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

[effe iets anders]

2008/1/31, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>:
> Eh, I thought than you are proposing some *real* changes ;) (OK, it
> was just my initial wish, but I realized the meaning a couple of
> moments after.) Here are my thoughts about that:
>
> - Every block longer or equal to 7 days should be Wikimedia-wide.
> - The fourth block on two days in, let's say 15 days should be Wikimedia-wide.
> - The fourth block on one day in 7 days should be Wikimedia-wide.
> - And so on...
>
> So, here is "better" group of reasons:
> - If en.wp (or any other approved by WMF) ArbCom decided to block
> someone on 1 year, I really don't want to see such person on any other
> project.
> - If some community decided to block someone on a longer period, it is
> probably because of very good reason.
> - If someone got N-th consequent block (usually, any consequent block
> is higher) on any project, I assume that such person is troll or
> whatever-destructive.
>
> But, we have the dark side, too:
> - If some ArbCom fails, it would be much more visible to the whole community.
> - If some community made some crazy decision only to remove some
> person from their project, it would be a global issue.
> - If some admin is not reliable, it would be, again, a matter of the
> whole community.
>
> Of course, I would be happy with any kind of moving toward this model,
> which includes WM-wide IP blocks, too. I would really like to see open
> proxies blocked indefinitely because they are much more harmful to the
> small projects then to the big ones (yes, Andre, I know that you don't
> agree with that ;) ).

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.

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.

BR, Lodewijk