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

[Luca Motoc]

I do agree with this. As I have been blocked and appeal and was directed in
so many places and when I wrote to ARBCOM twice I got no answer.

2015-08-02 18:41 GMT+02:00 Filipus Klutiero <chealer at gmail.com>:

> 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
>
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-- 



Prof.Dr. Luca Motoc
S3EN>EES
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