Kbrown (WMF)

Welcome to Meta!

Hello, Kbrown (WMF). Welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum if you need help with something (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing!

-- Meta-Wiki Welcome (talk) 15:38, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Foundation pages

It seems inconsistent with the practice of other WMF Community Advocacy employees that wmf:User:Kbrown_(WMF) is a dead page and there's no wiklink for you at wmf:Staff_and_contractors. NE Ent (talk) 15:55, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Hm, yeah, I'm not sure how WMF wiki slipped through the cracks back when I created my userpage everywhere else. I've populated that now. The Staff and Contractors template's content is curated by, and editing there is restricted to, HR staff - it looks like ALantz (WMF) would be the person to add a link for me there (once everyone is back from the holiday weekend, at least!). Thanks for the heads-up about this, NE Ent. Rather embarrassing to have my most "official" userpage be the one I forgot to create! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 02:26, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Banner on NL wikipedia

Hi Kbrown,

On the NL wikipedia a banner is appearing with a sentence no Dutchman or woman wil understand. Apperently it came from CNBanner:Strategy2016_A_Desktop-Strategy2016Text2/nl. The first version appears to be made by you. User:Natuur12 found the location of the text and changed it in a version one could understand. However, the old version still appears on NL wikipedia. Is there some update required I am not aware of? Could you please help? Thank you very much!

In addition, if you need any translations in Dutch in the future for a similar short banner text you might contact me on my nl user page. I will be very happy to assist. Ellywa (talk) 09:17, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

@Ellywa: Thank you for letting me know about this (and for offering to help in the future...I will remember that and almost certainly be calling on you again!)! I have changed the state of the new translation (I think) to "published", which I hope will fix this. Please let me know if that hasn't fixed the issue for you (you might need to purge your cache to see it), and I will call in help from someone more experienced with the translation workflow, since I am still learning it as I go. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 14:45, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Language redirection

Hi! "Special:MyLanguage" has already provided redirection to translation in user language (if these pages is exists). Your edit is redundant, please revert it. And this also.--Kaganer (talk) 08:49, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Hmm... I'm now saw this topic. This should be feature request, IMHO.--Kaganer (talk) 09:43, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Re:Thank you for your translation help!

Thank you for your thanks! :) --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 19:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you!

I've just received your translation star and I'm happy to know that my contributions help people. See you, --Gato Preto (talk) 16:57, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Funny!

right after me. I cannot continue the survey anymore, never occured to me before.

It is disapponting, but in a funny way :D Not sure if I was lucky to say something or unlucky.--Alexmar983 (talk) 23:39, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

@Alexmar983: Oh dear, I assure you that wasn't on purpose! I don't want to cut anyone off mid-thought, so please go ahead and finish adding your opinions if you want; we probably won't be gathering the final information from the pages for a few more hours. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Sure I can? Thanks a lot!quite sure it wasn't, and if it were, it's just the rule--Alexmar983 (talk) 23:50, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

A point of view about election of stewards

Hi Kbrown,

I would just like to point a very abnormal point about the rights to be eligible for selecting stewards here after so i checked up conditions and found that we need to have 600 editions to be accepted !!!

I wounder how many people would do it on perpers to vandalize useful corect articles or add only one full stop or apostroph to exceed these suposed 600 editions you really think how it can be disapointing to compage 600 rubish editions to one complete article or one entire publication what about if the conditions will be about the kilobytes added or the number of illustrations uploaded ?

Cheers --Rami75013 (talk) 04:49, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rami75013. The current Steward election standards were chosen by the community, modeled after the criteria that were used at the time to elect members of the WMF Board of Trustees. So as best I can tell, if you want to change those requirements for Stewardship, you would need to organize a consensus to do so within the community (probably with a Request for Comment on Talk:Stewards or Talk:Stewards/Elections). Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 17:58, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Template:2016 Strategy sidebar translation issue

Hello !

There is a problem in translation markups in Template:2016 Strategy sidebar page. Indeed, the messages 21 and 22 do not include end "]]". So when we try to translate them, the tools indicates that two "]" are needed so it considers the translation as obsolete (so it displays English text instead). Can you resolve that, please ? --Pols12 (talk) 10:11, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Pols12, fixed. --Kaganer (talk) 19:26, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Pols12, Kaganer: thank you both! Sorry I wasn't able to get to this more quickly. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 14:53, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Re: "comms"

Hi, what does comms mean in the edit summary? Nemo 05:14, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: It's an abbreviation of "Communications" that we sometimes use at the WMF when we don't feel like writing out "Communications Department." You'll probably notice a lot of abbreviations like that in my edit summaries if you look through them - I'm a lazy typer! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:32, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for helping me out with WRC Templates!

