Requests for comment/Global bans

The following request for comments is closed. Option one has the most support, and in the absence of any serious redrafts from those who voted for option two, I am closing this RfC in favour of option one. There is relatively little support for option three. It would seem sensible to trial this new policy for a fixed-term period and then review it after that has expired. Hopefully then some cases would have shown the reliability (or not, perhaps) of the process, and everything can be weighed against other potential redrafts to the current policy. However, that is just an addition to the closure on my part. PeterSymonds (talk) 21:06, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

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Why we're having this discussion

Català :

Durant els últims mesos, wikimedians i personal de la Fundació han treballat junts per revisar les condicions d'ús per a tots els projectes de Viquimèdia, i el 25 de maig, els nous termes van entrar en vigor.

Un dels canvis als termes és una declaració que, «Especialment usuaris problemàtics que han tingut els comptes o l'accés bloquejat en les edicions de múltiples projectes poden estar subjectes a un bandejament de totes les edicions del projecte, d'acord amb la política de bandejaments globals».

Ara que el Consell d'administració de la WMF ha aprovat els nous termes d'ús, això significa que s'ha de crear un procés comunitari per promulgar un bandejament global.

Aquesta política va ser creada per fer front a situacions on les diverses comunitats autònomes han decidit prèviament bandejar o bloquejar indefinidament a un usuari a causa d'un patró d'abús que no és simple vandalisme, correu brossa, o conflictes de contingut. Sense una política de bandejament global, Stewards o altres funcionaris no tenen un mandat clar per prohibir als editors que no són simplement vàndals o spammers, fins i tot si hi ha una petició legítima per fer-ho.

Fins ara, els editors de Viquipèdia, Viquiversitat, Viquillibres, Viquidites i altres projectes han ajudat a redactar una primera versió de la política. La proposta actual requereix una discussió de construcció de consens (no un vot) entre persones de diversos projectes, incloent-hi editors que no siguin de la Viquipèdia i que no parlen anglès.

Si us plau, faci comentaris si creu que la proposta actual funcionaria, o si es necessiten altres revisions.

Deutsch:

Über die letzten Monate hinweg haben Wikimedianer und WMF-Angestellte zusammen neue Nutzungsbedingungen (Terms of Use) für alle Wikimedia-Projekte ausgearbeitet und diese neuen Bestimmungen traten am 25. Mai in Kraft.

Eine der Neuerungen der Nutzungsbedingungen ist die Festlegung, dass "insbesondere problematische Benutzer, deren Benutzerkonten oder Schreibzugriff auf mehreren Projekten blockiert wurde, möglicherweise gemäß der Global Ban Policy mit einem für alle Projekte gültigen Bann belegt werden können."

Da das Wikimedia Board of Trustees die neuen Terms of Use genehmigt hat, muss nun ein solcher Community-Prozess zur Ermöglichung solcher Global Bans geschaffen werden.

Diese projektübergreifende Richtlinie wurde wiederholt gefordert, um Situationen, die mehrere voneinander unabhängige Projekt-Gemeinschaften betreffen, begegnen und unbegrenzt gesperrten Problemnutzern, deren Nutzerverhalten über normalen Vandalismus, Spam oder Streit um inhaltliche Fragen deutlich hinausgeht, Einhalt gebieten zu können. Ohne eine solche Richtlinie haben Stewards und andere Funktionsträger keine klare konventionelle Grundlage zur Verhängung solcher Sperren, selbst wenn die Forderung nach ihnen gut begründet ist.

Bis hierher haben Benutzer von Wikipedia, Wikiversity, Wikibooks, Wikiquote und anderen Projekten sich an dem Erstellen des Richtlinienentwurfs beteiligt. Der gegenwärtige Vorschlag verlangt einen konsens-orientierten Diskussionsprozess statt einer Abstimmung von Benutzern über mehrere Projekte hinweg. Dies schließt die Beteiligung von Nutzern von Wikipedia-Schwesterprojekten und aus nicht-englischsprachigen Gemeinschaften ein.

Bitte nehme unten Stellung zu der Frage, ob du den gegenwärtigen Entwurf für praktikabel hältst oder Änderungswünsche hast.

English:

Over the last several months, Wikimedians and Foundation staff have worked together to revise the terms of use for all Wikimedia projects, and on May 25th, the new terms came into effect.

One of the changes to the terms is a declaration that, "Especially problematic users who have had accounts or access blocked on multiple Project editions may be subject to a ban from all of the Project editions, in accordance with the Global Ban Policy."

Now that the Wikimedia Board of Trustees has approved the new terms of use, that means that a community process for enacting a global ban must be created.

This policy was called for to deal with situations where multiple independent communities have previously chosen to ban or indefinitely block a user for a pattern of abuse that is not simple vandalism, spam, or content disputes. Without such a global ban policy, Stewards or other functionaries do not have a clear mandate to ban editors who are not just vandals or spammers, even if there is a legitimate request to do so.

So far editors from Wikipedia, Wikiversity, Wikibooks, Wikiquote and other projects have helped draft a first version of the policy. The current proposal requires a consensus-building discussion (not a vote) among people from multiple projects, including editors not from Wikipedia and who do not speak English.

Please comment on whether you think the current proposal would work, or whether further revisions are needed.

Español :

Durante varios meses los Wikimedistas y los empleados de la Fundación han trabajado juntos para revisar las condiciones de uso de todos los proyectos de Wikimedia. Las nuevas condiciones entran en efecto el 25 de mayo.

Uno de los cambios introducidos es la declaración de que, "Los usuarios que son especialmente problemáticos y que tienen bloqueadas sus cuentas o acceso en varias ediciones de Proyecto serán separados de todas las ediciones de Proyecto, de acuerdo con la Política global de prohibición."

Ahora que el Consejo de Administración de Wikimedia ha aprobado las nuevas condiciones de uso, se debe crear un proceso comunitario para poner en ejecución la prohibición global.

Esta política es necesaria para solucionar situaciones en que varias comunidades independientes han tenido que prohibir o bloquear definitivamente a algún usuario debido a una serie de abusos que van más allá de simples vandalismos, correo basura o desacuerdos con los contenidos. Sin la susodicha política de prohibición global, los administradores y empleados no tienen un mandato claro de prohibir a ciertos editores, aunque sea apropiado hacerlo.

Hasta ahora los editores de Wikipedia, Wikiversity, Wikibooks, Wikiquote y de otros proyectos han ayudado a hacer un primer borrador de esta política. La propuesta actual requiere una discusión para la formación de consenso (no una votación) entre personas de varios proyectos, incluyendo a editores que no sean de Wikipedia y que no hablen inglés.

Por favor, hagan sus comentarios sobre si piensan que la propuesta actual podría funcionar o si necesita revisiones.

Français :

Au cours des quelques derniers mois, les Wikimédiens et le personnel de la Fondation ont travaillé ensemble pour réviser les Conditions d’utilisation applicables à tous les projets Wikimedia, et le 25 mai 2012 les nouvelles conditions deviendront effectives.

Parmi les changements des conditions figure la déclaration que « Les utilisateurs particulièrement problématiques, qui ont eu des comptes ou leur accès bloqués sur plusieurs projets peuvent être bannis de l’ensemble des projets, conformément à la Politique de bannissement global. »

Maintenant que le Conseil d’administration de Wikimedia a approuvé les nouvelles conditions d’utilisation, cela signifie qu’un processus communautaire mettant en œuvre un bannissement global doit être créé.

Cette politique a été fondée pour traiter de situations dans lesquelles de multiples communautés indépendantes ont déjà choisi de bannir ou bloquer définitivement un utilisateur en raison d’une série d’abus qui n’est pas du simple vandalisme, du contenu indésirable non sollicité ou des disputes sur les contenus. Sans une telle politique de bannissement global, les Stewards et d’autres responsables délégués n’ont pas de mandat clair leur permettant de bannir des contributeurs qui ne sont pas que de simples vandales ou émetteurs de contenus abusifs, même s’il y a une demande légitime pour agir ainsi.

Jusqu’alors les contributeurs de Wikipédia, Wikiversité, Wikibooks, Wikiquote et des autres projets de Wikimedia ont aidé à rédiger le brouillon d’une première version de cette politique. La proposition actuelle nécessite une discussion (et non pas un vote) visant à élaborer un consensus parmi les participants aux multiples projets, y compris les contributeurs non issus de Wikipédia et qui ne parlent pas l’anglais.

Veuillez donc indiquer vos commentaires si vous pensez que la proposition actuelle pourrait fonctionner, ou si d’autres révisions sont nécessaires.

Interlingua:

Durante le ultime menses, Wikimedianos e le personal del Fundation ha collaborate pro revider le conditiones de uso de tote le projectos de Wikimedia. Le nove conditiones entrara in vigor le 25 de maio.

Un del cambios in le conditiones es un declaration que "Usatores particularmente problematic qui ha contos o accesso blocate in plure editiones del Projecto pote esser subjecte a expulsion de tote le editiones del Projecto, in conformitate con le politica de expulsion global."

Post que le Consilio de Administration de Wikimedia ha approbate le nove conditiones de uso, il es necessari crear un processo communitari pro decretar un expulsion global.

Iste politica ha essite demandate pro tractar situationes ubi plure communitates independente ha optate pro expeller o blocar un usator pro un abuso persistente e plus complexe que mer vandalismo, spam o disputas sur contento. Sin politica global de expulsion, Stewards o altere functionarios non ha un mandato clar pro bannir contributores qui non es simplemente vandalos o spammatores, mesmo si il ha un requesta legitime de facer isto.

Pro le momento, contributores de Wikipedia, Wikiversity, Wikibooks, Wikiquote e altere projectos ha adjutate a conciper un prime version del politica. Le proposition actual require un discussion pro attinger consenso (non un voto) inter personas de plure projectos, incluse contributores non de Wikipedia e illes qui non parla anglese.

Per favor indica si vos pensa que le proposition actual pote functionar, o si ulterior revisiones es necessari.

日本語：

この数ヶ月間、ウィキメディアンらと財団職員が協力して全ウィキメディアプロジェクトの利用規約を改訂し、5月25日に新しい規約が発効しました。

規約の変更点の一つに「過去に複数のプロジェクトの言語版でアカウントやアクセス権を停止された特に問題の大きい利用者は、グローバル追放の方針にしたがって、全プロジェクトの全言語版からの追放の対象となることがあります。」とする宣言があります。

先立ってウィキメディア理事会が新しい利用規約を承認したため、グローバル追放を制定するコミュニティ手続きが作られなければなりません。

この方針は、単純な荒らしや内容についての論争でない不正利用行為を理由として、独立した複数のコミュニティ群が、ある利用者を追放または無期限ブロックした、という状況に対応するために必要とされるものです。このようなグローバル追放の方針がない状態では、正当な依頼があった場合でも、スチュワードまたはその他の当局者が、単純な荒らしやスパマーでない編集者を追放するために必要な裏付けがありません。

これまでにウィキペディア、ウィキバーシティ、ウィキブックス、ウィキクォートなどのプロジェクトの編集者らがこの方針の初版を起草するために協力しました。現状での本提案は、ウィキペディア以外および英語版以外を含む、複数のプロジェクト群の人々による（採決ではなく）合意形成のための議論を必要としています。

現状の本提案がうまく機能するかどうか、さらなる改訂が必要かどうかなどについてご意見をお聞かせください。

Македонски:

Во текот на изминатите неколку месеци, викимедијанците и персоналот на Фондацијата заеднички ги преработија условите на употреба на сите Викимедиини проекти. Новите услови стапија на сила на 25 мај.

Една од поважните измени е изјавата дека: „Особено проблематичните корисници чиј пристап досега бил забрануван на повеќе проектни изданија може да подлежат на забрана на пристапот на сите изданија на Проектите, согласно Правилата за глобална забрана на пристап.“

Одборот на доверители веќе ги одобри новите услови на употреба, што значи дека е време да се покрене постапка во заедницата за донесување на правилата за глобална забрана.

Овие правила ги осмисливме заради потребата за справување со случаите каде повеќе независни заедници претходно решиле да забранат или трајно блокираат корисник поради постојана злоупотреба која не претставува едноставен вандализам, спамирање или проблематичност со содржините. Без вакви правила, надзорниците и другите надлежни лица немаат јасно овластување да забрануваат уредници што не се обични вандали или спамери, дури и кога таквите барања за забрана се сосем оправдани.

Во осмислувањето на оваа нацрт-верзија на правилата ни помагаа уредници од Википедија, Викиуниверзитет, Викикниги, Викицитат и други проекти. Тековниот предлог сега треба да се разгледува и дискутира со цел да се донесе консензус (не гласање) помеѓу учесници на разните проекти, вклучувајќи уредници вон Википедија и таквите што не знаат англиски.

Би ве замолиле да дадете свое мислење: дали сметате дека сегашниот предлог би функционирал, или дека треба уште да се преработува.

Polski:

W ciągu ostatnich kilku miesięcy wikimedianie wraz z pracownikami Fundacji pracowali nad nową wersją warunków korzystania dla wszystkich projektów Wikimedia. Weszły one w życie 25 maja bieżącego roku.

Jedną ze zmian jest zadeklarowanie, że „Wyjątkowo kłopotliwi użytkownicy, których konta lub dostęp zostały zablokowane w wielu wersjach projektu, mogą zostać wykluczeni z wszystkich innych wersji projektu zgodnie z zasadami globalnego wykluczenia”.

Teraz, gdy Rada Powiernicza Fundacji Wikimedia zaakceptowała nowe warunki korzystania, należy wypracować porozumienie co do społecznego procesu dokonywania globalnych wykluczeń.

Powstanie tej polityki jest umotywowane problemem radzenia sobie z sytuacjami, w których niezależne społeczności zdecydowały się na wykluczyć lub zablokować na czas nieokreślony określonego użytkownika z powodu szkodliwego zachowania, które nie jest zwykłym wandalizmem, spamem, bądź sporem o treści. Bez takiej polityki Stewardzi ani inni funkcjonariusze nie mają legitymacji do nakładania globalnych blokad na osoby, które nie są jedynie wandalami albo spamerami, nawet gdy zostanie sformułowana stosowna prośba.

Na chwilę bieżącą redaktorzy Wikipedii, Wikiwersytetu, Wikibooks, Wikicytatów i innych projektów pomogli stworzyć pierwszą, szkicową wersję nowej polityki. W obecnej propozycji wymaga się budującej konsensus dyskusji (nie głosowania) między osobami spośród różnych projektów, łącznie z redaktorami spoza Wikipedii oraz tymi, którzy nie znają języka angielskiego.

Prosimy o komentarz w sprawie tego, czy obecna propozycja ma szanse działać, czy należy wprowadzić dalsze poprawki.

Português :

Ao longo dos últimos meses, Wikimedistas e a equipe da Fundação trabalharam juntos para revisar os termos de uso para todos os projetos Wikimedia. Esses novos termos entraram em vigor em 25 de maio.

Um dos termos modificados passa a declarar que: "Especialmente, as edições de usuários problemáticos que tenham suas contas ou acesso bloqueados em múltiplos projetos podem estar sujeito a banimento de todos os projetos, de acordo com a Política Global de Banimento".

Agora, o Board of Trustees da Wikimedia aprovou os novos termos de uso, o que significa que precisa ser criado um processo na comunidade para decretar o banimento global.

