Misplaced Pages

:Village pump (proposals) - Misplaced Pages

Article snapshot taken from[REDACTED] with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Doc James (talk | contribs) at 13:31, 8 May 2018 (→RfC on notability of compilation albums). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 13:31, 8 May 2018 by Doc James (talk | contribs) (→RfC on notability of compilation albums)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) Discussion page for new ideas and proposals
 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 
Shortcuts

New ideas and proposals are discussed here. Before submitting:


« Archives, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216

Centralized discussion
Village pumps
policy
tech
proposals
idea lab
WMF
misc
For a listing of ongoing discussions, see the dashboard.

RfC: Ending the system of portals

Moved to Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)/RfC: Ending the system of portals – Hi everybody. Because this discussion has become so lengthy (400,000+ bytes), I have moved it to a subpage of the village pump so that the village pump is more accessible. I apologize if any confusion has been caused by this. Mz7 (talk) 01:59, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

This entry got archived by a bot twice so far. I'm reposting it, because the discussion is live. 30 days will be up on the 8th.    — The Transhumanist   02:22, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Bumping thread for 30 days. Mz7 (talk) 06:51, 28 April 2018 (UTC)


Proposed Bot for tagging BadSVG files.

Example of reasonable SVG file with embedded raster image.
Which can also be scaled.

Some SVG files are no more than a bitmap file with an SVG "wrapper". When I have found them in the past, I have added {{BadSVG}} to them. There will be plenty of others I have not seen. It is proposed for a new bot to go through the SVG files we have and when it finds the start of a hex code stream (i.e. like xlink:href="data:image/jpeg;base64,), it tags the file with the {{BadSVG}} template. The file names will then be in Category:SVGs for cleanup where interested editors could consider cleaning them up. Once we have examined the existing files, the bot can be adjusted just to examine new uploads. Ronhjones  20:01, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Great idea. Embedding raster graphics in a "scalable" format is pretty pointless and may confuse readers/re-users when they don't scale as expected. -FASTILY 21:51, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
Raster images in an SVG file should scale just like other raster images. Glrx (talk) 22:44, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
We also need a better process for getting rid of these images. Uploading a real SVG is preferable in cases where one exists, but in cases where no real SVG can be found, it is still preferable to replace a "fake" SVG with a real raster image. If it's a non-free image, it's fairly simple to swap it out in the article and then tag it as orphaned, but if it's not, I've had {{Obsolete}} tags removed since the replacement image wasn't the same file type. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:48, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
We could do with a new or expanded speedy to cover that. I've done some in the past, taken out the jpg and replaced it in the article. But there is always the risk that someone will swap it out in the 7 days that F5 takes to mature. Maybe expand G6? Ronhjones  16:19, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
I built a tool several months ago to download the first 4 KB of every SVG on Commons. And I investigated this, finding three usages of bitmaps:
  1. The bitmap off canvas or behind an SVG traces, such as File:649th Military Intelligence Battalion Coat of Arms.svg
  2. Mixed use: Small bitmap used for a tiny element, interactive SVGs
  3. Full Bitmap in an SVG wrapper, such as File:Pst-geo.svg
I scanned the 1.2 million SVG January Commmons dump and found 2,457 SVGs with 3+ KB base64. — Dispenser 03:06, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. It is inappropriate to automatically label any file with an embedded stream as bad SVG. One application of SVG is to provide a bitmap image with editable text labels. See File:Moon names.svg, which is an image of the moon with text labels in both English and Ukrainian; there are also German, Bulgarian, Chinese, and Spanish versions. A bot could capture six reasonable images and inappropriately label them as bad. Imagine a picture of the thoracic cavity with text labels for lung, heart, and aorta. See File:Blausen 0458 Heart ThoracicCavity.png. Yes, it is a PNG, but there could be an SVG-labeled version. There's been a project to do that for many images. See the SVG text labels in c:File:Defecating into a pit (raster).svg. Admittedly, the pit image is simple enough that it should have been vectorized rather than kept as a bitmap, and the project has lost its way by spawning translated JPEGs rather than translated SVGs. Yes, there are inappropriate SVG files out there, but that does not mean all SVGs with raster data are bad. Glrx (talk) 22:44, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
@Glrx: Maybe the template name is wrong? (not my template!) - Template:Bad SVG - only has the word "bad" in the title. Perhaps it should be more like "SVG with Raster". My view is that, if they were tagged then it would give a list for subsequent review. Ronhjones  14:26, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
@Ronhjones: The use of "bad" in the name is an intent to say that the SVG format has been misapplied. The text of the template ("This SVG image contains embedded raster graphics. Such images are liable to produce inferior results when scaled to different sizes.") does not explain the problem. Scaling of continuous tone images (typical photographs) is usually not a problem. Magnify the image enough and you will hit a resolution limit, but that is not a misapplication of a raster. That's why the Moon names raster is reasonable. If small, discrete tone, text characters (or curved shapes or non-Manhattan geometry shapes) are present in a raster image and then magnified, the anti-aliasing will blur the desired character, destroy the discrete tones, and fail to maintain / reconstruct the desired shape. There is nothing inherently wrong with inserting a raster image into an SVG file, so tagging an SVG file with an embedded raster seems like overkill. The problem is when the raster image contains drawn geometrical shapes. Sort of if the raster existed as a PNG, then somebody would come along and tag it with {{Convert to SVG}}. Even if somebody were to just stick such a PNG inside an SVG file, that would be a step in the right direction: maybe somebody will come along and replace the rasterized geometrical shapes with scalable vector shapes and remove the raster. There's not a compelling reason to delete such an SVG file; it might improve. On the other hand, an SVG that is just a continuous tone portrait of Winston Churchill probably has no business being an SVG file; JPEG would serve the purpose. None of these cases are simply detected with a string match. Tagging all of them for review does not seem to have a significant priority. So the SVG is bad/poor/misapplied. Why does it have to be examined/fixed/deleted right now? I blanche when I look at all the defecating-into-a-pit JPEGs. They are wrong in so many ways, but many of the African languages are not accessible, and the images don't need to be fixed today. Glrx (talk) 16:45, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
@Glrx:Oh, OK. I started this thread as I discovered that there were a few (it was about a dozen in a random 400) non-free SVGs which were which were just a photograph (and a high res one at that) - they were all converted back to jpg and scaled to an appropriate non-free size. Looks like it needs more of a manual examination. Ronhjones  16:58, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
Good arguments and thanks for your kind words about my moon SVG, Glrx. Another set of SVGs with embedded bitmaps are interactive renditions of GIF animations:
They could arguably be converted into video clips, but that would lose quality due to recompression. Cheers, cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 17:11, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
  • needs some work What we need is some reporting tool to tag candidates and which can be told of the apparent few where there is a larger raster which is nonetheless appropriate. Mangoe (talk) 13:50, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
@Mangoe: I can't see why a bot could not work out the percentage of raster and maybe categorise into, say, low / medium / high levels of raster image. Ronhjones  14:26, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
Just to add there are 14222 non-free SVGs and 6815 free SVGs in en-wiki Ronhjones  14:26, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
I ran the head download script last week. So I have 690 SVGs on the possibly bad list, but haven't time to refine it. A simple method for culling labeled or drawn over SVGs is to count the number of opening tags (<). — Dispenser 03:39, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
From a technical standpoint, I didn't notice any of those SVG files deserving a Bad SVG label. They are predominantly logos that have geometric shapes, so they should be SVG files. On the other hand, many of the images are non-free fair use, e.g., File:American Heart Association Logo.svg, so we may not use high resolution versions of them. That is, converting them to SVG would be a pointless exercise. The files are already tagged for fair use, so I'd just let them be.
For a non-logo example, File:Cauldron.svg is an appropriate use of SVG. It has both bitmap and vector elements; it is using SVG gradient fills. It could have been done with all SVG elements. Glrx (talk) 23:32, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Community de-adminship processes

Considering the community has the power to appoint admins, it is only fair that we have a procedure at hand to hold our admins accountable but every community de-adminship proposal has failed, some because the discussion is heavily derailed by a few editors, others due to no consensus. I simply think that this is a necessary process for the validation of WP:ADMINACCT. Sure ArbCom can, but that process takes months at end and sometimes doesn't even have an ideal outcome, they're not the community afterall. A lot of admins are concerned with the fact that they make enemies while their tenure here and that will severely skew the results in such a process, but then the reverse can be true as well, essentially making it a fallacious argument. I don't want such a process to lead the witch hunt against admins who might've made a few errors in judgement but a process to hold the ones accountable who have gamed the system in one or more ways and repetitively abused the trust of the community under the radar. Effectively, a process to be made without the ArbCom cogs to take forever. I'd like to hear more thoughts on this matter. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 07:21, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