Hi Karen,
Pine gave this barnstar to me a little while ago, and since we share this passion for templates and you are so talented figuring them out, I wanted to share this with you too.
Thank you for taking the time to walk me through this template. Hugs, María (WMF) (talk) 17:43, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Annual plan

Hi Karen, I believe your name should have been featured prominently in all communications re: the WMF annual plan, given how much work you put into it. So, thank you! I also have some feedback about your translation script, but those are for another time :) TTYS --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:05, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Aw, thank you Elitre (WMF)! I'm just happy the whole process went smoothly enough that we can look back at it now and be pleased! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:44, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Training modules

Please see here. It appears that you scheduled the close of consultation ("15 September: Preparatory consultation period ends") before anyone was really aware that consultation had begun. Would you please consider keeping the dialog open for another 2 to 3 weeks, given that your WMF blog only announced this campaign today? - Thekohser (talk) 13:21, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Karen, please, help to remove crap site "Janevistan" (sh.wiki.). See Jimbo Wales Talk Page

Dear Karen, there is something of potential interest to WMF [1]. Please, help to remove crap site "Janevistan" on sh.wiki. Thanks!178.222.127.197 09:29, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Hello anonymous editor. I'm afraid that I cannot remove content from projects in the way you are asking - the Wikimedia Foundation does not create or administrate content on the various Wikimedia projects, and in almost all cases we must leave those tasks to be done by the volunteer communities that make up our projects. However, almost anyone visiting the site can edit or add to most pages, unless that person has been banned or blocked from the project. So in most cases, if you believe that content could be improved or needs to be removed, we suggest that you to address yourself via the local project's processes.

In this case, addressing the issue yourself would involve opening a discussion on the project hosting the page you believe is a problem. On sh.wikipedia, it looks like that would probably be either sh:Wikipedia:Pijaca-Пијаца, for a general policy discussion (for instance, if you wished to convince the community that searches of mainspace should not give results that include redirects to userspace), or sh:Wikipedia:Članci za brisanje, to request deletion of the specific page (if you believe that it violates policies that the project already has in place).

If you believe that a project is incapable of handling a serious issue, there is also the option of requesting help from the community here on Meta. It looks like another user has done that recently in two places to ask for help about the page you're talking about. You may wish to join those discussions.

I hope this information helps! Kbrown (WMF) (talk)

Share your experience and feedback as a Wikimedian in this global survey

Hello! The Wikimedia Foundation is asking for your feedback in a survey. We want to know how well we are supporting your work on and off wiki, and how we can change or improve things in the future. The opinions you share will directly affect the current and future work of the Wikimedia Foundation. You have been randomly selected to take this survey as we would like to hear from your Wikimedia community. To say thank you for your time, we are giving away 20 Wikimedia T-shirts to randomly selected people who take the survey. The survey is available in various languages and will take between 20 and 40 minutes.

Take the survey now!

You can find more information about this project. This survey is hosted by a third-party service and governed by this privacy statement. Please visit our frequently asked questions page to find more information about this survey. If you need additional help, or if you wish to opt-out of future communications about this survey, send an email to surveys@wikimedia.org.

Thank you! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 22:25, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

great

You have done a great job Tyreese David Samuels (talk) 11:58, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Flooder right since Feb.

Hi. I see that you assigned yourself the flood right in February. I am guessing that it is still there as an oversight, though it is a long period to have the right and I would hope that you would now be able to unbit that right. Thanks.  — billinghurst sDrewth 06:17, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you billinghurst - you're right, taking it back off my account just slipped my mind at the time. I've removed it now. I apologize for forgetting, and thank you so much for the reminder! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 11:05, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Thx. The new ability to put an expiry time will work well with this right.  — billinghurst sDrewth 12:14, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Minassian Media, Inc.

Hi Karen, you asked me not to add a red-link to the unknown media company that the WMF paid $436K to in 2015-2016 because the document was going to be headed to the FDC (Funds Dissemination Committee) and the Board of Trustees. Since Craig Minassian is the CCO of the Clinton Foundation, his company seems like an odd choice to do PR work. Since you've worked on the page in question, I wondered if you could direct me to the right interlocutor for the question. Is it GVarnum-WMF who is most likely to be able to respond to questions about the WMF staff training apparently undertaken by the consultant?

