Talk:Office actions/Community consultation on partial and temporary office actions/draft/Archive 1

First comments edit

Thank you for this draft. In general, please consider replacing it with complete package that includes 1) a model code of conduct that is subject to adoption by each project, 2) deferring to each community for its own enforcement mechanism, 3) more thoughtful due process rights for people who are investigated by T&S, and 4) clearly specified appeal rights rather than "final and non-appealable". Many thanks for your consideration. Hlevy2 (talk) 14:45, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

I've taken the liberty to split this into its own header. On enWikipedia we have time limits for appeals so that we don't have people endlessly pestering; generally no more than one appeal per year and no earlier than one year after the sanction kicked in. Perhaps we can have something like that here. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:19, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
I believe that the mandate for this consultation is to discuss the relationship between T&S and the English Wikipedia. That's where the Fram incident that triggered all of this happened. T&S should wait until we are done here, then decide whether to consult with the German Wikipedia etc, hopefully in their native language. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:17, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Wikimania starts today, so I want to give people a chance to get back from that and catch up before I respond. Given the WMF's preference for simple and straightforward text, some of you will be happy to know that most of the words that come to mind are just four letters long. Dank (talk) 19:49, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Unwatching. Today's entry at w:WP:FRAMSUM is encouraging. Dank (talk) 18:24, 19 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Grammar issues, etc edit

  • In point #2, it says "adaptions". That's not (for the most part) a word. Perhaps adaptation and adoption got mixed up? In any case, I think what you want is "changes". Deacon Vorbis (talk) 14:49, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
    Not sure what you mean by "That's not (for the most part) a word". It's a legitimate synonym for adaptation. –Ammarpad (talk) 14:57, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
    No, it's not legitimate. It's just an alternate form of the word, and even Wiktionary's entry had to go back to back to a 1911 dictionary, and even back then, they called it rare. That's not a word that should be used. Moreover, even "adaptation" shouldn't be used here – it carries all sorts of inappropriate connotations. It's bureaucrat-speak for "change", which is all that's apparently meant here. Deacon Vorbis (talk) 15:18, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
    You claim it's not legitimate and then agreed it's 'an alternate form of the word'. That makes no sense. Last thing I will say is DO NOT defend on Wiktionary to get meaning of words. If I knew it's where you got this whole notion from the start, I'd not have commented. –Ammarpad (talk) 15:27, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
    I'm saying it's not "legitimate" because there's no good reason to ever use it, kind of like "irregardless". Dictionaries tend to be descriptive and not prescriptive, but we can and should be prescriptive when it's called for. The point about referring to Wiktionary was to find that even their source was calling it rare a century ago. Deacon Vorbis (talk) 15:37, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

"final and non-negotiable" edit

If the Fram fiasco on the English Wikipedia taught us anything, it's that "final and non-negotiable" bans from T&S are rejected by the community. Any "consultation" should take that into account. Jonathunder (talk) 18:13, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

That caught my eye too. Those three words imply that T&S never errs in its bans. If those words are kept, I'd recommend every person in the chain of command who approves one of these to take the text of the action to a quiet room, shut the door, turn off the phone, & read it carefully word by word including the punctuation marks while considering every possible outcome of this action.
Or the language could be changed to something less inflexible, such as "not usually altered". That wording allows some space to reverse an action that is found to be excessive or just plain wrong, while maintaining the seriousness an office action is intended to have. -- Llywrch (talk) 18:29, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Hi folks, let me stress again that this is a draft of a future consultation. That means we're not, currently, taking input into what the existing policy says or what the future policy will say, which is what you seem to be talking about. This draft is here so we can talk about what questions the consultation, when it launches, should be asking (and how it should be formatted, etc). So "the paragraphs as you have them laid out now makes them difficult to read" or "you really need to add a question asking people XYZ" are the kind of input that's going to be useful here. If you use this opportunity to instead share your thoughts on the policy itself, they're kind of going to go nowhere, because we're not recording that type of feedback at this point, because the consultation isn't open - or even in a format that necessarily asks the right questions (that's what we need your input for during this draft phase!). Will we try to remember in a month, when we're collating feedback on the actual consultation, "hey, someone said something on this other page last month that might be relevant"? Yes, sure. But generally if you want to have input into a consultation topic, you comment in the consultation, because that's where the people reading the consultation are sure to be looking. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Well in that spirit, I'd appreciate links to the pages where the relevant policy is spelled out. I'm having trouble conceiving of a situation where I'd want T&S to perform a temporary ban as opposed to a permanent, site-wide one, or having the local governance mechanism handle the situation. (No, I'm not arguing whether or not T&S should ban someone, just asking for links to relevant information so when it comes time to comment on the content of the draft I can do so in an informed manner.) -- Llywrch (talk) 19:51, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Welp that's embarrassing, we composed a consultation and forgot to, uh, link to the actual policy. Good catch, Llwyrch. I've added links now. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 21:54, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
"We're not, currently, taking input into what the existing policy says or what the future policy will say" Good luck with that. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:17, 16 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Link edit

