On 20 January 2015 at 17:19, Trillium Corsage trillium2014@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?