Talk:Community health initiative/Editing restrictions

Please discuss which of the suggested tools on the content page would be most helpful in supporting editing restrictions! — Trevor Bolliger, WMF Product Manager 🗨 00:41, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Feedback

I see no one has given feedback yet. Probably the best way to get feedback on this would be to post a request on Administrator's Noticeboard.

I don't spend much time at Administrator's Noticeboard, but I think I can give some comments on a few points. Being able to block an individual from a specific page will be very helpful and very desired. We like to use the least restrictive means to solve a problem. Blocking one (or a few) individuals from one (or a few) pages will often be preferable to a full user-block or hindering other editors with page protection.

On the other hand, I believe there would be apathy or aversion towards category-blocking or other attempts to automate a topic ban. Topic bans can involve arbitrary terms, and any automated selection of pages to block would generally be a poor fit. People will actively dislike this option. We wouldn't want any impression that the technical-implementation reflected the boundaries of the community-imposed restriction. Topic bans are typically universal - they can be violated by writing about the topic on any page.

The Required Muting option seems generally counterproductive. Let's assume there's a conflict between users A and B. If A reverts B, then the revert itself is likely a problematical action. We would want B to be notified, so we could review and potentially sanction A for reverting B. Less significant, but similar, is if A is posting comments mentioning B. If there's an interaction ban or similar, A should not be posting comments about B. Again, the notification helps us review or sanction A. I'm having a hard time picturing real use cases for Required Muting. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think clear use cases should be identified before working on this one. Alsee (talk) 00:03, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, @Alsee:. We haven't announced this anywhere (short of it existing on meta and me linking from this discussion.) We try not to have too many discussions happening simultaneously, both so we can stay on top of them all (which is hard enough to do with a three-day week and unforseen illness, sorry for the delay!) and so we're not bombarding Wikipedians/Wikimedians with too many topics.

I think you're 100% correct about page bans vs. category bans. Category bans might work for communities other than ENWP with different editing restrictions, so it may be something of extremely low effort to build that is never used on ENWP.

As for 'Required Muting' — I also agree it's a weak proposition with little compelling rationale. I think a lot of this one will depend on how the Mute feature evolves in the future. We're hearing feedback both from parties who want Mute to be stronger (prevent more interactions) and those who want it to be weaker (prevent fewer interactions.) We're going to monitor the two first-version Mute lists before making any decisions about how it may evolve. Deciding to build 'Required Muting' would fall even after that. — Trevor Bolliger, WMF Product Manager 🗨 21:12, 5 September 2017 (UTC)