The wikilink for "the English Wikipedia's community" goes to a page stating "Wikipedia does not have a project page with this exact name." EddieHugh (talk) 19:06, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Did they mean to link this? Jonathunder (talk) 21:41, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Yep, that was what we meant. Copying and pasting page titles: a dangerous business that should only be attempted by experts. Fixed, and thank you for catching it! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 21:56, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Meta is not the correct venue for this consultation. edit

Meta does not seem to the correct venue for this consultation. The consultation consists of the trust and safety office asking the communities to delegate authority to utilize two proposed tools. To be legitimate, such a delegation would have to take place via each community's process for making such decisions. Those take place on the individual wikis, and not on meta - any result produced here would need to be ratified elsewhere, or (as has been seen already) risk being rejected as invalid.

While trying to comply with each project's decision making process might be more difficult, that's basically what the WMF is proposing with partial bans. If the WMF is incapable of determining if their own behavior complies with the rules set out by various projects in different languages, then how will the Foundation determine if the behavior of users complies with those same guidelines? 98.113.245.219

I'd like to echo this - If you want real community buyin, you need to take this to the individual projects and let them discuss it in the manner they choose. For English Wikipedia, this means a RfC at our Village Pump, not a community consultation on Meta. If you want to implement this on de.wiki, then bring it there, and let them decide on a consensus there. The best you can get out of a discussion on Meta is an opt-in proposal. Maybe. Tazerdadog (talk) 04:40, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
However, Meta is the place where all Wikimedia-wide matters are handled (e.g Steward elections) and we cannot have the same discussion occur on over a hundred different projects anyway. I did come to this page thanks to a link the WMF put on a local project page, so it seems like it was adequately publicized. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:46, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Why would a ban from a single project be considered a Wikimedia-wide issue? The issue is not one of the publicity - it's determining when consensus has been achieved. For something like an election, determining consensus is possible - but that's a special case, since there's voting. In general, meta is suitable for announcements and discussions like this one, but it's not clear that consensus here corresponds to consensus on other projects. It sure looks like it does not. 98.113.245.219 13:57, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Because this page isn't about a ban on one project, it's about the policy that allowed that ban to happen and also led to one other controversial ban on dewikipedia, another on Chinese projects and could lead to more controversial bans on other projects down the road. Also, since it's a global policy the global project is the correct place to have the consensus finding process (c.f also the Global policies). Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:14, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
  • Jo-Jo, you are not addressing a more fundamental question: should these policies be global? That question is what lies behind all the controversy here. You see, a lot of people don’t WANT a global policy. They want to continue with their established project-by-project policies. That disagreement needs to be resolved before anything else. You need to go to each project and explain WHY the Foundation thinks a global policy is needed, and get approval for it. The Foundation put the cart before the horse by creating a global policy that (at least some of) the projects don’t want. Blueboar (talk) 12:17, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
    IMO, "should these policies be global?" is a different question from "should this be discussed here?"; I only commented on the latter point. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:49, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
    By carefully controlling what questions get asked and rejecting the questions that people want to ask, you offer us en:Hobson's choice. Might I suggest you simply save time and effort by simply writing the question and the answers with no participation by the community? The result (further protests) will be the same. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:58, 16 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
  • I agree this is the wrong place to hold this discussion. Whatever is agreed here is distinct from the projects themselves. If anything is enacted on, for example, en.wikipedia, based on decisions here that the community don't like, the community will object because they will, quite rightly, feel they have not been properly consulted. Do what you will, but without proper buy in from the local communities, any unpopular enforcement may face push back. SilkTork (talk) 23:44, 26 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

So if it’s questions that are being asked for: edit

Should the WMF hire a Trust and Safety team comprised of unaffiliated professionals in their respective fields or continue to promote editors to this position?

I’m sure this can be worded better but the gist is that so much about the FRAMBAN looks awful from a personal COI perspective and any functional company should strive to avoid that. Everything on WP is recorded, and the past interactions with many of the involved parties, including WMF accounts, are there for all to see. I’m not making a judgement on the propriety of the action against Fram, that’s beside the point. I’m saying, that the WMF should be using its more than adequate resources to hire outsiders to deal with what T&S should be dealing with. If anyone can put that in the form of a better question, please do. Capeo (talk) 00:45, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

"This draft is here so we can talk about what questions the consultation, when it launches, should be asking (and how it should be formatted, etc)" edit

Let's start with the formatting.

