On 20 January 2015 at 17:19, Trillium Corsage <trillium2014(a)yandex.com>
wrote:
I guess I don't object much to specific ban
reasons not disclosed to the
*public* if it at least is publicly said "reasons of privacy prohibit us
from commenting specifically," however I would object if specific ban
reasons were not disclosed to the *banned individual*. It's simple fairness
and common decency to tell somebody why he or she has been banned.
Consider a user like Russavia who has done a great deal of positive
editing, contributed great value, to the WMF projects. He shouldn't just be
banned without telling *him* specifically why. Personally I feel he was
pushed around at English Wikipedia a lot, that one of his maligned and
deleted focus projects "Poland Ball" was for years worthy of its own
article, and that had to be vindicated by its articles in like a dozen of
the non-English Wikipedias before, after years, the English Wikipedia
administrative bullies finally backed down (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polandball, now #3 in Google results).
However regardless of your opinion (which is wrong but that's a secondary
issue) of it the reasons for blocking were publicly discussed on the
English wikipedia and can be found through enough digging through the
relevant logs and archives. Given that this does not satisfy you there
would appear to be little point in paying attention to any demands you make
for openness.
Of course if the WMF indeed tells the individual the
particulars, he or
she could himself or herself choose to make that public. Maybe that's what
the WMF really doesn't want. If it were done that way, there'd be no "you
compromised my privacy" complaint basis for the individual.
Sigh. Okey consider the following (which I wish to make clear is entirely
hypothetical). The WMF is 99% sure that an editor is using Wikipedia as a
C&C network for a bot net (yes in theory this could be done). Now it has
two options. It can either ban the editor without giving a reason or it can
give its reasoning and face a 1% risk of significant libel damages and
legal costs (falsely accusing someone of running a botnet is libel). Which
one do you think it is going to do?
--
geni