The thread at ANI which required me to ask: link. This thread is to elicit new opinions on the matter just, and see if anything has changed from the status quo and if we have the cause to make a new proposal. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 07:25, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Another navel-gazing discussion would not be helpful. It is obvious that admins who actively work to repel unhelpful editors get a lot of enemies, and such admins would get a lot of heat from socks whom we would have to pretend were good faith editors raising issues of concern. I would prefer that the admins spend their time repelling unhelpful editors rather than spend time arguing with their friends. No one has shown a discussion involving an admin which failed to get the correct outcome within a reasonable time. Arbcom would desysop an admin in under an hour if it were really necessary (they would discuss whether the emergency desysop was warranted). Johnuniq (talk) 07:43, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
You seem to suggest a "deep state" network of socks would mysteriously arise and we will assume they are here in good-faith when simply they have no credibility for such. I'm sure the state of the community is not so dire and you're exaggerating. ArbCom doesn't make emergency desysops, it's still at the behest of stewards/office@WMF. ArbCom's functioning is the essential defining factor of a bureaucracy, no one's saying they can't do their job, but are they doing it well, not as much as we would want, such is the description of the job. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 07:58, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
That would be somewhat resolved by limiting desysop discussions to an WP:ECP-locked page (I'd say just autoconfirmed, that's really not a hurdle). IP editors and newer accounts could still make arguments and present evidence on the talk page, and if they have any pretense of validity then someone who can edit the ECP-locked page will carry them over. If the talk page gets flooded with "get rid of him!" spam, it could go into pending changes (with the understanding that any good-faith comment, no matter its position, should be approved). No comment one way or another on the original topic, just something that'd prevent pretty much any reasonable claims of sock influence without completely silencing grievances by newer or anonymous users. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:00, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Personally I suppose putting the same system of RfA sounds about right, the idea of accountability. The bottom line is, some people are malicious, things will happen, but in the course of time, it will not even reflect in the process. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 19:01, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Two of the things we would have to consider:
Admins ARE kangaroo courts. HiLo48 (talk) 21:50, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
If you have a plausibly workable idea, describe it somewhere and provide a link, then we can have a discussion about an actual proposal. · · · Peter (Southwood) : 08:01, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
That's not happening, most opposes are simply based on "we do not want such a process" primarily, so having a proposal without addressing why not would be pointless. There have been workable ideas time and again but it's hard to change beliefs when they are based on assumed ideas. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 09:25, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Re your above comment about desysops, the procedures for an Arbcom emergency desysop are here. Of course it involves an arb contacting a steward to perform the operation. Re "workable ideas", if starting a discussion it might be worth linking to a couple of such workable ideas, preferably with a mention of how they would avoid adminship becoming a beauty contest where admins who don't spend most of their time charming their voters get replaced by those who do. Johnuniq (talk) 09:46, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Johnuniq, I get your point, more than a fair number of these proposals have arose and all of them have gone down, with some actually being pretty good, or some close to consensus even. But, with the community (+ admins) not ready to even accept the idea, making a proposal at any point is useless, considering the same group will shoot down the idea even if it had any merit (since in the end, it's about opinions, isn't it). --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 18:56, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
This is a perennial proposal. As the initiator of the thread at that link, I knew from the start that it was a non-binding measure. It was designed to bring attention to an issue, knowing that it wasn't the forum couldn't actually remove admin rights, but useful to see if others agreed that something wasn't working out and to incubate some sort of solution. The situation resolved itself, and I think the project is better for it, but I don't think there is ever going to be agreement for a ground-up community-initiated removal process exactly because admins do tend to perform actions which people could hold grudges against. There may be hope for a peer-level process where other admins can initiate it. -- Netoholic @ 10:17, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
That's my point. If a few editors who hold grudges could skew results, it could well happen at the RfA stage and why are we being so protective in the case of de-adminship, when it's the community vs. a few editors with grudges. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 16:48, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
The "what about the editors with grudges" argument holds no water whatsoever. Stewards are confirmed on a yearly basis and it has never been a problem - even if it were, you can have a system with safeguards to prevent that sort of abuse. A community-based desysop procedure makes sense. The community elects admins, and it should have the power to remove them. If enwiki were to seriously consider this, I would offer up a system similar to that used on Commons and Wikidata: 1) an ANI/AN thread regarding the misuse of sysop tools gets consensus to initiate a confirmation RFA, then 2) a confirmation RFA is held, requiring a simple majority to remove sysop access. There's no need for some heavily bureaucratic system like those proposed in the past. And if you want more safeguards, replace the simple majority requirement with consensus to remove at the confirmation RFA as well. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 17:06, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, even if there are grudges, they can be enough to sink an rfa, dragging it down from say 75% to 60% etc, but a majority/supermajority voting to remove can't be from grudges, considering especially that usually there are 150+ people !voting. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:16, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Exactly my opinion. Every argument along the line seems like the very definition of exaggeration to me. With a community to back, I'd say unless you've blatantly abused the right, it's harder to lose than gain the rights, considering everyone wants good admins to stick around and with the dwindling numbers of RfAs, they'd be less inclined to vote for the sake of it, without evaluating merit and joining the sides of the few editors who hold grudges. I think the fact that (some) admins think the community will give in to that is a wrong thought in itself, considering they're the ones who picked you in the first place. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 18:56, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Ajraddatz, as much as I respect you, your comparison is not at all similar. The majority of participants at steward confirmations are individuals from projects that have admins and/or ‘crats, which means stewards have next to nothing controversial to do on the home projects of probably a super-majority of those participating in the discussion. Compared to example, en.wiki, where enforcing our text copyright policy has suddenly become controversial. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:00, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Maybe, but you can still look at the community desysop proceedings on other Wikimedia wikis to see the same effect. On Wikidata, we've had one de-RFA and no abuse of the process. On Commons, almost all of their de-RFAs have been in-process and legitimate. The sort of abuse that people fear just doesn't happen in practice, at least to the extent of being able to change the outcome. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 22:29, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
The de.wiki process the 2015 RfC was based upon gives bad enough numbers to show that the concerns are not exaggerated, and I think that project is probably a better comparison to en.wiki than many of the others used. There is this theory that the reason the community has set higher standards at RfA is because of how difficult a desysop is, and that if we only make it easier to desysop, the RfA standards will become lower.I don't think that is the case. I think what we would have would be a lot more people resigning the tools under a cloud rather than go through a process that may very well end in their favour and that the RfA process would still have ridiculously high standards. The net result here would be a project that is already struggling to get more admins to replace the attrition of inactive ones still not getting more people at RfA, and also losing more people who would rather resign than go through what is sure to be an unpleasant experience. I think any admin who has lost the trust of the community should resign, and that when there is a valid question as to if they do have community trust, ArbCom should desysop: I brought a case based on this principle. I just also believe that the already established community desysop procedure (which is what ArbCom is) works fine and has less negatives than any alternative that has been proposed. To paraphrase Churchill, it's the worst form of desysop except all the others. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:49, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, but Tony, isn't the question - why you believe so? If an admin were to fear and resign, they would do so in every case, any kind of process - if an admin were to fear and resign, they already know their mistakes will get them desysoped. Community evaluation is faster, and gauges opinions better than ArbCom can, it holds admins accountable where we want them, rather than wait for Arbs to churn out the results after extensive off-wiki conversations. The RfA standards now have nothing to do with this, personally I dislike that the numbers have fallen to this dismal count, but if you want to fix that, this thread won't help. And attrition in admin numbers can only be fixed when we get more RfAs with a community more willing to accept them, not by keeping the few admins who might get de-sysoped due to a community referendum. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 04:34, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
No, it would just mean that someone doesn't feel like going through an abbreviated show trial at an ANI-meets-RfA and that they have better things to do with their life than go through the hell that would be. ArbCom is slow and not fun, but at the very least, every party tends to be treated with respect. The idea I strongly get from your statement is that you are talking about a system where guilt would be assumed and the burden would be on the person up for review to prove they should retain advanced permissions rather those wanting to retain them to prove otherwise (it may not be your intent, but that is how it does come off.) That would be a radical departure from the current system, and one that I could not support. Additionally, I'll raise the point that any system such as this would make the unblockables phenomenon much worse than it already is. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:52, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
That's an unpleasant idea. I would not entertain such an idea, I am only arguing for a community-deadminship process and assumed guilt is quite far from it. Why do you keep saying it like the community will lead the witch hunt against innocent admins who might've made mistakes, there's almost a nil chance that an innocent user will get caught up in community-based processes. I see that you support the ArbCom's take on sanctions but there's a certain group of people who undoubtedly are not, no system is perfect, but this certainly has to be more perfect that the process ArbCom is. The point is, an admin will not have to prove anything if they are innocent, it's the duty of the community to evaluate. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 16:24, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
  • I would support an amendment to policy where a thread can be opened at AN to request an involuntary RfA for current admins. If that thread is closed with a consensus for an RfA, then one is opened by a crat, without the accouterments of accepting the involuntary nomination. The format and duration of the RfA proceeds (including watchlist notifications) as a normal RfA and is closed as normal by a crat, including the discretionary zone and possible crat chat. If the consensus is to oppose their adminship, then the bit will be removed by the closing crat. But opening one would require a consensus at AN, and an involuntary RfA for community confirmation cannot be opened by any one individual. GMG 19:16, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
I would grant broad leeway within crat discretion for the timing of the RfA, which could be reasonably delayed if needed to accommodate the asking and answering of community questions by the nominated admin, and require that the AN thread be closed by a crat, as the person who is charged with then opening the broader community discussion at RfA. GMG 19:26, 15 April 2018 (UTC) 
For further clarification, I've been thinking a lot about this exact issue lately. There is a central problem that we have essentially a type of landed aristocracy or peerage, at some level disconnected from the functional pragmatic use of the level of user access. Many of these are seasoned admins who were elected early on, and who have grown to be among our most valued community leadership, but we also have some current admins who absolutely would not pass an RfA in 2018 or even be considered for nomination for one. We have others who conduct themselves occasionally with general disregard for community norms, because the standard is whether you have passed an RfA ever, and not whether you can pass an RfA now.
The standard for desysop at ArbCom is spectacular disaster, and not consistent faithful use of the tools in accordance with community norms. So we reinforce a notion that so long as any admin who happens to be a disaster, can maintain the tools so long as that disaster does not become spectacular. That's a problem and it's one that fundamentally erodes trust in the corps and faith in the community. This would be an overall high bar for a re-RfA, where most comers would be turned away at AN, and most who proceed to a re-RfA would likely have already risen to the level of losing community trust, and would have their access removed. It answers the issue of individual grudges by requiring consensus for a discussion to even happen and at the same time, if that discussion does happen, it holds current admins to exactly the same expectations for conduct and competency as we do new admin candidates. GMG 19:50, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
I like it, with the exception of the the role you give 'crats in starting the confirmation RFA. I think that the confirmation RFA should be started by someone who wants the admin in question to be desysopped, so they can present their reasons, rather than a bureaucrat creating the request as a procedural action. Plus, that also gives people some time to reflect after the AN thread is closed on whether a desysop discussion is really necessary. Of course, I would prefer this to the status quo. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 21:08, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
For additional context, you may wish to review Misplaced Pages:Administrators/RfC for binding administrator recall, the last broadly-held RfC on this topic. Its proposal is similar to yours. (Misplaced Pages:Requests for de-adminship has a whole slew of other proposals.) isaacl (talk) 21:25, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
There are some key differences - namely that the proposed dewiki model has an ongoing quorum requirement, whereas this model would move forward from existing community practices (review of actions at AN/ANI). They also require a new RFA with the same passing standard, which is different from this. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 21:46, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Sure, that's why I said similar... Like I said, the idea was to see what has been done before and thus learn from it (you can see from the objections that safeguards like a quorum is a concern). (Regarding RfA passing standard, this proposal says "The format and duration of the RfA proceeds (including watchlist notifications) as a normal RfA and is closed as normal by a crat, including the discretionary zone and possible crat chat.") isaacl (talk) 22:20, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
  • The current process works fine and also has the advantage that the actions of all parties are examined: this has been cited by one person in the past as a reason why they are hesitant to file a desysop case request because they were afraid their actions would be examined. That means it is doing its job: preventing frivolous requests that can be resolved short of a desysop by making people assess how they have behaved in the situation, and possibly getting people to just calm down, which is usually the ideal.I’d also like to point out that while it is popular to complain about not having a desysop process short of ArbCom, a large part of the reason we don’t have one is that no one has proposed one that is actually better. That speaks volumes, IMO. This is a grass is always greener issue, and I say this as one of the limited number of people who has brought a successful desysop case before the committee as a filing party. Yes, the case request process sucks, but I’d much rather have it and know that the admin under discussion is getting full hearing than have an AN/ANI mini-trial or RFCU. There is also the factor that some of these cases, such as the MisterWiki case and some other recent admin issues, do involve private information, which the community is not equipped to deal with. The arbitration process is slow and takes a lot of effort, but it works. There is no need to replace something that works, especially when every alternative that has been proposed brings with it other issues. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:50, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Sorry Tony, I consider you a friend, as much as people who've never met can be. But the current system is not working. You and I were chatting on IRC at the time, and you only beat me to that ArbCom case because I was actively drafting the request in my sandbox at the time and you beat me to it. Spectacular disaster should not be the standard. The community should be the standard. We're not a country where people live with the choices of their government. We're volunteers, who simply leave when the administration isn't accountable to that community in a meaningful way. If the community is the ultimate authority for making our administration, then the community should be the ultimate authority for breaking it when appropriate. I don't want to end the world; but I would very much like to see the standard for desysop moved from spectacular disaster to simply disaster. My concern is not spectacular disasters that ArbCom doesn't act on; my concern is that admins who realize they can operate at the level of simply disaster with no oversight, are free to do so. GMG 00:28, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Sure, but I'm not convinced that there is a better method out there, or at least not one that wouldn't be equally as flawed. My standard for any reform proposal of anything is that it should be an improvement, not just a lateral move that solves some issues while creating others that have the same level of severity. Using the statistics from de.wiki the last time this was formally discussed on en.wiki, ~42% of admins subject to their procedure basically said screw it, and resigned or didn't respond at all. Now, I am of the belief that all admins who have lost the trust of the community should resign, and that when they don't, ArbCom should make that choice for them (that was my basic argument in the MisterWiki case.)At the same time, given that their actual removal rate by vote was only 13% and their retention rate as a whole was 44%, I suspect that many of those who chose to forgo the process on de.wiki would likely have been retained, but they just decided it wasn't worth it. That has the potential to have a real impact on the number of active sysops simply quitting, which I think we also need to take into account when looking at this. What some people also forget is that admins are also volunteers too, and while we have obligations to the community, if given the choice between their bit and an ANI-meets-RfA style sysop review process, there will be a lot of volunteers who decide it just isn't worth it, even if they shouldn't have anything to worry about. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:46, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
At the same time, we fret about inactive NPP reviewers skewing our numbers, when if dewiki is anything like enwiki, half of our admin corps is barely active anyway, and half of those are practically mummified, and so of course they wont stand for a confirmation, because the user right is a dusty artifact. Losing an inactive admin isn't an actual loss; it's the status quo with one less user right involved. Any active admin in good standing should pass with flying colors. That many don't would be a feature, and not a bug. GMG 01:29, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
ArbCom cases can take months—generally in complex cases, where there are multiple issues and multiple parties and where it is not immediately and clearly obvious what the community consensus is with respect to how an issue should be handled. The cases that ArbCom handles slowly and not to the satisfaction of all editors are the cases that the community hands to ArbCom because the community is unable to come to a consensus, and must resort to an independent arbiter because we have no other way to resolve an impasse.