Again and again I have seen (and not just on Wikipedia) alleged discussions in the form of questions where the questions are loaded, self serving, or contain unwarranted assumptions. It doesn't even have to be done on purpose; the person writing up the questions just naturally gravitates towards asking questions about what they want to talk about. In the most toxic cases, they then delete any "off topic" comments that don't fit the straitjacket they created.

If I understand correctly, you at T&S were told to have this consultation by the board after you did something which resulted in multiple administrators and editors resigning. You need to format this so that those concerns are addressed.

So my first formatting suggestion is dump the question and answer format, and structure the discussion the way most policy discussions on the English Wikipedia are structured. This is the format we are used to, and T&S should adapt to the community's preferred format for discussing things, not the other way around.

My second formatting suggestion is have the discussion in a newly created sub page of en:Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), not on meta. You really want to work with us so that we can resolve our differences through discussion instead of through mass resignations and articles about us fighting each other in the popular press. To do that, have the discussion where we are comfortable, not where you are comfortable.

My final formatting suggestion is Choose some topics yourself, but let the Wikipedia Community choose other topics on the fly." On the Village pump subpage, create a section for issues that T&S can address and participate in a back-and-forth discussion there.

If somebody posts a comment like "Hey! what about this page where a working group suggested that we allow material that is released under a CC NC (No commercial works) license?", just move it to another section with a comment like "this is not something T&S can address, but working group X has been invited to comment".

I also have some suggestions about "what questions the consultation, when it launches, should be asking", but first I want to see what kind of response I get to my formatting suggestions. To be frank, the usual response to an invitation to have an open discussion such as this one is [A] silence by everyone at the WMF, and [B] "answers" from members of the Wikipedia community who have the ability to criticize a question but lack the ability to make any actual changes at the WMF. I am hoping that this time it will be different. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:06, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Commenting on just one point, but this is about a Wikimedia-wide policy so it's definitively not appropriate for it to take place on a page on enwiki. There are people with stakes on other projects as well. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:48, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Guy Macon: As Jo-Jo Eumerus points out, this is a global policy, so we can't really hold the consultation on enwiki, as it would disenfranchise people from all other projects. And this draft/consultation is not intended to be a general discussion space for T&S topics, so while your second and third points present a good idea - and one we've been considering - for a general discussion space, this space is not that space. For your first point, could you be more specific about what format you'd like to see instead? In my experience, many policy discussions start with questions like "Should we change policy X to include the sentence "lorem ipsum blah blah'?" or "Does the policy as it is written mean that XYZ?" Are you envisioning a sort of free-form discussion where we just say "Partial/temporary office actions...give us your thoughts...go!"? If so, I would say the risk there is that we don't get the actual making-a-decision questions answered in that format - if what people discuss at the "go!" signal is "what the heck is a partial/temporary ban?", for example, that doesn't give us a "the community said yes, use them" or a "the community said no, definitely don't use them" to work off of the next time we need to make a decision about using a partial/temporary ban in general. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 11:08, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Kbrown (WMF): Why would holding the discussion on enwiki disenfranchise the members of other communities? The WMF would also need to to hold the discussion on those other communities, under the rules of those communities, for it to be a consultation with those communities. While that might lead to multiple discussions, the WMF is proposing that it be delegated additional enforcement powers by those communities - and hence the multiple discussions are in proportion to the additional responsibilities that the WMF wishes to assume. The problem with a consultation on meta is that the techniques for determining that a consultation is over and what the result is don't seem to function here, and hence it's very liable to produce results that are not accepted by the communities. 98.113.245.219 13:44, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
While holding 200+ individual consultations would be great in a perfect world, it's simply not feasible in reality. T&S lacks the staffing (and the language skills) to run localized consultations in hundreds of languages on hundreds of projects. We'd love it if we did have the capability to engage directly with each project simultaneously in its own language, but we just don't. So, since this is anyway a global policy that is expected to apply globally, we're holding the consultation here, where global policies are discussed and determined. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 14:47, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
I get it. People on other wikis are able to access an English-language discussion on meta but are not able to access the exact same English-language discussion on enwiki because reasons. Thanks for clearing that up for me. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:05, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Kbrown (WMF): T&S has already undertaken partial bans on wikis, which means that that they believe that they have the resources to engage with those wikis in a non-trivial manner. Given that this consultation has been mandated by the board and director, those resources should be applied to this consultation. This is happening because the WMF decided a process it developed was mature enough, and it was incorrect. Does it make sense to plan a consultation that will lead to a similar outcome? 98.113.245.219 15:25, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Kbrown (WMF): I don't think anyone is realistically advocating 200+ consultations here. That said, you DO need to hold individual ones with the major parties affected. At minimum this is the English, German, and Chinese wikipedias. You can probably get away with fewer than 10 consultations, covering the rest of them with an opt-in discussion on Meta. Respectfully, if you cannot manage that level of engagement with these communities, you cannot engage sufficiently to handle the nuanced cases implied by partial or temporary bans. Tazerdadog (talk) 04:21, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
So I got an answer (no, we won't do that because reasons) to one of my suggestions and silence so far on everything else. The rest of my suggestions got zero response from anyone at the WMF. Now it may turn out that you are just slow to respond -- if so I will retract this and apologize, but I have received this same stonewalling/silence from multiple WMF employees on multiple occasions concerning multiple issues, so I am not holding my breath.

