3 ms·

Headline aside, this is really well reported. Kudos to the journalist and buzzfeed for putting in an effort to understand the relative dynamics and for linking

by nullc 7y ago

Headline aside, this is really well reported. Kudos to the journalist and buzzfeed for putting in an effort to understand the relative dynamics and for linking directly to the underlying discussions. Wikipedia is one of the few very large venues online that I feel really had moderation done right (HN isn't in the running due to not being very large. :))-- sites like reddit, twitter, facebook just get capricious bans handed out essentially at random--- on those sites earnest and serious harassment usually goes unaddressed while petty staff qualms or favors for connected parties are about the only thing that reliably gets addressed. (And I am speaking directly from experience) Having a community that governs itself is really the only thing with a chance of scaling, but for that to work the community has to also own itself: Few will invest the labor required to maintain effective self-governance if they feel they are facing capricious overrides, creating an environment where they're working for someone else (without compensation) rather than for themselves. For a long time Wikipedia was a shining example here, but this incident suggests to me that it may not be anymore.

blargmaster33 7y ago
There moderation is pure leftist..
eecc 7y ago
I see your point, but the last paragraphs of the article painted a different scenario; one where the self-governing bodies were unable to address the skillfully borderline actions - where each one individually is within rule and custom, but as a whole are an act of harassment- of a malicious yet respected actor. Fascinating... there are several historical examples of “revolutionary” bodies that succumbed to these dynamics. Curious to see if there’s some layman’s literature on the subject
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  not quite what you are wondering about, but FWIW this bit from the article > “The community is currently blaming the foundation for their own mess, in my opinion,” he wrote, “which was caused by our abject failure to develop procedures to enforce civility without Foundation intervention.” reminded me of something Gustav Landauer said: > You don’t know what order with freedom means! You only know what revolt against oppression is! You don’t know that the rod, discipline, violence, the state and government can only be sustained because of you and because of your lack of socially creative powers that develop order within liberty!
- nullc 7y ago
  That is a claim being made, but it doesn't appear to be one that is actually supported by the facts. In this case, the editor in question had a longstanding dispute with Wikimedia connected party (a party whom, had, in fact been sanctioned by the community for their actions). I understand that monarchy is now in fashion in communities, but the arguments for democracy in its various forms as opposed to various kinds of dictatorships remain strong enough that I'd want to see some pretty good evidence that self governance isn't a good trade-off. I don't think that anyone would argue that community self-governance won't make errors, all systems of governance will. The abject failure of centrally moderated large web communities certainly do not argue for that approach. [Of particular interest: this case has all the marks of having received attention through influence (the banned user had a longstanding dispute with a WMF connected party who also quit the project at the same time)-- maybe that actually wasn't a factor here but WMF has not been forthcoming even TO the arbcom in private with a detailed justification for this actions. As a result of the apparent of impropriety and the largely unexplained secrecy it doesn't make for a particularly good argument that it's actually fixing a failure.]
  - nullc 7y ago
    > having received attention through influence To clarify in case this gets read as a greater accusation than I intended: I have some personal experience potentially similar to the persons involved in the potential conflict of interest in this case: My partner was previously chair of the Wikimedia foundation board. I was made uncomfortable on a number of occasions by staff whom didn't otherwise know me from Adam being unusually responsive to me compared to other contributors with similar or greater community standing but less luminous connections. ... and this happened even though no one asked for it and though I tried to carefully avoid invoking it. No explicit corruption is needed to end up with an undue and improper influence, that's just how people work. I addressed it by reducing my involvement. I can only imagine that now-- with greater distance between WMF staff and the community since many of the old time community originated staff left during Lila's tenure as ED-- that this sort of issue is even worse, since staff members that knew me as a community member didn't act that way as far as I could tell.
  - eecc 7y ago
- nullc 7y ago
  FWIW: The arbcom has now issued a statement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_to_the_Wikimedia_Foundation's_ban_of_Fram#Open_letter_from_the_Arbitration_Committee_to_the_WMF_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_t...
  - belorn 7y ago
    Thank you. That gives a bit more information about the scale. Two bureaucrats (out of 20), 18 administrators, an ArbCom clerk has already resigned, and now 4 out of 9 members of ArbCom is planning to resign.
  - eecc 7y ago
    Very well worded.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zapdrive 7y ago
Slightly off topic, but kudos to your contribution to the censorship on /r/bitcoin, you guys really won. I was skeptical of the mass bans you guys handed out, but you really pulled it off. You should give consultation to Wales on how to handle this situation. Maybe mass bans will be effective.
DanBC 7y ago
> Wikipedia is one of the few very large venues online that I feel really had moderation done right For years Wikipedia has given a pass to abusive harassing arseholes because those people were also prolific editors. That puts at risk the main principle of wikipedia - the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, because lots of those anyones are driven away by those toxic but prolific editors. And wikipedia just isn't very good at acknowledging they're bad at dealing with toxic editors. A bunch of admins will see clear pattern of abuse and will excuse it. "That's not so bad", "it's pretty bad but it's not as bad as it used to be", "no-one has told that person to stop" (despite there being many requests to the person to stop), "it's pretty bad but they're prolific", "I don't think it's bad and so anyone else who think's it's bad should toughen up". (We see most of these in the Fram discussion.) The worst thing about wikipedia (and we also see this on HN) is the refusal to trust process unless every single intimate detail is litigated in public, and that's something that often cannot happen when you have a person harassing others.
- nullc 7y ago
  > For years Wikipedia has given a pass to abusive harassing arseholes because those people were also prolific editors Can you suggest a similarly large service that does better? I can tell you first hand that reddit and twitter absoltely give not the slightest shit about constant harassment, impersonation, and posting threats and personal information: Except when I pick up the phone and directly apply pressure to the legal or executive staff via connections. > is the refusal to trust process unless every single intimate detail is litigated in public, This isn't the case here. Wikipedia has a established governance process for dealing with trouble making administrators, who regularly handle highly private confidential information-- and they're equally in the dark here. There is a process, but it isn't the users who aren't trusting it-- It's the WMF that is not trusting, bypassing the process, and not acting in a transparent manner.