Essa política foi necessária para lidar com situação nas quais múltiplas comunidades independentes, previamente, resolveram banir ou bloquear indefinidamente um usuário por repetidos abusos que não são simples vandalismos, spam ou disputas de conteúdo. Sem uma política global de banimento, os Stewards ou outros funcionários não têm permissão para banir editores que não são simples vândalos ou spammers, mesmo que haja um pedido legítimo para tal.

Por enquanto editores da Wikipédia, Wikiversidade, Wikilivros, Wikiquote e outros projetos ajudaram a planejar uma primeira versão dessa política. A proposta atual requer uma discussão para a construção de um consenso (não uma votação) entre pessoas de múltiplos projetos, incluindo editores de fora da Wikipédia e que não falam inglês.

Por favor, comente se você pensa que a proposta atual poderia funcionar ou versões adicionais são necessárias.

Русский:

В последние несколько месяцев сообщество и сотрудники Фонда вместе работали над обновлением условий использования для всех проектов Викимедиа. Эти новые условия вступили в силу 25-го мая.

Одно из изменений, внесённых в условия использования, состоит в появлении утверждения о том, что "В отношении особо проблемных участников, чьи учётные записи или доступ были заблокированы сразу в нескольких разделах наших проектов, может быть применён запрет на редактирование и использование других возможностей привилегированного доступа в отношении сразу всех проектов и их разделов, в соответствии с Правилом глобального запрета («глобального бана»)."

Теперь, после одобрения Советом Попечителей Фонда Викимедиа новых условий использования, сообщество должно начать процесс введения глобального запрета.

Правила предназначено для ситуаций, когда несколько независимых сообществ предварительно решили бессрочно заблокировать участника за действия, не сводящиеся к простому вандализму, спаму или спорам о содержимом. Без такого правила глобального запрета стюарды и другие должностные лица не имеют достаточных оснований для блокировки редакторов, не являющихся вандалами или спамерами, даже если был подан законный запрос на такую блокировку.

Редакторы Википедии, Викиверситета, Викиучебника, Викицитатника и других проектов помогли написать первую редакцию правила. Настоящее предложение предусматривает обсуждение (не голосование) с целью поиска консенсуса среди участников разных проектов, включая участников не из Википедии и участников, не говорящих по-английски.

Пожалуйста, прокомментируйте данную редакцию правила. Будет ли правило в существующем виде работать, или оно нуждается в дальнейшей доработке?

中文（简体）：

在过去的数月中，维基人和基金会职员合作修订了针对所有维基媒体计划的使用条款。新使用条款于5月25日生效。

其中，条款提到：“在数个计划上制造麻烦并被封禁的用户可能依据全域禁制方针而被所有计划封禁。”

现在维基媒体基金会理事会已经批准了新的使用条款，因此社群应当开始指定全域禁制的处理流程。

这一方针将用户将用于处理那些在多个独立社群上由于除简单破坏、散发广告、扰乱内容之外的原因而收到禁制令或被永久封禁的用户。在方针得到制定前，即使禁制请求合理，监管员和其他组织也因为缺少明确的规定而无法做出行动。

目前维基百科、维基教科书、维基语录和其他计划的编者已经协助起草了方针初稿，并需要针对草案进行寻求共识的讨论（而非投票）。其中包括来自维基百科以外的编者，以及不使用英语的编者。

请讨论当前的草案是否可行，是否需要进一步的修订。

中文（繁體）:

在過去的數月中，維基人和基金會職員合作修訂了針對所有維基媒體計劃的使用條款。新使用條款於5月25日生效。

其中，條款提到：“在數個計劃上製造麻煩並被封禁的用戶可能依據全域禁制方針而被所有計劃封禁。”

現在維基媒體基金會理事會已經批准了新的使用條款，因此社群應當開始指定全域禁制的處理流程。

這一方針將用戶將用於處理那些在多個獨立社群上由於除簡單破壞、散發廣告、擾亂內容之外的原因而收到禁制令或被永久封禁的用戶。在方針得到製定前，即使禁制請求合理，監管員和其他組織也因為缺少明確的規定而無法做出行動。

目前維基百科、維基教科書、維基語錄和其他計劃的編者已經協助起草了方針初稿，並需要針對草案進行尋求共識的討論（而非投票）。其中包括來自維基百科以外的編者，以及不使用英語的編者。

請討論當前的草案是否可行，是否需要進一步的修訂。

Option 1

Català : Sí, implementar la política de bandejament global en la seva forma actual.

Deutsch: Ja, die Richtlinie soll in ihrer aktuellen Form umgesetzt werden.

English: Yes, implement the global bans policy in its current form.

Español : Sí, implementar la política global de prohibición en su forma actual.

Français : Oui, mettre en place la politique de bannissement global dans sa forme actuelle.

Interlingua: Si, implementa le politica de expulsion global in su forma actual.

日本語： 賛成。現状のグローバル追放の方針を実施すべきです。

Македонски: Да, воведете ги правилата за глобална забрана во сегашниот облик.

Nederlands: Ja, implementeer het globale verbanningsbeleid in zijn huidige vorm.

Polski: Tak, popieram wprowadzenie zasad globaknych blokad w proponowanej formie.

Русский: Да, принять правило о глобальном запрете в существующем виде.

中文（简体）： 赞同，将当前的草案投入使用。

中文（繁體）: 贊同，將目前的草案投入使用。

1. Supporting as one of the authors of the policy. In the future we may want to change it to work with some kind of Global arbitration committee or Global requests committee, but for now those groups don't exist, so I feel confident that an RFC system which requires a cross-wiki discussion can serve us well here. Steven Walling • talk 18:46, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
2. Rschen7754 (talk) 20:44, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
3. Likely harder to implement than they really should be, but better than the status quo. Courcelles 21:38, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
4. Imzadi1979 (talk) 22:58, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
5. The conditions for obtaining consensus are a bit onerous, but I think it will work as a start. Personally, I would suggest changing the requirement to "inform every wiki that the user has edited" to a requirement to inform every wiki that the user has edited substantially (perhaps more than 100 edits?). For example, I've edited on 65 wikis, but only made 100+ edits on 8. I wouldn't expect someone to track down the community discussion board on 65 different wikis if they wanted to propose banning me. Kaldari (talk) 05:26, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
6. The proposal appears workable and contains several safeguards against abuse. Sandstein (talk) 06:12, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
7. I contributed to the creation of the policy and obviously support it in the current form.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:37, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
8. I thought we already were implementing it, but if we need another vote to say yes then yes. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:01, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
9. I agree with most of the commenters above that the current policy is a bit heavyweight, and onerous, and that is likely to make global bans a long and difficult ordeal. That said, this is one of those things where erring on the side of being conservative is a fundamentally good thing; if the process is difficult to set in motion, then it is that much less likely to be used frivolously. A project-wide ban is a big deal. — Coren ^{(talk) / (en-wiki)} 23:31, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
10. This isn't a four-star policy, but I think it is good enough for a start. This has been needed for years; we have seen too many instances of users creating new accounts on other smaller projects specifically to return to their inappropriate ways (either on the new project or by returning to the old project with a new account that has a different history). Risker (talk) 02:20, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
11. As someone who deals with the occasional problematic contributor, I see real value to this policy. While it's not perfect, it's pretty darned good, imho. In my capacity as an administrator and volunteer, not as an employee action. --Philippe (talk) 02:21, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
12. It may not be perfect but it's a damn good start and necessary. A global ban policy, especially one overseen by the community, is long overdue and long needed. While each project is a separate community we are all one large society and you can only clear your record so much by switching projects. If someone commits serious crimes in one region of a country (or for that matter one country) they do not get off scott free by just switching to the other "because they didn't do anything here". We are trying to allow some movement but you don't get unlimited free chances. At some point you're not longer welcome in the larger community. Jamesofur (talk) 02:33, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
13. Good lord. Why isn't this in place already? I genuinely believe that Wikimedia cannot - and will not - be able to exist without a proper policy on this, even if it's rarely used. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 13:45, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
14. A needed policy that can be improved when we see what needs to be tweaked. We need a fair process to address the problem users who repeatedly go to one project after another and abuse the good faith of each community. At some point, the global community can say that we don't want to continue to waste the time of people who have to sort out the problems they cause again and again. FloNight (talk) 17:53, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
15. Once implemented, it can be improved to better handle nuances that surely cannot all be thought up in advance. It needs to exist to be improved. Jclemens (talk) 02:56, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
16. I fully support the policy as written and see no need for any changes. Inks.LWC (talk) 06:45, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
17. Global bans are needed, and this policy seems fine to me. ^Email Vaibhav ^Talk 12:08, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
18. Yes, but it should be stronger. Once someone is identified as a harasser or child abuser on one project, that should be enough to get them kicked off all projects. It's criminally irresponsible (I don't know if literally) to knowingly allow such people to continue to operate on other projects (where, indeed, their previous victims might well also be present). Victor Yus (talk) 14:52, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
19. I believe that this policy is greatly necessary, because certain wikis (like pt.wikipedia) are too lenients with notorious harassers and obstinate puppeteers. These people tend to confound "freedom of expression" with "freedom of trolling." They talk about "democracy," but the only democracy that they can accept is for the ones who think like they do. - Al Lemos (talk) 16:51, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
20. Support on my front. Ironholds (talk) 19:14, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

    Yes. 174.17.242.119 19:19, 7 July 2012 (UTC) Removed anon vote. John Vandenberg (talk) 00:22, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

21. Bring it on! Qwrk (talk) 21:02, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
22. Especially on small projects (with not many admins/CUs) it would improve the situation! mabdul 21:55, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
23. As a community member active on more than one project, and who has had to "deal" with problematic/banned users online and offline, I'm supportive of any attempt to rectify troublesome participants. SarahStierch (talk) 22:53, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
24. Support option one. My76Strat (talk) 09:12, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
25. Too much time and effort are devoted to dealing with problem editors who are disruptive rather than contributors. It is unfortunate that this policy is necessary but I judge that it is needed. Doctree (talk) 17:09, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
26. Support Surajt88 (talk) 17:38, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
27. If anything, I would favor making it even easier to globally ban problematic users. That is to the extent I have concerns about the policy they are the opposite of most of those expressed by it#s critics below. Cross-wiki harassment is a serious problem and one that is difficult for individual communities to deal with. This gives the stewards a tool to help. Eluchil404 (talk) 20:50, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
28. Support. Good proposal. Binksternet (talk) 21:03, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
29. Support Good proposal as a start. I would also like to see editors banned for conflict of interest edits. Where it can be shown that an editor removes fact, suppresses or dilutes fact, misleads with irrelevant wording, and interferes with or reverts fact well supported by references and agreed to by concensus, or suppresses, removes or misleads versus primary meta published journal research they should be banned. I'm naive, but see my comments below. I recommend a global ban on conflict of interest editors evidenced by edits specifically found to be not factual.32cllou (talk) 22:57, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
30. Support. Good proposal. -- Alexf (talk) 00:00, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
31. Support. Ebe123 (on the go!) 14:20, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
32. Support A good last resort for people who are just too disruptive to be able to edit on any WMF sites. David1217 (talk) 15:55, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
33. We need to take a tougher line on the most problematic editors, and it should not be such an easy option for them simply to move to another wiki and carry on the same behaviour. This policy is a step closer to a reasonable response. MartinPoulter (talk) 22:13, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

    This comment sorely lacks "because" clause. You has serious contributions in only one project. How these pesky problematic users, who moved to another wiki, were harmful to you? Trycatch (talk) 01:45, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

34. Definitely. There also needs to be a global checkuser process so that these bans can be enforced properly. Filelakeshoe (talk) 13:44, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
35. Support. --GRuban (talk) 14:03, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
36. Support This sounds necessary. Also, when I open an account with any version of wiki, I immediately get the account on all other wikis, including commons, wikiquotes, etc. So it makes sense that if someone gets banned, the ban must be global. P.s.: why isn't there an Italian translation of this? --RCarmine (talk) 02:07, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
37. Support I mainly edit in Wikipedia and Commons. Support from my end too! --Titodutta (talk) 03:29, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
38. Support, as I am suprised it is not policy already. --Gavin.collins (talk) 13:54, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
39. Support the best among the three (in my opinion).Érico ^msg 22:55, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
40. Support support any policy which limits/reduces vandalism. the good work of thousands of editors ought not to be regularly spoiled by repeated attacks by others. Sianska79 (talk) 08:32, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
41. Support This was needed long time ago. Sometimes global ban is the only possible solution. --WhiteWriter ^speaks 19:44, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

    I've been active in Wikimedia's global community for almost two years now, and have never seen such a case. Ajraddatz (Talk) 03:44, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

    Ooo, trust me, i did. And i am talking mainly about nationalist cross-wiki POV fighters, who use wikipedia only as propaganda tool. For them, only global block is in order, as they are the poison of free and neutral encyclopedia. --WhiteWriter ^speaks 14:19, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

    In some places, abortion is murder, in other places, it is a popular human right. This rule is can ban everyone on both side of many issues. Will there be peace when only those who use sockpuppets for abuse rule the project ? No.

    Who determines what is the global POV for the global ban ? Germany ? United States ? China ? Ecuador ? Who ? Penyulap (talk) 01:18, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

42. Support: In my opinion this polisy should be made more "strong", though the current version is fine.120.61.6.109 12:12, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
43. Support I'm also surprised it is not policy already. If a user has been banned on more than one project already, this policy will save other communities from spending time going through the process of banning the editor again. Kaldari's suggestion (option 1 number 5) that it only be necessary to inform projects on which an editor as made a minimum edit count would be a good addition to the policy. It would also be a good idea for communities in which the editor has been active and not been a problem to opt out of the ban (similar to Wnt's veto suggestion below in option 2 number 5). This would perhaps lead to an additional policy that editors that have been globally banned, but are allowed to continue to edit in one or more projects, to petition to join new communities.--Wikimedes (talk) 21:50, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
44. Conditional Support The existing mechanism (global lock) for dealing with problematic editors/projects should be improved first, if possible. Otherwise, I support the proposal, with WMF having oversight/co-ordination. Dick (talk) 17:09, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
45. Support - I also am surprised this is not already policy. Seems like common sense to ban malefactors project-wide. Jusdafax (talk) 02:46, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
46. Support The policy appears to have strict guidelines on its usage and a firm procedure. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:51, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
47. Support Any way to help remove abuse or other negative things is a very good idea.
48. Support Current policy is unobjectionable. Protonk (talk) 22:32, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
49. Support Like others here, I am amazed this did not come around sooner. Peter.C (talk) 04:23, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
50. Support I've seen users who have absolutely no intention to make productive contributions on any WMF project get banned from enwiki, then bounce around other projects causing havoc in their wake. (Just occasionally the leaders of some of those projects take a liking to them and hand out higher permissions like admin or even CheckUser to them.) Their continued access to the projects is basically a denial of productivity attack on the community as a whole. Having to globally ban people is unfortunate, but we ought to have the ability to globally ban them when necessary. Given most people are nice, there's no reason this should be something that happens often. If global bans are problematic, we can always revisit the policy later and reverse it or rethink it. —Tom Morris (talk) 19:09, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

    Support Overdue. --98.19.151.60 12:18, 20 July 2012 (UTC) (aka Smokefoot) Removed anon vote.Érico ^msg 23:19, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