From the 2nd quarter 2014-2015 review, their responsibilities included: "Develop and execute first media training module for c-level, director, managers" (source)

Thank you very much for your help! SashiRolls (talk) 11:25, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@SashiRolls: In general, you'd definitely want to ask questions about the Communication team's work directly to them, and Greg is a possible first-line for that. However, in this case, you needn't go through another set of pings, because I have already flagged your question on the Annual Plan talk page to the Comms team for their attention; I imagine they will be getting back to you there at some point in the near future. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 12:22, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. Sorry for the n00b question, but to whom is that flag visible? Is it a transparent flag that anyone can raise / see? I saw in the Minassian report that "transparency" was one of the WMF's chosen keywords. I mean well, even if I'm bumbling about. SashiRolls (talk) 15:26, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Well, the pings you included in your initial post sent a notification to each person you pinged, and those pings are visible to anyone who wants to look at the page, since you used template:u (also known as the "ping" template). When I say I "flagged" something as well, it's not a formal notification or a big internal announcement or anything; I literally just sent an email to Heather (who leads the Comms team for AP communication purposes) drawing her attention to the fact that you had pinged her onwiki, since not all staff check all wikis every day (or even every week) and she may not otherwise have noticed notice an onwiki notification quickly. Me drawing her attention to it in that way may not even have been necessary in this case; I just don't know how often Heather checks in on that page and wanted to be sure she did see your question. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 16:00, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi

I am a board-approved potato, please do not revert me. Thanks in advance, The Quixotic Potato (talk) 16:27, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Mark for translation pls - Cycle 3 with timetable

Hi, could you mark this version for translation please? Very nice to have the timeline in other languages as well. Thank you ----Omotecho (talk) 16:33, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

@Omotecho: I've now done so - thank you for reminding me that I'd missed that step! It might take a few minutes for the template view to update in each language's version of the Cycle 3 page, but once that happens they should be up to date. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 16:41, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

navbar

Hello. I can't see any navbar in those pages (except for the first page, the intro) : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Sources/Wikimania_Movement_Strategy_Space_report/Day_1

I only see a red link. Makes it hard to navigate within the report. My interface is in English.

Thanks

∞∞∞∞ — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Anthere (talk) 17:21, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Access to nonpublic information policy/Noticeboard

Hi Karen. I noticed that you added a user to the list here. According to the information on the page you're not authorized to do so. If the information on the page is outdated it should be updated. -- Tegel _(Talk) 18:15, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

@Tegel: Thanks for noticing this! I'm new to this workflow and neither James nor I noticed that I wasn't in the list. James has updated it here. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 19:11, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Access to non public information.

Hi, I signed the access to non public information documents as stated in the steps to do so, however , my name does not show up on the list.Possiby. I could have done it wrong but you could help.Thanks Bingobro (Meta-Chat) 10:30, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

@Bingobro: Hi! Your signature was fine, it's just that the Phabricator system doesn't automatically affect the Meta page; someone from my team has to go through every week or so and manually update the Meta page based on the latest Phab logs. You can see here where I added you to the list this morning (if you're wondering why your line looks different, that's because it's a two-step process - a community member will come along before too long to incorporate that diff into the log entry). At any rate, you're good to go from your perspective; the rest is just paperwork! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Unblock

Hi, I'd be very grateful if my WMF account (user:SGrabarczuk (WMF)) was unblocked. I can't do anything, because one can't even log in when account is blocked globally. Ping @Jalexander-WMF: as well. Tar Lócesilion (queta) 10:02, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi Tar, I'm sorry for not getting back to you earlier! I will look into this and let you know when things are sorted on this end. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:17, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

@Tar Lócesilion: and...done, you should be able to log in and use the account now. Sorry for the delay in getting you set up! Please let me know if you have any issues using the account now (this is actually the first time I've ever un-locked someone!) :) Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:25, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Privacy policy – marking for translation

Hi! Could you please mark this change for translation? The notice still shows up in translations. (BTW, I think the whole #switch can be removed – as far as I understand, the non-empty (default) case would work only if Privacy policy itself would be transcluded somewhere. It isn’t.) —Tacsipacsi (talk) 14:08, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi Tacsipacsi! I forgot to reply to this a few days ago when I marked it, so a slightly-late thank you for spotting that it hadn't been sent out for translation! I'm not going to mess with the switch statement if it's working as it is, since I'm not that confident in my advanced template skills. Please do let me know if you see any other issues in my stuff, though. Thanks! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:53, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

