[Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

[Theo10011]

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 5:34 AM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski <tomasz at twkozlowski.net
> wrote:

>
> So what did you want to say? I haven't been able to find any answers to
> any questions that have been asked by so many people in this thread.


Try and be a bit nicer please. Gayle is still relatively new and this level
of scrutiny might be jarring for someone. I'm not sure what the expectation
was here, it wasn't going to be a grand plan or a hidden explanation for
this action. Sue and Erik gave their versions, so as far as explanations
go, if Philippe said he was the button pusher, Gayle could have argued she
was merely the one who authorized the button pushing. I kind of like that
she didn't take that route.

I don't think there's anywhere else to go from here. I suppose now it comes
down to futile arguments over levels of culpability. At the most, there was
malicious intent against Mz, where his removal alone was the eventual goal,
and a policy had to be erected or modified to facilitate that. The rest
might have been an amalgamation of inactive users and bystanders who got
caught on either side of it. It's sad if it had to come down to that.
Admins like THO and Mz, are godsend.

At the very least, this was handled poorly. I don't think anyone including
the executives would disagree with that one. Perhaps a courtesy note - a
thank you, a warning, some time in between - would have made the world of a
difference. Maybe the problem itself instead of the person could have been
isolated, and talked out. I still have a sneaking suspicion that Gayle
didn't realize what she was getting into.

I also think that people reading this are missing a lot of the context and
history here. Before the removal of his rights, Mz made ~2000 edits on that
wiki this year. A lot of them are tedious edits which no one really does
from the foundation's side. I think he's been working on his Manana list
since 2009[1] for that wiki.

For those that might not know him, even a cursory look at Mz's meta or
en.wp talk page would reveal that his time is valued as it is in other
places. It's filled with people asking for help with bots, db queries,
Mediawiki, small hacks and what not, he can certainly do a heck of a lot
more than an average technically-inept editor like me can. Mz also has his
own charm, and for the people who know him, love him for it. A few staff
members though, do seem immune to that exposure and do tend to lock horns
occasionally.

The two years that I have known Philippe and Mz (and strangely both were
among the first people I interacted with), they have had more than a few
contentious moments. Philippe might have a tendency to be a bit more prone
to control (IMO). I have also seen him discuss issues about staff rights,
and who has access where for a long while. It wouldn't be surprising to
learn that this removal, and policy change was in the offing. Perhaps, the
issue got exacerbated with Zack and Erik's concerns (something about HTML
insertions?) about the fundraising infrastructure residing on WMF wiki, who
knows.

Regards
Theo

[1]http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Ma%C3%B1ana