[Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?

[Billinghurst]

I also believe that there are special cases where there should be a policy decision made 
by the body that has the responsibility for due diligence, with legal authority and a 
legal basis.  To that end I specifically addressed the why (with detail) and a how 
(possible) to Sue in a separate post.  It contained detail that should not be put onto an 
open mailing list.

My proposal in short was that the stewards are involved and the  conduit for such a 
proposal to the Foundation, and that it could go through any of the discussion points that 
you identified.  It does not circumvent stewards, and is not top-down; it is the close 
with a great big THE END.

Stewards are limited in powers due to the ability for local projects to override.  There 
has to be someone make the call on what is ultimately right for WMF. There will always be 
persons who come and try to avoid blocks, and a ruling from WMF basically means 'no more 
wriggle room'.  Where someone is cyberstalking, close to the line on fraud/identity theft, 
there has to be authority in a ruling.

Regards, Andrew


On 4 Jun 2011 at 10:42, MZMcBride wrote:

> Billinghurst wrote:
> > I disagree, this needs to be a decision by the WMF, not by stewards.  Some
> > sites are 'independent', and this is a matter that needs to have no wriggle
> > room, and hence be a definitive statement.  It is simply a case that the
> > worst of the worst need to be managed from the top and at a policy level,
> > not as operational issues. This is a due diligence matter.
> 
> I think it's a fairly dangerous precedent to have the Wikimedia Foundation
> involved in making individual decisions about who can and can't edit. I
> realize that in the past, certain system administrators or Jimmy have done
> this, but as far as I'm aware, the Wikimedia Foundation (as an organization)
> has not and does not get involved in cases like this for a reason.
> 
> As Phoebe noted, there have been some efforts at Meta-Wiki (more recently
> than I thought, actually) to address this. I'd like to see the community
> give it a good-faith try (or two) to solve this without intervention before
> seeking top-down involvement. That isn't to say that the two bodies need to
> be completely separate. One procedure for a global ban committee could be to
> direct the Wikimedia Foundation to declare particular people as completely
> unwelcome, or something like that. But I haven't seen too much to suggest
> that the community can't solve this, only that they haven't yet.
> 
> Regarding independent projects, a local admin is going to do what a local
> admin is going to do, no matter whether it's stewards or the Wikimedia
> Foundation telling them otherwise. That can be handled on a case-by-case
> basis as appropriate.
> 
> Honestly, there are other seemingly intractable problems that the community
> has faced and the response from seeking Wikimedia Foundation help hasn't
> been great. Controversial content comes to mind. A long study that ended in
> a report that said "well, yeah, lots and lots of penises on Commons!" I
> don't really want to see a repeat of that dynamic again. If there are
> technical or legal aspects to this problem that the Wikimedia Foundation can
> put resources toward, let's figure out what those are and make it happen.
> But the community really needs to take charge here, if at all possible.
> 
> MZMcBride
> 
>