Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-06-30/Discussion report

On June 10, the WMF Trust & Safety Team (T&S) banned, a long-time editor and administrator on English Wikipedia, without prior consultation with the community, citing unspecified behavioral issues. T&S refused to give details, citing policy. An extensive discussion followed across multiple venues, concerning the relationship between WMF – its Trust & Safety Team in particular – and the volunteer community and its own self-administration. The co-founder of Wikipedia, said of the situation:

Former Arbitration Committee member said:

As of the time of writing, one of the several discussions is over 1 MB in size and growing, with over 450 distinct editors.

Prelude to WMF's recent actions
WMF has a unique role in English Wikipedia under the terms of WP:OFFICE, which stated that the Foundation may "override local policy" for the purposes of "complying with valid and enforceable court orders to remove content that might otherwise comply with policy or in protecting the safety of the Wikimedia communities or the public". The policy was in mid-2017 with a list of actionable complaints to include privacy violations, child protection, copyright infringement or systematic harassment.

WMF Trust & Safety has been notifying Wikipedians about revamped policies around harassment since at least as early as 2017. See Community health initiative on English Wikipedia for example or 2019 Community Health conversation on Meta. Community reaction to the ban of Fram suggests that many of these discussions and notifications were not well known or understood by the community. Many editors in the discussions noted by The Signpost expected office actions to be limited to extremely severe cases with specific legal consequences in the United States. In the words of Newyorkbrad:

Sydney Poore, a Strategist for WMF's Community Health Initiative, described how WMF is moving towards a Universal Code of Conduct for all Wikimedia projects. Poore, who edits as and, had spoken about this initiative in a June 11 video created by University of Washington. This video – sarcastically called the way Wikipedia communities had to find out about [a new Code of Conduct] by seeing it on Youtube – may have been seen by some as symptomatic of the disconnect between the Foundation and the community.

In April 2019, WMF announced a new user reporting system on meta-Wiki to the following groups:


 * AfroCROWD User Group
 * Art+Feminism User Group
 * Black Lunch Table
 * Gender Diversity Visibility Community User Group
 * Muj(lh)eres latinoamericanas en Wikimedia
 * WikiDonne User Group
 * Wikimedia LGBT+
 * Wikimedians of North American Indigenous Languages User Group
 * Wikitongues
 * WikiWomen's User Group

Beginnings of the current crisis
On June 10 17:56 UTC, posted a note at the Bureaucrats' Noticeboard, which read in its entirety:

This came as a surprise to everyone as far as we can tell. As far as the The Signpost is aware, there were no ongoing discussions or Arbitration Committee proceedings regarding Fram in the usual English Wikipedia venues for editor/administrator behavior issues.

The initial statement from Trust & Safety on June 10 stated:

At this point, Fram became barred from any sort of reply on English Wikipedia, but did make statements at his Wikimedia Commons page. In these comments Fram stated the total prior warnings from T&S came in April 2018 and March 2019 concerning two edits Fram made to an article in development by another member of the English Wikipedia community. T&S followed up with one more comment on June 11, summarized in the statement:

There were two more communiques from T&S in the main discussion forum, discussed below.

The Bureaucrats' Noticeboard discussion was moved to Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram to avoid clogging response to other administrative matters. It was listed at WP:CENT on June 11.

Wheel wars
Administrator unblocked Fram at 11 June 19:39 UTC, and was in turn de-sysopped by WMF, who also re-blocked Fram. unblocked Fram. Then Floquenbeam was re-sysopped by, a bureaucrat. Notwithstanding Fram's unblocked status, according to T&S's third response (which acknowledged that "a number of community members believe ... [banning] was improper"), they are still banned by WMF for one year and under WMF directive not to edit the English Wikipedia lest the ban become indefinite.

Another incident occurred over Fram's admin status. He or she was de-sysopped in the 10 June office action, then re-sysopped 25 June 2019 by bureaucrat, then de-sysopped again by. A bureaucrat recall motion against WJBscribe was initiated on 26 June, after which WJBscribe resigned and retired from Wikipedia.

Community expectations
Former Arbitration Committee member summarized why the situation was so problematic for the community:

, who has been editing since 2004, had a similar reaction:

Arbcom involvement and requested case
Prior to the block, WMF conducted a conference call in which one member of the Arbitration Committee participated,. They have that "an action to do with Fram was under consideration". Other arbitrators have said they were not aware of it.