In instances where desysopping is clearly the correct course – and when I say 'clearly', I mean 'clearly to uninvolved parties and not just local partisans' – the ArbCom can and does desysop by motion, and can do so over a few days. (In clear emergencies featuring ongoing misuse of tools or egregious abuses of trust, ArbCom has (and has used) procedures to suspend admin privileges in minutes.) Administrators and the community at large are aware of this, and it is not uncommon for an 'under a cloud' resignation to be tendered as soon as a widely-affirmed concern is presented at AN(/I), or immediately after a well-posed complaint is opened at ArbCom. In the recent Gryffindor case, for instance, a concern was raised at AN/I on 11 April; the weight of opinion in favor of an ArbCom request was established fairly rapidly; Gryffindor read the writing on the wall and resigned on 13 April. That was significantly faster and less wasteful of community time and resources than any new (albeit perennially proposed) process could be. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:14, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Any de-adminship process would probably have had the same effect on Gryffindor, they had the mindset for it. What you're saying in support of the ArbCom model is pure speculation. But what GMG has said is more true than false. The bars for a de-adminship at AC is spectacular disaster. And that's not a good bar. I'm not rejecting the idea that the ArbCom is inefficient, but with a procedure designed to increase bureaucracy in the system, you can see where things start going wrong. Emergency requests procedures of AC are redundant, Stewards have a full reign over who to desysop or not, even a crat can inform them, AC just makes a binding request (which means that the process can take more time rather than lesser). --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 04:27, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Responding at the bottom rather than in-line because there are a few points I want to address. First, the dewiki system isn't a model I would recommend following. The petitions are stressful for admins, the bar to keep adminship is too high, and the results cited by Tony above prove that it just drives admins away. Clearly that isn't what we're looking for. But that's not the only system, nor is it the most widely used, and Wikidata/Commons use a system which has better results. That said, I don't often pull out my soapbox for this issue because the ArbCom process does work - I just think that, from a philosophical perspective, it is wrong. The community should decide who admins are, and be able to remove them. I think that there might be some room for a proven, simple system with safeguards against abuse here, but any proposal for it would be an uphill battle that probably isn't worth the time. Especially when I could be complaining about RfA standards instead :-) -- Ajraddatz (talk) 00:59, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes, but I have and will continue to argue that the problem with the barrier to entry is the barrier to exit. GMG 01:34, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
  • I'll add my 2c here. While I think the current system is stable in people's minds, with a difficult barrier to entry and a quite difficult barrier to exit as well, it isn't exactly ideal given that we are failing to be able to elect a stable admin base (decreasing numbers consistently). There is an issue that an oppose !vote counts for around three times as much as a support !vote. However, I don't think this system is going to change without an increased accountability check on admins, as the difficulty to de-sysop makes a difficult barrier to entry essential in many people's eyes (not unreasonable). If we were to put forth a proposal to simultaneously somewhat lower the barrier to entry as well as lower the bar for de-sysop, that might be feasible. But doing either by itself would I think be very unsatisfactory to many people. What the exact elements of such a proposal would look like, I have no idea, but the current system is generally unsustainable. — Insertcleverphrasehere 04:38, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
    I concur with Insertcleverphrasehere on the analysis above. Another possible modification to the current system that might ease matters is a probationary period for admins. Not every admin has experience as an admin on a similar system, so there will often be a learning period with the new tools and responsibilities. If a probationary period of say 6 months and a reasonable number ot tool uses was the standard for a new admin, with a confirmation at the end of it, the bar to getting there might be lowered to a series of two easier bars. If they cock it up in a big way while in the probationary period, they will not make it through confirmation. If no blunders are made, the confirmation should be relatively painless, possibly even boring, if confirmation is the default when no serious complaints are raised. Or we could just wait until there are not enough admins to run the site, then go into panic mode and change the system in desperation to another one which may be just as bad. Some people just need the tools to do what they want to do. I don't need them at present, so there would be no point in RfA, as I have been able to get all the tools I find useful juat by asking for them. If I needed an admin restricted tool I would RfA, but not before, there is too much drama for my tastes. I needed some of the admin tools on other Wikis and got them without drama, but I don't need them here. I prefer the pen to the mop. · · · Peter (Southwood) : 06:37, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
    A probationary period would lower the RfA rate to non-existent (who wants to go through RfA twice?). I also don't think lowering the pass rate any lower is a good idea: we want admins to have broad support in the community and trust. We already have the discretionary range at 65%, which is basically what it takes to pass any other discussion. I also reject the idea that somehow lowering the exit barrier will have an equal effect on lowering the entrance barrier. I don't think it will have any impact at all: the RfA-standards genie is already out of the bottle. This is a prediction that is brought up all the time but it doesn't take into account the fact that when people collectively raise standards, they rarely lower them. If anything, any proposal on this would decrease the number of successful RfAs because no one would want to have to deal with the constant threat of ANI for a desysop. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:52, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
  • My tenure here or experience with such discussions is limited, so my opinion may as well be worthless, but here goes...
So far, the discussion has pointed to a two step procedure:
  1. An AN/ANI thread to discuss the abuse/misuse of tools by an admin and consensus on whether reconfirmation RfA is needed. A 'crat closes the thread and assesses the consensus.
  2. If the consensus is in support of a reconfirmation RfA, it is followed by regular procedures of a RfA (watchlist, time frame, etc.), though forced, where the votes are counted. As stated above, people who hold grudges can't sink a majority-vote-based RfA.
However, this raises a few more questions:
  • What is the formality of such an AN/ANI thread? Say, an editor finds three page deletions of an admin problematic and asks for review from other users. That is, the thread is about the deletions and not whether the person's adminship needs reconsidering. If the page deletion is identified as a long term issue, would a comment like "we should really look into the ability of this admin to handle his tools" be considered the "start" of step 1? Or should someone start a new thread (or a sub-section) with a specific title to document the entire consensus building formally so that comments stay on topic? The reason I say this is because a thread that talks about three page deletions would gain much less traction and a few editors might agree with the green highlighted comment I just stated above. Would that mean there is truly a consensus to conduct the reconfirmation RfA? In comparison, a thread titled "Considering reconfirmation RfA for XYZ" would probably catch more eyes. (That is just how I feel; that may not be true with how things work at AN/ANI since I don't frequent there enough).
  • Can any editor start such a thread? Even one quick to call 'Admin abuse!'? Or should there be a proper "case" before step 1 can be started (I've discussed this more in the next point). Keeping with the example I gave, if the 'long term issue' is falsely identified by the editor starting the new thread, people would start commenting that thread was spuriously created and that it's a time sink. Which leads me to next point...
  • How long should the thread last? Can it be snow-closed by a 'crat as a "time sink"? Or should there be a time-frame so that consensus building is given a fair shot?
    • If snow-closes are allowed - the process would be fairly informal providing greater leeway to the closing 'crat and could lead to limited participation. There won't be a lack of participation at the RfA, but there might be at the AN/ANI which is the first step. Since RfA has raised its standard over the years, it would be unfair for admins to be put in the spot so easily and questioned in a re-RfA after an informal-process-led AN/ANI. It could also potentially promote people to start spurious threads, knowing that they can be snow-closed (although, hopefully, a boomerang would follow in such cases).
    • If a time-frame is kept - a barrier would have to be created to ensure there is a proper "case" so that it is not truly a time sink. That would add a third step of assessment of the "case" and complicate things. But, the entire process would be fair. There would be enough time to view the actions of the thread initiator as well as hear the voices of the community. At the same time, there would also need to be a "gap" introduced between reports for a particular admin so they don't get targeted.
This is not like an AfD where both time-frame and snow-closes can be allowed freely since most snow-closes are strongly policy based. Admin conduct is largely subjective since we're assessing the actions of a person. If snow-closes are allowed, they would need to be for particular cases. Say, the idea is implemented with a time frame and someone starts another thread just a few days after the previous closes for an admin. It can then be reasoned that consensus wouldn't have changed (unless the admin royally messes up in those few days) and snow-close the thread. That would be the "gap" I was talking about earlier.
With all this formality, time-frame and "case" stuff, it seems to be getting closer and closer to how ArbCom works. I truly believe that the ins and outs of the process have to be worked out first. Just my views though, I'd love to hear what others have to say! Jitencontribs 09:24, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
The AN thread acts as the "stop-gap" for futile requests. That's not the idea but something we can probably think about, is all. When you have crats closing it, it has to be a responsible close and I doubt there's the leeway you talk of. Set up a minimum time-frame for reach and maximum time-frame for consensus and I'm sure crats can effectively deduce consensus. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 10:55, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Hmm...My general feeling is that any editor should be able to open such a thread, yes. This is no different than any other behavioral dispute that arises at AN or ANI where things might spiral out of control for a little while in a general purpose thread, and we end up with someone who's been following developments who decides they think they have a solution by proposing a block or a ban. I don't think you really need to set additional limits on the normal consensus building process. Some discussions will probably be a clear cut consensus one way or the other, and can be easily closed, even by a non-admin (I'm sympathetic to dropping the bit about crat closes). Others may be highly contentious and need a team of experienced admins to close. This is again perfectly in line with our normal consensus building process governed mostly by common sense. The discussion would be closed in accordance with normal procedure, summarizing the consensus and the concerns of the community, and that close would be the rationale for the re-RfA, in place of nominations and the three standard questions.
I think it's also important to point out that this is actually more lenient than what is possible under current policy, since it's simply a consensus for whether a re-RfA should happen, and not deciding to directly take away the mop. It may be perfectly reasonable for someone who thinks a user should retain the mop, to still support a re-RfA in order to solidify the conesnsus for retention, and put down unwarranted pitchforks.
The alternative under current policy and what I fully intend to start proposing at places like AN and ANI given the opportunity if something else doesn't come of this discussion, is to start TBANNING admins from taking any administrative action whatsoever until they appeal to the community to lift the TBAN. This type of administrator probation is as far as I can tell, and I've looked pretty hard, perfectly allowed under current policy. But that type of action is actually less accountable to the broader community, and more likely to be beholden to the types of people who frequent AN and ANI, in disregard for those who don't. GMG 11:04, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
And before someone calls this a solution in search of a problem, remember that at this moment ArbCom can barely agree whether to even issue a warning to an admin for edit warring, when, if you count page protection as an edit, they were already at 4RR, and would have been blocked were they a regular editor. Besides that, I'll bet someone like...oh...WBoG can probably think off the top of their head of at least one example where a current admin has mostly not yet been dragged to ArbCom because of the onerous bureaucracy, even though a case request is almost certain to be successful. GMG 11:39, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
As I recall, a community-imposed ban on performing administrative actions has been discussed and recognized as an effective removal of administrative privileges, and thus only within the scope of the Arbitration Committee to put in place. I'm not certain, but I think bans on specific categories of administrative actions have been passed, though it is rare. Usually people feel administrators an editor should either be trusted with the entire range of administrative tools, or none of them. isaacl (talk) 13:45, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
TBANs on use of specific tools are allowed, yes. There is also the Arthur Rubin example where the community passed a community ban against him pending the ArbCom case and then removed it when he returned. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:52, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes, that was brought up at my talk page a little while ago. If the community can CBAN someone, then I don't see any reason why they can't enact a TBAN which is in every way a less extreme sanction. It wouldn't be removal of the bit, it would be suspension of the bit, pending a consensus that they have regained community trust. Honestly, I'd welcome ArbCom to try to unilaterally overturn such a TBAN, because there would be no clearer demonstration that they cannot in this one area fulfill their duties as a body to the satisfaction of the community, and we need to formulate another option.
To my mind, a re-RfA, with all the accouterments of a set time table, wider audience, and opportunity for Q&A is the closest thing out there to a compromise between a bureaucratic nightmare on one hand, and outright mob rule at AN or ANI on the other. GMG 14:04, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
I would support forcing resignation before a reRfA, which would solve the issue people have of them being easy to game. I argued this in either January or December (whenever the last one was). That was shot down as not being something worth writing down. My preferred system here is that admins who have lost community trust, or where that trust has been called into question, resign without the need for a case and if they still want the tools run again. If they refuse to do that, then ArbCom steps in. I think that's where we are in most cases right now. I am disappointed in some of the Arbs over the current motion, but it seems likely to pass and regardless of my views of re: involved full protection, I doubt a community desysop process would have achieved much different. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:44, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
So in essence, something like what GMG and Ajr suggested but without step 2 (ie, the reRfA)? If I understand correctly, you mean: as soon as there is consensus in an AN/ANI thread that an admin has lost the trust of the community, they must resign. If not, the case would be taken to ArbCom. If they want to bit back after the resignation/forced resignation, they must run a regular RfA just like other editors. Is that correct? I think the main concern here is still that community's say should be final. If an admin loses our trust, they clearly don't deserve the admin tools and ArbCom shouldn't be able to say otherwise. Even if ArbCom is very much in line with community's thoughts, the whole procedure takes time and effort. A forced re-RfA on the other hand, as GMG suggested, is quicker and more accessible to the community. Just from personal feelings and the very little time I've spent reading ArbCom cases, there's more participation at an RfA than a case and the final ruling is determined by the community (which, imo, seems philosophically correct as the community is the one that voted for the admin). I didn't understand the "game" part though. My initial comment only addressed the AN/ANI thread; I hadn't even though about the actual re-RfA! Jitencontribs 15:11, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Well, my main concern is that 1) a direct desysop has already been rejected more times than anyone remembers, and functionally 2) AN and ANI have a tendency to be volatile and vitriolic, with people rushing to sanctions because they lack the creativity or time to find any other solution (exactly why we just passed a 24 hour minimum to CBAN discussions). So you take away the sanction as an option really and instead make them !vote on whether we have a discussion. Also in comparison, RfAs tend to be more well thought out, and bring out a much wider audience including a lot of our quiet content creators and gnomes who'd rather have a root canal than watchlist a noticeboard. GMG 15:23, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Jiten D: Yes, that is roughly my position. I think that once it is clear an admin has lost the trust of the community, or at the very least there is a valid question of community support because of a major breach of trust, they should either resign or ArbCom should desysop. This is the process that we just saw work here and that also worked at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conduct of Mister Wiki editors. It works and no one has suggested a process that would work any better given the political realities of en.wiki (again, see the de.wiki numbers. I highly suspect that if a Commons/Wikidata like process were to be followed here, we would see similar attrition, which is not a good thing.) Its also important to note that all ArbCom does in terms of desysop is remove and mandate a reRfA if someone wants the tools again (assuming no other sanctions.) We don't have a perma-RfA-running-ban short of a full site ban.I also dispute the idea that the ArbCom based desysop process is not a community-based desysop process: they are elected by the community, they take case requests when it is raised by the community, every step of the arbitration process has ample opportunity for community comment. All of the previous desysop reform attempts can fall into two camps: direct desysoping by the community (which I would call forced reRfA an example of). This is rejected because we want protections for admins who make tough calls, and the confidence in ANI at resolving disputes is slightly lower than the popularity of Congress and ArbCom. (See Misplaced Pages:Administrators/RfC for binding administrator recall. Any version of reRfA or direct desysop will face similar objections, and would likely fail.) The other proposal is to designate a group of trusted editors from the community to review requests for desysop when it is clear that there is community demand for it, so that the community can remove adminship when it feels that an admin no longer has its trust, this is the idea behind proposals such as WP:BARC. The issue there is that ArbCom is already that body: it is elected by the community every year to handle, among other things, desysop requests at the request of the community and with community comment. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:49, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Tony, the attrition isn't related at all whether we have a community-desysop process or not, but simply because our RfA standards have increased year-on-year. The solution isn't to make barrier to exit harder but the barrier to entry easier - you're going very roundabout with your argument. There is no consistent evidence across community desysop processes to suggest that it's been the triggering factor in attrition. You keep saying that ArbCom is elected by the community for the purposes of desysoping, but that's not only it, if you've read GMG's comment, the ArbCom's stance on desysop's way too soft, stuff that one crat would probably do if we had the policy to allow that. Instead, we wove in the right with the most complex and busy legal court in all of Misplaced Pages. You dispute the point, fair, but your point is essentially, "No, this is okay" after citing an example where the admin resigned. Gryffindor would resign under the threat of any such process as well, you just need the mindset to resign. And for the last time, ArbCom is not the community, they're people appointed by us, entrusted with the right to deal with issues in a fair and unbiased manner, while they are certainly good at deliberating, I disagree that admins appointed by the community should be left to desysop at the behest of a group of people who are certainly not the community. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 16:16, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Tony you can't accept the limitations of the dewiki process and ignore the success of the other community review procedures. Look for yourself at Commons (successful and unsuccessful) to see the lack of frivolous requests. And you're also wrong about the steward confirmations - most of steward work is taking global actions, not acting as a local admin on a project without them. Stewards can thus get grudge users from both homewiki activities (seen this year on ptwiki stewards' confirmations) and for controversial actions they've taken (I once took issue with someone editing my comment on Meta and they came back to oppose my confirmation the next year). The simple fact is a) this doesn't discourage stewards from staying on unless they've really messed up and b) safeguards prevent those grudge users from derailing the process. I also disagree that arbcom desysop is community desysop - arbcom doesn't appoint admins in the first place, the community does through RfA. And a general point regarding the AN/ANI thread requirement - there should be no fixed bureaucratic rule for this, because the intent is to use existing procedures. Admins can already be taken to AN/ANI over bad actions. My proposed system would just allow for a substantive follow up to those discussions. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 16:32, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Just as a general comment, I am reminded of a recent RfA on Commons, where the rationale was essentially I want to do this particular cleanup task and when I'm done I'll give the mop back. It ended up getting derailed for reasons other than the rationale, but I have to say it was refreshing to have a rationale that was so pragmatic and 100% I want to do this task with 0% I want to be a community leader of sorts. I wish we could move more toward that on enwiki, and the only way I see for doing it is reforming the back end, because that's what people are thinking about when they cast a !vote at RfA. The barrier to exit is what sets the standard of how bad a mistake at RfA is going to be if one is made. GMG 16:46, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Ajr: While I respect the work that stewards do, and think I have pretty good relationships with a good number of you, I disagree with you that there is any equivalency to steward confirmations in this discussion: steward actions are by the very nature of the role supposed to be uncontroversial. A steward who is behaving controversially *should* be removed, which is why the process there works well. Re: Commons, it has a very different culture from en.wiki, and I don't think it would work as well here.