In particular I have not received any repose to my comments about questions that are loaded, self serving, or contain unwarranted assumptions, followed by deleting any "off topic" comments that don't fit the straitjacket T&S creates. This is important. We really need to discuss it.

So again I beg T&S to please, please, please, engage in an open dialog with the community on this page. Respond to questions. Push back against unfair criticisms. Admit you were wrong when the criticisms are valid. Have an extended, back-and-forth discussion, hopefully ending on something we can agree on.

I am really trying to work with you here. I am not your enemy. We are supposed to all be in this together for the good of the readers. Please don't make me have to report to the CEO and the board that I tried to have an open discussion with you but you refused. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:48, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

I'm going to push back gently on the notion that I (or my team) am/are stonewalling or giving you "silence" here. I in fact did engage and am engaging with your points, and I would call what we're having here an open dialogue. If you feel I missed something (like your point about loaded questions), that's cool, it happens, let me know, but please don't characterize my engagement here as silence when I'm doing my absolute best to respond actively to users in this conversation as much as I can, and I in fact responded to all three of the main (judging by the bolding) points in your post.
Now, to address your point about loaded questions: I'm unclear on whether you're saying that the questions in this draft are "loaded, self serving, or contain unwarranted assumptions", or whether it's just a general criticism of ways you think the WMF tend to communicate. We did our best to compose the questions in this draft in a neutral, open-ended way, and if you think we fell short of that mark I'm interested to hear it, but I'll need you to be more specific about which questions you think are problematic and how they're problematic. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 09:14, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Point well taken. I was wrong. I made the mental error of treating you, a person who is clearly engaging in dialog and doing a good job of it, as if you were the same as certain past WMF staffers in the past who ignored questions. That was wrong, and I apologize. Sorry about that. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:19, 17 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Should this be a global policy? edit

Tazerdadog seems to me to provide above a strong argument why this does not have to be a global policy, however Kbrown (WMF) seems to believe that the decision for the policy to be global is fete accompli. Of course, this determination should be made very early on in this process as to whether the policy is/should be global in its authority. I say "no" and that there are many more downsides than upsides to making this policy global, but I'd like to know what the benefits are of making it global? Nocturnalnow (talk) 02:18, 16 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Nocturnalnow I've just received a new message from language community of one half-dead wiki. Wikimedia is the common point for such "developing" projects, so making it more global seems to be quite perspective. That's why, if we have the only metawiki project for all languages, though we have unique local wikis, we should also have common rules for the whole metawiki-community. I sure there will be many discussions and some of wiki-members might disagree with WMF principles and agenda. It is their own right. But if the main goal of meta-wiki is coordination between language communities, we should at least translate the final decision to as many languages as possible and inform others. Maybe they got used that nobody consults with them. Inmotional (talk)

Inmotion, Please read Tazerdadog's suggestion here as I think that would take care of the example and concern you are raising. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:15, 16 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Community Engagement edit

Thanks for starting this draft, my usual question: what are the steps undertaken to engage the community? I didn't see there be any message of this consultation on village pumps of the projects I am active at? I know this is a draft for the main consultation, but some form of consultation will be better. Thanks. --Cohaf (talk) 09:12, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Hi Cohaf. We are in the process of sending out notifications to all projects; it's a little bit slow in happening because some of the staff involved in the messaging are doing double duty handling this while attending Wikimania in a professional capacity. But I promise the notifications will be coming! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 10:49, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Kbrown (WMF): Appreciate it. For message, I am happy to provide translations if needed. --Cohaf (talk) 14:10, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
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