It's worth pointing out that the Board *are* responsible, even if they aren't involved in the actual decision-making - as they are ultimately responsible for everything WMF does.
Personally I think the present solution is better than no solution, as cross-project disruption is not something the community is particularly well-equipped to deal with. However, Dariusz's idea of creating a volunteer group of some description to review these actions is definitely worth thinking about. Chris
On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 1:07 PM, Cristian Consonni kikkocristian@gmail.com wrote:
2015-01-20 14:03 GMT+01:00 Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl:
transparency does not always have to mean full public access to
information
(in the cases described by Philippe clearly TMI may be e.g. involving the community and the foundation in lengthy legal disputes, or endanger a discussed individual). However, I definitely understand that we, as a community, may have a need to externally confirm the solidity of
reasoning
behind bans. I think we already have functionaries of high trust (such as the Board and/or the stewards) who could oversee the process.
Strong +1.
2015-01-20 13:11 GMT+01:00 Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org:
As has been explained multiple times in multiple places, the WMF have
been
advised, for very good legal reasons, not to give details.
"Believe it or not, there's a sensible reason behind our refusal to
comment:
we can execute global bans for a wide variety of things (see the Terms of Use for some examples - and no, "provoking Jimbo" is not on the list),
some
of which - including child protection issues - could be quite dangerous
to
openly divulge. Let's say we execute five global bans, and tell you the reason behind four of them. Well, the remaining one is pretty clearly for something "really bad", and open knowledge of that could endanger the
user,
their family, any potential law enforcement case, and could result in a quite real miscarriage of justice and/or someone being placed in real physical danger. So no, we - as with most internet companies - have a
very
strict policy that we do not comment publicly on the reason for global
bans.
It's a common sense policy and one that's followed by - and insisted
upon -
by almost every reasonable, responsible company that executes this type
of
action. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 04:40, 18 January 2015 (UTC)"
Fair enough, then we should ask the board to oversight the process i.e., in the end, being able to take responsability for the global ban infliction. I would not take this as far as require a deliberation from the BoT for global bans but it my well be a possibility.
If this is too demanding in terms of time to create a commission to do such a task. These people can be bound by any confidentiality terms that the legal department consider adeguate.
Don't want to go through community election? Create an appointed board of external, indipendent experts for this. (say ask somebody from EFF or similar orgs).
C
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