QEDK: I was providing recent examples of the current process working. Thus far, in any of the desysop reform discussions that have taken place over the years, no one has actually demonstrated that the process doesn't work or that there are a huge amount of actually filed case requests where the community would have desysoped but ArbCom didn't (or even one). It does. My basic argument is that while the current process has flaws (i.e. it is slow, which is the only one that has ever had consensus) all of the other possibilities that have been discussed also have flaws that are as bad or worse (I think it would increase attrition and also decrease recruitment, among other things). I'm a pragmatist who doesn't believe in changing something that works for something else that may or may not work and would likely be just as flawed. I also disagree with GMG that lowering the barrier to exit will lower the barrier to entry: the barrier will remain just as high and we will lose plenty of good user who simply don't want to go through public humiliation because of a grudge. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:56, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

I've been a local admin in a variety of places on Wikimedia and Wikia since 2009. Some of the most controversial actions I've taken are as a steward, because outside of permissions management, we deal with a large number of controversial issues that can draw attention. And I've also found that, regardless of the project, the culture and general function of a wiki are pretty well the same no matter where you go. That is just my experience though, and I can't measure it in any objective way. All of this said, I do understand your core argument that the arbcom process works and ensures that admins are empowered to take controversial actions. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 17:18, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
I'm unclear why requiring a re-confirmation RfA after a consensus would cause English Misplaced Pages to "lose plenty of good user who simply don't want to go through public humiliation because of a grudge", but having the same consensus trigger a resignation or an arbitration case wouldn't. I suspect going through an arbitration case would be just as likely to result in someone leaving. isaacl (talk) 17:53, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

@GreenMeansGo:, regarding why the community doesn't have the ability to remove administrative privileges: as I understand it, originally Jimmy Wales appointed and removed administrators. He then shifted the responsibility for appointing administrators to the bureaucrats as part of the request for administrative privileges process, and the responsibility for removing administrative privileges to the arbitration committee. To change this would require a change to the Administrators policy. There is no effective difference between removing administrative privileges or dictating that an editor cannot use them.

In the end, the basic problems are that consensus doesn't scale up as a community increases in number, there are structural problems with online decision-making (including the limited, self-selected sampling of voices heard), and English Misplaced Pages's decision-making tradition isn't conducive to determine real consensus. As a result, any attempt to make major decisions by a large community discussion generally gets deadlocked. isaacl (talk) 17:53, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Well, regarding TBANS there is a difference between removing access and suspending the use of it. Namely, it takes crats and ArbCom initially out of the loop all together. If an admin on probation decided to flout the TBAN, any passing admin can basically unilaterally hand out a block, and then take them to ArbCom if they unblock themselves (the lenient route). Or we take them directly to ArbCom, because we've created a situation where use of the tools at all is by definition abuse and directly contravening community consensus. Then if ArbCom decides to override consensus...I dunno...I guess we'd just have a wiki-constitutional-crises. Normally a TBANNED administrator (as in, TBANNED from US Politics or something) would be nearly up for the chopping block just by virtue of needing to be TBANNED in the first place.
In a nutshell, it's attempting to set up ArbCom to be in a situation where either their hand is forced, or alternatively they do something totally bonkers and everyone flips their lid, in the hopes that they'll prefer having their hand forced to gratuitous lid flipping. GMG 18:14, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
To clarify, there is no effective theoretical difference in the community saying administrative privileges shall be removed and an editor shall not use administrative privileges. Accordingly, by policy, the community does not have the scope to enact these restrictions, and the administrator in question would not feel bound by them. There is of course a practical difference today between the community making either of these statements and the Arbitration Committee ruling that administrative privileges shall be removed: the bureaucrats will only act on a statement from the Arbitration Committee. isaacl (talk) 18:22, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
I doubt that, if such a discussion were to be held in a proper manner, even though the policy doesn't exist, consensus can be reached. Nothing is stopping anyone from reporting the discussion to the stewards directly, and considering that local policy doesn't bind them, they can exercise their right to desysop considering the admin has effectively lost the confidence of community. The community has full scope in every scenario. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 18:50, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, I'm not sure if you're responding to me? If so, are you saying that you doubt that consensus can be reached? And then are you subsequently saying that if consensus were reached, the community could appeal to the stewards? isaacl (talk) 18:56, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
There may not be a practical difference but there is a policy difference, and there is nothing in policy that forbids it. It's already been shown that a current admin can be CBANNED while still retaining the rights, and it's already been shown that the community can restrict the use of the tools using a TBAN (see here). The difference is only one of scope, and possible gratuitous lid flipping by having ArbCom directly override community consensus.
But no, the community doesn't decide everything. There are some things that are decided by the WMF. We cannot, for example, eliminate ArbCom all together. Their existence is mandated by the foundation. We cannot reach a consensus to disregard WP:COPYVIO. We cannot override office actions. And if a steward ever showed up on enwiki and unilaterally removed the admin rights under those circumstances, lids would be violently flipped in every direction. GMG 18:58, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Ofc not, I simply meant to say, if the community needs to take action, it will. Unilaterally using rights isn't a question or an idea. @isaacl, I was responding to you, yes. If consensus is reached for the removal of rights, the Stewards are bound to take action even though the local policy is something else, their task is to execute community consensus. I do not mean appealing to the stewards, but requesting for the implementation. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 19:05, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Note that stewards will not take actions that could be performed by local bureaucrats except in emergency, and loss-of-confidence isn't an emergency situation by itself. See m:Stewards policy#Don't promote users on projects with existing bureaucrats. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 19:08, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
I would guess that loss-of-confidence is immediately an emergency situation. I know you're the steward ofc, but if we're getting technical, it says promote and allows you to exercise disretion elsewhere and furthermore, the primary "...task is to implement valid community consensus within the bounds of the Foundation's goals", and not implementing such a consensus would be directly against the reason why you were elected. But that's just what I think. I'd say you need to be in such a situation first to evaluate an outcome so speculating possibilities isn't exactly it. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 06:59, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, poor choice of words: I did not mean "appeal" in the legal sense, but simply "request". I still don't understand your first sentence, but I understand your line of argument regarding the stewards; thanks for the clarification. isaacl (talk) 19:33, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Removing privileges is the tool to enforce the restriction; there is no policy difference in telling someone they can't do X versus telling them they can't do X and no longer have the technical ability to do X. isaacl (talk) 19:40, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

