Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-03-29/News and notes


 * Wow, the Farkhad Fatkullin story is a bit understated. The dude was indef blocked by the same user he was criticizing,, who is now wheel-warring with multiple Stewards who are trying to overturn the block as obviously inappropriate. That would be an absolute shitshow over here, though a smaller wiki like that may not have any system of checks and balances to prevent this kind of abuse. Hopefully there is some higher authority that can step in and deop this dude. ~Swarm~  {sting} 03:47, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * He has been desysopped by the stewards as of a few minutes ago. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 04:57, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * What I find really troubling is the role of AffCom. This is really not the AffCom's business to decide who can be blocked on the projects and who can be desysopped.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:41, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It's unclear to me what the role of AffCom was. I can see that Steward Mehman97 mentioned his position as a member of AffCom, but also stated that he was not speaking or presumably acting on behalf of AffCom. He was clearly invoking some sort of perceived additional authority as being a member of AffCom, which is strange, because, as you say, AffCom, as I understand it, basically has the authority to recognize Wikipedia "clubs" as official affiliates, and nothing more. Being a Steward, he already had the full authority to take action in a rogue admin situation, and his AffCom membership would have been irrelevant. There was no reason to invoke his AffCom membership, and I'm not sure why he did. It does seem that he was not acting as a representative of AffCom itself, merely implying that part of his authority stemmed from being an AffCom member. Strange indeed. I suppose the notion comes from the fact that AffCom is an extension of the WMF Board. Still, I'm happy he took action. ~Swarm~  {sting} 06:17, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * For the record, Mehman97 is not a Steward. I think you're confusing him with Mardetanha, who performed the unblock. — 🦊 06:32, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Hello folks. First of all, to say that the role of the Affiliation committee is 0, I didn't act on behalf of AffCom and in general AffCom is not involved in this case. I mentioned AffCom for the reason that it is more recognizable (than for example Wikimedia UG Georgia, where I'm Chairman) for everyone, and with this I wanted to explain my interest in the matter. I think that we, the committee members have a social responsibility to help communities and people in problem situations, what I do. As a mediator, I wanted to peacefully solve the problem of blocking Farhad, but unfortunately the administrator didn't listen to my calls and ended as it is now. So, there’s nothing to do with AffCom and it’s not necessary to connect it with my actions as some kind of interested party. Kindly, -- Mehman  97  13:31, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Current Meta link on Farhad/Derslek case --ssr (talk) 06:29, 30 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Oh look, yet another ethnonationalist fight on one of the non-Western-European-language projects. For anyone who doesn't know the context, which is most people reading this, Tatars are viewed as a "troublesome minority" by Russian nationalists. I presume that's what's underlying this. Of course the WMF has no people who speak any languages needed to know what's going on here. Sooner or later one of these things will blow up into a big PR scandal. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 21:58, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
 * No, it won't. --ssr (talk) 08:54, 3 August 2020 (UTC)