51. Support Global bans should be possible and that requires a process. The one laid out is as good as anything I could come up with.Argos'Dad (talk) 03:18, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
52. Support as outlined. Its there when its needed, and has been needed for some time now. In the 6 years I've edited, its always been needed. Synergy (talk) 06:57, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
53. Support The Terms of use require us to have some policy through which especially disruptive users may be banned from all WMF projects, and this seems like as good a community-based process as any other that I've thought of. This will give the user community more say in the matter than the current reliance on the WMF staff. I like the requirement of being blocked by a minimum of two different projects, since that should cut down on the number of cases handled. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

    Support option one.174.134.99.11 22:28, 24 July 2012 (UTC)Removed anon vote.Érico ^msg 23:19, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

54. Support Provides for very clear warnings and is necessary to get to the ultimate objective - a better resource. XcommR (talk) 05:31, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
55. Support If a user gets blocked and starts vandalising other wikis, having them blocked from all projects is easier and less time-consuming than blocking for every wiki vandalised, as the user will just go from one to another. Floating Boat (talk) 10:04, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
56. Support Seems like a perfectly sensible policy to me BrianAdler (talk) 12:08, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
57. Support I support this proposal and believe that the Wikipedia community can be trusted with this amount of power. Go for it! Cynthisa (talk) 20:24, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
58. Support Nothing to worry me here. -- RA (talk) 22:07, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
59. Support Pundit (talk) 23:11, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
60. Support Sadly, Zealots do exist. I strongly support a STRONG "Global bans" process Netweezurd (talk) 23:31, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
61. SUpport Sadly but needed. Hahc21 (talk) 22:46, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
62. Support Wikipedias are getting bigger and bigger in the major language attracting more and more vandals, I think more restrictions to improve quality is a great idea. As long as there are NO FALSE POSITIVES! --Camilo Sanchez (talk) 03:38, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
63. Support It is reasonable to do this for users/editors who are causing a serious problem of this type. The discussion and appeal processes are adequate. Robert the Devil (talk) 15:39, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
64. T. Canens_@en.wp (talk) 11:00, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
65. KillerChihuahua (talk) 12:49, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
66. Support There are so many users, who are looking for a platform, that should not be offered here. Martin1978 (talk) 06:38, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
67. Support. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 15:51, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
68. Support.-- Cyrax (Comando) 15:53, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
69. Support Something like this is definitely needed for cross wiki disruptive users. -Djsasso (talk) 13:32, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
70. Trijnstel_talk 21:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
71. Support Vogone (talk) 21:36, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
72. Support --Steinsplitter (talk) 21:57, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Option 2

Català : No implementar, cal tornar a escriure la política. (Si us plau, escriviu els suggeriments als comentaris de sota o a la pàgina de discussió d'aquesta política).

Deutsch: Die Richtlinie soll noch nicht umgesetzt werden, weil sie korrigiert werden muss. (Bitte mache entsprechende Änderungsvorschläge im Kommentarabschnitt unten oder auf der Diskussionsseite der Richtlinie.)

English: Do not implement yet, as the policy needs to be rewritten. (Please make suggestions in the comments below, or on the policy's talk page).

Español : No implementar, hay que volver a escribir la política. (Por favor, escriba sugerencias en los comentarios de abajo o en la página de discusión de esta política).

Français : Ne pas la mettre en place pour l’instant, car cette politique nécessite d’être réécrite. (Veuillez faire vos suggestions ci-dessous ou sur la page de discussion de la politique).

Interlingua: Non implementa lo ancora; le politica debe esser rescribite. (Per favor face suggestiones in le commentos hic infra, o in le pagina de discussion del politica).

日本語： 本方針は書き直す必要があるため、まだ実施すべきではありません。（提案事項は、下記のコメント欄または本方針のトークページに書いてください）

Македонски: Засега, не ги воведувајте. Сметам дека треба да се преработат. (Давајте предлози подолу во коментарите, или пак на страницата за разговор на правилата).

Nederlands: Implementeer het nog niet, want het beleid moet herschreven worden. (Maak a.u.b. suggesties door een opmerking hieronder of op de overlegpagina van deze pagina).

Polski: Nie, jestem przeciwko wprowadzeniu zasad w ich obecnej formie. (Komentarze prosimy zostawiać poniżej lub na stronie dyskusji zasad.)

Русский: Пока не принимать правило, так как оно должно быть доработано. (Пожалуйста, оставляйте ваши предложения ниже либо на странице обсуждения правила.)

中文（简体）： 暂时不要投入使用，方针需要重写（请在下方的讨论或方针讨论页中提出建议）。

中文（繁體）: 暫時不要投入使用，方針需要重寫（請在下方的討論或方針討論頁中提出建議）。

# We should not be introducing more categories of bans. We should not have global bans. --Claritas (talk) 20:29, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

This user moved his/her vote to §3. -Pete F (talk) 20:56, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

# I oppose all forms of a global ban, if not for the mere idea of having the discussion to enact one be here on Meta, which is decidedly not representative of the Wikipedia Languages as a whole. In fact, didn't we have a discussion not too long ago on English Wikipedia about how Meta is actually disruptive and run by a clique of editors? The idea of a global ban is just meant to cut power from individual projects, when it is said projects themselves that should be in charge of whether they ban a user. The idea of global bans as a whole is preposterous. Silver seren (talk) 03:00, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

This user moved his/her vote to §3. -Pete F (talk) 20:58, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

1. The proposed policy still doesn't suggest the extent to which a local community can overrule a ban, and I still see this as an issue which can not be resolved. Better to let local communities continue to run themselves, and trust them to use common sense with problematic rules. Also, if the new ToU requires global bans, then you should change the ToU. I don't like the idea of WMF being able to mandate what the community does. Ajraddatz (Talk) 03:42, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

   Hi, I agree with you that there is nothing in the new TOU compelling the existence of global bans (merely a language-tidiness issue). However, I want to point out that the TOU was not passed unilaterally by the WMF. It was passed with a great deal of input, for which there were many open calls. -Pete F (talk) 21:00, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

2. My concern at Talk:Global bans#Respected users who are also banned still applies. The policy needs to have a clear statement that it does not apply to trusted users. Not that that project can opt out of the ban, but that the ban policy does not apply to that user. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 09:30, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
3. To me it doesn't look like there's been enough effort to assure that this process won't "pick on" certain projects. If you've read Jimbo Wales' talk page on en.wikipedia it's been practically a six-month filibuster by certain people calling for the abolition of Wikimedia Commons and denigrating the work that the admins there are doing. I can absolutely picture a certain crowd getting together on two projects and Meta simply for the purpose of banning key Commons admins that those people disapprove of --- actually, I'm quite suspicious that this is the primary intended use for this proposed global banning policy. So I say stop, don't do anything until you get solid guarantees written into it that projects won't use this process to undermine one another - for example, by allowing any single project the right to veto the global ban, if the user in question is a significant contributor there, or at least, if he's an admin for that project. But if we go that far, we then run into the question of what you do about a completely and genuinely rogue project that would abuse that right... and it all ends up being dumped into the actual WMF office's lap. But the WMF office already can and does handle critical situations when needed, by imposing a "global lock". Which means ... we already have the best global process we're going to get, and there's no need to start a new one. In cases of critical cross-wiki abuse, how often will two projects really manage to get their ducks in a row and go through this Meta process to get the user formally banned before the WMF office would step in anyway? Wnt (talk) 00:21, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
4. Each project should a a level of "sovereignty". I like Wnt's veto idea. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 01:27, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
5. According to this the main difference between a block and a ban is that a banned editor is no longer member of the community. Excommunications is a very sick, medieval practice. And it is worse than that: Wikipedia is the only site at the Net and the only place in the civilized world that allows community banning of already blocked editors. It creates a platform for dirty bullies, because real Wikipedia community (hundred of thousands editors strong) is usually adding content to wikipedia,and not supporting unneeded bans at drama boards. WMF should change its terms of use to stop bullying and not to make bullying easier. I am not against blocking. Of course some users deserve to be blocked and some deserve to be indefinitely blocked, but banning atop of a block is a sick practice --Mbz1 (talk) 14:12, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
6. my concern is that the minimum requirement isnt rigerous enough and open to potential abuse, minimum requirment IMHO should be banned on one project and indefinately blocked on a further two or more and that the user must have been blocked in at least one project for more than 6 months. en.ARBCOM has lifted bans/blocks conditional on the user accepting mentoring. I'd like to see a format where by a user can return after a period time via a trial period on a project as some people do mature and become constructive contributors. Gnangarra (talk) 12:03, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

   oh one other point a user must able to participate in the discussion, with no clerks or abrcom to over see the discussion that means that any block on meta must be lifted at least initially, obviously if the user goes ferral then reinstating the block will be necessary. Gnangarra (talk) 12:09, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

   Did you read the full policy? The last point is already included, under "Obtaining consensus for a global ban": "If the user nominated for a global ban is blocked on Meta, a temporary unblock may be considered to allow participation in the discussion." Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 16:05, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

   Yes I read the policy and the wording "may be considered to allow participation" implies that they dont have to be, it'd be better to say "a conditional unblock will be necessary to allow participation. If that isnt possible a steward(someone neutral/trusted/uninvolved) will act as a intermediatory ensuring appropriate comments are included into the discussion." A global ban is a very big stick we should at the very least ensure that the instructions include the ability for the person to be heard. What about the other points raised? Gnangarra (talk) 23:30, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

   I think it's reasonable to change to "must" instead of "may", personally. Be bold, if you like. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

   #I oppose the whole idea in principle. Global bans should never exist. Everyking (talk) 17:56, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

   This user moved his/her vote to §3. -Pete F (talk) 21:10, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

7. I'm concerned the language of the policy is to vauge. In general I believe individual communities should manage themselves. Only in extreme cases should such a policy be invoked. This policy basically just requires community concensus, and hence could be used on the whims of community opinion. I feel any such policy should be extremely specific, and in essence more be the form of an "office action" then an instrument of the community. I would be more comfortable with a policy of the form: If user does X, then he/she may be globally banned. (And I would want X to be very bad. The type of stuff one would call in the police for. Aka: Someone physically assualts someone in real life over an article dispute, someone inserts JS into common.js with the intent to steal people's passwords, etc). Bawolff (talk) 17:23, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
8. Give us global watchlists, then we'll talk. Integrate projects better, so we don't rely (in the existing flawed way) on Meta to coordinate cross-wiki discussion. Rd232 (talk) 23:37, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
9. I agree with the idea of global bans, but I think this policy is lacking. It doesn't deal with non-unified accounts, ignores issues related to socking, doesn't describe what happens if a local community circumvents and refuses to implement the ban, etc. It need some adjustments before I'll support it, given the inertia on Meta. Nathan ^T 22:54, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
10. I see multiple issues with the current proposal. As requirement for a global ban proposal it is listed that the user is permanently blocked or banned on two or more projects but there are no significant minimal requirements specified for the corresponding process beyond that there must have been a community discussion process. For instance, it is not required that the banning or blocking community grants the user in question the opportunity to give a statement in an acceptable timeframe, that the discussion runs over some minimal period, and requires some well-defined admin closure. One prominent example is en-wp (see here for the policy) where one informal discussion at an administrative board without any formal requirements is sufficient to ban an editor. Not even an admin closure is required (see here for an example where the closure took place by a non-admin who voted before for a ban less than 48 hours after the discussion started despite multiple opposing voices). The other problem is Meta. Meta is working great for non-controversial project coordination, requests to stewards etc. But Meta is in no way prepared to serve as a battleground for a large-scale global ban discussion which would tend to revive previous debates at other projects. See here for a lengthy discussion at Meta about Meta serving as forum to debate block decisions at other projects. Let me quote from the concluding remarks of that discussion [1]: [..] meta is not a good place nor the right place for people banned on a specific project to complain about a ban when everything on the local project failed already. But exactly this would be required at Meta as naturally all previous block or ban decisions would come under discussion. In summary, I would strongly suggest to move first towards better and more structured conflict resolution processes and minimal process requirements for permanent blocks or bans of long-time contributors before a new battleground is opened here. --AFBorchert (talk) 06:18, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
11. I insisted on Talk:Global bans before that the global bans policy must allow local opt-out so that smaller projects don't feel marginalized. The suggestion wasn't adopted despite multiple users expressing the same concern. Therefore I oppose the ratification of the global ban policy as it is, even though I support the idea of global bans. Deryck C. 08:57, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

    What is the point of even having global bans if people simply opt out of them whenever they like? Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:30, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

    In theory Wikipedia and like projects are run by consensus. In practice they are run by no-consensus, i.e. whoever can define what action occurs in the absence of any agreement on an issue is the one in power. If a global ban would block a member of a project, and the only way to overturn it is that a consensus of people on that project decide to keep the editor, that's actually a pretty difficult escape mechanism that will become relevant only in the most outrageous cases of abuse of the global ban mechanism. Wnt (talk) 18:39, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

    I think the idea is to let communities where the banned editor has been active and not a problem to opt out of a global ban, not to let the editor opt out.--Wikimedes (talk) 21:58, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

    Yes, sorry for the ambiguous wording. By opt-out I'm referring to the ability for individual projects to white-list individual users who are otherwise globally banned. Deryck C. 21:54, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

    It is allready that way. Administrators can locally opt-out an global ban with the special page GlobalBlockWhitelist.--Snaevar (talk) 01:21, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

12. I'm not convinced that we need full community bans on multiple projects. What I'd want would be to allow local opting out of a particular global ban and mere consensus from at least three communities other than the original banning community agreeing with the original local ban if any communities object over a reasonable time period - otherwise, local bans can be converted to full global bans directly.--Jasper Deng (talk) 17:42, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
13. Every project either needs to be given a veto, or a way to grant a global ban exemption to any editor the particular project feels should be allowed to continue editing on the granting project. Until the proposal includes such a provision it should be dead in the water. Also, this RFC is woefully under advertised on en.wikipedia. Monty845 (talk) 17:55, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
14. One of two things must be part of the policy: Either any project's objection to a proposed global ban disallows it entirely (of course, projects may still ban the user locally), or individual projects can, by community consensus, allow a globally banned user to edit on their particular project. If one project is alright with having a user who has been disruptive elsewhere, it is not the place or purview of other projects to step in and overrule them. I would prefer the second option, since that would allow the globally banned user to be restricted to only projects that have specifically allowed it. Seraphimblade (talk) 19:41, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
15. I can't support global bans based on the subject being "permanently blocked or banned on two or more projects". Two! Most of the people supporting this proposal are not active contributors to two projects (excluding Commons). ;-) Two projects is too easy to set up. It will entice people to ban someone on their home wiki, and then on meta or commons, and then start the global ban/excommunication process. Also, I would prefer that an RFC is held on meta first. I dont think there is any need to rush the establishment of global bans. The new Terms of Use doesnt depend on global bans. The cases I know about where the person is WMF-banned, this new global bans policy wouldnt have empowered the community to ban the individuals concerned, so the WMF would still have needed to make a overriding decision to WMF-ban the person based on the real world evidence. John Vandenberg (talk) 23:25, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
16. I would prefer to see some sort of override or veto for separate projects such as that suggested by Wnt. Captain panda 18:36, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
17. I think some sort of procedure for global bans is necessary, but I am discussing this on wikipemia-l and I'm not convinced that this proposal is a good way to do it. I agree with AFBorchert that "...Meta is in no way prepared to serve as a battleground for a large-scale global ban discussion which would tend to revive previous debates at other projects." Rather than having some sort of global call for review and consensus on global ban requests, I think that stewards should be trusted with that role, especially since stewards are trusted to handle confidential information which would not be made public. Also see the alternative but currently inactive proposal at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Global_requests_committee. My most recent email to wikimedia-l about the global bans policy is at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2012-July/121021.html. I may update or change my comments here on Meta depending on how the conversation goes at wikimedia-l. Pine^(talk) 21:22, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
18. I agree with John and Pine reasoning above. Béria Lima ^msg 21:41, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
19. Strong Oppose. To begin with, I was a participant in the Terms Of Use discussion, and my view is there was no requirement for a global ban policy, merely a legal basis for whatever one might exist (which includes none at all). Portraying that as compelling a banning policy greatly strengthens my view that this is a political effort to do various end-runs around local independence. Which brings me to my fear that this'll end up as the worst of both worlds. As in not used against literal criminals (standard operating procedure there is too often to ignore such problems as long as possible as a potential scandal in hopes they'll go away), but also a political bludgeon for admin cliques to use against opponents. For example, it's very easy to conceive of an argument over some pornography controversy or an abusive admin, involving both English Wikipedia and Commons, getting someone banned over "outing" or the various civility policies. Then, bang, the game-players will be off to Meta to try for a "global ban" against the critic. What do they have to lose? At worst, it's another opportunity to rake the target over the coals, with many denunciations of their evilness. This sort of thing is utterly irresistible to a certain type of personality, which is going to create the battleground other commentators have noted. I believe some of the "support" !votes are misled by thinking of an ideal world, where only the guilty are accused and convicted, rather than the sadder reality of minor authorities who may engage in petty abuse of power. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 23:46, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