There is a problem with mis-actions by admins, and lack of accountability of admins. But putting putting the death penalty of desyopping under the random clan & mob mentality that pervades other areas of Misplaced Pages is not the answer. One component of a fix would be to get rid of the ridiculous system where anybody with the tool belt is considered qualified to act as judge, jury and executioner on behavioral questions on established editors, and or deciding/closing even the most complex and contentious situations. This needs needs to be a second tier above admin; people who are proven to also be wise, careful, thorough, impartial, never hot-headed, with good judgement, analysis and decision-making process capabilities.....the "Yoda" level. And, just like the fix for the broken RFA process, discussions to award this need to be findings on an established framework of the qualities required, not the current random stuff that we have at RFA. Second, there needs to be a process to sanction mis-behaving admins with lighter penalties than desysopping that doesn't require the giant artillery of an arbcom case. Maybe a panel of 3 "Yodas" who could dish out findings on admin behavior and admonishments. And until we have Yodas, a community based process for findings and admonishments but not desysopping. North8000 (talk) 18:26, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Binding arbitration on content disputes has been suggested by others and me as a way to give final rulings on content disagreements. Today there's no final stop in the process; people can periodically bring up issues (hoping consensus has changed), and whoever lasts the longest may well succeed, so editors have incentive to be contentious. I appreciate there are pitfalls with binding arbitration to be wary of (for instance, consensus actually can change, and sometimes there are cliques that need to be counteracted). The largest barrier, though, is that people would have to give up their veto right to block changes (one person alone can hold up a change for an astonishingly long time; a few people can do so indefinitely). Until something more drastic happens to Misplaced Pages's editing environment, I don't foresee binding arbitration being introduced. isaacl (talk) 18:39, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
I really don't think the answer to fixing a bureaucracy is more bureaucracy. The 3 Yodas will never ideally represent the view of the community and there's nothing to say they can remain completely unbiased. The key to removing bias from a system is to have multitude of opinions, as eventually, bias cannot skew the opinions to one side or the other. Your argument, along with Tony's, is based on the key principle of the community not being able to take care of our decisions, like there's a huge mismanagement that occurs anytime it's upon the community to decide, but that has never been the case. If anything we need to involve the community as a whole more, not less. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 18:46, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Agreed 100% with QEDK. If the community can be trusted with making admins they can be trusted with removing them. And the three Yodas model falls to the same reason why BARC was rejected - it's just another ARBCOM-like process. As an aside, I don't think that the community does an excellent job of making new admins. But they certainly wouldn't do a worse job of removing them. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 18:52, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
I didn't say anything about 3 Yodas and I'm not sure if I favour that specific proposal, but in general: consensus doesn't scale up. All of our experience with communities in the real world demonstrates that managing interpersonal interactions requires some form of hierarchy. We can do our best to keep it as grounded as possible with the community at large, but it's just not possible to hold an effective conversation with hundreds of people: it demands too much time and attention. isaacl (talk) 19:27, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
I mean we do a half decent job of it half the time. There's currently a discussion ongoing at WP:ACREQ where more than 200 people have weighted in so far. GMG 19:48, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
That conversation is pretty civil, which is good, but it has a lot of redundancy, with people repeating points, because almost no one is going to read over 200 statements (I read many of the opposes and some of the supports at the start of the RfC, but haven't kept up). Due to the traditional structure of discussions on English Misplaced Pages, people spend a lot of time arguing with individuals over their viewpoints, instead of consolidating discussion around each argument for and against. (I've written about these issues before.) And that discussion isn't related to behavioural issues, or even a content dispute. It's also isn't that evenly split, so it's more a lot of people agreeing with each other, rather than a conversation. That being said, there are a lot of conversations that can (and often do) proceed smoothly. But the contentious ones are hard to resolve without some kind of structure to manage them and provide incentive for collaborative behaviour. isaacl (talk) 20:06, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
  • WP:BARC was an idea of mine for a new policy that failed to gain traction. Lauched together with Worm That Turned during a period when community desysoping was once again a current topic, it was an experiment in community opinion more than anything else. On the lines of, 'let's try something and see what they say', it's nevertheless interesting reading and IMO is still a fundamental basis for new ideas. 100+ supports was not an insignificant turnout by today's RfC standards and was in fact numerically (115/75) the majority. Mdann52's closure made a very fair assessment that on the strength of the arguments there was no consensus. My main concerns at the time were to find a system that would protect any community desysoping process from an overspill of votes from aggrieved users who fail to understand that some admins do make tough calls - there is clearly a lot of schadenfreude in such participartion. Serious cases of privilege misuse (or serial poor judgement ) are in fact quite rare considering the number of admin actions that are carried out, and the (low) number of truly active admins who do the brunt of the work.
BARC was nearly 3 years ago. With the apparent reduced workload on ArbCom, and a marked drop in coordinated attacks on adminship in general, I question whether today a 'community' desysop system is required - TonyBallioni makes a salient point in clarifying that as elected officials, the Committee mebers are nevertheless members of the community. Whether we are happy or not with the work of each individual who occupies one of those those seats (some do occasionally vote at odds with the other members), at this moment in time I am personally satisfied that the work they do in this area reaches the right conclusions. It's the structure of the ArbCom system that needs streamlining, IMO its own mess of bureucacy is what makes it so slow and ungainly.
Nowadays, although it still suffers from the ocasional disingenous opose votes and what are probaly a lot of drive-by supports, even if it's still not attracting a plethora of contenders, RfA does what it says on the can - most of serious candidacies pass and there is a significant reduction in failed bids for the bit. Like community desysoping however, no one has ever come up with new a idea for it that pleases everyone. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:09, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
  • If the community can grant adminship, the community should be allowed to take it away. RfA activity remains extremely low, in part because adminship really has become a big deal. I am fairly certain that the community will not take any major steps until the number of admins drops so much that a crisis is created, and by that time it will probably be too late. Lepricavark (talk) 15:04, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
  • I can think of two practical ways to create a functioning de-sysop procedure which bypasses Arbcom, protects admins from frivolous complaints and does not add another layer of bureaucracy.
    1. As a show of good faith and in recognition that a significant portion of the community thinks there should be some community process which does not involve ArbCom even if there is little agreement on what that process should be; All administrators post their own recall criteria. The only two requirements is that the criteria be binding and can not be changed while there is active discussion to perform a recall. This allows individual admins the flexibility to be bound by procedures they feel comfortable. I would suggest that it should be possible to challenge an admin's chosen procedures if they do not reflect the spirit of the intended purpose ie "Recall me by taking me to ArbCom" or if there is no reasonable way for the condition to be fulfilled. • A 'sub-option' is this could, rather than being voluntary, it could be forced via RfC.
    2. Simply use an AN/ANI thread which meets three conditions 1) It is opened or has a sub-thread which is expressly for the purpose of recall. 2) The thread runs for some minimum time, say 3-5 days. 3) The thread is closed by three experienced editors: An administrator; A non-admin editor who has experience closing contentions threads; An editor or administrator selected by the admin whose community confidence is being questioned. The close is a simple Sustained/No-confidence. • This could also be implemented in combination with #1 as a universally agreed recall condition. A No-confidence could be implemented either through voluntary resignation 'under-a-cloud' or using the TBAN idea GreenMeansGo has suggested previously. (I also think that the extra care of the three conditions would give weight to a TBAN decision if even if the process had not been agreed upon via prior discussion or could act a a method of 'creating policy through practice',)
These options use the tools we have and #1, in my opinion, has the added benefit of the admin corps, by voluntarily recognizing the concerns of a significant population of editors and being responsive to those concerns, collectively showing ongoing faith and trust in the community. Just as the community shows faith and trust in them. Jbh 01:21, 18 April 2018 (UTC) Last edited: 01:31, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

The grudges

The main counter-argument for a community-initiated desysop process seems to be the "grudges" - users who have been blocked/warned/offended by an admin at some point, who show up at the desysop proceedings to oppose the admin under review without seriously considering the situation and pattern of overall behaviour displayed by the admin. I've been arguing throughout this thread that this is nothing more than a myth that would not actually derail a community desysop process - let's look at this in more detail.

  • Starting with cross-jurisdictional comparisons: do grudge users control the community-initiated desysop processes on other wikis? No, though some (like the dewiki model) can potentially drive off admins who don't want to go through the process. More on this below. But if you look through the archives at Meta, Commons (successful and unsuccessful), steward confirmations and Wikidata you will see a distinct lack of frivilous requests or requests being derailed by "enemies" of the admin under review. This isn't to say that it doesn't happen - but it doesn't happen in large enough numbers to derail the process. I picked those processes because I am the most familiar with them - if anyone else wants to add some analysis of others please do so.
  • Now let's look at enwiki, because I know everyone is going to have "those projects aren't enwiki, enwiki is different and special" on repeat in their brains while reading the above point. Enwiki doesn't have a community-initiated desysop process, but it does have AN/ANI and ArbCom where the community can complain about sysop actions. Some AN/ANI threads can even lead to ArbCom cases for desysopping, so it's a surprisingly similar system to those proposed above, just without any decision-making power for the community. So let's look at how these "grudge" users derail the existing processes. There is a current case request before ArbCom right now about desysopping (found here), without any evidence that the "grudge" users are dominating the discussion. I see maybe one or two comments of questionable value, with most comments being appropriate reflections on the conduct of the user in question. Looking to the ANI thread on the same topic (here), again, I'm not seeing much in terms of users with grudges showing up to derail the process. Does anyone have any actual examples of an AN/ANI thread being filled up with users with grudges trying to get back at a specific admin? And again, I don't mean one or two - one or two people with grudges will show up anywhere, be it RfA or a request for desysopping. I mean enough users to derail the process or to wrongfully desysop an admin who was just taking a necessary but controversial action, or enough to form a consensus that a de-RfA should be initiated.

There's another argument here that deserves some attention. Tony expresses it above, saying that a community-initiated process will cause admins to just quit rather than go through a confirmation RfA. That's a very good point to make when looking at the dewiki system, but it doesn't apply to Meta/Commons/Wikidata/steward confirmations and I doubt it would here. Admins can already be dragged to AN/ANI or ArbCom for their conduct here, and ArbCom proceedings are possibly more stressful than a re-RfA given the timeframe and private nature of the decision. Changing the step after AN/ANI from ArbCom to community process isn't going to cause mass resignations. Admins here already self-select which controversial actions they take to avoid community uproar; this will be no different with or without community-initiated desysopping processes.

The biggest argument I see against a community-initiated process like the one I outlined above is that it would likely have the exact same outcomes as the current ArbCom-led system, and thus the change would only be symbolic. I think this is a fair enough argument to dissuade me from proposing anything on this topic. But I always like to push back against the nebulous claims of possible abuse that could happen whenever something new happens, because whether it's this or IPBE liberalization, it just doesn't pan out that way. Sorry for the long post. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 02:19, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Well thought out, as always, but the big counter argument is that the structure of an ArbCom case actively discourages the grudges. There is also the flip side that arguably ArbCom can hold popular admins to account in ways that ANI won’t (and we have plenty of examples of people having their friends stop by ANI). So I think a better counter is: ArbCom works fine, it is arguably more effective than a community process would be for politically popular admins, it provides protection against potential witch hunts in that the actions of all parties are examined, and no one has actually put forward a provsss that would work better. Like Kudpung hinted at above, if anything, the thing that needs work currently is streamlining the process for obvious cases, which the committee has already started to do on its own without some massive reform RfC that would likely end with only minor tweaks to procedure. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:08, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
No, Tony. ArbCom has already said that ANI cannot delay with admins, and any attempt to do so will be met with a curt "ArbCom is thataway". It's also said that it will not deal with popular admins. One once even blocked a member of ArbCom for comments made during a deliberation, and ArbCom supinely backed down, unwilling to further antagonise. And ArbCom is yet to reinstate even one admin that it has desysopped. That's how dysfunctional it is. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:37, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
I dunno, can we assume that people are willing to tolerate frivolous opposition if it does not derail their (re)confirmations? "Grudge-based votes don't matter in the end" has been offered as an argument at all past discussions on this topic and yet no consensus for a community-based desysoping process has ever arisen, so maybe a lot of people are not willing. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:43, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
That is exactly the reason why I opened this thread. The rationales aren't logical but based on a system at this point and that shouldn't be the way for things to move forward. I agree with Hawkeye7, AC processes are' dysfunctional, the fact that Tony and few others see it as a perfectly operating committee doesn't even occur to the majority of the community. The only reason AC exists as it is, is because the community still sees a need for a panel to deal with the issues, but nevertheless cannot fix the internal problems which arise from each of its outcome. That doesn't automatically imply that the community is fine with the ArbCom as-is. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 08:01, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

In my view, I agree with "if it ain't broke don't fix it". However, RfA is broken. You only need to look at the most recent Admin newsletters to see the issue. Despite having a whole two (!) RfAs last month, we're losing Admins faster than we gain them. Yes, superficially, that's a direct result of community-endorsed processes to desysop inactive admins, but an inactive admin isn't any use to the project - I think we can all agree that we need a sizable number of active admins. We all know about RfA inflation, and there seems to be some form of consensus in the above posts that the reason for our loss of admins is the high bar to entry. The dispute here is whether we need to lower the bar to exit to lower the bar to entry, or would that be counterproductive. Ultimately, the only way to lower the entry bar is to convince RfA !voters to be more lenient. If it was easier to sanction misbehaving administrators, I expect more people would get the mop. Personally, I would suggest something similar to WP:ACTRIAL, but for a community sanction process (it probably should be limited in scope to admins appointed in the period in question). It would be interesting to see if RfA standards decreased if a desysop process existed, and whether that would lead to a corresponding increase in applications. Regarding sanctions available to the community, I note that ArbCom is capable of handing out temporary desysops - Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Pedophilia userbox wheel war. Much like escalating blocks, if the community is able to impose escalating desysops (perhaps leave permanent to ArbCom). I'm not certain myself, but we've got a wide range of options available. I'm sure there is some solution that exists that will achieve consensus, we just need to find it. I strongly believe, however, that we cannot just do nothing. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 09:44, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