No problem, I’ve already noticed it thanks to FuzzyBot updating the Hungarian translation page. The switch may cause the blank line below the other languages banner, but it’s not a big issue, it’s OK to leave it as it is. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 14:54, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

E-mail

RadiX∞ 02:30, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Policy Office Actions

Hi Kbrown, you changed the page Office actions by adding a number of policies on 19th February. Could you please tell me who decided on these new policies? Is there any document that could give information about these policies, their regulations and how they were established? --Mautpreller (talk) 11:22, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi, Kbrown. As a long-time sysop in the German Wikipedia, I'd be interested to become informed about the making of such substantial policy changes, too.

BTW: It's always preferrable that the left hand knows what the right hand intends - and even better, if those informations are delivered before facts or new rules are established. --Wahrerwattwurm (talk) 21:56, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi, Kbrown, I would like to know more about these shortly added new policies too. To block someone only in f.e. de-wikipedia who's accounts are blocked infinite there anyway?[2] Like user:Wahrerwattwurm I am a long-time sysop in the German Wikipedia. Best, --Felistoria (talk) 22:43, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi, Kbrown, I share the considerations brought up above. Additionally, I am wondering why the WMF felt it might be necessary to override the local sysops' actions, who alreay had dealt with the issue. All known accounts of the user had been blocked infinitely and the user himself has not announced or shown any intention to circumvent the blocks (at least to the public). So, actually, why the WMF was meddling into the local administration in this case – the case, indeed, was closed for about two months already. Thanks and greetings. --Matthiasb (talk) 02:13, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

I've asked about this on the talk page of Office actions, it seems to be the better place for such discussions, as this here is just a personal talk page. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 08:15, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Maybe someone of the Trust & Safety Team could give us a hint, where would be the right place to discuss the subject? Obviously there is a need for discussion about the policy changes and their simultaneous applications in the German Wikipedia, that is addressed by different people on different ways (mails, meta forum, project talkpage, personal talkpage), but yet seem to have caught no attention. Greetings --Magiers (talk) 09:42, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi all. I understand your interest. Regarding the question about the changes to the Office Actions policy, which I implemented on-wiki on February 19 - this was one outcome of the Improving Trust and Safety program laid out in the Foundation’s Annual Plan effective July 1 2018. It covers Foundation policies and was worked on by our team as a group effort for an extended period of time and signed off on by management, thus my changes to the policy page. I do understand that the fact that our team took action on German Wikipedia shortly after the policy changed is causing confusion in the local community. However I was not personally involved in the Janneman/ Edith Wahr/ Judith Wahr case, so I can not give you any answers concerning that case, myself. The team has left a message with information related to that case on the talkpage of Der Kurier that I hope will be helpful to you. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 16:23, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Refining the draft

Hello Karen! I've added the anchor to link directly to the Primary office actions section (diff). Please review or revert, as appropriate. Thank you. — Aron M (talk) 10:28, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Consider using translators-l if you ever need a message translated

Hi Karen!
I've just noticed in our village pump a message with the title "The consultation on partial and temporary Foundation bans just started" that you posted on September 30th. It went unnoticed by me and, I dare assume, by some other editors, too. I belong to the cohort of translators and I wanted to share with you my perspective: it's easier to draw community's attention to the subject if the message is translated into its language. Not only because of the obvious reason, but also because user(s) who prepare the translated message beforehand have more time to get acquainted with the topic and by the time the message is posted they are likely to become the first one(s) to engage community in the discussion. This might not be the best example, but I translate Tech News and when I see it posted on the village pump it encourages me to go and maybe clarify some of the news there for my community because I already lived several days knowing and exploring the thing they all just see for the first time.
And I appreciate emails that Chris always sends to translators-l@lists.wikimedia.org about the messages he's about to send (example), as well as notifications from Johan, Benoît and others. I totally understand that sometimes there isn't much time for dancing around (simple {{int:please-translate}} is ok in these situations), but when there is — a little pause for translators is much appreciated. Though I can't affirm that the Translators mailing list is equally effective for all languages expected but maybe others have more info on that.
PS. I decided to write this on your talk page to be able to mention your wonderful colleagues. Thank you all for the WMF—community communication work you do; it's not the easiest task I can think of. -- Ата ^(talk) 16:32, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello Ата

I was coordinating translations there.

I requested translators assistance on September 19. Maybe you missed it?