An Arbcom case was requested by WJBscribe on June 13 concerning WJBscribe's actions, but has expanded to request consideration of the entire relationship between Arbcom and WMF. Arbitration committee member  a request for comment, sponsored by Arbcom in their page space and managed by clerks, to decide how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future.

WMF Board
Doc James, a Wikimedia Foundation board member, stated on his talkpage that the board did not have further information for the community at 06:05, 15 June 2019 (UTC), at 14:11, 16 June 2019, 15:19, 20 June 2019, 22:29 22 June 2019, and again 16:19, 26 June 2019. This statement was essentially reiterated by Jimbo Wales at his talkpage 10:58, 21 June 2019:

The board's chairperson, María Sefidari, stated that they "had nothing to do with this decision to ban an enwiki admin", expressing dismay that the on-wiki discussion had put a third party under the microscope with this:

The invocation of Gamergate was received harshly by some editors. During development of this article, the author's note was met with this reply: [I]s The Signpost REALLY going to drag Gamergate into this??? REALLY? Talk about throwing fat onto the fire. The Signpost is not taking a position here on the Gamergate comparison, merely noting it for the record.

Universal Code of Conduct
WMF's vision of a Universal Code of Conduct may not be achievable according to one side of a hot debate. Administrator, cites their US Army experience and says it is. On the other hand, stated there is no universal concept of civility. not even in English [speaking communities]. criticized the medicalization of speech codes, perhaps reading it in the title of the Community Health Initiative, or the board chair's reference to the health of the community.

Rapprochement?
Out of this crisis has emerged not just strikes and angry commentary on actions of the WMF office perceived as abrupt and unannounced, but a round of soul-searching on the community's ability to self-monitor. An example is Levivich's comment:

At the same time, members of the community have sought a rapprochement with WMF. Newyorkbrad proposed a series of de-escalatory actions in a "suggested resolution". The resolution ends with a request that

As of writing deadline, nearly a hundred editors have endorsed Newyorkbrad's statement. However, it remains to be seen whether the response from WMF, acknowledging Brad's outreach but reiterating the ban is non-appealable, has already closed the door on the discussion.

Conclusion
Summarizing a novel's worth of words in a column for a monthly newsletter inevitably brings selection bias. The voices selected above were intended to give the reader a flavor of the debate, not to substitute for deeper reading and involvement.

Intra-community and community–WMF discussion is still under way and likely will be for some time. Even when this report was "wrapped" a new debate erupted, resulting in the resignation of a bureaucrat. We hope this is not a new fracture line in the administrator corps. Nineteen have resigned so far, and they are needed more than ever.

We will close this report with a summary of the way forward from a member of the Arbitration Committee:

Readers are encouraged to review one of the indexes below and decide whether and where to lend their own voices.

Summaries and other notes

 * Main discussion
 * Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram
 * Noticeboards
 * (moved to first item listed)
 * (hatted)
 * (hatted)
 * (hatted)
 * (hatted)


 * Village Pump
 * [sic] (closed)
 * Project(s)
 * (refers to deleted tweet issued from project's official Twitter account, but see Special:Diff/901906578)
 * Other Wikipedia space
 * Wikipedia talk:Office actions
 * WMF Office
 * User talk:WMFOffice
 * Miscellaneous user pages
 * and other threads
 * and other threads
 * began 28 June
 * and other threads
 * began 28 June
 * and other threads
 * began 28 June

The following editors made strikes, resignations, retirement or other related actions following WP:FRAMBAN.


 * Editors who retired or went on strike
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * (managed Wikipedia Editor of the Week Award)


 * Sysops who resigned
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * (resigned sysop, strike)
 * (resigned, retired)
 * (already retired)
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * (resigned sysop, continues editing)
 * (resigned sysop, retired)
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * (resigned sysop, on strike)
 * (resigned sysop, retired)
 * - (resigned sysop in protest of the actions of Floquenbeam, Bishonen and WJBscribe overturning WMFOffice actions)
 * (resigned sysop, also bureaucrat, and retired)
 * (resigned sysop, retired)
 * (resigned sysop, self-block)


 * Other bot and permissions-related protests
 * (managed XLink bot)
 * 


 * Vanished editors
 * f14de8e7
 * d8028996