[WikiEN-l] Ban Appeals Subcommittee transparency and WP:EXPLAINBLOCK violations

Sun Aug 2 16:41:04 UTC 2015

Dear colleagues,
In April, User:JzG set an indefinite block on my account. This was the third block to affect me in just over one month. Worryingly, 2 of these 3 blocks violated policy (the first violating block was performed by User:Bbb23).

I did not appeal Bbb23's block, which was a lesser offense since it was time-limited, and since I had already decided to retire, but I did appeal JzG's. The Ban Appeals Subcommittee (BASC) operates in secrecy. Until now, the communications with the subcommittee which I am about to disclose here had not been published. Most of you are probably unaware of what happens there, and I hope the following will be seen as an opportunity for improvement rather than a discouraging report.

In my case, I had already decided to retire, and a couple of invalid blocks among the myriads of blocks we issue is not by itself a cause for alarm. This becomes a concern when weeks after they were set, none has been corrected. And this gets extremely worrying when both of the faulty users still have administrative privileges, months after their errors were reported. At that point, we have conditions for such behavior to enter mores - if that has not already happened. In light of what follows though, this is no surprise.

  Transparency

The Ban Appeals Subcommittee operates behind the private email alias arbcom-appeals-en at lists.wikimedia.org. For a radical transparency advocate like me, having to use such a communication channel already raised a red flag. But I had no idea how bad the situation was.

It took me 3 attempts to submit the appeal. While there was no confirmation in the first 2 attempts, since the failure was quiet, and since appeals are kept secret, it is likely that other contributors also failed to submit and are waiting for the results of an appeal which never reached the committee in the first place. I reported this issue to the subcommittee and offered my collaboration to fix it, but 2 months later, no member has either confirmed that the issue is known or asked for details.

Thankfully (in a sense), the BASC appears to decide matters very quickly. The BASC's opacity apparently does not hide a problematic backlog. JzG's case was decided in just 2 weeks. What it may hide, however, is a total lack of accountability. Indeed, when the BASC declined to intervene in JzG's case, the list of arbitrators involved was not provided. In fact, I cannot even tell whether the BASC's decision was unanimous, even though I asked more than a month ago.

  WP:EXPLAINBLOCK

JzG did not explain his block, yet the BASC's decision reads:
> After examining your conduct we have determined that the current block and block log message are correct and compliant with policy. 
I asked the Arbitration Committee at large to explain its subcommittee's decision. Having received no answer weeks later, excluding a huge mistake, the subtext must be that the Arbitration Committee does not consider WP:EXPLAINBLOCK to be part of policy.

I am against all rules, and EXPLAINBLOCK is not the one exception to that rule. If an account with a single edit is blocked due to obvious vandalism, linking to that edit is sufficient. Administrators should not have to write even one sentence to justify such blocks. But I do agree with EXPLAINBLOCK in spirit - we should not block important contributors (whom BASC is supposed to be dedicated to) without explanation. If we cannot live up to our slogan, we should at least be transparent. It is also insulting for a major contributor to be blocked without explanation. When I was blocked by User:Swarm, I pointed out his errors and let him some time to fix before I decided to retire. I would likely not have been so diligent had the block violated EXPLAINBLOCK. And if that does not seem enough, of course, the best reason is efficiency. I was blocked 4 or 5 times on the English Wikipedia, and at least 3 were in error. If blocks are not explained, contributors may waste much time 
trying to figure out the reason why they were blocked - whether such a reason exists or not.

That being said, the Arbitration Committee is free to oppose EXPLAINBLOCK. However, it should not pretend EXPLAINBLOCK is not part of policy. If the committee opposes, it can voice its concerns on the policy's talk page, but it must refuse to hear EXPLAINBLOCK violation cases until the policy has been changed. If the committee is saying that administrators should not be expected to respect EXPLAINBLOCK with current manpower levels, it *should* seek to recruit quality administrators and certainly *must not* decline to fix violations without explanation. Alternatively, the policy could be changed to state that explanations are conditional to sufficient resources. Otherwise, contributors develop an expectation of accountability.
*If* there is a coverup or anything of that kind, the BASC *must* still unblock to comply with policy, possibly renewing with a pseudo-explanation indicating that the administrators chose to keep their reasons confidential.
In short, if we have a manpower issue, randomly clearing appeals at the risk of turning away even more contributors will not help.

Since the BASC's deliberations have not been disclosed despite my request, and since the BASC will not even disclose the arbitrators at fault, I can only say that they are among the following (apologies to those who are not responsible for the decision):

  * AGK
  * Euryalus
  * Seraphimblade
  * Thryduulf (claims to be Chris McKenna)

Those of you who have had to contact the BASC know that reporting problematic blocks on their own account does not start there. I ended up there because the block revision process is broken from beginning to end. After contacting the BASC, I noticed this issue was already being discussed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Ban_appeals_reform_2015
My account is still blocked from contributing to any page on the English Wikipedia. I never intentionally violated policy and will not start doing so because my account was blocked, so I will not contribute there. However, I urge those who remain to contribute to this project. Proper ACL management is critical.

Note that arbcom-l at lists.wikimedia.org is intentionally not Cc-ed, since this will cause lists.wikimedia.org to refuse the message "for privacy protection".

-- 
Filipus Klutiero
http://www.philippecloutier.com