[Wikipedia-l] editing restrictions

Tue Apr 20 05:31:22 UTC 2004

Hello all,

This is at the same time, news from another wikipedia,
and somehow a feature request (or start of discussion,
whatever), hence sent to wikipedia-l and wikitech.

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NEWS SECTION

Today, the french wikipedia adopted new rules with
regards to sanctions and exclusion (majority of 93%)

To make it simple.

Before : the only action toward a problematic user was
banning. It was decided by consensus, with 100%
agreement. Two people were banned by this way, Mulot
(in august 2002) and Papotages (in november 2003).

This naturally has become unworkable.

Now : a new policy was adopted. This is not a final
policy, as several points have to be further
discussed, but it outlines the principles.

This policy is rather different from the english one.
I guess the difference is due to 1) we are less
numerous and 2) we never had a benevolent dictator :-)

The major differences rely here

* There is no arbitration committee. Decisions are
taken by the full community (with requirements of
number of contributions or length of presence
depending on the decision).

* The policy relies on two steps, clearly identified.

The first step is meant to slow down edition by a
problematic user, or to restrict his right of edition
to some parts of the project for example. It is
relying on the *agreement* of the user to respect
these rules. The community issues a sort of warning to
the problematic user and ask him to voluntarily
respect this collective warning.

For example, if a user is unable to collaborate on an
article, and starts edit wars on this article all the
time, he may be asked by the community not to edit
this specific article for one month.

The restriction in edition is automatically lifted
after a month.

If the user does not respect the request issued by the
community, the second step is reached. Similarly, a
user being issued repeated warnings and edition
restrictions in first step will meet second step.

The second step is restriction of edition, by
technical means. In short blocking/banning temporarily
or permanently.

#  This means that the entire community will be able
to express disagreement to a user, depending on his
behavior as an editor.

#  Decisions of restriction of edition or banning will
not be unilateral but collective

#  Restriction in edition should not be necessarily
seen as a punishment for the user, but more a warning
from the collective, and request for him to behave
differently

#  Restriction in edition should be respected by the
user himself, voluntarily. That means the user
actively chooses to behave within community norms or
not. If he accepts, his full rights will be
reinstated. If he refuses, a vote for banning will be
started

#  Community answer to problematic behavior is
gradual. It allows room for voluntary behavior
improvement and general forgiveness.

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FEATURE REQUEST SECTION

You may note that the second step, restriction of
edition by technical means, is limited. The only point
on which we may act is time. Banning for one week, one
month, forever etc….

I think it would be nice that technical means allow to
block people more selectively, such as blocking on all
meta space, or blocking on one article specifically.

In the first case (meta space blocking), that means we
recognise the right of the user to contribute to
articles themselves, but we do not welcome them in the
community.
In the second case (article blocking), that means we
could selectively prevent a user to edit on article or
some set of articles which are really “hot buttons”
for him.

This has been mentioned a couple of time already, as
well as edit throttling, which I think, holds interest
as well.

I would give a 100 wiki-kisses to any developer
interested in working on that :-)

I would also suggest raising funds for this, 'cause I
am not sure I own 100 wiki-kisses. But I promise I am
dedicated in making/removing people sysop and
bureaucrat status to give developers more free time
:-)

Anthere

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