And thank you, as well, for all the great translation work you always provide! :)

Best, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 10:23, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Oh. That's a shame on my side. My deepest apologies. -- Ата ^(talk) 10:42, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Why a steward instead of an uninvolved meta admin to close community consultation?

Hi Karen, I noticed that you have asked for an uninvolved steward to close the Community consultation on partial and temporary office actions. Is there any reason that you would not accept a closing summary from an uninvolved meta admin or 'crat instead? As you can see from Stewards' noticeboard#Community consultation on partial bans, they don't want to go near it, and I can't blame them -- you've asked for an uninvolved functionary from a relatively small pool who depend far more on keeping good relations with The WMF than admins or 'crats, but then in the same sentence asserted that the very much involved T&S team would summarize the discussion if none of the stewards stick their neck out. As for your question about the number of respondents, there were over 230 by my count, which is on the high end of community-wide RFCs, is it not? EllenCT (talk) 19:47, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi @EllenCT: Closure by a Steward is what we agreed to during the pre-consultation drafting stage. Typically the Foundation, as the owner of the Office Actions policy, closes consultations about it and the Terms of Use (which govern Office Action policy, and which are "owned" by the Foundation). See, for instance, us closing the consultation regarding paid editing here. In this case we are willing to allow a Steward (or Stewards) to close it, because Stewards have a community governance role matching the global scope of the policy that was being evaluated in the consultation. We're not comfortable with a local admin or 'crat closing it, because they, as a group, don't have the global role of a Steward. Stewards are not beholden to the Foundation in any way, which I think is what you're getting at with your comment about them depending on good relations with the Foundation. They are elected by the community, and they answer to the community. We have no intention of attempting to influence a close by a Steward or Stewards, and we would not be pleased if a Steward were to close it with the intention of somehow pleasing the Foundation rather than of adequately summarizing the discussion - we're interested in a good, comprehensive close that covers the issues that were discussed, not a handwave.

As far as participation in the consultation, we're concerned about two things: one, fewer people participated here than were involved on local wiki discussions of our use of partial and temporary office actions; and two, the majority of participants in this consultation came from two projects, rather than being globally representative, which is what we were hoping for when we sent out global notifications. Those facts don't invalidate people's opinions on the consultation or anything, but they're things we'd like to understand better for next time we run a consultation. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 16:33, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. Are there any reasons why not having a global role would make it less likely for an uninvolved meta admin to be neutral or provide a sufficient summary? Do you think T&S as an involved party in the dispute would be seen as neutral if you were to summarize the discussion? EllenCT (talk) 20:18, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

From my point of view, someone without a global role (like Steward) trying to close the consultation is likely to run into trouble thinking globally - that is, how what they say will be interpreted and used at the global level, across all projects. So a Meta-only admin, for example, has the point of view of someone active on Meta, but not the experience on, say, Bokmal Wikipedia that might tell them that something that they think works on Meta won't work on Bokmal. As a fer-instance, there was discussion during the consultation of Jimmy being the final arbiter of office actions. To someone experienced on enwp, that might seem totally reasonable, but as we saw in the discussion, to those experienced on other projects (and, particularly, those experienced across a spectrum of projects), it's actually quite unreasonable from their point of view. As far as neutrality, I can see why you ask, but from our point of view a) this was not an adversarial consultation where "involvement" is relevant, and b) "involvement" is sort of a moot point, because we own the policy the consultation may amend and ultimately we (in particular, our legal eagles) will make any necessary edits to the policy. So whether we're "involved" or not, the decision of what to implement out of this consultation falls to us either way. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 14:47, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