by nullc 7y ago

blargmaster33 7y ago

There moderation is pure leftist..

eecc 7y ago

I see your point, but the last paragraphs of the article painted a different scenario; one where the self-governing bodies were unable to address the skillfully borderline actions - where each one individually is within rule and custom, but as a whole are an act of harassment- of a malicious yet respected actor. Fascinating... there are several historical examples of “revolutionary” bodies that succumbed to these dynamics. Curious to see if there’s some layman’s literature on the subject

PavlovsCat 7y ago
not quite what you are wondering about, but FWIW this bit from the article > “The community is currently blaming the foundation for their own mess, in my opinion,” he wrote, “which was caused by our abject failure to develop procedures to enforce civility without Foundation intervention.” reminded me of something Gustav Landauer said: > You don’t know what order with freedom means! You only know what revolt against oppression is! You don’t know that the rod, discipline, violence, the state and government can only be sustained because of you and because of your lack of socially creative powers that develop order within liberty!
nullc 7y ago
That is a claim being made, but it doesn't appear to be one that is actually supported by the facts. In this case, the editor in question had a longstanding dispute with Wikimedia connected party (a party whom, had, in fact been sanctioned by the community for their actions). I understand that monarchy is now in fashion in communities, but the arguments for democracy in its various forms as opposed to various kinds of dictatorships remain strong enough that I'd want to see some pretty good evidence that self governance isn't a good trade-off. I don't think that anyone would argue that community self-governance won't make errors, all systems of governance will. The abject failure of centrally moderated large web communities certainly do not argue for that approach. [Of particular interest: this case has all the marks of having received attention through influence (the banned user had a longstanding dispute with a WMF connected party who also quit the project at the same time)-- maybe that actually wasn't a factor here but WMF has not been forthcoming even TO the arbcom in private with a detailed justification for this actions. As a result of the apparent of impropriety and the largely unexplained secrecy it doesn't make for a particularly good argument that it's actually fixing a failure.]
- nullc 7y ago
  > having received attention through influence To clarify in case this gets read as a greater accusation than I intended: I have some personal experience potentially similar to the persons involved in the potential conflict of interest in this case: My partner was previously chair of the Wikimedia foundation board. I was made uncomfortable on a number of occasions by staff whom didn't otherwise know me from Adam being unusually responsive to me compared to other contributors with similar or greater community standing but less luminous connections. ... and this happened even though no one asked for it and though I tried to carefully avoid invoking it. No explicit corruption is needed to end up with an undue and improper influence, that's just how people work. I addressed it by reducing my involvement. I can only imagine that now-- with greater distance between WMF staff and the community since many of the old time community originated staff left during Lila's tenure as ED-- that this sort of issue is even worse, since staff members that knew me as a community member didn't act that way as far as I could tell.
- eecc 7y ago
nullc 7y ago
FWIW: The arbcom has now issued a statement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_to_the_Wikimedia_Foundation's_ban_of_Fram#Open_letter_from_the_Arbitration_Committee_to_the_WMF_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_t...
- belorn 7y ago
  Thank you. That gives a bit more information about the scale. Two bureaucrats (out of 20), 18 administrators, an ArbCom clerk has already resigned, and now 4 out of 9 members of ArbCom is planning to resign.
- eecc 7y ago
  Very well worded.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

zapdrive 7y ago

Slightly off topic, but kudos to your contribution to the censorship on /r/bitcoin, you guys really won. I was skeptical of the mass bans you guys handed out, but you really pulled it off. You should give consultation to Wales on how to handle this situation. Maybe mass bans will be effective.

DanBC 7y ago

> Wikipedia is one of the few very large venues online that I feel really had moderation done right For years Wikipedia has given a pass to abusive harassing arseholes because those people were also prolific editors. That puts at risk the main principle of wikipedia - the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, because lots of those anyones are driven away by those toxic but prolific editors. And wikipedia just isn't very good at acknowledging they're bad at dealing with toxic editors. A bunch of admins will see clear pattern of abuse and will excuse it. "That's not so bad", "it's pretty bad but it's not as bad as it used to be", "no-one has told that person to stop" (despite there being many requests to the person to stop), "it's pretty bad but they're prolific", "I don't think it's bad and so anyone else who think's it's bad should toughen up". (We see most of these in the Fram discussion.) The worst thing about wikipedia (and we also see this on HN) is the refusal to trust process unless every single intimate detail is litigated in public, and that's something that often cannot happen when you have a person harassing others.

nullc 7y ago
> For years Wikipedia has given a pass to abusive harassing arseholes because those people were also prolific editors Can you suggest a similarly large service that does better? I can tell you first hand that reddit and twitter absoltely give not the slightest shit about constant harassment, impersonation, and posting threats and personal information: Except when I pick up the phone and directly apply pressure to the legal or executive staff via connections. > is the refusal to trust process unless every single intimate detail is litigated in public, This isn't the case here. Wikipedia has a established governance process for dealing with trouble making administrators, who regularly handle highly private confidential information-- and they're equally in the dark here. There is a process, but it isn't the users who aren't trusting it-- It's the WMF that is not trusting, bypassing the process, and not acting in a transparent manner.