Stewards' noticeboard/Archives/2023-07

An RFC that can be closed

Hello! In my opinion, Requests for comment/LGBTQIA+phobia can be closed. It is quite inactive and only recently attracted an "oppose". The participants overwhelmingly reject the proposal as they feel the situation is already covered by the current policy. As the RFC proposes to change a global policy, per Requests_for_comment/Policy#Closure_of_RFCs it should be closed by a steward. --MF-W 16:24, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Agree. It is clearly no consensus. SCP-2000 17:40, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Done Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 02:19, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: —MdsShakil (talk) 06:56, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Gitz6666 global lock discussion

Dear Stewards, could you see your way clear to undoing the global lock placed on User:Gitz6666's account?

Following the discussions at the Signpost and elsewhere, it has become abundantly clear – in my view at least – that this situation would never have arisen if Italian admins had not circled the wagons around a biography of en:Alessandro Orsini (sociologist) that was one-sided and – again in my view, having researched the available academic sources – incompatible with BLP policy.

Moreover, given everything that has been said on and off wiki, it appears that Gitz6666 in the first instance merely communicated material that was openly available on-wiki and in a second instance followed advice received and raised COI concerns privately with an admin. There appears to be no public or private evidence that Gitz6666 did any more than that. On the other hand, I find there is ample evidence suggesting that Gitz6666 had the best interests of the project at heart.

Gitz6666 has around 7500 contributions and a clean block log on English Wikipedia. I feel the global lock by User:Sakretsu was a significant overreaction, taken by a steward who would have been better advised to delegate the decision to one of their colleagues whose home wiki is not the Italian Wikipedia (cf. salient comments by User:HaeB in the Signpost discussion).

Regards, Andreas JN466 22:47, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

@Jayen466 thank you for the note, as noted at w:en:Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-06-19/In_the_media, there is currently an active appeal under private review. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:06, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

The first public acknowledgment of the appeal was sixteen days ago, on the 21st of June. This suggests that the case evidence is not very strong as if it were the glock would have been confirmed quickly. Can you give us an idea of the deadline you've set for yourselves to announce your decision? SashiRolls (talk) 08:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

After internal discussion and review of available evidence, stewards have decided to accept Gitz6666's appeal.--Sakretsu (炸裂) 16:33, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad to have learnt of this. Thank you for this decision. Dronkle (talk) 18:19, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I believe stewards should be aware that their colleague has crossed the line of acceptable conduct. This is not the first example of a lack of professionalism in that discussion from the steward in question, perhaps some internal discussion needs to take place about the importance of stewards being bound (at the least) by the Universal Code of Conduct. SashiRolls (talk) 10:34, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

@SashiRolls: Stewards are appointed on an annual basis, and responsible for their own actions to the community. Whilst stewards talk about things among themselves there is neither an hierarchy nor accountability from one steward to the others. There is no line to cross in the sense that you portray. Bringing your judgmentalism here is not really warranted.  — billinghurst sDrewth 11:18, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by:  — billinghurst sDrewth 14:09, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Requesting help on English Wikinews

English Wikinews is facing numerious IP vandalizing, disrupting and it seemed to be an attempted attack. Since it has been opt-out from small wiki, global sysops cannot do anything. Local sysops seemed to be inactive, I'm hereby asking for a global help from stewards. Lemonaka (talk) 12:02, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

@Lemonaka global abuse filters just went active, has that helped at all? Regarding enwikinews in general - there are currently at least somewhat active local bureaucrats that could work locally to promote more administrators. Additionally, you may want to start a local discussion about opting in to to the GS wikiset if this has become unmaintainable. If there appears to be an active attack going on, reporting live on #wikimedia-stewards is advisable. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:39, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

@Xaosflux Done, seemed attacks have been stopped by global filters or just stopped. Lemonaka (talk) 13:56, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Let's not make a mountain out of a molehill. This was just GRP placing one of his rants on one page, and reverting patrollers who reverted him (he uses a VPN or something, so he changes his IP with every edit; blocking them's pointless). We get massive spambot attacks from time to time, and don't always have an admin to deal with them. This is why we'd appreciate if y'all (patrollers) left it to community regulars to decide when there's an emergency that warrants a steward's intervention. We appreciate your work, but you don't have the experience with the situation on the project to determine that. Regarding GSes, Billinghurst brought that up last week here. Heavy Water (talk) 15:35, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Lemonaka (talk) 11:51, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Review of ability to edit local special:AbuseFilters with new global application

Hi to all. With the success of Requests for comment/Make global abuse filters opt-out and now its implementation, I think that it is time to review the access to local abuse filters, and the global abuse filters, or at least the scope. There will need to be a team of competent people able to play in the space of abusefilter-modify-global, especially as we transition to large wikis getting hits on filters that are less designed for large wikis, and definitely not been customised. In fact some filters were written knowing that the large wikis were not within scope.