I shouldn't see why a panel of uninvolved admins cannot close the discussion; we do that with high-traffic on the English Wikipedia with some regularity. If specifically a steward was desired, it seems to me that should have been discussed with the stewards before the consultation was begun, to make sure there at least was a steward who would be willing and able to do it. Seraphimblade (talk) 21:22, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm looking into whether closure by a panel is acceptable to the Foundation, and I'll get back to you on that, but in regard to your second point about consulting Stewards before the consultation: our initial plan was to simply close the consultation ourselves, the same way we've always done with Foundation/office policy consultations. Stewards were a compromise we were willing to allow instead if the community was sufficiently interested in recruiting one. Our public commitment at the start of the consultation was that "The community can handle the closure if the volunteers can find an uninvolved Wikimedia steward who volunteers to review and close it in a timely manner at the end of the consultation" (emphasis added). I'm not sure if nobody got that far down the page and noticed that, or nobody felt like taking it on, but now the upshot seems to be that nobody took the responsibility and the volunteers haven't found a Steward closer, and now people are arguing for some other type of person to close it just to have someone close it, which was not part of our agreement with the community. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 14:47, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Hi again folks. I have taken the question of a panel closure back to the team to be discussed, but in the meantime I wanted to let you know that I've submitted my recommended closure to management here at the WMF for approval, and my recommendation is the complete removal of the partial and temporary ban tools from the Office Action policy. That conclusion is still pending approval, so it's not an official done deal yet, but I do expect it to be approved and for that to be the close. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't know that a steward is the only option if you are looking for a global perspective. For example, what about a former steward who resigned in good standing? Or OTRS admins, or OC members? --Rschen7754 02:02, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Rschen7754: If you have a specific person from one of those groups lined up, please let us (well, me) know, and I can seek opinions on whether that's acceptable. It's possible other specific people with global experience would work too, but we just don't have time to pre-emptively review every Wikimedian whose expertise might be applicable just in case they volunteer as closer. Generally speaking, the group we agreed to closure from was Stewards, because as a group the experience of each person in that group is known to match the needs of the consultation. I can't really go to management and be like "So, just checking your opinion, are you ok with this group, or this one, or this one - no, none of them said they'd do it, just requesting your time to deliberate about it just in case it happens." I'd probably get back "Let me know when and if this actually becomes the case." Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 12:39, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Kbrown your proposal is unacceptable, or at best it is incomplete. I refer you back to the Board of Trustees statement:

T&S focus on the most severe cases, for instance: the handling of legal issues, threats of violence, cross-wiki abuse, and child protection issues until consultation and agreement between T&S and the community are achieved.

If anyone attempts to declare the issue resolved by "complete removal of the partial and temporary ban tools from the Office Action policy" I will open an RFC proposing that NO AGREEMENT has been reached between T&S and the community. I suspect it will get consensus, and I will bring that consensus to the Executive Director and the Board.

The Foundation itself quite firmly emphasized that the the temporary & partial ban policy is completely irrelevant to the problem here. See these quotes:

• One of the recent changes to the Trust & Safety policy is the introduction of new options that include time-limited and partial (project-specific) bans to address serious concerns that are considered temporary or project-specific in nature. This change to policy is not a change of the team’s scope of cases taken. - Jan (WMF) (talk) 20:44, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
• Prior to this policy update, the only sanction option available in a case like this would have been an indefinite global ban. - WMFOffice (talk) 19:27, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Having T&S take the same case again, and be more narrowly limited to only issuing a permanent global ban, just makes the problem worse.

Members of T&S have attempted to narrowly restrict the scope of discussion to within "limited and partial bans", and rejecting discussion on scope of cases taken. So long as T&S are unwilling or unable to address the underlying problem, I expect the community will be content to allow the "no agreement" status quo remain in place permanently. Alsee (talk) 23:20, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

@Alsee: I'm kind of confused by what you're arguing here. The consultation was about partial/temporary office actions. That was what the questions we worked out with the community ahead of time were about, and it's the questions people answered in their responses to the consultation. We're not deriving any conclusions about the types of cases we handle going forward from this consultation because, well, that's not what the consultation was about. You seem to be saying that because the consultation wasn't about that, you won't accept the resolution of the questions about partial/temporary office actions? That's your prerogative - I can't make you accept or not accept anything personally - but it confuses me because rejecting the (presumed) outcome of the consultation (that is, rejecting "we will not use partial/temporary office actions again") won't somehow force us to use those tools again if we determine that community consensus is against us using them, and I'm pretty sure you don't actually want us to go on using them, anyway. It seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater - people objected to our use of partial/temporary office actions, and we're trying to sort that out, and it seems odd to refuse to sort that out because we're not simultaneously discussing something else (especially because my experience is that trying to sort out two or more things simultaneously leads to a) fatigue and more limited input from participants and b) lots of confusion). Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps it will help if I note what I believe to be a recurring problem with Foundation-Community engagement. Sometimes the Foundation attempts to dictate a "scope of discussion", to predetermine the answer (or predetermine the type of answer) that the Foundation wants or expects. T&S staff incorrectly concluded that "temporary and partial bans" were the problem. Staff dictated that discussion was restricted to temporary and partial ban policy, and ignored feedback outside of that scope. Restricting the scope of what the Foundation is willing to hear is a good way to fail.

