Billinghurst wrote: > I disagree, this needs to be a decision by the WMF, not by stewards. Some > sites are 'independent', and this is a matter that needs to have no wriggle > room, and hence be a definitive statement. It is simply a case that the > worst of the worst need to be managed from the top and at a policy level, > not as operational issues. This is a due diligence matter.
I think it's a fairly dangerous precedent to have the Wikimedia Foundation involved in making individual decisions about who can and can't edit. I realize that in the past, certain system administrators or Jimmy have done this, but as far as I'm aware, the Wikimedia Foundation (as an organization) has not and does not get involved in cases like this for a reason. As Phoebe noted, there have been some efforts at Meta-Wiki (more recently than I thought, actually) to address this. I'd like to see the community give it a good-faith try (or two) to solve this without intervention before seeking top-down involvement. That isn't to say that the two bodies need to be completely separate. One procedure for a global ban committee could be to direct the Wikimedia Foundation to declare particular people as completely unwelcome, or something like that. But I haven't seen too much to suggest that the community can't solve this, only that they haven't yet. Regarding independent projects, a local admin is going to do what a local admin is going to do, no matter whether it's stewards or the Wikimedia Foundation telling them otherwise. That can be handled on a case-by-case basis as appropriate. Honestly, there are other seemingly intractable problems that the community has faced and the response from seeking Wikimedia Foundation help hasn't been great. Controversial content comes to mind. A long study that ended in a report that said "well, yeah, lots and lots of penises on Commons!" I don't really want to see a repeat of that dynamic again. If there are technical or legal aspects to this problem that the Wikimedia Foundation can put resources toward, let's figure out what those are and make it happen. But the community really needs to take charge here, if at all possible. MZMcBride _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
