[Foundation-l] "Wikidrama" and autonomy of Wikimedia projects

Tue Aug 12 00:39:25 UTC 2008

--- On Mon, 8/11/08, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] "Wikidrama" and autonomy of Wikimedia projects
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Monday, August 11, 2008, 3:34 PM
> On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 12:57 PM, Cary Bass
> <cary at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> 
> > Scenario 2:
> > A user has been banned on enwiki.  The user has
> "outed" psuedonymous
> > individuals via his blog and threads Wikipedia Review
> by compiling
> > information put together elsewhere on the net.  He has
> taken to another
> > wiki and under the auspices of the local wiki's
> policy, has put back
> > links to pages which have links to pages (sometimes
> several pages deep)
> > which "outs" the individuals.
> >
> 
> Just an additional note to what Cary wrote--this Scenario 2
> in turn then
> spilled over to a separate third project, where users of
> the first project
> arrived in wide numbers to "vote" in an election
> of a Checkuser whose home
> project was the first project mentioned in the scenario.
> En.wiki users
> arrived on the third project after having in many cases
> little to no prior
> involvement in that third project, to actively vote on the
> election of a
> user who was primarily active on the first one and who had
> allegedly taken a
> side in that initial dispute that had nothing at all to do
> with the third
> project. So that scenario #2 actually impacted three
> projects, not just
> two...
> 
>

This is a problematic situation, but I don't understand why there is such a breakdown in communication between the project that it would get to this point.  I certainly think that it out of line for a non-local community member to run for checkuser without the local communities blessing if that is indeed what has happened here.  If there no local community to speak of  it should be a steward issue, and no election of checkuser should be necessary.  If there is a local community and this report is accurate, I cannot imagine more insurmountable error that could be made in good faith.   I cannot even imagine how to overcome the cultural gaffe of trying to get checkuser rights within a local community that is not supportive of the idea.  Now it could be the local community is supportive of checkuser and the difficulties in having 22 local voters is leading to crossover support from other wikis which the local communities is accepting of.  But if the local
 communities did not invite the situation, I think the non-local editors need to back off let some people who are untainted by this gaffe try and salvage the situation and broker some kind of compromise and cooperation.  If this is worse case, it is not the sort of situation which will work out on it's own to anyone's satisfaction.  But this is all described so vaguely.  Please make it clear about how substantial the local community is and if they are truly concerned.

Birgitte SB