The Board said to identify the shortcomings of current processes and to propose solutions. It appears that T&S intends "deleting temporary and partial ban policy" to be the proposed solution.

To be clear, I am not arguing that T&S should use temporary or partial bans. To be clear, I consider that section irrelevant. To be clear, I don't care if you delete it. To be clear, I am well aware that my personal opinion on the issue is irrelevant.

If T&S believes that is a solution, if T&S attempts to assert that as a resolution, I am saying I intend to open an RFC explicitly asking the community to accept or reject that proposed solution. I believe the outcome will be a consensus against that as a proposed solution. I am cautiously optimistic that the Board will back up my position that T&S has not successfully achieved consultation and agreement between T&S and the community.

The status quo is a directive from the Board that T&S focus on the most severe cases, for instance: the handling of legal issues, threats of violence, cross-wiki abuse, and child protection issues until consultation and agreement between T&S and the community are achieved. I believe the community will consider the status quo to more successfully solve the problem than your proposed solution. Alsee (talk) 20:30, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I think this illustrates some of the disconnect the WMF has. I found the same with the "2030 strategy" bit. I only found how sweeping it was by pure accident, since I happened to have a second to read it after a very anodyne-looking post on the mailing list got made. Contra that innocuous-sounding post, I found proposals to do everything from take over control of content, including inclusion criteria, to accepting nonfree content. At this last consultation, you asked why there was "low participation" (which there wasn't; a ton of people participated, but that's beside the point). It seems that either WMF doesn't understand just how big of a deal things like editorial independence and free licensing are, and how unacceptable it is to even suggest getting rid of them, or does realize the gravity of it and is trying to hide the proposal in the disused lavatory with a "Beware of the Leopard" sign and later disingenuously say "Well, no one objected...". When I brought to the attention of different communities how sweeping and impactful those recommendations were, most people had no idea something like that was going on or being proposed. You need to involve the communities, and that doesn't mean people who come to Wikimania or a "strategy salon", it means people on the projects, at the coalface, who can tell you things like "No, we should not eliminate anonymous edits showing IPs". And that means you're going to have to give an announcement that actually gets their attention, and makes clear you are proposing a massive change with a huge impact. That didn't happen with this "partial ban" proposal. If people had realized WMF were essentially proposing to usurp community control over when to involuntarily exclude someone, we would've told you "Absolutely not" to begin with, and the damage and fallout from the Fram scenario could have been prevented. What we told you at that consultation was very clear, and it wasn't just "Don't use temporary bans", it was "WMF stays on its side of the line—child protection, threats of violence, and cross-wiki abuse, and that is all. The communities handle the rest." If what you got out of this was anything other than that, you were not listening to the feedback you were given, and that's a massive problem. Seraphimblade (talk) 11:01, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

I second the above. It's very well written and describes clearly my point of view, as well as likely many others. Vermont (talk) 23:10, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree with what Seraphimblade wrote. Of all the 'recommendations' in the Strategy discussion, the one that got the most support (47 people, by my count) was one written by an editor who was not part of a strategy group: "the recommendations regarding the role between the WMF and the communities are completely backwards. It is not time to extend the terms of use. To the contrary, the board should create "terms of use" that the foundation has to comply with in their dealings with the communities." And when is the conclusion of the community consultation going to be announced? It's more than a week overdue. (I suppose I can wait: I've been doing very little editing for the last four months, waiting to see if the wmf power grab will be reversed.) EddieHugh (talk) 22:17, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Kbrown (WMF) I came here to tell you that your proposed close of the Framban/consultation is clearly wrong. Seraphimblade came here to tell you that your proposed close is wrong. Vermont came here to tell you they agree with Seraphimblade, your proposed close is wrong. EddieHugh came here to tell you they agree with Seraphimblade, your proposed close is wrong.

T&S would be escalating the conflict if you delete the temporary&partial ban policy and escalate these cases to permanent global bans.

I alerted you that any attempt by T&S to resolve the issue in this fashion would result in a community proposal to blow up your proposed resolution. It is severely concerning that you have been non-responsive for a week. I would really rather us not go there.