@Bellezzasolo: We could start by changing the current system where oppose !votes count three times as much as support !votes at RfA, by moving the discretionary range down to 50% and leaving it up to the 'crats. But yeah, RfA inflation is a problem, and the problem is us. — Insertcleverphrasehere 10:36, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Admin activity at enwiki causes massive resentment from long term abusers down to POV pushers and editors who feel wronged, for example, by an unfavorable outcome at WP:AN3. Inclusionists passionately hate admins who delete pages, and deletionists passionately hate admins who reject speedy delete requests. Enwiki is the number one website for anyone wanting to spread their good news to the world; it's also the best place for spam and trolling and lots of other bad things. The best admins at enwiki spend serious time imposing sanctions and it is absurd to compare their activity with what stewards do, or with what happens at meta/commons/wikidata. The point about a community reconfirmation process is that it would boil down to a vote. People could argue that certain votes should be discounted because no good reason was provided or because the voter had only a handful of edits, but in the end a reconfirmation would be a count of votes. It might be possible to devise a system of voter eligibility requiring that the voter had never been sanctioned by the admin, and had never argued the opposite of a position taken by the admin in a dispute, and had 2000 edits and 12 months experience with 500 edits in the last six months. However, that approach would be rejected due to the overwhelming bureaucracy required. Johnuniq (talk) 10:10, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Agreed 100% TonyBallioni (talk) 14:01, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
I think there is some value in comparing what other wikis do, at least hopefully to the point of not being "absurd". They might have less users, but there is no reason to believe that they would have proportionally less problematic users. That is especially true given that a lot of enwiki-banned users go over to Meta or Commons and have to be dealt with again there. So even though they have less users needing sanctions, they have less admins to give those sanctions, and thus the editors with grudges still exist and could still derail the process (but, again, don't). Anyway, I agree that ArbCom streamlining their process would be a positive here and would require less work that any community-initiated process. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 14:48, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
The fact that Commons is a haven for the people we show the door is precisely one of the many reasons we should not look to them for anything except copyright. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:57, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Your point is that the POV pushers and axe-grinders are explicitly given free reign at RfA. And the solution is to restrict the editors who have access to the process. Which is, in fact, what we are already doing by giving the desysop function to ArbCom. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:44, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
I don't see why you would need to bear grudges against people who've moved on to other communities, your logic is simply a fallacy at this point. Sometimes it's best to take your own argument with a pinch of salt instead of apparently irrefutably stating that admins are fallible to socks/LTAs and we must do our best to protect them. Admins aren't at risk without exhibiting abuse and this is a step further in that direction as well. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 08:01, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
  • I guess this is starting to get a bit broader in scope. But I would agree without qualification that any move which helps simplify ArbCom is one in the right direction. One of my biggest problems with both AC/DS and ArbCom itself is that both are so ungodly complicated that they essentially don't exist as a form of dispute resolution that's available as a remedy for use by new and moderately experienced users. GMG 14:13, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
I get the feeling, from TB and Kudpung, that the ArbCom process is actually likely to be sufficiently streamlined in its current form. However, I don't think that the actuality of that matters. There's a fairly wide perception of anything branded "ArbCom" as highly bureaucratic (which it of course is by necessity), and also slow and unwieldly. Furthermore, the result is a perception of Administrators as semi-untouchable. Hence the high standards at RfA. I doubt that a community process is necessary - it's likely to result in the same outcome as an ArbCom case would. However, I dare say there are users who would be happier handing out the bit if they felt more empowered to remove it. I also note the above discussion questioning the wiki-legality of TBAN'ing an admin from their tools. However, if we are able to TBAN an admin from certain tools (established), and CBAN admins, I'm pretty confident of the ability to TBAN the entire suite of tools. Of course, that differs from the technical ability to desysop - just like there's not technical enforcement of normal TBANs. I think that making this clear as an option - after all, the community is generally the ultimate seat of authority on non-legal issues, short of a Jimbovention. Of course, an admin could violate such a TBAN, but an ArbCom case would likely result. Perhaps an RfC and consultation with the Arbs on this is justified. I expect that, should a proposal as such pass, the community would feel empowered, without much changing (ArbCom can of course overrule such a TBAN, on an individual basis). ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 15:49, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
I don't think the TBAN would need consultation or an RfC. I think it would need to be tested. In other words, you would have to make the constitutional crisis in order to solve it. If the actions of an admin were really bad enough that there would be strong consensus for it, I doubt ArbCom would intervene to override it. Whether they would desysop someone for violating it may be a different story. It would be even more politically complicated if ArbCom actually declined a desysop, and then the community responded with a TBAN. If that ever happened all bets are off and I have no idea at all how it would work out. GMG 16:08, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I found what I was looking for - User:Widefox/editors. In particular, this graph highlights the problem facing the community:

By 2030, I expect about 350 active admins and 400 semi-active, if current trends continue. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 16:10, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Actually, I think that would be a sufficient number. There are no substantial admin backlogs, and no indication that there would be any if we had half the present number.But Ido agree that the standard at RfA is sometimes absurdly high--however, the same people who make the standard so absurdly high would also be the ones who would try to desysop too readily. The system of ANI is rather often a system based on trying to do rapid prejudiced actions before the other side has a chance to protest. In contrast, my experience is that arb com is too slow and far too legalistic--more so than anyone who has not been an arb can realize, because the worst of the legalism tends to be in our internal discussions. It might perhaps be good if we had some sort of intermediary process, but I do not suggest adding to the complexity. We need instead to have arbs who are prepared to judge by the actual merits, not the technicalities (and this can be accomplished if more anti-bureaucratic people would be willing to take their share of the work); we also need to have some time delays built into ANB/ANI to decrease mobbing. Such proposals have been in the past rejected, but I think this needs to be reconsidered. DGG ( talk ) 23:51, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
DGG hits the nail on the head here in multiple ways. The easiest solution to ArbCom reform (and therefore, desysop reform) is not creating new systems (which we would have to do for any desysop process), it is electing individual arbitrators that will take community concerns seriously and be fine with a less bureaucratic process in the case system. On the flip side, the case request system has built in a delay that prevents the mobbing that we see at ANI. I think in clearcut cases, the committee should expedite the decision (which we saw relatively recently) and do an abbreviated case schedule. This can also be done by electing the people as arbitrators who are willing to hear things more quickly and on the merits, while also still respecting the process. Those are difficult things to balance, but I think it is the best way forward. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:59, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Have all matters heard by a panel of 5 (3 is majority) (a clerk pulls names out of a hat at every filing, with a rotation procedure); elect 19 (so you have the possibility of 3 panels of 5 and spares left over for people who need time off/recusal/substitutions) - that should cut down on delays and behind the scene discussion (you can have rare fail-safe full ctte process after a panel happens to go really squirrelly). Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:27, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
We got rid of the subcommittees, because based my understanding, they weren't really working/it was basically whomever decided to show up. I suppose they could start a new subcommittee call it the review subcommittee or something like that, but I'm not sure how much of an appetite there would be for that. I think something that could be done without any additional structures would be to actually follow the procedures that say a case is accepted when four net arb votes are cast, and set the timetables to be 3 weeks instead of 6 for cases involving the conduct of one particular user (with the parties being able to ask for the full 2 weeks for evidence if they want). It'd build in the delay from the mob mentality that we fear, while also trying to streamline what is usually a 2 month saga between case request and end of decision. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:45, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
Well, no sub ctte in my suggestion, they are random panels, and you are assigned at each case, - they are smaller in number and should already be committed to be available (or already said they are unavailable). Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:58, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
  • I know it's a popular theory (because it makes it easy to explain away the ills of the system), but I've never actually seen or heard any hard evidence that occasional ridiculously high standards are putting potential candidates off. It seems to me that such votes are made by people who don't have a clue what RfA and adminship is all about, they are not regular RfA participants, and they would probably not stand a chance of becoming an admin themselves.
Nor have I personally noticed any indication that the reasons for such high standards link to a perceived notion that it's too hard to remove the bit - again, such voters have such a shallow understanding of the process that they probably don't even think that far. More damage is done to RfA by people who serially make ridiculous oppose votes on the flimsiest of grounds, and who are also determined that even an RfA that is clearly going to pass doesn't get away without at least one vote in the oppose section. WP:RFA2011/VOTING is still the only in-depth research that was made into RfA voters and their trends and most of it continues to be largely accurate today, though an update to the stats would be interesting, .
I believe there is a growing apathy for maintenance work in general. I'm aware of TonyBallioni's view of WP:ORCP but while I think it's not such a bad initiative, it's also not used as often as it was. IMO, lowering the bar to adminship is absolutely not the way to go, but imposing a threshold for voting there almost is certainly worth considering, but an up to date WP:RFA2011/VOTING-style research would be needed to establish the criteria. What would be appropriate right now are a few T-bans for those who turn up to vote with the sole intention of creating more heat than light. If we lower the bar, we'll almost certainly risk have an increase in admins who do not really have the skill set for the job - and then we will need a fast track desysoping system. What we should be looking at are ways of reducing the bureaucracy, not creating more of it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:44, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
  • The idea that the low rate of people becoming new admins is down to the lack of a community desysop process doesn't add up. The number of successful RfAs went from a peak of 408 in 2007 to 28 in 2012 and has remained at that kind of figure since. If that decline was due to admins being perceived as "untouchable", why weren't they perceived that way in 2007? The procedures for desysopping didn't change much between 2007 and 2012. If anything I think we are now a bit harsher on admins who screw up than we used to be. Doubtless there are several factors behind the decline in the numbers of successful RfAs, including standards inflation (standards have certainly gone up), reduced activity in the project generally (there is less admin work than there used to be) and possibly some decline of interest in maintenance tasks as Kudpung suggests. But I find it hard to believe that desysop procedures are much of a factor. On the other hand a community desysop process would mean more RfAs, or at least more of an RfA-like process. If RfA is broken then that's not a decision we want to make. Hut 8.5 20:11, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
    While there was a drop in raw edit levels from 2007 to 2014, before the 2015 rally, we still don't know whether the loss of edits due to the edit filters and the use of huggle etc to revert and block vandals faster means that there is more or less actual activity now than at the supposed peak in 2007. In any event the changes in level of activity on the site are minor when compared to the change in activity at RFA, especially as in a maturing community you would expect a growing proportion of editors to be admins rather than a declining proportion. But we should also remember that RFA has changed out of all recognition since 2007, in particular the biggest RFA reform, the unbundling of Rollback in early 2008, ended the era when "good vandalfighter" was sufficient qualification to pass RFA. There are now nearly five times as many Rollbackers as admins........ ϢereSpielChequers 21:14, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
    Actually, I did the back-of-the-envelope math a few weeks ago on the larger Misplaced Pages projects by active users, pulling numbers from here, and the ratio is fairly steady IIRC at about 0.5% to 1.5% of the total active population. Seems a lot like the top ~1% of most-admin-like (however you define that) users is pretty much the standard, and the changes in the community only affect what the top 1% most-admin-like users are defined as, and not what the ratio is. However, the changes in that definition are substantial, especially on comparatively tiny projects. RfAs on Commons make RfAs on enwiki seem like grotesque affairs, and it's still pretty big. Even more so for RfAs on something like Wikiquote or Simple, which don't even get as much participation as a standard RfC on enwiki.  GMG 21:33, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
    Ratios may be currently similar across wikis, but that doesn't mean they are static. Or that editors making 5 or more edits a month is a relevant figure for the potential admin pool. If you take editors who make 100 or more mainspace edits a month, then the numbers for EN Wiki in 2018 are slightly higher than for 2012, but the number of admins has fallen steeply in the last 6 years. ϢereSpielChequers 06:18, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Seeking consensus

As one of those who has regularly opposed having a second, parallel, community desysop process I suspect the onus is on me to explain why I, and I suspect many others, don't see the need for a parallel system in addition to ARBCOM.

  1. On this wiki we have an ARBCOM, elected by the community and with the power to have admins desysopped or otherwise censured. Models of deadminship on wikis that don't have an ARBCOM equivalent are not really relevant to the discussion unless their proponents make a case as to why they think this rival system is better than ARBCOM. Assertions that admins are untouchable or that we don't have a community deadminship system I generally ignore unless they give examples of admin behaviour that ARBCOM won't sanction.
  2. While I don't follow every question and thread in Arbcom elections every year, and it is several years since I've written a voting guide, I don't see the ARBCOM elections being dominated by discussion of types of "bad admin" that candidates want to be less tolerant of, or that the voters want candidates to be less tolerant of. ARBCOM elections involve far more participants than these perennial proposals to supplement ARBCOM, if there was community consensus to be stricter on say deletionist Admins who stretch the criteria of speedy deletion beyond consensus or Admins who don't reply to every query on their talkpage then I'd expect that to surface in the ARBCOM elections and to result in an ARBCOM that was less tolerant of that sort of admin misbehaviour. Instead we have proposals like this with abstract talk of "bad admins" who are "untouchable" as if ARBCOM didn't exist or never used its powers to desysop.
  3. Then there is the issue of speed and timing and the related issue of privacy, ARBCOM has a proven record of desysopping people very very quickly when it is merited, and also having things take an extraordinary amount of time when people wanted to desysop someone who was not available to volunteer time here due to real life events. Remember the timing of an RFA is entirely up to the candidate, and since we are all volunteers it is or should be entirely acceptable for a controversial admin to email the Arbs, and say they don't want to out themselves, but they are on tour, sitting an exam, 8.75 months pregnant etc etc and unavailable for the next few weeks. Of course people are entitled to get miffed if an admin does that and then blithely edits multiple hours per day, but I'm not seeing ARBCOM being that gullible.
  4. Since we already have one community based system to desysop people having a second parallel one is at best bureaucratic (some proposals have been incredibly bureaucratic), and at worst brings in the potential double jeopardy issues of what happens if someone is cleared by one process and then taken before the other.
  5. As ARBCOM is elected by the community it has all the systemic advantages that indirect democracy has over direct democracy. In particular if we have a year when ARBCOM appears to have made some unsatisfactory decisions the electorate can, and in the past has, voted the incumbents out.

