User:Incnis Mrsi/Global locks

Recommendation to improve the global (un)lock process. The primary goal is to avoid debacles like one with Solomon203, but also to improve accountability which is generally poor as of May, 2018.

Accountability of stewards

The policy lists several overlapping reasons to lock an account. In practice, it is more important to specify why are we sure that the acc may not be used, rather than what exactly wrong the account did. Roughly, there are three common scenarios.

Pure, obvious disruption

No matter which namely: vandalism, spamming, threats, or blatant edit warring in several wikis. This may include offensive usernames unless classified below. A random experienced Wikimedian can easily see that the account does not rightfully belong to the Wikimedia system.

Instructions: It is not very important how exactly is the global lock worded in this scenario, but respective canned rationales may not be misused.

Puppets, including ban evasion

Cross-wiki sock puppetry is lockable, but puppets are not expected to look clearly disruptive. Identification of puppets may be done by check-users, sysops, and other experienced users. Stewards may (although are not expected to) verify identification with technical data available to them.

Instructions: Sock puppets of globally banned persons should be locked first.
The locking steward has not necessarily to refer to the puppeteer by name if the request to lock an account is written on Meta-wiki. But if the steward identified the abuser by his/her own devices, then s/he must name a specific abuser—on the request page or in the reason itself—and bears full responsibility for consequences in such a case.
If the account is locked because it is a sock, then the steward may not use canned rationales like “vandalism-only account”.

De facto global ban

Accounts of a user banned according to established process must be locked. But there are cases (other than the two scenarios above) where stewards lock an account for serious abuse—even that has positive contributions—and prevent such person from further editing. It is an established practice, but it is not grounded in the policy. Such incidents are relatively rare, may be controversial, and are usually discussed before implementation, and sometimes afterwards.

Instructions: The locking steward must provide a link to respective request and/or discussion. The use of canned rationales in this scenario is unacceptable, amounts to a production waste and may not be tolerated.

Requests at Steward requests/Global

Consequently, appropriate guidelines should be set up for the global requests page.

Headings

Headings should be clearly worded using English for anything except usernames which are (almost) arbitrary strings. Ambiguities like “lock/unlock” amount to a production waste. If all accounts to be locked are identified as sock puppets, then it should be worded clearly in the heading.

Bundling

Accounts presumedly belonging to the same person may be bundled. If the person owning account(s) is formally globally banned, then the link to the respective user: page (preferably on Meta-wiki) must be provided. The same for lesser long-time abusers having their master account globally locked. For well-known de facto banned LTA it is sufficient to specify a conventional monicker. The heading for a multiple-accounts request should specify to which abuser do they pertain.

If the request is about to lock a principal account (that is, to establish a new de facto ban), then substantiation for it should be provided in the body of request. Preferably to include links to sockpuppet investigation or other relevant discussions in local sites.

Accounts sharing a common abusive behaviour (spambot, WP0 abuse) may be bundled too. Nature of the abuse should be clearly indicated in the heading.

Responsibility for lock requests

A user supplying identification pointers is responsible for their veracity. Hence, sock puppetry allegations by users of low credentials should be rejected by a steward (unless can be easily checked). Please, don’t supply random identification guesses.

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Discussions

(under construction)

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Simplified lock procedure

Mistakes and poor accountability are caused by a huge workload, induced by industrial-scale sock puppeteers and serial vandals. Some solutions should be considered to process the most obviously abusive accounts easier. One of such solution is to open restricted global locks to a broader audience: global renamers, sysops (for single-wiki activity accounts), and possibly further; henceforth denoted other admins. Only accounts satisfying certain conditions may be locked by an other admin.

Positive conditions

Age. Only a new account may be locked via the simplified procedure. An account making its first action earlier than 12 hours ago pertains to the stewards’ domain exclusively.
Blocks. An account must be blocked somewhere before using the simplified procedure. Not important in the case of a sysop vs single-wiki activity account.

Negative conditions

An account whose edit was patrolled in any wiki where it is not blocked should be ineligible for a simplified procedure.