In an attempt to head off a big ugly mess here, I'm pinging Jimbo Wales and Doc James to hopefully reconfirm the Board of Trustees statement that T&S focus on the most severe cases, for instance: the handling of legal issues, threats of violence, cross-wiki abuse, and child protection issues until consultation and agreement between T&S and the community are achieved, and to hopefully confirm that the Foundation cannot claim a unilateral "agreement". The community has not agreed to any resolution here. I expect the community will not agree to your proposed resolution. If necessary, I will seek an explicit community consensus that agreement has not been achieved between T&S and the community. Alsee (talk) 23:27, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

My interpretation of the announcement was that Fram-like cases would be left to communities, instead of escalating them to permanent global bans. I know that wasn't stated specifically... am I being naive in this interpretation? EddieHugh (talk) 12:50, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

EddieHugh, prior to the consultation T&S made it clear that they did not consider partial&limited-ban-policy to alter the scope of cases they take. The obvious implication is that rescinding the policy would also not change anything. They also said that without the partial&limited-ban-policy, the only option available to them in a Fram-like case is an indefinite global ban.

Since the consultation began T&S has refused all attempts to discuss the scope of cases they will handle. If they want to participate in an agreement then they need to be willing to discuss exactly what that agreement would involve. Alsee (talk) 06:06, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

We're on the right (talk) page to get an answer to whether a Fram-like case would be handled by communities or T&S and their global ban or no ban options.... EddieHugh (talk) 12:36, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Discussion continued at User talk:Samuel (WMF) after closure. Alsee (talk) 12:01, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm as much in favour of long breaks as the next person is, but Kbrown has been marked as on vacation for a month now, despite an original statement that her return would be on 1 Dec. Is this a permanent 'vacation'? We'd still like to... "get an answer to whether a Fram-like case would be handled by communities or T&S and their global ban or no ban options", as asked a month ago now. EddieHugh (talk) 18:51, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

@EddieHugh: Sorry about that, I forgot to remove the banner when I came back, and since it looked like the conversation had migrated to Samuel's talk page, I didn't think there was anything outstanding here. As far as your question "whether a Fram-like case would be handled by communities or T&S and their global ban or no ban options", I'm afraid that's difficult to answer without looking at a specific case and what makes it "Fram-like" - the involvement of an admin? a history of problematic behavior and warnings? the issue being confined to a single project? Each of those would mean a different answer to your question. However, as you know, as of July, the Board has limited T&S to handling "legal issues, threats of violence, cross-wiki abuse, and child protection issues". A case that fits within those parameters would likely be handled by T&S; cases outside those parameters are currently being referred back to the community(ies). I hope that offers you some clarity, and I apologize again for the delay in getting back to you. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 12:49, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Log In

Hi User:Kbrown (WMF). 2 years of Wikipedia access restrictions were lifted in Turkey on 15 January. After this news, I wanted to log into my account. However, I couldn't log in for more than 2 years and I forgot the email address and password. I talked to Administrator User:Vikiçizer, Bureaucrat User:Xeno and Steward User:HakanIst about this. If I learn my e-mail address, I can set a new password. I can learn my e-mail only from someone who can access the database. Can you help me? User:Abecesel.

Email

Hello Karen, I sent a email to the legal-reports list yesterday. I received an automatic reply, but am I also supposed to receive a human reply confirming you've received my message in good order? --MrClog (talk) 21:15, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi MrClog - answering for Karen since she is not on that mailing list. We do not generally reply directly to emails sent there, but we evaluate and read every email sent there. You can accept this as confirmation that your message was received. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 20:23, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Users Confientiality Agreement

I had signed the OTRS Users Confientiality Agreement. Could you help add my name here?--May♡♡→♡℃※Talk 08:28, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Email

RadiX∞ 01:49, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Requests for comment/Ombuds Commission inactivity

I have started a RFC about the persistent inactivity of several members of the OC. --Rschen7754 02:02, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi, have you had a chance to review this? Also @JSutherland (WMF): --Rschen7754 03:10, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi Rschen7754. I've been following the discussion there, yes. I think the current and former OCers who've commented there have done a good job explaining what's gone/going on, particularly with regard to how this year's Commission is more active. At this point I don't see much that a comment by the Foundation can add to the discussion that hasn't already been said. As far as our position on your recommendations, I can't speak for Foundation management or the Board, but I imagine that if the RfC reaches a consensus recommending changes, they would at least be considered, though I obviously can't tell you that any such changes would be made (particularly because legal implications/obligations are a concern). Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 10:44, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Reminder to vote now to select members of the first U4C

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Confidential Agreement

@Kbrown (WMF): I would like to help out with the account creation, and signed the Phabricator Legalpad. Could you please list my name at Access to nonpublic personal data policy/Noticeboard?

I would appreciate if that can be done quickly, as I have to apply again after this is done. Thanks! ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 13:27, 27 November 2024 (UTC)