I think that it is time to look to create a local group Global abuse filter-editors with two of the three rights that local administrators have to create those filters (per mw:Extension:AbuseFilter). No need for restricted rights as we don't apply restrictive actions on global filters.

[We could even consider that we can remove the global components from meta admins by default and move to this approach to allow the community that fuller control, though that would be a solution in search of non-existing problem, just the potential.]

IMHO these global abuse filters were given to stewards, and these rights have moved (dribbled) further and further in drip feeding rights, and independently the use. There needs to now be the clarity on where these rights and the filter management belongs.

data

special:listgrouprights

• local admins
  • Create or modify abuse filters (abusefilter-modify)
  • Create or modify global abuse filters (abusefilter-modify-global)
  • Modify abuse filters with restricted actions (abusefilter-modify-restricted)
• stewards
  • Create or modify global abuse filters (abusefilter-modify-global)

I feel that we need to put these more broadly before the community, and they need to be able to be managed independently of metawiki administration. Before I more firmly put this out into the wild, I would appreciate any thoughts and conversations that you can make public about the PoV of stewards.  — billinghurst sDrewth 03:27, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

there is Meta:Requests for comment/Create local meta abuse filter helper and abuse filter manager role --Johannnes89 (talk) 06:48, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Are the existing global groups "abuse filter helper" and "abuse filter maintainer" not sufficient for this task? --MF-W 10:39, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Think the core question here is really: should metawiki admins have global filter access revoked? Is there an identified problem with that today? — xaosflux ^Talk 10:44, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

This seems to repropose Meta:Requests for comment/Create local meta abuse filter helper and abuse filter manager role, which is under discussion (and as of now, unlikely to pass). I don't really see a problem that could be resolved by introducing a new group. I can't imagine a case when I would trust someone to edit the global filters, but at the same time not edit the Spam blacklist (and thus oppose Meta local adminship) or edit the local filters to help resolve issues there (and thus oppose granting AFM).

Creating local filter maintaining group could make sense if we want to stop treating Meta admins as a sui generis global role (despite having only Meta rights, Meta admins can affect all Wikimedia projects [and third party installations] by editing the blacklists that are centralized on Meta). However, this setup doesn't seem to be problematic (please let me know if I missed something) and even if it was, creating only the filter maintainers group wouldn't solve it. Martin Urbanec (talk) 10:49, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

The major issue with the status quo is that any person who solely wants to work on global abuse filters has to then be an administrator and then meet the meta admin criteria and all it entails with editing. We are trying to fit square pegs into round holes by applying 15+ year approach to today's wikis and functionality.  — billinghurst sDrewth 13:50, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

c.f. overlap at Meta_talk:Administrators/Removal_(inactivity)#Square_pegs_and_round_holes;_presenting_something_sustainable_for_the_future. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:08, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Seeking clarity on global locks

If a user is globally locked and also locally indefinitely blocked on multiple projects, is it okay for him to make another account and just edit from that one? And if he does that several dozen or hundred times and those accounts get globally locked on sight, is it okay for him to keep on making more accounts? Lastly, if a user has several dozen or hundreds of globally-locked accounts (no global bans), several dozen or hundred local indefinite blocks, and has committed cross-wiki vandalism for a couple of decades, is it okay for admins at a local WMF wiki to let that person use an indefinite amount of accounts at just that wiki (i.e. said person has had all of these global locks for decades but everyone at, e.g. the Italian Wikibooks thinks he's an okay guy and lets him edit using a few dozen accounts there)? I see that global lock is not a policy, but global ban is, so I'm making sure that I have clarity on whether or not local admins of individual WMF projects are allowed to let globally locked users just create new accounts on those individual wikis and do whatever. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:36, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I am also an administrator at the English Wiktionary.

