User:Tazerdadog/Fram Timeline

This is intended to be a neutral post summarizing the major developments in this incident in the form of a timeline. Other editors are explicitly invited to edit this comment collaboratively to ensure it's a fair and useful summary of events.


 * April 2018 - Fram recieves an email from WMF trust and safety containing a "conduct warning" stating that "I have taken a look at several conflicts you’ve had over the years with other community members as well as Foundation staff, and I have noticed increasing levels of hostility, aggressive expression—some of which, to the point of incivility—and counterproductive escalations."


 * March 2019 - Fram recieved a reminder email (implied to be from trust and safety) citing the following 2 edits from October of the previous year, and issuing a 1 way interaction ban (implied to be with User:LauraHale) Edit 1 Edit 2


 * Sometime in the last month - User:Opabinia regalis, representing the Arbitration Committee, participates in a regularly scheduled phone call with WMF Trust and Safety. During this call, Trust and Safety mentions that action against Fram was under consideration.  See Opabinia's statement here.  This was the only information that the Arbitration committee received ahead of time.


 * 11:41, 10 June 2019 - WMFOffice blocked and banned Fram with an expiration time of 1 year as an office action


 * Sometime near this time - Fram recieves (implied to be an email from trust and safety) citing this edit and saying the following:


 * "This decision has come following extensive review of your conduct on that project and is an escalation to the Foundation’s past efforts to encourage course correction, including a conduct warning issued to you on April 2018 and a conduct warning reminder issued to you on March 2019. With those actions in mind, this ban has been triggered following your recent abusive communications on the project, as seen here.


 * This action is effective immediately and it is non-appealable."


 * 11:56, 10 June 2019 - A thread is created on the Bureaucrat's noticeboard. Initial reactions can be distilled to "What the fuck?!"  The fact that it's an emergency ban seems at odds from the fact that it has an expiry date of 1 year and the fact that it's limited to English Wikipedia.


 * 14:58, 10 June 2019 - the role account User:WMFOffice posts in the thread for the first time. The post can be found here The post states that the banning was in response to complaints by the community, they cannot say who made the complaint for privacy reasons, although it's later revealed to almost certainly be User:LauraHale, the process takes about 4 weeks, the community decides what happens with Fram's admin bit after the year is up, and there is no possibility of appeal.


 * The community was unsatisfied with this - it did not provide any relevant information to help us determine if this was a good ban or not.


 * 01:27, 11 June 2019 - Fram makes a statement on Wikimedia Commons about the situation. It is copied over to the discussion page within an hour.  In the statement Fram begins by revealing the Emails and diffs above.


 * The community has major concerns in response to this. A proposal to literally "Go bonkers" receives a significant amount of support.  It becomes clear that the community has no confidence in this office action.


 * 05:50, 11 June 2019 - User:Floquenbeam announces that they intend to reverse the office action. Floquenbeam initially wanted to do so immediately, but was convinced to wait until Noon San Francisco time (13:00) to allow the WMF the chance to de-escalate.


 * 06:55, 11 June 2019 - the thread is moved to it's current location.


 * 08:23, 11 June 2019 - Jimbo Wales makes his first substantive comments, asking Floquenbeam not to unblock Fram and promising that he and User:Doc James, a community liason, are actively seeking answers.


 * 12:58, 11 June 2019 - User:WMFOffice posts a placeholder indicating a comment is forthcoming.


 * 13:27, 11 June 2019 - User:WMFOffice posts a second statement, which may be found here. In that statement, they promise an additional reply, state that they couldn't have passed anything more than a "distilled summary" to ArbCom due to privacy concerns, and that it would've been improper for arbcom to adjudicate a case where they were one of the attacked parties. They explicitly cite section 4 of the terms of use, “harassing and abusing others.”.


 * 13:39, 11 June 2019 - Floquenbeam Unblocks Fram per the community consensus in the thread. There was significant community support for the unblock, however, as office actions are not subject to the typical consensus building process, this was an act of civil disobedience.


 * 18:32, 11 June 2019 - the WMF re-blocks Fram and desysops Floquenbeam for 30 days as an office action. Their full statement can be found here.


 * 18:41, 11 June 2019 - Previously offwiki speculation that User:LauraHale, the accuser of Fram, and User:Raystorm, aka Maria Sefidari, a WMF board member had a close personal relationship is posted onwiki. This raises possible concerns about conflict of interest.


 * 01:20, 12 June 2019 - Bishonen re-unblocks Fram, citing wheel warring by WMFOffice.


 * 14 June, 2019 - the next WMF board meeting is scheduled for this date. It's a time when wee will likely get some answers.

I have tried to do the discussion justice in this summary, but it's a difficult discussion to adequately summarize. Please feel free to add/remove/modify to improve this and keep it up to date. Cheers, Tazerdadog (talk) 10:53, 12 June 2019 (UTC)