    This looks to me to be a policy in search of a problem. So, on how many projects do problem users cause problems? Two? Three? If a user causes a problem on a project then they get banned from that project. I see no reason for anything else. 74.205.216.211 02:26, 8 July 2012 (UTC) Anon vote struck. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:45, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

    I have no problem with the concept of global bans (as they will save a lot of trouble when dealing with persistent cross-wiki problem users) but I agree that local consensus should be able to override the ban for the local project, as a safeguard against abuses. 75.117.22.64 03:23, 8 July 2012 (UTC) Anon vote struck. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:45, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

20. Per John Vandenberg. Administering the Terms of Use should be WMF business. --JN466 14:39, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
21. I don't see a need for this at all. I don't know if the policy is proposed with some users already in mind that could be to a global ban, but I can't imagine a situation where a user should indeed be "globally banned". Apart from the fact that most users are really only active in one or two projects: If a user is blocked on two projects, which this policy proposal requires for a global ban to be possible, it is entirely the decision of these two projects to block the user. If the user is disruptive on other projects too, it should also be entirely to the local communities there whether they want to block him/her or not. If a user does not behave in a blockworthy manner in a project, but contributes constructively, why should he be blocked? [] I think every community is able enough to block those that harass them on their own. As mentioned (also in the policy proposal), the possibilities to deal with spambots via global locks and global blocks by stewards already exist; and also the possibility for the WMF to block users for "private" or legal reasons in an office action. To my mind, this is sufficient, and the possibility of global bans via an RFC on meta would merely create endless discussion pages that end up in "mud-wrestling" about certain users or actions. --MF-W 15:14, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
22. I agree with Warburg. Also, the moment this is accepted, the rules for the global ban can be rewritten. Wiki-history clearly shows that the blocking and banning policies have evolved so as to allow editors to be banned on flimsy grounds. Count Iblis (talk) 16:48, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
23. I think I see the need for this but also agree with others that the new Terms of Use do not require this. I accept that the new Terms of Use were discussed but the ambiguity in the wording of the global ban term means I don't think that we can assume that those discussing the new Terms also understood that global bans would have to be implemented, i.e. the term enabled but did not require. If required is what the foundation intended then they should have made the terms of use clearer. If such a banning mechanism was to be implemented then I am unhappy with such discussion being held on Meta due to how little traffic it sees. I am aware that notifications would be given but am not sure this would be enough. I would like to see a requirement that, as a pre-requisite to a global ban, a user is already banned on all projects to which they actively contributed. Obviously this would need some thing to stop gaming but I'm sure that could be worked out. Further I would suggest that a global ban should be largely automatic after x (perhaps 5) local bans and that any discussion on meta be limited to making sure the requirement for a ban is met. Dpmuk (talk) 23:54, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
24. Weeks ago I made the statement "I'd be much more comfortable with the policy if only stewards could close these discussions, as I trust stewards much more than I do meta admins. Stewards have a more public and through vetting process, and the most recent two incidents that I've come over to Meta to see have left me very, very unimpressed with Meta admins' judgements." I will not support any version of this policy that allows Meta admins to close the discussions, based on the times I've interacted with Meta, I lack confidence in Meta admins as a body. Sven Manguard (talk) 04:24, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
25. per AFBorchert above. I also support local project opt-out, at least for the larger wikis. --Avenue (talk) 06:29, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
26. My concern with the policy, as proposed, is the apparent lack of any definition of an appropriate length of time for community discussion. In my opinion, it would be most fair to actually set a specific length of time (say, 5 or 7 days) for the discussion to last, rather than allowing for an arbitrary line between consensus and non-consensus. Additionally, perhaps it may be wise to vest the authority to determine whether consensus has in fact been reached in an elected panel made up of at least five Wikipedia users, each from a different project (perhaps with community authority to veto a denial of global ban with a significant majority vote). This may create a more fair end result, since a global ban is a serious sanction and should be imposed through a process that attempts to remove as much appearance of capriciousness as possible. Windchaser (talk) 22:08, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
27. If global bans is implemented, the banned user may evade the ban, such as create another account, especially if the wiki doesn't have any checkuser yet. I think the global ban shouldn't be implemented. --Dede2008 (talk) 10:53, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
28. I don't see a reason why local projects should give up their rights to the guys on Meta. Block somebody on en+(simple or meta or any other small project), and hurray, you can ban the person from everywhere. There is no opt-out for local projects, so any claims that the policy is to help the local projects (and not to take part of their freedoms), is a lie, plain and simple. --Trycatch (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

    I oppose the idea entirely. Too complex, not needed. - Face (talk) 14:15, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

    I have moved my vote to Section 3. Cheers, Face (talk) 20:43, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

29. Rewrite: For starters, I suppose some of that legal copy below needs to make it into the proposal. For second, I don't think you should be globally banned unless/until you are banned on the Wikimedia project where you have made the most edits. That would indicate that somewhere, the account is making meaningful contributions. I'd take TryCatch's edits one step further and point out that you could have 100,000 contributions on EN, but 100 each on two other small projects that didn't like you very much and indeffed you. You could have a clean block record on the Wikimedia project with the most edits, and still be eligible for a global ban. Also, if the user has e-mail, he should be guaranteed to receive e-mail notification. Purplebackpack89 13:48, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

    # Per Claritas (vote #1) MachoCarioca (talk) 22:41, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

    This user moved his/her vote to §3. -Pete F (talk) 20:56, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

30. I was unfairly blocked and banned on the Wikinews project due to a content dispute in which an involved admin decided he was right and I was wrong. I was then summarily attacked for days on end by friends of the admin. Then, a clique of admins and editors stepped in and falsely claimed I was disrupting the site without ever providing a single piece of evidence other than "we don't like you so you're blocked". As if that wasn't enough, I was then banned without any justification. Meanwhile, no disruption ever occurred. Because this global ban can be easily gamed by small cliques ganging up on individuals editing separate projects there needs to be a provision in place allowing an independent ombudsman to step in and represent the accused. In my case, there was no presumption of innocence. I was informed that I was guilty and that I should apologize; since I didn't do anything wrong, I refused, and I was summarily banned. Based on my experience, I strongly oppose the implementation of this global ban in its current form and I endorse Seth Finkelstein's statement in its entirety. Viriditas (talk) 02:02, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

    Did you even read the policy? Getting blocked or banned on one project is not enough to even allow a discussion about a global ban. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 05:17, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

    His point is that it's not difficult to get banned from some projects, where there is a clique in charge and all you have to do is get one of them to dislike you. Silver seren (talk) 05:46, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

    And it was much, much worse than that. They went so far as to fabricate evidence to maintain the ban, and claimed I was using sock puppets. When asked for actual evidence they could not produce any. These are the same Wikinews admins who are running the site. Calling these admins corrupt is an understatement, but it's possible they are just ignorant and paranoid. In any case, these are not the kind of people who should be in any position of authority. Viriditas (talk) 11:24, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

    I totally agree. The fact that you're eligible for a global ban if you'd been indeffed on any two of the small Wikimedia sites (many of which are essentially run by <20 people) is a bit much Purplebackpack89 04:57, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

31. Important issues have been raised in above comments. How would this affect SUL? What about communities that do not wish to ban the user? Given the incredibly large number of projects we have (tons of languages, and several distinct 'types' of project besides Wikipedia, for which we are undoubtedly best known), it seems unfair that just because two communities have banned a user, all the others should be forced to ban that user as well. As an example, let's say someone is banned from English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia. At present, we have 285 Wikipedias, so this person's "ban coverage", so to speak, is about 0.7% of all Wikipedias (and remember, we are much more than just Wikipedia—this number does not even take into account those other projects). Is it really fair to increase this user's "ban coverage" from far less than 1% of all projects to 100%? Given the volume of all projects, this represents an increase of going from what may as well be a 0% ban to 100%. Something seems wrong about that. Dalahäst (talk) 08:33, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

    After further consideration, I've decided to move my vote to option 3. Dalahäst (talk) 05:12, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

32. This seems great for English and other widely supported language editions. I wonder about it's applicability to language editions with smaller editor support. It would seem like a great way to "take over" a language edition - ban everybody who disagrees with you (which is possible now. But now, the banned editor has no recourse on other language editions.) 71.169.156.220 13:48, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

    If the user X manages to get banned on Russian Wikiversity and Chechen Wikipedia (I just picked up two really problematic projects), it does not at all means that they are globally banned. It only means that a discussion on global bans could be opened. And unless the user has done smth really serious, and was not just banned because the project dictators did not like the user - there is zero chance they get banned globally.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:03, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

33. Needs to be crafted to take into account community concerns. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:59, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
34. Conditional support:Support the good intention before this cruel proposal. If a user finds to be extremely disruptive in many projects, especially when he is against the very basic idea of 'open world', it should be applied. But the checks to avoid the abuse of this policy(?) should be streamlined better. A user could be banned in WP by an editor cabal of elitists for boldly moving against their interests; I'm aware of similar blocks in WP. So consensus to ban a user in 2 projects may not always indicate that the user is such a culprit. Hence, my proposal is to mandate the support of at least one administrator (or above) from each project to enforce the ban. -Ashley thomas80 (talk) 11:51, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
35. Per AFBorchert. Broccoli • talk page 12:33, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
36. The way this is written, this would favor large projects over small projects. Someone can be incredibly useful on a small project and end up banned on larger projects, because the projects simply operate differently. Rather than looking at "project consensus" the way this is worded looks like it favors a more democratic system, to the point where it's basically going to turn into a vote. And the large wikis are going to win. I don't see the benefit to this policy; it does not add any value to the project, unless local wikis have a very clear avenue for locally overturning a global ban. Global blocks already exist, and they seem to be managed well, and those are the cases that are time consuming for local wikis to handle (that is, on a cost-benefit level, because of the ease at which disruption can occur). For the less obvious cases, I fail to see how it can be such a problem that we have to circumvent local banning procedures on each wiki that user visits. --Shirik (talk) 15:43, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
37. we need a system of coaching, counciling, backstopped by ban. i see ban being used upon veteran editors who express good faith. is it not hounding to pursue editors who are doing good work, because of history on other projects? cannot bans be circumvented? positive feedback is superior to negative feedback. we need a system of positive feedback of positive change. Slowking4 (talk) 15:55, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
38. Unfortunately this policy if enacted would unenforceable. What are you going to do if a particular project chooses to ignore the ban? What are going to do exactly? To wage a war against a whole project? I do not see anything productive coming from it. In addition, there is no clear way to determine a consensus for a ban from a discussion where so many different people from so many different projects participate. Ruslik (talk) 19:08, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
39. I think global bans are, sadly, likely to be necessary in some cases. But I would like to see a little more precaution built into the policy, in order to prevent it from being abused. In particular, the two qualifying projects on which the user was banned should be among the ones on which that user is most active. Currently, it looks like two minor projects that the user doesn't even know about could collude to get someone globally banned. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:55, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
40. Support—the policy as it stands now could allow some major Wikipedia to impose something on other (especially smaller) Wikipedias, or vice versa, which I oppose in principle. In extreme cases this phenomenon could literally kill very small Wikipedias. I think it should be possible to ban someone across projects, but every effort should be made that if the editor has anything at all to contribute, they should not be banned from all projects. —Ynhockey (talk) 14:20, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
41. Make it 3 bans instead of 2, to further error on the said of "assume good faith". But see the section below, that I oppose the proposal on a more basic level for several reasons. Debresser (talk) 01:22, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
42. As others have said, it must be explicitly possible for a local project to establish consensus to locally override the ban. I think otherwise this is a good framework, so I would like to see this provision (which seems to have strong support in this section) added, at which point I will be happy to change my vote. Less impactful on my vote, but still important: Slowking4 makes a good point about emphasizing positive reinforcement over negative; and I am utterly unconvinced that the new Terms of Use necessitate a global banning policy, and am disappointed to see that argument used in a way that belittles legitimate "no" votes. What the new TOU did was compel us to consider a new policy. Let's let that process run its course without presupposing an outcome. -Pete F (talk) 21:40, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
43. I agree with the anon user who said seems like a policy in search of a problem. Why are we building this particular WMD? Because that's all it is. The avenues of redress are NOT clearly spelled out, especially for trusted users who find themselves at the wrong end of this. Ombudspeople, neutral parties, advocacy, mediation - these NEED to be built into A PROCESS or else this could so easily turn into a bully tool/ Why can't we take a breath and find a way to build a positive outcome possibility vs. just a really big stick to deal with "undesirables"??? EBY ([[2]]) 21:53, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
44. This is the policy equivalent of a Maginot Line. On the one hand, we let anybody edit anonymously, on the other hand we propose to ban a user from non-anonymous edits? Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 21:26, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

45. A tyrants wet dream. Filters out and hunts down the Julian Assanges of the world, and has no effect whatsoever upon the anti-social people it is claimed to target. After having to write an article for a simple concept that nobody else had ever thought to write about, I can't see how the majority can care about the way in which these filters actually work, higher concepts of justice are of little interest. The average English wikipedia user, according to statistics, comes from a country where they can't be convinced that buying a handgun to deal with their own neighbour is a bad idea.

    The idea is to limit the project to people who are anti-social enough to give up their social bonds and then to lie about their identity and rejoin the project. This is who we want to limit the project to  ? and keep out those who refuse to abandon friendship and camaraderie and continue working to resolve differences because they do not want to lie about who they are because their integrity is too great to allow it ? They are the ones we are trying to keep out ? How is this proposal a good idea ? There are adults on each project capable of making up their own minds, are we looking for a super parent here ? What is a good name for tyranny, what is a good name for dictatorship. The number of projects is a slippery slope. 2 projects ? that's not even trying to hide the intention here, I would have started with a higher number and worked it down after it was passed if I were a smart power-hungry dictator. Where adults are available to make up their own mind for their own project, then they should opt out of a default ban, Penyulap (talk) 00:18, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

46. There must be at least a local method of overturn so that a productive member of a wiki can continue to work there even if other wikis ban globally. --Nouniquenames (talk) 15:14, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Option 3

Català : No implementar res.