This is a question that has been posted by a lone admin who has - after a period of around 15 years - unilaterally decided to start militantly enforcing a block against a user who (although blocked) is widely tolerated for block evasion due to the length of time since the original offence (in 2006), and the fact that blocking has proven to be effectively impossible (they've used 700+ known accounts). For the most part, they're a productive member of the community, don't try to hide themselves when using sockpuppets, and are generally not seen as a problem. As such, there is generally a consensus against Koavf's approach here, as can be evidenced in this thread here. This is a particularly unique situation, and the admin above has very clearly become personally invested, as they have behaved in a rude and argumentative manner towards several other admins who have asked them not to do this.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that the question above is an attempt to manufacture false consensus over what is a local matter. This is after the admin falsely claimed that the user was globally banned (which they are not), and so seems to be an attempt to salvage the justification they were using.

I would urge stewards to allow the English Wiktionary to deal with this via consensus instead, instead of indulging in this attempt to manipulate the situation. Theknightwho (talk) 06:49, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

You are wrong. The question is an attempt to clarify global policy and its relationship with local action. Please do not post your inaccurate speculation here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:50, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

The thread that Knight refers to can be found here. CitationsFreak (talk) 06:52, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

(non steward comment) @Koavf note: You are talking about global locks not global blocks (which are only applied to IPs).

The blocking policies of most projects (different to banning policies which don't allow a person to edit the project ever again) allow people to create a new account after some months if they don't show blockable behaviour again.

Of course after repeated offences with multiple sockpuppets a project might decide to block any further accounts on sight, but that's up for your local community to decide. Johannnes89 (talk) 07:04, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Johannes. For those reading, he is a non-steward as he pointed out, but a global sysop. Your perspective is appreciated. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:22, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I will note: as another active Wiktionary editor, though WF’s original offense was in 2006, there have been multiple occasions of blockable behavior since then, in en.wikt & other sites, as the global lock history can also show. Koavf is also not the first admin I’ve seen do this. AG202 (talk) 07:25, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Slight correction: Their original offense was on 17 September 2005, when they were blocked for deleting the Main Page and going on a vandalizing rampage. Otherwise I agree with you. Megathonic (talk) 20:15, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Koavf might not be the first, but of the 121 blocks imposed since May 2023, Koavf imposed 116 of them. It is an unprecedented uptick, and has made the situation a lot more difficult to manage and keep track of. For comparison, 2022 saw 6 blocks in total and 2021 saw 18. Theknightwho (talk) 12:55, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

What is harder to manage now? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:33, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Let me try and put this to bed right out of the gate. If a users main/1st account is still locked, they are still subject to being locked until that original account has their lock appealed. It is not fair to other communities for a project to "allow" a new account, which then continues to be disruptive under that username for other wikis. I will lock anyone who remains evading. The process is that they need to appeal to the stewards.

That being said, our appeals process is hell right now, I will admit. Mostly because unsavory characters continue to be such and their appeals are meant to be their own disruption. While I am personally working on said administrative process (in a pile of every other steward mess), it's going to take time to clear the standing ~200-300 account appeals that we do have. But for now it is our process until more stewards wade in to the appeals process regularly or we elect more willing to deal with it. -- Amanda (she/her) 08:01, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you, but there’s also nothing to suggest this user is disruptive outside of English Wiktionary, and they’re not even disruptive there to any great degree (i.e. not permablock-worthy). All the really bad stuff dates back to 2006-7, and given the half-million collective edits since then, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what the guy is like. Theknightwho (talk) 08:30, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Why was the account globally locked, anyway? I've never seen WF do any significant edits outside of en.wikt (apart from the one time on en.WP when they became a sysop and deleted the main page, but that was almost 20 years ago, certainly not a reason to apply a global lock in 2019), so it's entirely possible that there has been a case of mistaken identity in which some other LTAs have been confused with Wonderfool and conflated into one. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 13:53, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Surjection makes a very good point, so I did some digging:

