Grants talk:Project/Chinmayisk/Community toolkit for Greater Diversity/Complaint to the stewards
In light of these events on the Discussion page of our Project Grant proposal and other recent instances of arbitrary blocking and abuse of administrative powers on Marathi Wikipedia, we are making our complaint to the stewards public. A steward unblocked User:Chinmayisk in response to the complaint, while I am still blocked from editing.
Since Chinmayi and I were blocked on Marathi Wikipedia on October 8, 2017, I have observed that the sysop and bureaucrat in question has acted on several occasions in ways that violate some basic policies and principles of Wikimedia. The exchange here can serve as an example. For this reason, I feel compelled to make this text public.
As his specific objections to our grant proposal go beyond the scope of the regional and local frameworks of Marathi Wikipedia, we believe that Meta is the most appropriate location for this discussion. We would appreciate any help and suggestions in resolving this matter. Please post your comments in the Comments section. -- Rohini (talk) 04:02, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
Text (reproduced verbatim) edit
Subject: Abuse of sysop privileges on several counts by User: Mahitgar
Date: October 13, 2017
Hello,
I am writing this complaint on behalf of User:Chinmayisk and myself (User:Rohini) against User:Mahitgar, whose recent actions on Marathi Wikipedia and Meta have been in violation of several universal and local policies of Wikipedia. He is a sysop and bureaucrat on Marathi Wikipedia and has carried out these actions in response to our Project Grant application on Meta. For better readability, I have included all supporting URLs at the bottom of this message.
In keeping with the grant application procedure, I posted a notification on the Marathi Wikipedia Village Pump (MWVP) informing the community that the proposal is up for review. The contents of the notification were not inappropriate, disruptive or in violation of any universal or local policies of Wikipedia.
User: Mahitgar deleted the notification without notice or warning. The edit summary of the diff, translated from Marathi:
He immediately blocked User: Chinmayisk and me on Marathi Wikipedia for one month, again, without notice or warning. Translation of the block logs from Marathi:
User: Chinmayisk -- To avoid interference by non-Marathi [people] in determining the new policy.
This is in contravention of the Wikipedia’s blocking policy, which allows blocking only in the face or disruption and/ or vandalism, and treats blocking as the last resort. It also explicitly mentions that a user can be blocked for activity on the Village Pump only after being warned at least once. It is pertinent to note that User: Chinmayisk has no edits on Marathi Wikipedia and no warnings on any other projects. She and I have been blocked to prevent us from objecting to Mahitgar’s actions. It is also worth noting that Wikipedia is open for everyone to edit; "interference" is an unacceptable, parochial and discriminatory term for describing the constructive participation of an individual whose native language is different from the language of the Wikipedia.
He also placed a temporary block on the IP addresses last used by us when we were logged in to our respective accounts (#273 and #268 in the block logs). We suspect that this was an unauthorised CheckUser action carried out unilaterally by Mahitgar. Unless he had a way of blocking our IP addresses without knowing them, this is a gross violation of our privacy, of Wikipedia’s policies, and of its cornerstone principle of upholding the privacy of its users.
In Mahitgar’s own words, his actions were in the interest of the "smooth enforcement of a new policy", which was posted on the MWVP within minutes of blocking us on October 8. He insists that the so-called policy retroactively applies to our grant proposal, which cleared the preliminary round of screening on October 3. Though he refuses to provide the URL of the policy or of the forum where the Marathi community is discussing it, we believe he is referring to a so-called policy named "Control of financial affairs in the name of Marathi Wikipedia". This was posted by Mahitgar on the MWVP without due process or community consensus. The introductory paragraph of the 'policy' reads:
Mahitgar has changed the status of the page where this was posted to "protected indefinitely". He states on our proposal's discussion page that he will provide an English translation of the 'policy' but has not yet.
Mahitgar contends that the so-called policy is meant to rein in misappropriation of donor money sought for Marathi Wikipedia activities. While we appreciate his good intentions, he has not substantiated why he believes that our proposal, which is still under review, amounts to misappropriation of funds. Our proposal has been endorsed by several long-standing and prolific Wikimedians [redacted]. It is not a proposal meant exclusively for Marathi Wikipedia either; it is a grant request meant to benefit diversity and inclusion across projects.
I have documented the goings-on have publicly on the Discussion page of our proposal. Our public requests to be unblocked and to start a discussion process have been ignored by Mahitgar. We have repeatedly sought constructive engagement and the assumption of good faith (WP:AGF) but in vain.
In light of the above events,
- We request you to help us get unblocked on Marathi Wikipedia as the block is arbitrary, unwarranted, in violation of the Wikipedia’s policies, and was clearly done to muzzle speech against the so-called "policy for the control of financial affairs".
- We seek clarification about whether an unauthorised CheckUser action was done on us.
- We also seek action against User:Mahitgar for abuse of his sysop and bureaucrat privileges, viz,
- Violation of blocking policy
- Violation of deletion policies (Removing a village pump notice meant to inform the community of the grant proposal and seek its comments and feedback)
- Potential violation of privacy
- Potentially unauthorised and unwarranted CheckUser
- Transgression of the consensual and collaborative process of policy formation
- Coercing community members to follow a unilaterally-declared set of rules
- Use of intimidating language in keeping with (#6): “...fall in line without much argument”; “Until new conditions get completed no allowance possible about the same”; ...remove [Marathi Wikipedia] village pump…[notification] link; “Avoiding any direct or indirect subversive attepmt towards marathi Wikipedia policies will be taken seriously by the Marathi language community”.
- Exclusionary behaviour towards the complainants (One is a native speaker of Marathi, an editor on Marathi Wikipedia and a long-standing Wikimedian; the other is not a native speaker and her participation was termed as "interference".)
We thank you in advance and will be happy to provide more information, context, clarifications, and translations.
-- Rohini and @Chinmayisk:
Supporting URLs edit
- Section of Grants Discussion page where we have publicly engaged with Mahitgar and documented his actions:
- Diff of village pump notification deleted by Mahitgar