[Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia-wide global blocking mechanism?

[Milos Rancic]

I know that you don't agree with that, Lodewijk :)

On 1/31/08, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sorry, but I have some big problems with that. I thought for a
> moment I misread you, but I am afraight not. Communities have
> different values, different borders, different rules, different
> behaviour. I beleive we have some very valuable member of the transcom
> that has been banned for a long time from her home wiki. And I'm
> confident there are more of these cases. If I am seen as disruptive
> somewhere, that does not mean the same behaviour occurs at all on
> other projects, with other people. And even if it would, it does not
> automatically conclude that this behaviour is also bad on the other
> community. Personal attacks for instance are very differently
> interpreted in some communities as in enwiki.

- I really don't care about developed Wikimedian communities (and
their cultures) which are not able to live with other Wikimedian
communities. Bottom line is: If your cultural norms don't allow you to
use computer -- don't use it.

- And if some community depends on one or couple of problematic
contributors, it is a better idea to wait for some others or even to
make some fund raising and find some professional editors.

- Long term ban is not a local, but a global issue. I was very clear
about options.

- Personal attacks are personal attacks and, if needed, may be defined
globally. Expressing racism is also a very clear field. Of course,
someone may interpret that sun shining is a personal attack or a
racism, but this is their own problem.

- Yes, I know that a person who did personal and racist attacks on
en.wp may be a hero at its own language project. But, then we have a
problem with a whole project. And sooner or later we won't be able to
ignore it anymore.

- Also, Wikimedia is a culture with its own values and goals. A person
who is not able to accept and understand this -- is not able to
participate in the project, except as a POV pusher. And if it is a
local community-wide behavior, then we are feeding a project which is
unacceptable from the point our basic values.

- BTW, I know very well what "different culture norms" mean on the
Internet (I live in a "different culture"). Members of really
different cultures are not using Internet.

> Also the open proxies of course. While in some wiki's open proxies are
> mainly used for vandalistic activities, in other projects they are
> being used to avoid easy government control, arrests or the loosing of
> a job. in some projects these addresses are disruptive, in others they
> are the backbone of the project. By deciding that for instance
> nlwiki's open procy policy should become wikimediawide (preventively
> block all open proxies, including TOR etc) might just very well kill
> some projects. I am confident this is not your intention. Of course
> there are ways around it, but this is just an example. My whole point
> is: who is one community to decide for another community who is
> allowed to join them. On one side you extremely rely on good faith of
> the blocking community, but on the other side you forget that also the
> blocked person might be acting in good faith, but for *some* reason,
> makes him/herself impossible on a project. Maybe because of language
> barriers, maybe because of long ongoing disagreements. It can all be
> in good faith, it can all be a reason to block if that is best for
> that local community. It is not per se the best for every community.

- http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies

- There are a couple of projects which need open proxies free for
editing and it is possible to make exceptions for them. However, ways
for helping to valuable editors from such places.