• The account in question was globally locked by Ruslik0 in 2019 despite (a) not having edited on English Wiktionary since 2010, and (b) having no (zero) contributions on any other wiki. It's not clear to me why a global lock was suddenly warranted at this time.
• The other accounts locked by Ruslik0 in that sweep include perhaps 4 known sockpuppets of this user, all of which were very old and long inactive, as well as a nest of socks belonging to specific English Wikipedia LTAs (clearly not Wonderfool) that had been recently created and were active in abuse on that wiki. This leads me to conclude that the global lock may have been issued in error by a busy steward who was rapidly (and perhaps carelessly) locking many accounts without looking into the details of each one.
• It's true that the global lock "policy" is very loose, but it does seem like global locks are intended in cases where cross-wiki activity is occurring, which is not the case here.
• This user has hundreds if not thousands of known accounts, so if Ruslik0 really did intend to globally lock the user, it would have been logical to lock them all. The fact that only a tiny handful were locked again suggests the locking was done in error.
• Ruslik0 is now retired, so even if he could remember what he was doing in 21 March 2019 (which is highly unlikely), we cannot ask him how he chose which accounts to lock on that day.

Based on this I would suggest that very little weight should be placed on this global lock. This, that and the other (talk) 00:58, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm confused by what you mean by cross-wiki activity, since, as you point out, Wonderfool has hundreds of accounts and has definitely edited across multiple projects using those. Do you only mean the Wonderfool account? If so, why? As pointed out in the many lock requests involving him, many of those accounts have caused cross-wiki problems, his main account is sometimes called "Dangerhaus" or "Robdurbar" (which only vandalized en.wp), and no more justification that "it's Wonderfool" was needed for dozens of these locks. If someone can just vandalize en.wikt with "Wonderfool" and then is allowed to vandalize en.wp with "Robdurbar", that's a very confusing approach. In fact, any notion that "you were bad under [Name X], but if you just keep on making endless accounts under other names, go for it (until you start vandalizing under other names)" just makes no sense to me. "Robdurbar" and "Wonderfool" are globally locked for good reason and this is all aside from the fact that Wonderfool's shenanigans are mostly aimed at increasing his edit count and deliberately being a scofflaw more than being actually helpful and when he is helpful (only under some accounts, some are purely disruptive), he has mediocre edits anyway. There's no incentive to allow us to downplay the one global lock of "Wonderfool" and ignore all of the other global locks and all of the other cross-wiki abuse and pretend like these shenanigans aren't obviously against the rules in the first place. Is there any WMF wiki that doesn't have a rule opposing the use of sockpuppets for block/ban evasion? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:53, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Those requests seem to completely support my view that these are a case of mistaken identity where WF has been unknowingly conflated with at least one other unrelated LTA (Arturo Gustavo). — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 08:50, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

It seems User:LightandDark2000 is the user responsible for this identification, which was done in Steward requests/Global/2019-03#Global_lock_for_LTA_Robdurbar_socks basically on the basis of "I think it's them". It most definitely isn't - I can tell you that with certainty. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 09:00, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

It would be good to get proper clarity on this, given that Koavf’s actions strongly suggest that he fully intends to use this thread as justification to continue as before while ignoring the rest of the local admin team (as fellow admins Surjection and This, that and the other can attest). If it transpires that the global lock was imposed as a mistake, it would nip the issue in the bud. Theknightwho (talk) 12:27, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

To be clear, yes, I continue to plan to block sockpuppets locally, per en:wikt:Wiktionary:Blocking policy: "Blatant or confirmed sockpuppets created for the purpose of vandalism or block evasion." —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:53, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Continuing to do something after no less than 5 other admins have asked you to stop is unacceptable, particularly when you are very clearly going out of your way to subvert local consensus. To repeat what you have been told many times: policy is formed by consensus, and does not override it. This is not the thread for that conversation, though. Theknightwho (talk) 14:15, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

It is not the case that five admins told me to stop. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:26, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

It could be that some of them are a different long-term abuser, it could be that some of them are him. I'm just stating the fact that "this is Wonderfool" is in fact the rationale that is used to globally lock dozens of these accounts by a steward. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:51, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't matter that it is the rationale if it is clearly mistaken, since that means the global lock is null and void for being mistaken in the first place. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:18, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