Deutsch: Nein, die Richtlinie sollte nicht eingeführt werden.

English: Nay, global bans should not be implemented at all.

Español : No, no debemos usar prohibiciones global.

Français : Non.

हिन्दी: नहीं.

Italiano: No.

Latviešu: Nē.

Македонски: Не.

Nederlands: Nee, het globale verbanningsbeleid moet helemaal niet geïmplementeerd worden.

Polski: Nie. Globalnych wykluczeń nie należy wprowadzać w ogóle.

Português : Não.

Русский: Нет.

Svenska: Nej.

Українська: Ні.

中文： 反對設立全域禁制。

1. Wrong. The behaviors and policies of one project should have nothing to do with another. It is relative to the cultural context or the context of the project itself. Obotlig (talk) 21:41, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

   Can we just add you to Option 2 then? Silver seren (talk) 22:17, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

   I created/preferred this option because I don't think this should be considered in any manner. The separate administration of the different projects is important. If there is some tally here count me as opposed to it... Obotlig (talk) 22:24, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

   I do completely agree with you, but hey, there's nothing that says we have to pick just one option. Why don't we do both Option 2 and 3? Silver seren (talk) 22:44, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

   I urge all to discuss the existence of this section here. - Face (talk) 13:35, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

2. All this process is is a method of invalidating the opinions of the smaller projects. There is absolutely no reason why blocks and bans can't be left to projects individually. Silver seren (talk) 22:44, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
3. " The behaviors and policies of one project should have nothing to do with another. " (2) MachoCarioca (talk) 22:42, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
4. Support. I've not seen evidence that editors who are banned from one project, are automatically bad on others. I would much rather see automatic increasing penalties (ie. ban for 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, a year) --Iantresman (talk) 09:44, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
5. I disagree with the proposed policy on principle. Béria Lima ^msg 16:23, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
6. The proposed system allow larger communities (such as en-wiki) to easily force their opinion on smaller wikis, so I believe it's a horrible proposal. Large communities (at least large communities) should be able to decide for themselves if they want to ban a user or not. Sorry, but they know better what is needed for their wikis than group of random outsiders voting on meta. --Trycatch (talk) 20:02, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
7. Maybe later. My issue is that a "community ban" requires a community. I don't believe there is a global wikimedia community as yet. Should we see the various wikimedia projects merge/meld/form into a global community, then we could re-visit this. This of course doesn't preclude global blocking as necessary (as already noted). - Jc37 (talk) 20:35, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
8. I oppose the idea entirely. Too complex, not needed. - Face (talk) 14:15, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
9. I voted under Option 2 originally, but Option 3 better reflects my viewpoint. Everyking (talk) 19:23, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
10. Each community should be allowed to make its own decisions on banning users. Someone doing something ban-worthy in one place does not mean that they will elsewhere. Metagame (talk) 02:33, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
11. We already have a means for uncontroversial global blocks. Necessarily, this means that the only users that would be subjected to this policy would be controversial. Intrinsic in controversy is that they have tendencies to do things that make sense to other people, even if these actions irritate the majority so much they end up banned. With such diversity across different projects, it is perfectly plausible that said tendencies will fit in with other projects. Don't remove that option. There is nothing to stop individual projects from recognizing bans in other projects anyway. Egg Centric (talk) 20:56, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
12. I strongly disagree with any external intervention in a project's decisions.--Strainu (talk) 21:41, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
13. Per my original vote. --Claritas (talk) 20:33, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
14. The idea that a person could be banned globally, itself... Just sickens me!!!! --Ian159 (talk) 03:10, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
15. In my opinion this is not needed. In the rare cases that it would be necessary, it will be enough to ban on an ad hoc basis. Also, this proposal reeks of the bureaucracy we have been seeing all too much lately. Debresser (talk) 01:19, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
16. Against global bans. Nah, for the fear this one degenerates. Its easy then for local admins to demand that a problematic user should be banned globally. Thats why this is cutting of what an open system should be, at first "open".--Angel54 5 (talk) 15:40, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
17. Totally opposed to this idea. Themfromspace (talk) 04:31, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

    I don't believe a global ban is in the best interest of any serious and respectable editors. I also believe there are other issues regarding banning that need to be addressed first. I've experienced unfair banning practices from Wiki for difference of opinion rather than any inappropriate behavior on my behalf. I've seen this happen with several other editors also. This issue will need to be addressed in the future or Wiki will simply fade away. Don't think that this is impossible either. I watched Myspace fade away to nothing with over 300 million active users. There are other sites competing with Wiki, that do not censor the editors over petty differences of opinion. 184.58.111.18 07:36, 27 July 2012 (UTC) Removed anon vote. Érico ^msg 21:53, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

18. Per original vote. Switched here from option 2, above, after further consideration. Dalahäst (talk) 05:14, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
19. Per Ajraddatz below: "However, this is also a no-win scenario. Either you give local communities the power to overrule the ban (which makes it nothing more than a formality), or you don't, and remove self determination of projects in this regard." -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:32, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
20. Local communities will find the way without global "help." На местах как-нибудь сами разберутся, без вашей неоценимой "помощи". Георгий Сердечный 13:40, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
21. Uncle Sam is hogging enough of the real world without hogging all of the internet as well. There are adults in other places, not just the USA or En.wikipedia. Penyulap (talk) 00:29, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
22. It's contrary to principles of wikifederalism. Leucosticte 19:19, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

⧼Moodbar-header-comment⧽

• Comment: To those who have commented with the rationale that they dislike all forms of global ban... you should be aware that, according to the new Terms of Use, not having global bans is simply not an option. The question here is whether we think the current policy is fair or not. The new Terms make room specifically for revoking access to Wikimedia sites if you use your account in abusive way. If the community can't come a consensus on when and how to globally ban users, then these requests are going to end up getting directed at the WMF to fulfill based on the Terms. I think we all agree that having the community make a consensus decision about banning is superior to anything that even remotely involves the Foundation making a judgement call. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 03:06, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• And if a community in a language Wikipedia (or other Wikimedia area) comes to a consensus decision that a user is not to be banned? Silver seren (talk) 03:30, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• Read the policy. There is a very clear requirement that A) all projects were someone is active have to be notified of any ban request B) communities can appeal any ban in favor of something less heavy-handed. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 03:54, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• Global bans are only for users who "present a current danger to all Wikimedia communities". Allowing one project to harbor a user who endangers the entire community would clearly be counterproductive. That said, a project that was strongly interested in defending a user would likely be able to block consensus on meta, and failing that, could appeal any ban that was enacted. Kaldari (talk) 04:09, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• Highly doubtful that such a community would be able to. Anything but the top ten language Wikipedias (maybe even just top 5) would not have enough members to block a proposal that was, say, supported by English Wikipedia members. We all know that English Wikipedia (and likely German and Spanish) would be able to force anything they want. Furthermore, explain to me exactly how a user who is wanted in one project is a "danger to all Wikimedia communities" if he's banned in those other communities? Silver seren (talk) 04:13, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• Have you read the proposed policy? It offers several examples. Kaldari (talk) 04:23, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• I just read through Global bans again and still see nothing that will protect the consensus of a smaller Wikimedia community from this process or that preserves the sanctity of Wikimedia projects being wholly separate. Silver seren (talk) 04:32, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• When it comes to users who consistently abuse independent Wikimedia communities, the projects are not wholly separate. These people exploit the lack of our ability to make cross-wiki consensus decisions to harass and abuse others. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 04:53, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• @Silver seren: I was referring to examples of how a user could be a danger to all the projects, not examples of how smaller wikis could opt out. If you feel strongly about the issue, perhaps you could suggest some wording to that effect. Personally, I wouldn't support a smaller project being able to overrule the consensus of the global community, but perhaps other editors would see the value of such a provision. Kaldari (talk) 05:02, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
• Why would you need cross-wiki consensus decisions? All you have to do is inform the members of said wiki what the user has done in other wikis and leave it up to them. If the user in question has been wholly constructive there, then they would have no reason to ban them. Informing all communities is fine, but not controlling who is allowed to be in them. Silver seren (talk) 05:14, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• Speaking from experience, the amount of time and effort required to conclusively demonstrate that a user should be permanently banned from a project is often enormous (especially if the user is being actively deceptive). Asking someone to repeat that process over and over again every time the user reappears on a different project is a pretty big request. At some point they should be able to present their case in a centralized discussion, and seek an appropriate remedy across all the projects, at least in my opinion. As someone who actively edits on many different projects (often interacting with the same users), my perception is that the projects are more interdependent and interrelated than you suggest. Kaldari (talk) 05:46, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• In my opinion, the MORE bureaucratic the Wikipedia, WMF, etc. world becomes the FASTER participation rates will drop. I'm only a casual Wikipedia editor, I happened onto this discussion by accident and all this hand-wringing is making my head spin! I'll reiterate here what I said in my (support) vote: in keeping with the "assume good faith" principle, I believe that the global bans power can be safety entrusted to those who will be implementing it. Cynthisa (talk) 20:39, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

• The decision to enact global bans has already been made (after months of public discussion regarding the Terms of Use). The question at hand is how should such a policy be implemented. Kaldari (talk) 04:19, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• Yes, and I opposed it then too. Lots of editors oppose the terms of use as they were changed. Silver seren (talk) 05:35, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• If the decision has been made, then it was done under the carpet and in a way which did not seek proper community discussion and approval. Similar large global changes have required a global vote to be enabled, this was part of a ToU forced on the Wikimedia community. I would say that the future global vote on this policy should definitely also have a section for opposing global bans in general, and I would certainly contribute to arguments presented there.
• Back to this specific proposal. The section on enforcement leaves out any mention of whether or not communities could locally revoke the global ban action, but yet that was a well debated point in many discussions. Global bans have failed in the past when local communities overruled global "consensus", and they will continue to unless this is specified. However, this is also a no-win scenario. Either you give local communities the power to overrule the ban (which makes it nothing more than a formality), or you don't, and remove self determination of projects in this regard.
• I also disagree with a sentence in the relation to ToU section. "As the service provider of Wikimedia websites, the Foundation has and continues to support community consensus relating to blocking and banning decisions." should be clarified to specifically say that the WMF will support any consensus for a global ban - even if it is against their position. Perhaps I'm just a bit paranoid, but I don't want the current wording to justify some arbitrary action down the road. Perhaps something along the lines of "The Foundation has and continues to support any community consensus around blocking and banning, even when its official position does not align with that consensus." Or something like that. Ajraddatz (Talk) 06:04, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• It also wouldn't surprise me at all if a certain scenario develops, where a local community disagrees with the global ban and finds some way to unblock the user (even by letting them in through a new account if necessary) and continue to unblock them because their consensus is to have them unblocked. And it's not like you can just ban all the admins in said community, what would happen to that language Wikipedia? Silver seren (talk) 08:37, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• It would become a banned language. Count Iblis (talk) 23:19, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

• I can just imagine the press response on that one. Silver seren (talk) 20:13, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Quite simply, if the new terms of use require a mechanism for global bans, then the new terms of use are wrong and need to be revised. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 02:10, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• If the global bans is implemented, the banned user can still create another account (a.k.a. sock puppetry) and evade the bans, especially if the wiki has no checkuser, and have checkuser but not active. This is contrary to the policy, "Banned user may not create another account to evade the bans". --Dede2008 (talk) 11:20, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
  • You're correct here, but a ban is not a technical mechanism for preventing editing, it's a community decision that someone is not welcome to edit whatever account they're using. The purpose is to develop a consensus around whether that's appropriate or not, and then we can take any steps necessary to find and block sockpuppets. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 02:37, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

• Now this kind of statement worries me. "Any steps necessary" sounds like it involves a lot of invasion of privacy. Are you going to ban them off legally, and then resort to subpoenaing the ISP records of people you block, to see if you can catch them at it? From what I'm seeing, your pursuit of "sock puppets" extends to the kind of thing they warned us about at http://panopticlick.eff.org/ , i.e. using privacy-destructive browsers and settings to track users around the web. In the Fae ArbCom case on en.wikipedia it appears that users can be banned for refusing to tell another project it's OK to hand over their personal information from other WMF projects - you might just as well demand their Facebook passwords like some employers are now doing, or their main e-mail passwords. Why not, the way the "sockpuppet" hunters are thinking? It gets to the point where you go from being an encyclopedia where anyone can edit, where the damage done by anonymous vandalism every day is undone by dedicated volunteers, all the way to the other extreme and become a site for spying, harassment, maybe even legal invasions which would be a terrible precedent that some other tech companies are probably chomping at the bit to follow. I mean, if Facebook decides it's OK to declare somebody persona non grata, they're pretty much off commenting the net - just try logging into a site like Yahoo News or CBS News or a whole lot of others to comment, if you won't enable their particular scripts. Same for Google and doing searches. If you set this precedent you're clearing the way for those companies to strut around like tin gods and sole proprietors of the Internet. (I mean, sooner than would otherwise occur) Wnt (talk) 05:36, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

• Your ability to assume bad faith is astounding. "Any steps necessary" does not mean violations of the privacy policy. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 16:23, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

• Wnt, the WMF isn't a court of law or similarly authorized government agency, so it has absolutely no ability to issue a subpoena. Consequently, your worry about the WMF subpoenaing ISP records is misplaced. Also, the WMF does not require permission from users to get information about the WMF's own projects, so your worries about that are also misplaced. If they want to know who's using their own websites, they can just take a look at the server logs. As I understood the Fae case, the concerns were focused on non-WMF projects, not about "personal information from other WMF projects". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

• The Terms of Use include that WMF may "Take legal action against users who violate these Terms of Use". I would like to assume good faith about this, and assume that this applies only to people who try to crash the whole server or lure kids away to be abused, but recent events (in particular, the ability of elements focused on imposing censorship to force a change in chapter leadership) make me more doubtful that this authority will continue to be used responsibly for very much longer. Of course, w:subpoena says that such are issued by a court when a case is brought, though it says lawyers as officers of the court can issue them themselves in some cases... in any case I'm not making the distinction there. Wnt (talk) 00:53, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: I take exception any time that Wikipedia issues a punishment whilst declaring that it is "not a form of punishment", since I dislike hypocrisy. And waterboarding is "not a form of torture".
  Varlaam (talk) 22:49, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

  It might be marginally more accurate to say that bans are not "intended solely as a form of retribution". It is similar to taking the car keys away from a drunk driver: it may feel like a punishment for past behavior, but it is also a method of protecting society from future misbehavior. Most WMF projects care somewhat more about protecting themselves from future misbehavior than about exacting retribution for past behaviors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

What do the ToU say?

