[Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?

[Steven Walling]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 8:40 AM, Newyorkbrad <newyorkbrad at gmail.com> wrote:

> In view of the entire history of this matter, not all of which should
> necessarily be discussed publicly, Poetlister should not be editing under
> any account name on any project.  The fact that as recently as a couple of
> months ago he was applying for advanced permissions on a project is
> particularly concerning and I would not be averse to Foundation-level
> intervention at this time.
>
> Newyorkbrad
>

Thanks for commenting Nyb.

I just wanted to suggest that, rather than setting the precedent of the
Foundation enacting a global ban (even if it's from community request),
people should simply ask the Stewards to do it.

I realize that they're not used to fulfilling such a role when there are
local admins, but if community members wanted to make the case strongly to
them that this is one exceptional situation, then it may be a solution that
keeps staff from stepping in to ban folks who have violated community norms
consistently and egregiously across the projects.

As an added assurance to the Stewards that this is truly exceptional, I
would suggest starting a draft of a global community ban policy on Meta,
which could be worked on in good time after the situation with Poetlister is
dealt with. I don't know if that has been tried and failed before, but with
a very specific example like this one to show need and a very very limited
set of use cases, it may be shown to be necessary.

Just my two cents anyway. While I've been at the Foundation I've been
thinking a lot about how greater communication and cooperation between the
projects could seriously reduce the need to rely on the Foundation or the
Board for certain aspects of global Wikimedia governance. I would love to
see that happen.

Steven Walling