That may well be the case: I'm not interpreting what happened, I'm reporting what happened. See also below with Billinghurst. This is not a normative claim, but a descriptive one. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:27, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Amanda. So speaking as a steward, just to be clear: if a user is globally locked, it is not okay for him to make another account and just edit from that one or keep on making more accounts after his other accounts are globally locked and it is not okay for admins at a local WMF wiki to let that person use an indefinite amount of accounts at just that wiki. This is how I'm reading your response and just want to make sure that I am not misconstruing it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:35, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I'd like some clarity on Amanda's point, because if it were true it would make global locks indistinguishable from global bans, wouldn't it? Theknightwho (talk) 17:50, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Comment The official process for ridding a user from WMF is via a global ban, and that is the process to be used if you want something with certainty. While stewards can, and do, use the locking mechanism to block users of standing in some community, whilst being problematic in others is itself a somewhat controversial practice, and all the way back to when Jimbo did it circa 2010 to <forgotten name, something like user:the...>, and that lock was repealed. The lock is a single person's action, is lacking a clear due process, can be problematic, especially in the highly litigious and combative Wikipedias. For any certainty and with due process, the global ban process should be used and be the only definitive means.  — billinghurst sDrewth 15:00, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree that it's unfortunately not clear and locking is still a guideline here, not a policy. Since there is some ambiguity, I wanted to get at least one steward to make a definitive statement about if local wikis have the power to allow globally locked users to make multiple accounts to edit there. It seems like that answer is no. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:37, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Sadly, we aren't going to be able to provide clarity to that level. We don't have a policy basis to say no, but the unwritten SOP is no. Technically, the community could make that a sticking point in my next confirmation if they wanted to, so some level of accountability there. The only way in policy is to globally ban someone.

To answer some earlier questions all in one post, I don't claim to have looked into this specific user, and frankly won't until they appeal themselves. If it as you say it is and that's the either decision of the steward handling the appeal, or the consensus of stewards, great, I'm fine with whatever result. The thing is that is still a process that has to occur, otherwise, stewards have the operating authority to lock it. The only exception to the third-party appeal is if you start a global RfC on the matter to force our hand to unban, but I think that's a waste of community resources when we haven't even considered it first.

As far as global bans vs global locks and effective differences, 1) the above me mentioning policy backing & Billinghurst's comment 2) There is more effect re. events, etc with Global bans than with locks. 3) Global bans are more strictly/speedily enforced than global locks. So not much, still something to distinguish. -- Amanda (she/her) 04:08, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

And I will add to that.

Take out the pejoratives of sockpuppet, meatpuppet, etc. It doesn't help the discussion, solely think alternate accounts. Many wikis allow multiple accounts to edit for the same person where they edit in good faith, and non-problematically, there is no policy against it at WMF, and those rules about single accounts are typically WPs, and they apply a one-to-one relationship of accounts to people.

Justin, so please rethink this => global locks are account-based, not person-based. There is no policy basis for dealing with locks out through the WMF-universe, they are just accounts. So there is no policy for locking alternate accounts just because they are alternate accounts, they are typically done as consequence of dealing with a primary locked account, and based on the shit one is cleaning up around it. We don't set policy on accounts. Lots happens around global locks for activity and managing LTAs, and it is typically activity-related.

Global bans are person-based. Dealing with bans and managing people is way better, as it allows the approach of dealing instantly with however they turn up, be it whichever account, or whichever IP address. This is one person to many accounts, and once a person is declared banned, then any sight of them leads to a block.  — billinghurst sDrewth 05:21, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

The use of "sockpuppet" is for precisely that reason, tho. Alternate accounts are fine for reasons like "I'm using a public computer" or "I'm speaking for the WMF", but those are justified and declared. Sockpuppets are used for things like, "I'm blocked, but want to edit anyway and can't be bothered to follow the rules". "global locks are account-based, not person-based" and yet, dozens of global locks were done because "this person is Wonderfool": so they are in fact, person-based. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:25, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Problematic accounts get dealt with as problematic accounts, typically LOCKED, irrespective of whether they are sock, meat or mascarading as marionettes. Don't hang on that definition for trying to progress your issue. They are the accounts, not the people. Policy is focused on people.  — billinghurst sDrewth 05:29, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

What policy? Also, as I pointed out, there are plenty of accounts that did not have problematic behavior other than "This is Wonderfool". —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:33, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Is it really all global locks, or is it this one globally locked person? CitationsFreak (talk) 05:51, 20 July 2023 (UTC)