The ToU actually do not require the implementation of global bans, rather they permit or authorize the implementation of global bans. The relevant phrase is "may be subject to a ban", where may is the operative term. Having a Global Ban policy is required, but there's nothing in the ToU that would prevent the content of the Global Ban policy from being "we do not have global bans." --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 09:23, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

That said, I think that a properly formulated global ban policy could be useful (though not in its current form, as noted above). Just clarifying what the ToU actually say. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 09:32, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

That's obvious wikilawyering. If we did not want to put the banning power up to a consensus decision based on community policy, then it would not have been mentioned. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 15:47, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

It is not wikilaywering. You kept saying "you have no choice, the ToU require it." I'm simply pointing out that that statement - which is how you framed the discussion - is false. Since that framing appears to be designed to influence the outcome of the vote, it is neither a trivial nor a merely formal point. I was inclined to assume good faith about that until I saw your reply... --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 04:58, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

This was indeed a distressing assertion: the ToU have been approved as they are and what they say is very clear, dismissing their language as "wikilaywering" is quite insulting to those who discussed them for so long. Of course many would have opposed them had they required the implementation of global bans, which by the way would have been inconsistent with the whole (declared) rationale of the document, which is said to be to empower the community and the projects, not to force something upon them. --Nemo 09:36, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying that there was an appropriate global vote on whether or not to globally ban users? Where was that? You keep saying that the community approves global bans, but I cannot find any appropriate channel through which that was confirmed. Ajraddatz (Talk) 16:14, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't see the policy as requiring that any given number of users be globally banned. The global ban policy could be "Let's not do it", or "let's put off setting up any formal processes for now." I doubt that the WMF Office is really going to give up all power to globally ban a user on its own as an office action, in confidential or sensitive matters - so why have two different ways to get a user banned? If there are cases where they want community input, they can still start RfC/Us here or on a Wikipedia to gather editor input on an ad hoc basis. Wnt (talk) 22:47, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Why have two ways, especially a community-controlled way? Let me count the reasons...

1. It's in line with our values as a volunteer movement to defer decision-making to the community wherever possible and practical.
2. It's a waste of donor money to pay staff to fulfill global ban requests every time, when community members could do it. We are not Facebook, where we're going to hire a team of people to moderate abuse flagging.
3. The collective wisdom of the community, especially when it comes to the closing functionaries like Stewards, is much greater than any single person on staff. In short, better decisions will get made.

I could go on, but I figure it's completely obvious why we should encourage any effort to take banning decisions off the plate of the Foundation. As a staff person, it seems a little strange to hear anyone even remotely suggest that they would prefer paid staff to handle this kind of decision. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:54, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Philosopher, I think you're wrong. I believe that the TOU demands that a policy for setting up a global ban be created. The TOU does not demand that any individual user ever be banned under it—the user "may", or "may" not be—but it must be possible to do so.

The TOU says, Especially problematic users who have had accounts or access blocked on multiple Project editions may be subject to a ban from all of the Project editions, in accordance with the Global Ban Policy.

That means that it must be possible for users to be banned "from all of the Project editions". The minimum requirements therefore are these:

1. That we have a policy on this subject (you agree here);
2. That the policy applies to people with "accounts or access blocked on multiple Project editions"; and
3. That the policy outlines the process for banning a user "from all of the Project editions" (no opt-out).

You could write a policy much like this one. You could write a policy that is much more restrictive, e.g., global bans require a legal conviction for breaking laws, or require a vote of the entire Board of Trustees, or require the unanimous consent of every project, or something like that. You could write a policy that sets the bar so high that no actual user ever gets banned under it. But there must be a process that, at least theoretically, could result in such a ban. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:27, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I think that is a misreading of the text, and perhaps not relevant at this point in any case. It says that someone may be banned under a global ban policy; not that someone must be able to be banned. The ban policy can simply be "we don't ban people globally" in which case no one will be banned under it. But in re relevance, it's pretty clear there is no consensus for this particular global ban policy and perhaps none for any global ban policy, and I don't see the WMF imposing one. The Foundation could, of course, simply impose bans as an office action (as they have recently) for violations of the TOU. Nathan ^T 16:21, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Nathan, please think that through again. The TOU says that someone could be banned, right? But you don't think that the TOU requires us to have a way that you could get banned? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:32, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Philosopher here. I do believe a global ban policy is important and will be helpful to advancing the mission; but I the word "require" doesn't apply, and seems to overly dramatize these discussions. If it were "required," there would be an intolerable consequence associated with not implementing it. What would that consequence be? In what way will the sky fall if we don't adopt a policy? It's really important to be careful with words like this when seeking consensus -- Wikipedians do not tend to react well when they feel manipulated. -Pete F (talk) 13:04, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The "intolerable consequence" would be having contradictory official statements. Philosopher wants the TOU to say "users may be globally banned" snd the global ban policy to say "users may not be globally banned". I think that's intolerable. Perhaps others believe that sort of self-contradiction is fine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:09, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, that is not correct. As I wrote on my talk page (in reply to your post), I am unsure whether a global ban policy is a good idea or not, I simply believe the current proposal is not a good one. My point was that the ToU accept that a mixed position may exist and that saying otherwise was dishonest and deceptive. I never said it was a good idea to have such a mixed position. You're mistaking my interpretation of the ToU's content with my preference on what to do next. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 10:54, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I believe that the TOU is recognizing that not all such users will actually be banned. It's not "two blocks, and you're automatically out". Any given user may or may not be banned, but there must be the possibility of a ban. A Global Ban Policy of "we do not have global bans" (to quote your original comment above) does not meet the requirements. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

See Nemo's comment above - your interpretation is contrary to the explicit language of the policy and to its intent. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:45, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand your comment. The TOU says that especially disruptive users can be banned via this policy; Nemo says that the TOU wouldn't have been approved if the TOU required especially disruptive users to be banned.

Are you trying to highlight the gap between "must have a method for banning people" and "no requirement to ever use that method"? I agree that there is no TOU requirement that anyone actually end up being banned. But it says that people can be globally banned, and that the method for banning them is supposed to be at this policy page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:12, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

No. Rather, I'm highlighting the gap between "must have a policy on banning people" and "no requirement to authorize bans in the policy or to actually ban people." The ToU states that people may be banned, which is true - even if we do not have a policy authorizing bans, that policy would still be subject to change in the future. Final comment. I think I've made my point and you've made yours, so further discussion is likely fruitless. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 10:37, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

The TOU says "...may be subject to a ban from all of the Project editions, in accordance with the Global Ban Policy." Other mechanisms of banning people don't 'count' in terms of this TOU provision. So "may be banned, but without having a policy authorizing bans" isn't adequate here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:11, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Frequency of usage

Have we actually estimated how often we anticipate having to employ a global ban? There's little reason to have a framework for something that would be used so rarely (then again, a high frequency of usage would be another reason for concern, but that's another matter) that the problem could be more easily addressed through existing means. Dan Wang (talk) 08:51, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Two quotes

I'd like to explain my vote rational above using two quotes:

I state and have evidences to prove my statement that community bans as they are executed now resemble "Two Minutes Hate" described in 1984 by George Orwell: "The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

Another quote is by an award winning physicist, and a former wikipedia user:

"I have had more than enough of the absurdities of this fictional pseudo-environment, in which people play out their aggressions as though they were knocking down "enemies" in a video game. I have the impression that many of those for whom this is a permanent romping ground are simply maladjusted individuals in their real lives who have a compulsive need to act out aggressions in this fantasy world as a rather pitiful form of self-affirmation"

WMF is a charitable, tax-exempt organization , and it should concentrate on stopping these "maladjusted individuals" from "playing out their aggressions as though they were knocking down "enemies" in a video game".--Mbz1 (talk) 16:24, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Surprisingly, i'm in full agreement with you. Amen, Mbz1, amen. Silver seren (talk) 00:48, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

To me, the quotes sound more like inviting to support the global ban, in order to prevent disruptive editors reappearing at different projects under new accounts.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:11, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

The 2nd quote especially seems like a perfect explanation for why we need global bans. Kaldari (talk) 17:38, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I think so, too, but I suspect that Mbz1 believes that the people responding to the RFC (and therefore possibly issuing the ban) are the aggressive, maladjusted individuals, rather than the person who might be banned.

Mbz, do you have any suggestions on a process for banning aggressive, maladjusted users? Do you think that it's possible that getting rid of the worst of such users might make the WMF websites a better, more productive place? WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:31, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

It is to be expected on a page filled with commentary by people who are blissfully or wilfully ignorant of the certain facts

• Global bans shall only and can only apply to editors with the greatest integrity, because all others will simply sock abusively. They will be assisted by the SPI process, which acts as a kindergarten to the most obtuse of antisocial class, to educate them over and over and over again how to avoid detection. Like a software game where the character blinks on and off for a time before returning, the SPI process educates the uneducated and welcomes them back to the project with open arms as soon as they can avoid detection. Wikipedia is a broken video game with unlimited lives for the anti-social, it is fundamentally designed this way. The SPI process is one warm loving hand and the indef ban is the other warm and loving hand that nurtures and teaches that only those who make no social ties, those who no longer speak to their friends, those who take no interest in any subject, will be rewarded. Their single resolve becomes at that point a rhetorical question.

• Global bans can only target those with integrity. The only application possible for such a tool is injustice because the only people it can silence is the just. 'Long term abuse' drama boards and virtually every venue inside and outside wikipedia is full of evidence that nobody can be silenced. Antisocial people wake up in the morning and spend the day putting their message out there and all the bans in the world have been proven to be comprehensive failures in stopping them. The only people a global ban can ever have any effect on are those few people, who are good and just and refuse to sock because it is beneath them. They stand upon the high moral ground and won't lower themselves to telling lies without a good reason. The only people who can be kept away by these two hands that foster anti-socialism are the good people.

I won't comment to suggest how I feel about Mbz1's statement, because the people with ears to hear the truth will hear it and know it when they first come across it. Those who refuse to accept the fact of the truth and who blind their minds to it won't be woken from their delusions, so there is no point to try. People who choose to be ignorant will do it as long as they can. People will choose to seek and embrace simple idiotic answers to life's questions. Wikipedia will come to en end. All websites come to an end, the Internet, humanity, the Earth, all things with a beginning have an end. Global bans are just one more solid rocket fuelled thruster attached to wikipedia's fuselage to help the project reach marginalisation, funding shortfalls, and a garbage reputation that little bit faster. Penyulap (talk) 16:13, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

We apparently need some more requirements

I've looked through what I've seen hinted at on the mailing list and here, essentially a user banned from Commons on some nebulous "secret evidence". The accusations the Foundation has made against this person, without bothering to provide a shred of evidence, are disgusting and potentially libelous, so I won't repeat them or the user in question's name here. However, I expand my oppose to apply until and unless any such global policy includes the following:

• No global ban is permissible as an OFFICE action unless such a ban has been ordered by a court having jurisdiction over WMF.
• Should such a court order require a ban as an OFFICE action, the action log shall clearly link to a digitized version of such order, and anyone inquiring about it shall also be provided the link to the court order. WMF shall not be required to provide any detail on the matter beyond providing a link to the order.
• Should such a court order be sealed, and WMF forbidden to digitize or link to it, the decision shall instead link to a digitized version of the order sealing the original order. Since the US does not have "superinjunctions", the sealing order should always be able to be made public. WMF shall again not be obligated to provide any detail beyond a reference to the above order.
• WMF shall promptly reverse such a ban should the court order be vacated, reversed, overturned by a higher court, expire, or otherwise become invalid.
• WMF shall not seek such a court order, and if faced with an action seeking such, shall within reason oppose it. At very minimum, such opposition shall indicate that WMF shall notify the user in question that such a request has been received, and give such user the opportunity to oppose the request at his or her own effort and expense. If a court requires that WMF not notify the potentially affected user, WMF shall take all steps it can to attempt to overturn the gag order, and shall, upon such order being overturned, promptly notify the potentially affected user.
• Any global ban applied without such a court order is not an OFFICE action, and may be reversed by anyone having the technical ability to do so. Anyone reversing such an action shall not be subject to any sanction. Anyone purporting to apply such a ban as an OFFICE action but not linking properly to the court order requiring it shall be subject to the loss of any advanced permissions used to apply the lock, and shall, if a WMF employee, be subject to the employment sanctions below.
• Placement of multiple local bans on projects the editor customarily edits is the same as a global ban. Placement of local bans by WMF shall not be used to circumvent this restriction.
• WMF shall not take any action based upon demands from courts which do not, in the opinion of its General Counsel, have jurisdiction over it.
• Employees of the WMF are subject to discipline, up to and including immediate dismissal from employment, for breach of these requirements for any reason. A repeat offense, or a failure to reverse an offending action once demonstrated that it does not comply with this policy, shall result in automatic and immediate dismissal of the offending employee(s) of WMF. This provision includes, but is not limited to, Board members. This provision only applies to actions undertaken or questioned after this policy has been put into force. WMF employees shall not be disciplined for actions undertaken prior to this policy's adoption, provided that they promptly reverse or do not interfere with the reversal of all bans currently existing and not in keeping with it following ratification.
• WMF employees dismissed under the above shall not be eligible for any position with WMF for a minimum of five years after the date of the offense, notwithstanding the result of any election or other event.
• WMF shall construe these requirements broadly, and shall not attempt to use "loopholes" in specific wording to circumvent the spirit of these restrictions.

The only alternative is "WMF shall provide, in full and with all details, its rationale for any global lock it applies, upon inquiry by anyone." WMF is clearly unable or unwilling to do that, and has stated it may come into legal jeopardy from doing so, so the alternative is that it must not place locks at all unless a court order actually exists. Alternatively, I guess WMF can ban anyone who disagrees with them, and accuse them of horrible things but refuse to back those claims by presenting actual evidence. Go ahead, if you want to. Seraphimblade (talk) 16:40, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I know about the case that you're referring to. The evidence wasn't "nebulous" or "secret". There was a long, open discussion: commons:Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/User_problems/Geni's_allegations_against_Beta_M. Wikimedia shouldn't tolerate pedophiles, their advocates, or anyone possessing CP. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 17:04, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I think it's pretty obvious that a global ban could not be made in secret via the method outlined in the policy. As for office actions, if you have complaints about them then this is not the appropriate place to voice them, as this policy is a community-owned one that does not replace or amend office actions in any way. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:07, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Having found that someone was banned for someone of the same username expressing an opinion on a non-WMF site (vile and disgusting though that opinion may be) makes me more, not less, concerned. I sure hope no one signs up with my username somewhere and expresses a nasty opinion!

That aside, even if the two users are the same person, I can find no conduct-based discussion in the thread Michael linked, no indication that the user in question sought inappropriate relationships or uploaded inappropriate media, just that they said something that we've apparently decided we don't like. Well...no, and if that's the case, we really need to make sure the community process is the only one. We allow nationalists to edit, and nationalism has arguably been the most destructive ideology in history. But if they edit neutrally and do not behave inappropriately, they may work here. So should anyone be able to. If they (or anyone) should actually behave badly, by all means, boot 'em. But that's the point at which the community will and should agree to that. And to Steven's point specifically, saying that this policy should supplant and overrule any potential OFFICE actions is absolutely relevant. Seraphimblade (talk) 17:41, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

No community policy can override an office action. However, the current Terms of Use make it explicit that the default situation is community-controlled decision making under the proposed policy. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:51, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Well then, Steven, my normal respect for OFFICE actions has come in cases like Conventional PCI where the OFFICE has, firstly, specified that legal action is the reason for the OFFICE action, secondly, specified exactly what legal action, and thirdly, advised editors how to contest such legal action if they want to do so and implied that if such legal action were successfully challenged, WMF would withdraw its objection. If WMF is now going to use its authority for OFFICE actions as a "big hammer" absent legal requirements to use it, that's unacceptable, and WMF needs to be reined in. I'm also concerned at looking at the Damon Dash article on en.wp, since it seems WMF has also there failed to specify exactly what legal action requires its intervention there. OFFICE is for extreme cases involving actual legal action, and upon request, you must specify exactly what that legal action is. It is not a big red "Override the community because we don't like their result" button. Seraphimblade (talk) 18:18, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Separating between legally-mandated actions and ones that are not is exactly why this policy was created. If what you want is never to see office actions used in banning, then I would support this policy or suggest a different community-centric solution. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:22, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm unclear now, Steven. Are you saying WMF would not have acted if a community process had been in place at the time of this issue? From the discussion I'm seeing on Commons, there was nowhere near sufficient community consensus for a ban, and I see nothing from WMF indicating it was legally required/ordered to place one. Are you saying WMF would've stayed out of the situation? If not, how far is WMF planning to expand OFFICE authority, beyond when it's required by law to take an action? Seraphimblade (talk) 22:23, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not talking about the past office action on Commons, I'm talking about the future. If this policy is accepted, then it is one more step that could be explored by the community to avoid any banning decisions being made by the WMF. Whether it would apply precisely to the situation on Commons that you've mentioned, I can't say. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:35, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Steven, remember I asked this exact question to you on Wikimedia-l, to which you said, OFFICE action and the global ban discussion aren't related. Second, the ban for the OFFICE action didn't take place on commons, but Meta. Third, I would like to know where this recent change about OFFICE action should be brought up? It went from deleting pages, to the first instance of global banning a user with absolutely no explanation. Seraphimblade, I agree with all your points. You might want to check for archives of Jimmy's page where this was discussed at length. And Welcome to Meta. ;) Theo10011 (talk) 22:43, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Theo - you're right that office actions have not traditionally affected anything but content. On the other hand, the current terms of use may be read as suggesting that the WMF (office) may act where necessary to enforce the ToU. You should bring this disparity up on Talk:Office actions; those implementing office actions should update it to describe their understanding of what actions are taken when. Whatever current practice is, that page should reflect it. –SJ talk  [And am I the only one who finds the undying capitalization of "office" depressing? It's not an acronym, or a shortcut here; no need to shout :-) ]

Heh, Sorry for proliferating the usage of caps Sj :P I completely agree, I'll make a note on the talk page. It should be updated. The ToU are also recent in themselves. Theo10011 (talk) 06:29, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

@Steven Walling - the WMF generally has to be dragged into OFFICE actions by kicking and screaming (either by real lawyers, or looming bad publicity). Those situations are exactly the sort of cases where a project would tend to opt-out, under the common misconception that out-world laws don't apply in-world, or the loyalty-based idea of "S/he may be an SOB, but goddammit, s/he's our SOB!". In practice, that means this proposed banning system will not have any effect on the need for OFFICE actions (I must admit the theoretical prospect of a ban-war between the apparatchiks of Meta and the, err, let us say, "boundary testers" of Commons, is vastly amusing from a popcorn point of view - but in reality, it's not going to happen). What this proposed policy does is to create a horrible "escalation" attack. Before, if a clique could get someone banned on English Wikipedia, there wasn't much of an incentive to go after the target on a smaller wiki. Here, all that clique needs is an English Wikipedia ban plus any smaller wiki ban, and they can then shoot the moon for a Global Ban. The last thing Wikimedia needs is more vendetta drama. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 02:00, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Seth, clearly I disagree per my explanations above. Needless to say I reject your idea that global bans or any bans are about vendettas. They're about protecting the projects from the nastiest of characters, and the process provides multiple layers of public, community scrutiny to combat frivolous banning discussions. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 03:41, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I still don't understand at all why this is necessary. Each project can ban whomever they want on their project, why does this sort of process even need to exist? It really just seems like a method to have the larger projects be in control over who can contribute to the smaller ones. Silver seren (talk) 09:19, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Have you read the proposal? It includes examples of the sort of situations in which a global ban would be necessary:

• Harassing or threatening contributors to the projects, on- or off-wiki
• Serious on-wiki fraud or identity theft (not limited to abuse of multiple accounts)
• Inappropriate use of user rights with access to private information, such as CheckUser or Oversight
• Violations of the privacy policy or other official Wikimedia policies.

As I've already pointed this out to you before, I'm not sure why you're still asking the same question. Kaldari (talk) 17:47, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Then all that would need to be done is inform the other projects the user is involved in of what they have done and, in all likelihood I would think, those projects would also block the user. Thus, they keep their independence and there's no need for this global ban nonsense. Silver seren (talk) 22:09, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Except that, in practice, that's not what happens. I can think of at least three cases, offhand and without even digging in my archives, where someone was using a smaller project to continue extreme misbehaviour that got them banned on other projects and where the administration of those projects, after being informed, either refused or were unable to take action. Sometimes it's political, sometimes it's systemic: I know of at least one user who committed serious identity theft and harassment that was a checkuser on a smaller project that could not be ousted because many of the small pool of administrators and bureaucrats were his socks.

On a large(r) project, things tend to average out; on the smaller projects, it only takes one or two admins with a bone to pick with the projects that were harmed to stonewall action. — Coren ^{(talk) / (en-wiki)} 00:52, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

• I am not sure why we are discussion office actions here whereas the proposal is clearly NOT about office actions and does not cover office actions.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:34, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Silver, your comments are rather naive. For example: "No global ban is permissible as an OFFICE action unless such a ban has been ordered by a court having jurisdiction over WMF." You are obviously not aware of how it works in the real world. Courts never order the website to ban users; the court orders the user to stay away from the website. Think about it: the most famous order of this type went to Kevin Mitnick. The court told him not to own or possess or use a computer. The court did not tell the local stores not to sell him a computer. The court did not tell the ISPs that they weren't allowed to let him on their networks. The order goes to the (alleged) perp, not to the websites.

Additionally, while I'm sure that you see this as a way of protecting users in their apparently God-given right to use a private(!) website against the wishes of its owners, your plan could result in serious harm to the people you are trying to protect. So: the WMF can't ban anyone without a court order? It's pretty easy to get a restraining order against a pedophile who "might" be contacting children on the internet. That's a "court order". And that court order is going to be followed by a criminal investigation that could land the person you're trying to protect in prison.

You want everything to be public? It's bad enough to be wrongly suspected of pedophilia, but you're demanding that these potentially false suspicions be carefully disseminated to the widest possible audience. Protecting the potentially innocent person is exactly why the WMF doesn't always provide information about the reason for a block. Think of it this way: What if I misunderstand some comment of yours, and believe that you might be a pedophile, and you end up getting blocked for a while. Do you want to have a public conversation about that, in which we all talk about whether or not you're a pedophile? Do you want your permanent block log to say "Blocked under en:Child protection for appearing to be a pedophile"? Wouldn't you maybe like the WMF and the community to exercise a little more concern for your reputation and privacy? WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:59, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Um, Seraphimblade said all of that, so I don't know why you're using my name.

Though I should note that I have always opposed en:Child protection, because it doesn't actually protect children. If we actually wanted to protect children, then we wouldn't ban such users, but instead monitor their editing. If we are monitoring them, then it is much less likely that they would be able to take any actions against children and we are that much more likely to notice if they did and we can then report them to the police with the exact evidence of what they have done. Banning on suspicions of mental state just means that they create new accounts and don't mention it on those accounts, so we have no idea that we need to monitor them. And if any of those users are a threat to children, it is now close to impossible for us to keep an eye out and stop anything from happening.

The whole point of en:Child protection is to protect the Foundation from liability, not to protect children. Silver seren (talk) 19:53, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Even assuming that last point is true, the protection to naive users is still real and should be supported. The only thing more silly than having pedo advocates explore the boundaries of what they can get away with in an open community is debating whether that would be a good idea. A desire for total freedom is a misunderstanding of the world and there is no WMF project intended to give anyone on the Internet the ability to express their personal freedom. It was very unfortunate for WhatamIdoing to incorrectly address their comment, but that just illustrates their point—publicly explaining that X was blocked because X is a pedophile advocate is not helpful as such an allegation cannot be put back in its bottle, even if the block is overturned as a mistake. Johnuniq (talk) 01:07, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

I should note that Child protection here on Meta is still only a proposed policy. I've suggested we could enact a stripped-down version which reiterates the provisions of the Terms of use that concern problematic behaviors that could actually affect children, without the problematic "advocacy" and "identification" language that Jimbo Wales applied without community consensus in the en.wikipedia policy. I agree that we would place ourselves in a very problematic rhetorical position if we tell correspondents from Yemen and other Arabic nations that they must accept our Muhammad images and blasphemies in the name of wide-ranging conversation, while they must not dare to suggest that their countries' very low or absent ages of consent are morally defensible. Wnt (talk) 16:06, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. And note that merely editing Wikipedia may significantly shorten your life, so to protect Wikipedia users from harm, we should think about totally different things like an automatic block after being logged on for more than half an hour and then that block being automatically being lifted after an hour. Count Iblis (talk) 18:04, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

I sincerely apologize for using the wrong name, which I am striking. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:36, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

in re Office actions, i see that w:Texas Instruments signing key controversy is fixed, (seems unencyclopedic to me) - but question. :would you global ban a user adding back information deleted per a DMCA takedown, that was not confirmed by a court, but before the counternotice? Slowking4 (talk) 16:15, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

in re w:CTB v News Group Newspapers would you global ban user defying superinjunction, based on reliable sources out of court jurisdiction? Slowking4 (talk) 16:21, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

One issue is that a fair amount of Office actions (like the Choose Your Own Adventure one I was involved in) occur without an explanation by a Foundation member on what was wrong with the article. To this day, I don't know what the Office action on that article was for, other than a Foundation member saying that, in regards to the references, "A simplistic and romanticized story about the creation of the book series was told during its early years in the media", which, clearly, alarmed many of us, because it seemed like the Foundation was saying that the reliable sources were not reliable and, thus, they were going to be writing the article in a POV manner instead with who knows what sources. But then I wrote a short article draft using said early references and they let it through, so what exactly was the issue in the first place? Silver seren (talk) 20:02, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Please guys. This policy is a community one totally disconnected from office actions. This is a rat hole, not a productive line of inquiry for this RFC. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:56, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

i take your point that global ban is based on community consensus. however, given the distrust; lack of clear communication, the perception might be that legal requirements might lead to global ban. my questions were based on cases where truth-telling was blocked by legal process. one enforced by office action, one not. is there a consensus, or policy about that?

i am concerned by bad blocks. there were some shocking cases detailed at wikimania. what is the appeal mechanism for blocks, bans? are there some trusted users, that will periodically review either requested or unrequested? the arbcom process appears to be using draconian measures; is this an escalation of those measures? Slowking4 (talk) 22:54, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Seraphimblade missed two key pieces of evidence that changed my mind in that case: first, as I recall, the account's own contributions seemed indicative that this was a specific named individual, from a specific university, and a person of that name from that university had been convicted of a speechcrime, and although I disagree with any and all censorship law, I recognize that Wikimedia has to take seriously; and second, this person appeared to be inviting children and people editing articles about high schools in the United States to Wikia projects and a porn site under his control. Reading over the data, I was convinced, to within a preponderance of the evidence, that this constituted "Soliciting personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18 for an illegal purpose", as the Terms of use put it. (Note that the United States would generally have imposed terms against him having contact with minors, so it would appear that the purpose would be illegal even if it were strictly platonic; he evaded many of the American penalties by means of being deported) Now, I understand far too well that our system is dysfunctional - anyone reading about the Penn State case should know that - we make demons of the people involved, then we don't dare accuse anyone who might be, we vastly overuse prisons instead of doing medical research and treatment, we punish pictures while even hundreds of thousands of children are being exploited as prostitutes, who themselves may be punished - this is a situation where our entire society is crazy, and I don't mean the batty old uncle with the unicycle crazy, I mean the rocking back and forth in a straightjacket gloating about knifing people in a locked prison ward kind of crazy. But that doesn't mean that Wikimedia could be blase about what looks like a real danger to kids on the project.

Now as for private proceedings, here's the problem: Commons had to go through the whole process itself because the English Wikipedia ArbCom did the private proceeding, and didn't tell Commons what it had. Commons couldn't just take their word for it because they might have banned the editor simply for having an opinion. It is important to note that anarchists don't believe in government identification cards or the right of a central state to know everyone's birthday, or to make positive law based on sharp age cutoffs; so if you're going to prohibit people who appear to advocate any form of pedophilia, you're effectively banning anarchists from the project. Of course, anarchists will be the first to point out their opposition to exploitative relationships, and means to prevent them that don't involve arbitrary law (e.g., economic reforms to end the pressures of prostitution), but the point is, when you ban "advocacy", it's up to the Defenders of the Faith to decide what beliefs are heretical and what are not, and accommodating anarchists may not be on their list of priorities. The result of these two things is that the community had to go back and redo the process from scratch, first hearing faulty evidence, later getting to the full story, only to have the WMF step in very quickly once the evidence started to turn against the editor, to finish the job quickly by office action. That this is then used to impeach Commons or open community discussion ... that is simply wrong. Wnt (talk) 03:28, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Bans (although a scary word in any usage) are a necessary evil, perhaps (but then Wikipedia becomes "the encyclopedia some people can edit"). Just don't ban ME, please — I have not yet begun to write ! (pardon me if I've posted this in the wrong section and without any justification!) Penwatchdog (talk) 10:37, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Global Requests Committee

Please note there is now active discussion at Talk:Global requests committee about the Global Requests Committee idea. The scope of the Global Requests Committee could include handling global bans. I have also commented on Wikimedia-l including the post at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2012-July/121025.html regarding using the Committee for handling global bans. Pine^✉ 06:23, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Local opt-out

This section is intended as a draft space for text that would outline how a local project could locally override a global ban. This provision appears to have a good deal of support under "Option 2" above.

“ DRAFT TEXT HERE ”

I believe this is an important provision. It would soften the impact of a global ban, but not render it useless.

Imagine this scenario, under our current system (without a global ban policy): Andy is blocked on 2 or more projects, and continues to edit in English WikiFoo. WikiFoo, like many of our smaller projects, has a very small community that is more intent on doing wiki work than on policing behavior; so even though Andy might be behaving in the same disruptive ways that got him/her blocked elsewhere, and causing some strife for WikiFoo's other members, he/she might not be not blocked on WikiFoo simply because pursuing a block is too onerous.

With the option for a local override, WikiFoo would retain the ability to decide whether or not Andy can person to keep editing, but the default position would be reversed. If Andy and his/her work is strongly supported by the WikiFoo community, WikiFoo would likely establish a consensus to locally override the global ban. If no such strong support exists, the default of "global ban" would apply on WikiFoo as anywhere else. -Pete F (talk) 22:01, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this would render the entire policy useless. Both recent cases of requiring a global ban - with Poetlister and the commons user - came up specifically because one project was opposing a ban for that user. In the first case, an RfC was started on meta to globally block the user and override the enwikiversity decision to leave him unbanned. Keep in mind that the entire point of a global ban should be to remove a disruptive user who wouldn't be otherwise outright globally blocked for their actions on multiple projects. Ajraddatz (Talk) 16:02, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Ajraddatz, I think you might want to read the proposal again. It's not a suggestion that one project could have the ability to block a broad ban on behalf of other projects. So while it does significantly change the nature of what is proposed, it is far from rendering it completely useless, as you say. -Pete F (talk) 02:48, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

How would a global ban exemption, where there was a global ban in force, with an exemption applicable only to WikiFoo, which has opted out of the particular ban, harm any project other then WikiFoo? The point of the global ban is so that projects don't need to go through the trouble of banning the user locally, not to override local consensus. Monty845 (talk) 16:38, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Can you explain what exactly is wrong with allowing Poetlister and the other one to continue to contribute to those individual projects and be global banned from the rest? How exactly is that an issue? Silver seren (talk) 20:26, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

• I suggest the following opt out policy:

A global ban exempt flag shall be created that allows an editor whose account is globally banned to continue editing normally on any project account with the flag set. Projects may adopt their own local standards for granting a global ban exemption and deciding what level of account may grant the flag. In the absence of a local standard setting out a different process for granting exemptions, a discussion on granting the flag should be help at a prominent community noticeboard and if, after discussion, consensus is clearly in favor of granting the exemption, the administrator who closes the discussion may grant the exemption. Discussion on an exemption should not begin until a global ban is proposed and accounts should not be flagged as exempt unless there is reason to believe a ban is imminent.

The key is that each project should develop their own standards, we should really only develop a policy here as a stop gap for those projects with none of their own. Monty845 (talk) 16:47, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like a good proposal. Deryck C. 19:31, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

An absolute must for any local optout provision is an ABSOLUTELY NO SOCKING policy, i.e. any socking on the opted out project or on other projects would lead to the automatic, no-exceptions removal of the optout. If this is done, then a local optout has at least the advantage of helping to enforce a global ban, by giving the user something to lose if they try to evade the ban. (NB an exception might possibly have to be made to allow requests for local optouts, unless there is a clear off-wiki mechanism.) Rd232 (talk) 17:13, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Why on earth would that be required? Certainly the opted-out project would get to decide if socking was something they wanted to worry about? (I can't imagine that they wouldn't worry, but surely it's their worry?) --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:44, 26 July 2012 (UTC) A more measured tone on my part would have been wiser. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:03, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I concur with Philosopher. This is the local project's worry. In addition, a strict "absolutely no socking" global guideline has the danger of defeating local opt-outs, because when you're banned your instinct is to appeal it... and that instinct often involves attempting to edit while you're blocked. Deryck C. 19:31, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. To begin with, the assessment of "sock puppets" by "duck" or "behavioral evidence" is comparable to astrology - sometimes it works, by chance. Having this done outside your project against your project's members would be most demoralizing. Wnt (talk) 18:38, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

• I honestly don't see how this would work. A stewards lock would keep anybody from contributing, and if they're globally banned, a steward will (presumably) lock on sight, as they do with some trolls already, thus keeping them from contributing to any WMF wiki. Frood (talk) 18:46, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

This is beyond the global ban proposal's worry. If WMF is so keen on having global bans, they can easily hire someone to invent whatever technical mechanism needed to make them work. (Hello devs!) Deryck C. 19:34, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose the "local opt-out" proposal. In addition to the three general criteria, situation-specific criteria will always include a violation of one or more sections of the terms of use. It's not okay, for example, for someone who has had a major TOU violation on projects A, B and C to be given safe harbour at Project D. We have had experience with this in the past, where users have continued the same behaviour directed at the original blocking/banning project from other projects, using the "email this user" facility, user subpages, and in some cases content pages. This kind of enabling behaviour is very destructive to the tightly interwoven inter-project ecosystem. Risker (talk) 22:34, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

  Risker, thanks for providing the first substantive argument against local opt-out. I'd be interested to hear more. (It seems to me that there's probably too much chaos in the current proposal/discussion for it to go anywhere, but if nothing else, I'd like to understand the implications better the next time something like this comes up.) -Pete F (talk) 16:26, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

  While meeting the three general criteria doesn't mean one has to be globally banned, meeting them is sufficient ground for starting a non-frivolous global ban discussion. The case I have in mind is of multilingual editors who have strong editing agenda, usually nationalistic: they're likely to be much welcome in projects of certain languages but stir up hatred in others. The communities who hate them will then be able to forcibly remove this editor from another community who love them, via global bans. (The examples I have in mind are Capsot, Instantnood, and Ohconfucius - banned by one project (okay not two, but these are just examples I know) but loved by others.) Deryck C. 10:27, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

  If we need to make it clear that content disputes are not typically legitimate reasons for bringing up the possibility of a global ban, let's edit the policy to do so. This policy is primarily meant to address things like:

• Harassing or threatening contributors to the projects, on- or off-wiki
• Serious on-wiki fraud or identity theft (not limited to abuse of multiple accounts)
• Inappropriate use of user rights with access to private information, such as CheckUser or Oversight
• Violations of the privacy policy or other official Wikimedia policies.

Those are things specifically listed in the current policy as examples of the kind of behavior that are worth having a global ban discussion about. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:50, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

The very fact that we are enacting a global ban policy right now, with the current wording, implies that reasons for future global bans don't necessarily have to be similar to the examples listed above. Deryck C. 09:25, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

+1 Deryck. The current phrasing of the policy ias a major flaw; the introductory text to the 4 bullet points Steven quotes above is simply: "Past reasons for requesting a global ban have included:"

If the intent is that future global bans should be limited to cases that are similar in some respect, that needs to be stated explicitly. (Maybe the relevant distinction is that it needs to be clear that the user's behavior is not limited to certain content areas that are specific to certain languages or projects.) -Pete F (talk) 18:26, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

The reason I left it as examples rather than explicitly limiting, is because I didn't want to start a policy that is supposed to be community-owned (unlike the ToS that refers to community global bans) by making it prescriptive. If people would be more comfortable making a line by line list of things that a global ban is for and excluding everything else, go for it. But I think considering that we can't predict the future, I'm not sure it's a great idea. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:45, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Steven, it seems to me necessary to have a solid proposal, and clear advocacy about why it's a good thing, in order to move forward. I remain generally sympathetic to the idea that a process for global bans would be a good thing to have. But the devil is in the details, and I want to understand why a specific path is the best one, and see that its design has taken into account the kind of concerns that have been brought up on this page, before I would get behind it. -Pete F (talk) 15:26, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

The fact that we can't predict the future could also be a reason for explicit limitation to a list of enumerated offenses. We don't know what kinds of abuses this policy might lend itself to; therefore it might be prudent to limit the potential for abuse by not creating any sort of elastic clause. Leucosticte (talk) 15:58, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

+1 Leucosticte. -Pete F (talk) 12:47, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

@Risker: You write, "This kind of enabling behaviour is very destructive to the tightly interwoven inter-project ecosystem." Explain how it is destructive. If, say, someone harasses another user on a few wikis, gets globally banned, and is allowed on xxwiki due to his record of useful contributions and no problems with the users there, isn't that beneficial? It might cause more friction among the projects if people from one community are telling another community what to do. The user who has a problem with what's being said about him on xxwiki can just ignore it; he doesn't have to go there if he doesn't like it. This whole notion of harassment as saying anything about a person that that person doesn't like is misguided anyway; and that is pretty much the only kind of harassment that can occur unless both users are part of the same community, in which case it's a local problem, not a global problem. Leucosticte (talk) 19:30, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Not correct. No amount of good edits is worth the ill will and wasted time that some people cause with their lies and manipulation. When someone forwards me an email containing lies about other people from an user who is banned, with questions about what they should do, it puts me in the middle even if it's not my home wiki where they are editing. Some people deliberately go to smaller wikis to get in the good graces with the editors there so they can have status to attack their perceived enemies. Eventually they lose support but not before hours of volunteer time is wasted sorting it out and good people get annoyed with each other. There is an interconnectedness that the banned user is (ab)using to his favor. For people like this we need global bans that local wikis can't opt out of. FloNight (talk) 21:54, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Might it not be the fault of the people who respond in unhelpful ways to the user's behavior that feelings get inflamed and what could have been a minor situation escalates? It seems like this could have the opposite effect of what's intended. It could lead people to go on cross-wiki witch hunts.

Some of the drama queens who get offended at every little thing are at least limited to their home wikis by the fact that they lack influence anywhere else. But this would allow them to wreak havoc all over the wiki farm by making global ban proposals that will require people from other wikis to have to respond in order to safeguard their privileges (e.g. the privilege of having a particular user be allowed to continue editing their wiki). People will have to cross-post a notice of the discussion at that wiki in order to solicit input for the global ban discussion, and so local drama will become global drama.

In any event, how is it any worse if someone trash talks a user over at another WMF wiki than if he goes entirely outside the WMF umbrella to do it, e.g. by posting at Wikipedia Review or the like? We can't stop people from posting whatever they want outside the WMF umbrella, so why bother stopping them from posting it within that umbrella, as long as it's okay with the wiki involved? It is just as easy to ignore what someone says on some small WMF wiki as it is to ignore what they say on a non-WMF project.

The solution to problematic speech is usually to either ignore it or refute it, rather than to suppress it. If it's not worth refuting, then ignoring it is a viable possibility in most cases. I receive a lot of messages that I archive without making any response. And a lot of negative stuff is said about me across the wikisphere, much of which I make no direct response to. In some cases I don't even read it. I don't have to let it consume my time if I don't want to.

This whole proposal shows a lack of respect for the fact that, aside from a few behaviors like posting child porn that are pretty easy to define and identify, there is no one standard of appropriate behavior, and different wikis may legitimately have different opinions about what they deem appropriate. Yeah, the ToS may speak in vague terms about "harassment" and the like, but that's a pretty vague term, and I see no problem with letting each wiki decide for itself what is okay to do there. On MediaWiki.org, for instance, the rules of civility are somewhat relaxed because the programmer community has a different culture than the typical Wikipedia. Likewise, on Wikiversity, there is a greater need to err on the side of protecting freedom of speech in order to preserve academic freedom. Users from other wikis should butt out of what are rightly considered local decisions.

Incidentally, if we're going to have global bans that override local decisions to allow users to continue, why not also have a global unban process that will unban users from local wikis if the meta community deems that appropriate? Why are we only creating ways to make it easier to ban people, rather than ways to make it easier to remove bans? Leucosticte (talk) 14:55, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

There is nothing prohibiting a global unban process. You could propose one if you thought it worthwhile. It's just not the point of this discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:30, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Overturning a global ban decision

Global_bans#Overturning_a_global_ban_decision:

Discussion to overturn a global ban decision is conducted through the requests for comment process on Meta, in order to include the widest possible audience. A request must follow the same consensus process for requesting a ban, described above.

This section doesn't explain how a banned banned user may start a discussion to have his or her global ban overturned. Users who are global banned can't access globally locked accounts. They can't log into globally locked accounts, they can't use Template:Unblock with globally locked accounts, and they can't use Special:EmailUser with globally locked accounts. Will they have to create a new account in order to post a request or use Special:EmailUser? How will they interact with the community? If this isn't addressed, then a reasonable attempt to start a discussion about overturning a global ban by creating a new account might be considered a violation of that ban. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 21:58, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The section is not designed to support the request for overturning being made by the banned user. The point of the section is to lay out how a community may request an overturn on behalf of the user, but since the policy requires that people be unblocked as necessary to participate in the original banning discussion, it's not like people aren't going to have plenty of chances to make their own case against being banned. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:08, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

As time advances, it's likely that a community will forget about a global banned user and not bother requesting for a global ban to be overturned. If a global banned user learns his or her lesson and wishes to become a good-faith editor one or two years later, you're saying that they're basically out of luck. A random person isn't going to request for that ban to be overturned, and the community would probably wish to hear promises of good faith from the globally banned user. It's basically impossible to overturn a global ban with your vision of the global ban policy. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 22:18, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

If you are sent to prison, you often get out after a few years even if you were sentenced to life. Similarly, if you are globally banned, it makes sense to provide a way to return after a few years when/if you have learnt how to behave. However, not being able to log in isn't a problem here. You can still send normal e-mails as long as you have an e-mail address to send them to. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:33, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Stefan: A global ban is not the kind of measure that should be used for users that merit a one year or six month block, and then given another chance. This is the rare nuclear option, for people who have been indefinitely blocked on multiple projects. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:37, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Michael: No, it's as easy as the decision to get a ban in the first place. The purpose is not like a local admin's block, where you just appeal. It's a consensus process, aimed at supporting the possible situation that post-banning discussion, a community decides someone is productive and thinks the global ban should be overturned in favor of local autonomy. If you've behaved so egregiously as to merit a global ban, and there is no Wikimedia community that will vouch for you, then no, the policy is not designed to support overturning. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:39, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, if you do something really evil (e.g. murder someone), you are sentenced to life imprisonment, but still get out after some 20 years. For example, Mattias Flink murdered seven people but might get out after 20 years. I'm not convinced that vandalism or harassment is worse than murder. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:55, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

This isn't prison and we're not a court of law. It's revoking the editing privileges of certain accounts, based on violating the terms of use. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:01, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Then simply allow for cases where the global ban might be overturned - no matter who asks about it. Those who ought not have the ban lifted will not unduly benefit from seeing a process existing, will they? 50.89.146.11 12:00, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

In that presumably rare situation, the affected person can use a plain old e-mail system (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo! mail, iCloud, GMX mail) to send a plain old e-mail message to one of the many people or groups that list plain old e-mail addresses on their user or project pages, and beg that person or group to request an end to the global ban. If you look at Steven's userpage, for example, you will see his regular e-mail address printed there for use by anyone in the world. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:17, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

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The policy should explicitly allow globally banned users to Email other users without Special:EmailUser as long as the Email that they're sending is about overturning their global bans. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 20:56, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Why? Why should the global ban say anything about something so completely outside the WMF's power? Should we say that banned users are permitted to use other websites and to play games on their computers, too?

More pointfully, what if I make a pest of myself that way? Do you want me to be able to flood Steven's e-mail inbox and when he justifiably complains about harassment, have me tell him that the global ban policy explicitly allows me to send as much e-mail to any of the millions of WMF users as I want, so long as the subject is overturning my ban?

What's the cost of not explicitly including this potentially abuse-able suggestion? I suppose that someone might complain, and then what? We'll really extra super-duper globally ban the user? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:40, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't want people replying to such requests with "You can't have a proxy / meatpuppet / voice. Banned means banned. Don't communicate with anyone. You're not allowed to be heard." The Constitution of the Unites States was originally written without a bill of rights, because its framers thought that such rights didn't need to be stated explicitly. People were quick to see the flaw in that way of thinking. If freedoms weren't stated explicitly, then those freedoms could be easily taken away or denied. I feel that banned users need a First Amendment in order to be allow to make an unban request. As for the possibility of harassment, I included, "as long as the Email that they're sending is about overturning their global bans" in my comment for a reason. If you don't want banned users Emailing people, then how about explicitly allowing banned users to make unban requests on a noticeboard while logged-out? --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 17:49, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't mind them sending e-mail—like I said, that's outside the WMF's purview, because it doesn't involve any of the WMF's resources—but do you really want to issue blanket permission to do something that both (1) doesn't involve the WMF's website and (2) might annoy the recipient?

At minimum, "as long as the Email that they're sending is about overturning their global bans" ought to have a restriction like "so long as the recipient doesn't object". Spamming someone's inbox every five minutes is unfriendly behavior, and it doesn't matter whether the mention of overturning a global ban is the main subject of the message or a passing mention by way of a fig leaf.

Or, to put it another way, who are you to give permission to anyone to send e-mail to me?

It sounds to me like a more reasonable approach might be to say that any Wikimedian in good standing may request a review of a global ban decision, or that each decision needs to specify a means of appeal (and a minimum time, so that "losers" don't instantly appeal and thus irritate everyone). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:36, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

+1 Whatamidoing. I think this is exactly right. The only thing I'd add is that if there is anybody identified who may be emailed, it should be Wiki*edians in positions of trust. On English Wikipedia, it seems reasonable to me that someone might email an ArbCom member, for instance. I feel more comfortable about a policy granting that kind of permission wrt a non-generic volunteer. It could get difficult to capture this in policy though, since so many projects lack an ArbCom. -Pete F (talk) 12:45, 12 October 2012 (UTC)