I think those are the main pitfalls that I and others have pointed out in a supplementary, parallel desysop system. My apologies if I've missed an important one. I hope this gives those who want two separate community deadminship systems some issues to ponder and points to cover if they want to pursue this further. ϢereSpielChequers 12:07, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Proposal creating an event coordinator user right

There is currently a proposal at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Event coordinator proposal about creating a new user right for event coordinators. All are invited to participate. TonyBallioni (talk)

Automatic welcome messages for new IP editors and new Registered editors

I propose that a Misplaced Pages bot should automatically welcome all new IP editors and new Registered Users at their talk pages. At present, there is no such welcome system. Instead, we have a very unevenly distributed system of individual editors attempting to welcome some, but not all, new users and IPs. Brian Everlasting (talk) 03:35, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

You may wish to review Misplaced Pages:Perennial proposals#Use a bot to welcome new users. Anomie⚔ 11:41, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
@Brian Everlasting: User:HostBot invites new users to the Teahouse RudolfRed (talk) 21:30, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
IPs by their nature need an uneven system. Some IPs are stable over long periods of time, years even, others are reset in hours. There is no point sending a welcome to a goodfaith IP editor unless their address seems stable, and that requires human judgement. ϢereSpielChequers 11:00, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Add a link to the Signpost to the Main Page

Yes, yes, I know, perennial proposals and all, but what about just a small link under Other areas of Misplaced Pages? The Signpost is definitely useful for getting up to date with what's going on in the community, and there's also a good deal of work going into it. However, it's nearly impossible to find it, and readership has been declining for several years. There have been several crises in the team itself, mainly due to a lack of contributors - which obviously get recruited from readers. Therefore, I think it's both in the interest of Misplaced Pages and of the Signpost to add a

- The Signpost – Stay informed on what's going on by reading the newspaper for Misplaced Pages.

to Other areas of Misplaced Pages. Thoughts? Zarasophos (talk) 08:46, 27 April 2018 (UTC) This proposal has been replaced by the idea of adding a notification to the watchlist as discussed further below. Zarasophos (talk) 21:33, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

This seems like a good idea. It will not take up too much room on the Main Page of Misplaced Pages to do this. Vorbee (talk) 10:11, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

  • Support - why has this never been thought of before? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:47, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - because the signpost is a bunch of navel gazing bullshit and editorials that almost always do not meet quality to be linked from the main page. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:53, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose-Mainly per OED, whilst distancing from the qualifiers:).Signpost is nowhere near to Mainpage-stuff.~ Winged Blades 11:05, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - navel gazing is enough for me.--John Cline (talk) 11:29, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Implemented already, sort of - we already have a link, "Site news". What's on the right? The template box version of the signpost. Plus you get other news sources. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 12:23, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Add a watchlist notice instead (as I have suggested at various times and places). Add for say 3 days after a new issue is released. Now they will be monthly this should be acceptable. Signpost is most appropriate for regular (and so mostly registered) editors, for whom a watchlist notice is far more visible. Mind you, with a main page link you would benefit from the free attentions of User:The Rambling Man imposing his unique vision of the English language on you, which would make for highly entertaining talk pages. Johnbod (talk) 13:12, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
    Another stunning contribution, laced with personalisation and offensive pinging. Well played Johnbod, you are a shining example and we should all follow your methods. You were already told over at ERRORS just how wrong you were, why you would feel it necessary to bring that up in a completely unrelated topic is beyond me. It's not a good look John, it's not a good look at all. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:23, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
    Actually I wasn't "told" at all, until someone else informed me after the event, as you insist on the editors whose work you attack so freely at ERRORS not being notified (see over there)! And you were wrong. Unlike you I believe in pinging people when their work is being criticized - there is such a thing as unproductive and "offensive non-pinging". Johnbod (talk) 16:08, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
    You're just making yourself look bad here John, really really bad. Continue, by all means, but don't say you weren't warned. Tsk. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:11, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
    Note, on request I gave the signpost a 1 week trial on watchlist last issue, and asked the editors to seek wider consensus if it should be recurring in the WL. (c.f. MediaWiki_talk:Watchlist-messages#Signpost). — xaosflux 15:51, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose The signpost is primarily written for editors and not for our non-editing readers. --Jayron32 13:14, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Moot As Bellezzasolo points out, we already have this. He pointed to the Site News link. Signpost is also prominent in the Community portal which is linked in the sidebar for every page, not just the Main page.Andrew D. (talk) 14:59, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose -actually strong oppose if it means anything. Signpost is nothing more than glorified WikiProject newsletter. It is nowhere near the standard of being in the main page. –Ammarpad (talk) 15:16, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - Signpost builds and indicates community which is what we want to broadcast to readers and editors. The quality is fine, better than fine considering it's volunteer grass roots with 0 budget, like most everything else on WP. Our ethos is open knowledge for all, but many have an attitude that open knowledge about Misplaced Pages itself is not of public interest. Far from it. -- GreenC 15:58, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose for "publicity", posting the Signpost to places like the Teahouse or WP:AN would be better. For the mainpage itself, making the link to Misplaced Pages:News more prominent would be most helpful. power~enwiki (π, ν) 18:13, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose as per above - Do we really think our non-editors would care about "Admin reports board under criticism", " WikiProject Military History" or "ACTRIAL results adopted by landslide" ? ... No ofcourse they wont, The Signpost is more of an editor thing than a reader thing. –Davey2010 21:32, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Conditional - if it receives recurring watchlist notification, as was trialled with the last edition courtesy of xaosflux, then I don't think it needs Main Page publication (Personally I'd like it, but I see the arguments against). If it isn't going to have the watchlist, then I "vote" support. There is discussion on the recurring bit at MediaWiki_talk:Watchlist-messages#Signpost Nosebagbear (talk) 12:44, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support From my experience with newbies in public wiki workshops, I think a lot of readers will actually find the Signpost informative and a fascinating insight into the community.--Pharos (talk) 04:53, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support -Indy beetle (talk) 22:50, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Weak Oppose - I like the idea of the watchlist notice, to involve more editors who might not otherwise be looking, but I don't think the content of the Signpost is appropriate to try to put in front of people who don't understand the context. The Signpost frequently contains editorializing/commentary/humor that, while well and good within the community, would be confusing to someone unfamiliar with Misplaced Pages process who comes to it through the main page. — Rhododendrites \\ 04:31, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Commons deletion notification bot

Further information: meta:Community Tech/Commons deletion notification bot

This bot was proposed via the community wishlist in 2017. It is currently being build and should be done in a couple of months. The bot is going to be "opt in" and will place a notification on the talk pages of article when an image used within that article is put up for deletion on commons. Further details here. One eventual hope is to have the article alerts pages include these items. Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Medicine/Article alerts Peoples thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:37, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Add a notification for the the Signpost to the watchlist notice

Hello all, a discussion about using the watchlist notice to provide notification to users of new issues of The Signpost is open at MediaWiki_talk:Watchlist-messages#Signpost - your input is welcome at that discussion. Thank you, — xaosflux 21:15, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

  • As I have stated before, I support this idea because the Signpost serves as an important tool for the en.Wiki community to get informed about and discusd all kinds of topics. While these functions are important, it is currently in a crisis of readership (with the numbers steadily decreasing for the last years) resulting in a crisis of volunteers. A watchlist notification could be a first step out of this crisis. Zarasophos (talk) 21:38, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
@Zarasophos: This is not a vote. Xaosflux is just letting watchers of this page know about the other discussion. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:57, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
True enough, I guess I shouldn't do tired Misplaced Pages. Zarasophos (talk) 21:58, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

New article template

When someone starts a new article, there is a template with useful links above the editing box, one that starts with "Before creating an article, please read Misplaced Pages:Your first article". The last line says "You can also start your new article at Special:Mypage/Article. There, you can develop the article with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and move it into "article space" when it is ready".

What about adding a link to Draft/Article as well? The text may mention that it would be preferred for drafts that would be worked by several users (at least, that's the idea), and that the userspace is more suited for personal projects. Cambalachero (talk) 01:23, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Support. I'm surprised this hasn't been done already. I propose changing this
'You can also start your new article at Special:Mypage/Example. There, you can develop the article with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and move it into "article space" when it is ready.'
to something similar to this,
'You can also start your new article at Special:Mypage/Example or Draft:Example. There, you can develop the article... (etc.)'
this,
'You can also start your new article at Draft:Example. There, you can develop the article with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and move it into "article space" when it is ready. Additionally, you can do the same thing in your personal user space, by going to Special:Mypage/Example.
or this.
'You can also start your new article at Special:Mypage/Example. There, you can develop the article with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and move it into "article space" when it is ready. Additionally, you can start the article in the draft namespace, by going to Draft:Example.
If somebody else has another suggestion, please comment here, as I'm not the best when it comes to writing stuff like this.--SkyGazer 512 22:44, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Delhi Project Tiger Edit-a-Thon

Brief

An Edit-a-Thon with Workshop has been scheduled on below given dates. This is an initiative taken for Delhi-NCR Wikimedians/Wikipedians to support the PROJECT TIGER WRITING CONTEST. New editors will be introduced to Misplaced Pages and educated about the system. They would be trained to get engaged with Misplaced Pages by contributing their works.

All editors of Delhi-NCR are requested to attain the edit-a-thon with new contributors without any language barrier.

Bottom Line
  • Adding up New Contributors
  • New Contributors Orientation
  • Workshop on Editing by Introduction of WMF, Misplaced Pages
  • Training on language translation & Developing skills
  • Educating about Wikimedia protocols, tools & system
Date

Day 1: Saturday, 2018 May 19, 10:00 AM IST
Day 2: Sunday, 2018 May 20, 10:00 AM IST

Venue

USO International Center
USO House, USO Road,
6, Special Institutional Area,
New Delhi - 110067

Link to Event Page

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Delhi_Project_Tiger_Edit-a-thon

Organizer & Ambassador

Raavi Mohanty 07:10, 5 May 2018 (UTC) Raavi Mohanty

Category tagging for article sections

Might it be useful to be able to list article sections in a given Category, where the main article topic is not suitable? For example the article on the Supermarine Spitfire prototype K5054 has a section on Replicas, while the de Havilland DH.88 Comet article has one on Airworthy reproductions and replicas. It would be useful to include these sections in Category:Replica aircraft. For example one might be able to add a template or a modified category tag to the section, for the sake of argument something like: 

==Replicas==
]

which would list the section as:

Would such a system find much use? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:15, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Probably, but I'm guessing this is significant work for no great amount of benefit. --Izno (talk) 13:56, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

The mess of actors by medium

I tried to start a CfD on this issue. It can be reached if you go to Category:Film actors and follow the lead. So far, it has very little participation, and one long winded, mean spirited objection. This despite the fact I literally went through 100 articles in preparation for the nomination, and demonstrated that in over 90% of those television actress articles there was overlap with other mediums. I also pointed out multiple cases, such as Star Trek, where the same actors played the same roles in both TV and film. This is about the only case where someone woould be so rude in response to someone having literally posted 79 categories to the nomination. Then there was a complaint about not posting to projects. Well, I tried to post to projects, but the guidelines on CfD in no way make it obvious how to post to projects. I tried to post to individual editors too, but the posting heading provided was just not working. This needs a wide discussion, but the general response exemplified by some commentators at CfD to just be rude to those who do not do the impossible of posting a proposal onto thousands of categories is troublesome. With the rise of categories like Category:American web series actors do we really want to categorize actors by how the creatin they were in was distributed. What are made for TV film actors? What about films first released on netflix? Where are the lines?John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:34, 5 May 2018 (UTC) I put this both here and in policy, I really do not know where to put it, I just want to start a true discussion. We need to avoid being hung up on the present way things are done.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:36, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

“What links here”

When I’m expanding an existing Misplaced Pages article, one way to find good info to add is by using the “What links here” button. But this is ruined if the article that I want to expand is in a template that’s used in a ton of articles. For example, consider Picket Lake, Minnesota. If you go to that article and click on “what links here” you get a ton of useless search results that are listed merely because they each use a template that happens to include a link to Picket Lake, Minnesota and it’s impossible to tell which of the search results will actually provide further substantive info about Picket Lake. So, I suggest that the “what links here” button should exclude search results that merely have templates mentioning the article in question, although the template itself would be a valid search result that would not cause any difficulties. Or else the search results should indicate which ones result merely from a template. Anythingyouwant (talk) 03:49, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

This is a question that probably needs to be added WP:PERENNIAL. The answer is, yes, it could be so-modified, but no, it probably won't happen, because it is marginal utility for some probably-large amount of software work to make the search and WLH functions work inconsistent with expectation. --Izno (talk) 13:40, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
Well, the above example can still be "handled" as the total number of incoming links is still limited, but there are examples with hundred-thousands such incoming links making it a complete nightmare to reverse-lookup stuff through WLH. So, some options to filter and/or sort the WLH output in useful ways would be highly appreciated, and any time spent into developing a solution is time well-spent: Solved once, used often.
In some cases, however, there is a good working and easily applicable (although not perfect) solution to this problem already:
The link through the template should go through a (specially crafted) redirect rather then point to the target article directly. This way, incoming links through that redirect are easily distinguishable from "normal" links (and links through other redirects) in WLH.
At present this isn't really applicable to navigation box links as we try to avoid redirects there so that the navigation link is displayed in boldface on the page itself (a practice with IMO only marginal value and that could IMO be abandoned).
However, there are other use cases where it is applicable without any backdraws: For example, some of the templates linking some kind of numerical identifiers to a common article use this through special redirects ending on …" (identifier)" as parenthetical extension of the subject's name, see {{CVE}} for an example. This nicely groups all those links under a single redirect in WLH and allows a user to optionally ignore or even focus on them depending on what kind of information s/he's trying to look up through WLH. Also, unlike navigation boxes these templates aren't normally used on the target page and so the desire (if any) for boldface links doesn't exist. Of course, this only catches links going through the template (but that could be easily solved by bots), so, depending on how consistently such identifiers are routed through such templates in related articles, it might help to remove more or less clutter from WLH and thereby help reverse lookup of relevant stuff. It was also used by {{ISBN}} thereby helping to remove a lot (!) of clutter from the ISBN article's WLH list - but one editor decided to edit-war over it. It would help even more, if the citation template would use it as well (which would be trivially easy to adapt).
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:58, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
In the case given, would it help to do a "Search Misplaced Pages" for containing... "Picket Lake"? (The quotation marks are necessary.) There would be fewer results and they may be more relevant. Bus stop (talk) 21:05, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Proposal: A US-only CentralNotice in support of Net Neutrality

Proposal: A US-only CentralNotice in support of Net Neutrality.

