[Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?

Risker risker.wp at gmail.com
Fri Jun 3 18:22:19 UTC 2011


On 3 June 2011 13:11, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> On 3 June 2011 10:00, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I too would like to see the development of a process for global banning
> of
> > users who have created serious problems on either the global or the
> > multiple-project level.
>
> Is there something the Foundation could do to support that happening?
>
>
>

Sue, the one thing that comes to mind is that the Foundation does have the
right to restrict access to private or non-public information and can decree
that a specific individual is banned from any position that permits access
to such information. (The data belongs to the WMF and therefore access to it
can be controlled by the WMF.) It is possible that this could extend as far
as use of the "email this user" feature for editors who have been shown to
abuse it, because those "non-public" emails travel through the WMF servers.
Again the WMF has the right to decree whether or not this is appropriate use
of WMF equipment.  Neither of these issues are project-specific; they are
global in scope.

I tend to agree with Kirill Lokshin about the ability of the WMF as a
service provider to restrict access to its property in a general sense, for
the very small number of individuals who have repeatedly abused their access
across several projects, or more directly by affecting Wikimedians by taking
"wiki-disputes" into other areas; my estimate would be that we're probably
talking fewer than a dozen people altogether over the past 10 years who
might meet this level of abuse.

Risker/Anne


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