Just to summarize the difference between WMF and ArbCom, in view of the majority of the en.wiki community:
We elect ArbCom, and if they do not do what they should be doing, they do not get re-elected in two years, which happens on a regular basis
We do not elect WMF and in fact we have no means of influencing WMF (apart of the three Trustees we elect every three years who are themselves typically alienated from the community). Short of taking down the fundraiser banner or of organizing a Wikipedia blackout.
This is the difference, and this is why virtually everybody who had to say smth about this episode was unhappy with the process. Without looking at the diffs, I only remember three users who were perfectly happy with what happened, out of hundreds who said smth.
One unfortunate consequence of the whole episode was, whoever is right and whoever is wrong, the general opinion about WMF in the community is all-time low, with people generally not prepared to believe to anything communicated to them. If WMF is not interested in getting very unpleasant surprises, they should start working towards building the community trust.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 10:48 PM GorillaWarfare < gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 8:36 AM Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
Any Arbcom approved sanction against Fram based on the evidence would not be controversial for anyone.
Sorry for coming in late to this conversation; I've mostly been following the sicussion happening on-wiki. But I wanted to pipe up to say that I absolutely do not believe this is true (see also my comment here < https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Commit...
).
To repeat my comment somewhat, the English Wikipedia ArbCom has in the past had to place similar bans: that is, ones against long-term contributors with many supporters, and ones in which the full details behind what led to the ban cannot be revealed publicly. The reaction has been quite similar to the one the WMF is currently experiencing—"star chamber" accusations, claims that we've abused our power or the process, and assumptions that the ban is unwarranted unless everyone is allowed to scrutinize the private evidence. The ArbCom is empowered to take action based off of privately-submitted evidence and private discussion, but in practice it is extremely poorly-received when we do, basically across-the-board.
– Molly (GorillaWarfare) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GorillaWarfare _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe