteers (cf. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-August/090841.html ), and Greg then removed himself as the task assignee and hasn't responded on either the task or the wikimedia-l mailing list since. And there's still German text prominently and confusingly at the top of https://wikimediafoundation.org/. Amazing.
MZMcBride
So MZMcBride is temporarily banned for an unspecified amount of time. I have some concerns: a) The fact all these are secret is a recipe for FUD and misunderstandings. From accusations of partiality of the committee to people being unblocked because people think its an accident, are all natural consequences of things being secret. I think this is bound to create a negative environment in the long term. b) What is the point of blocking him temporarily and not telling him how long he's banned for. That's just silly. c) While I agree that writing wtf can be inappropriate, if the CoC is going to weigh in to the fray it should fully enforce things on both sides. MZMcbride (and any other individual contributor) is at a power disadvantage here relative to how the foundation is an organized group, and while I can't condone the form of how he expressed his concerns, he's not wrong that the comments on the bug are poorly communicated. The bug report seems legit (I've heard many people complain that the issue is confusing and looks like its a mistake). First the bug is closed as being a feature not a bug (Although its still unclear what exactly the aim is). Then the bug is re-closed because the site is "soft-launched" (I guess that means beta) and the issue will be fixed later, although that seems kind of contradictory with the first close reason. This is all very confusing and rather dismissive of legitimate concerns. I think that if MZMcbride is to be censored (in the sense of being condemned), than the code of conduct committee should also attempt to enforce clear communication on this task to be fair to the fact that some parties in this dispute are at a power disadvantage.
-- Brian