Net Neutrality is the principle that service providers should treat all Internet traffic as equal, and not discriminate on the basis of origin, destination, or type of data. Net Neutrality protects people's access to knowledge by prohibiting internet service providers from blocking, slowing, or prioritizing data traffic for a fee.

The Wikimedia Foundation and several US Wikimedia affiliates have come out in support of Net Neutrality in the United States, as well as the efforts in Congress to keep the Open Internet rules in place. Just as the Foundation considers Net Neutrality as essential for access to knowledge, the Wikimedia community should realize that equal access to knowledge is important to our mission and knowledge equity and act accordingly. The concern is that if access to Misplaced Pages and/or its sources is slowed, or allowed only as part of a paid premium, this could gravely harm our fundamental mission to provide free access to knowledge for all. Any restricted access could reduce the quality of articles and reduce the diversity of contributors who create and maintain Misplaced Pages’s content. If access is limited in a way that restricts access to sources we use to create Misplaced Pages articles, that hinders our mission of delivering free knowledge.

This proposal is to gauge the community's interest in presenting a banner to US-based viewers of the English Misplaced Pages, which would show the importance of Net Neutrality to Misplaced Pages's mission and encourage further reading and action. A landing page with more details has been produced here. A proposed banner with expandable information is previewable here, with a preview of its unexpanded form as follows:


Free knowledge depends on net neutrality.
We are asking for your support.

LEARN WHY AND TAKE ACTION

The reason this proposal is being brought up now is that on May 9, a petition will be filed in the U.S. Senate to force a vote on a bill to block the FCC's December repeal of net neutrality rules. The bill currently has bipartisan support from half the Senators, and only one more vote is needed for the bill to pass in the Senate.

In general, Misplaced Pages should remain non-partisan and non-political; however, Misplaced Pages's own mission of free and open knowledge for all is a political one, and the community must support public policy when that policy is vital to protecting its mission. Just this week the German Misplaced Pages ran a banner to support European Union copyright reform; in the past, banners were run in South Africa in support of freedom of panorama, and banners were run in Australia to support fair use. This proposed Net Neutrality geo-targeted banner would be in line with previous community efforts to support policies in the best interest of Wikimedia.

Some may remember SOPA and PIPA, two other laws that would have radically altered how the internet is used in the United States in a way that negatively impacted our mission. A Misplaced Pages blackout and banner was instrumental in turning public and legislative opinion against these detrimental bills. We're not going for a blackout this time, but hope that a US-focused banner can direct attention to the issue and preserve Net Neutrality by promoting a grassroots effort to convince Congress to act.

Thank you.

Further reading:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Gamaliel (talk • contribs) 19:00, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Survey

  • I'm puzzled by the assertion that "net neutrality is not in the interest of the global Wikimedia movement". Misplaced Pages Zero was a necessary step in countries where the situation is not ideal and net neutrality is not in place, but I doubt anyone participating in that would trade real net neutrality for a workaround like WZ. The Foundation (was in charge of WZ) has publicly come out strongly in favor of NN, so they seem to think it *is* in the best interest of our global movement, as do many in the Wikimedia volunteer community. Gamaliel (talk) 19:21, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • As a political reality in the states, the Foundation has to support net neutrality , but as a large player in the online marketplace, we are much more likely to benefit from Net Neutrality not existing than be hurt by it. We are the website run by a large organization that people complain about getting preferential treatment. The simple fact is that by our size and reputation, the ability to get preferential treatment from ISPs could actually help our mission of spreading free knowledge. We aren't the small startup website that someone is running from their home. We're an international organization that is the 5th most visited website in the world. People could use us as the reason to oppose Net Neutrality if they were trying to set up rival projects. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:34, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • We should look beyond the end of our own noses and support what is right. The possibility that Wikimedia may not benefit from net neutrality should not prevent us from supporting it. Surely an open Internet is more important. Richard Nevell (talk) 22:44, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • You don't get an open internet by giving government censors more power. As Reuters points out, "The FCC ... has introduced a so-called 'general conduct' provision in the latest version of the rules ... In the general conduct provision, the FCC will say that Internet providers’ actions cannot be harmful to consumers or content providers ... "A 'general conduct rule,' applied on a case-by-case basis with the only touchstone being whether a given practice 'harms' consumers or edge providers, may lead to years of expensive litigation to determine the meaning of 'harm' (for those who can afford to engage in it)," the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a net neutrality advocate, said in a filing submitted on Thursday."' --Guy Macon (talk) 14:45, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Net neutrality is key to the interest of the global free knowledge movement of which we're a part - Misplaced Pages's birth would never have been possible without it, and we'd be foolish to forget that.--Pharos (talk) 21:04, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Then start a PAC or other advocacy group and lobby for it that way. Using an organization that has in the past benefited from the lack of Net Neutrality around the world to lobby for Net Neutrality in the United States is a bad idea. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:19, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Whether it's the problematic grammar or the confusing line of thought, I don't understand your point. I'm not trying to be argumentative – I honestly don't understand it. Care to clarify? -- Fuzheado | Talk 19:24, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • For whatever it's worth, former WMF General Counsel Mike Godwin has in the past defended zero-rating alongside net neutrality. For lack of a better summary, it's an important nuance. I haven't asked him lately, but at any rate, even if you do think W0 and net neutrality are at odds, W0 is done with, so this shouldn't be a concern. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:38, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - This is an important enough issue not just in the US, but globally, and one where the community should have a voice of conscience. The modest proposal is not an extreme one like the SOPA blackout – it is a nondisruptive awareness campaign to highlight a troubling trend that could affect more than just daily traffic to Wikimedia projects but everything from multimedia uploads to bulk data contributions to GLAM collaboration – all the types of things have gotten Wikimedia to where we are today. -- Fuzheado | Talk 19:20, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Richard 19:24, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Also show to users with IPs from Canada and Mexico, as some ISPs near the borders serve both sides. Lojbanist 19:27, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:39, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Megs (talk) 19:57, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Extremely strong oppose. Misplaced Pages should not take stands on political issues. SOPA was arguably an existential threat; this is not. --Trovatore (talk) 20:03, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
    All existential threats were once non-existential. Should we fold our arms until when we are aimed directly then we start running non-dismmisable banners across all WMF projects indefinitely?... –Ammarpad (talk) 20:33, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
    We should not be involved in politics, period. Even the SOPA thing I have come to see, in retrospect, as a mistake. --Trovatore (talk) 20:35, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support as coauthor. I've been researching this one and may have lots of further comment. -- econterms (talk) 20:05, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - Free knowledge depends on an environment that does not privilege large commercial websites.--Pharos (talk) 20:14, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. We can't keep running political ads so frequently. The primary objective of this website is to provide a 💕, and the frequency of CentralNotice use is becoming very disruptive. (Also, the summary above re the US Senate vote is misleading. Passing the Senate alone will not determine the repeal, and the bill does nothing without the approval of the House and the President.) --Yair rand (talk) 20:29, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • The last time we took a comparable action was over 6 years ago. True, it does not feel very long ago to those who were heavily involved at the time, but this is hardly a frequent occurrence.--Pharos (talk) 20:38, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
    It has been 56 days since we had a CentralNotice pushing political action on the Turkish Misplaced Pages block. --Yair rand (talk) 20:56, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose: The Internet is not broken, and does not need to be "fixed" by giving the US government more control over the internet. The recently repealed Obama-era net neutrality rules adopted a vague but sweeping "general conduct" standard that gave the FCC the power to crack down on perceived bad behavior by internet providers without providing clear guidance about what would trigger enforcement. Misplaced Pages was built on internet freedom, not government regulations. Please at least try to read and understand the reasons who so many people oppose this: --Guy Macon (talk) 20:34, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support: The Internet is not broken, and we should state that we are in favor of keeping it that way. And this proposal is not similar to the previous one at Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_147#Net_neutrality that asked people for overt political action; this one just encourages support for the principal. Dicklyon (talk) 20:38, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
    @Dicklyon: There's a huge red button saying "Take action" linking to a page asking for "your support" and "your voice" to preserve Net Neutrality, as well as linking to a tool for contacting members of congress by phone, email, and Twitter. I think that counts as "asking for overt political action". --Yair rand (talk) 21:10, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support --denny vrandečić (talk) 20:52, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - net neutrality regulation is a partisan issue, with the left arguing that regulation is necessary and the right arguing that the same state of affairs can be achieved without regulation and that unnecessary regulation in this area is more harmful than good. I personally think that regulation is good here, but we aren't the internet wing of the Democratic party and I don't think we should be taking a side on this American political issue. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 21:07, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • No partisan issue is supported by all of one side and opposed by all of the other. My point is that this is a political issue and we shouldn't be involved. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 21:36, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Actually, it is not a partisan issue, Net Neutrality has . 22:33, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose Is there an actual problem here that needs to be fixed. I don't support extending governmental power over the private sector (citizenry) without some clear specific justification based upon a serious detrimental problem (not theoretical musing) and a clear specific belief that regulation will bring improvements. This is really fear of monopolistic control that must be "regulated" by the government, when monopolies really inspire competition which brings about more choices and better results than regulation. This is a political issue and WP should take no position. MB 21:10, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • I would agree with you generally, but this is clearly a special situation. Scrapping net neutrality wouldn't encourage new ISP's to start up because the costs of starting a new network are simply too high. Removing it wouldn't have any affect on potential new competitors, just allow the existing duopoly to charge more for the same service. I doubt that anyone is sitting around wanting to start a new internet service but just can't because of net neutrality. It is a political issue, but we have a duty to do what we can to ensure Misplaced Pages continues to be a valuable resource into the future. --Blervis (talk) 21:58, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose Support If we are going to take a historic stand for something which is likely to get media coverage then at least we need to assess what we have and what we are doing. I appreciate this RfC and I want to support this project but I think we should plan this a little better. Here are some things which I would want to see done:
    • Develop the right external partnerships
      • Someone needs to initiate on-wiki conversation with partners and get them to post to Wiki. A prerequisite for a Wikimedia partnership is that organizations should either have an on-wiki presence or a wiki community project here which is capable of two way communication. If they want a wiki call out then maybe someone can ask them if they can bring expert review and community engagement to wiki.
      • The proposal promotes Battle for the Net and Public Knowledge, a non-notable organization and an organization with a wiki page which probably would not pass AfD. It is not helpful to the Misplaced Pages community to associate with fringe organizations for which readers cannot get information on Misplaced Pages.
      • Misplaced Pages is the single most single most consulted source of information about net neutrality. These organizations have a communication strategy which does not include bringing expertise to Misplaced Pages, and they are making a mistake by not directing their staff to promote the development of the Misplaced Pages articles. I know these are small organizations but they are still funded, and there is nothing that they could do to better achieve their communication goals than give attention to wiki. If they develop wiki articles then they should claim wiki's audience to their funders, who almost certainly already require them to report impact and reach. Someone needs to tell them and they need to respond.
      • Battle for the Net organizes community events which they do not document. They should catalog their images and photos and get them into Wikimedia Commons. Unfortunately the many dozens of public demonstrations which they organize typically are not leaving behind a media record.
    • Develop the Misplaced Pages articles:
      • "Net neutrality" is in poor shape. For the amount of attention this article gets (it is high traffic by Misplaced Pages standards) I am a little embarrassed that so many people read it without it being well developed. Can we confirm that the wiki community wants this article to get media attention? It is intimidating for many editing to review high traffic complicated topics like this and I have doubts that we should showcase it without a cleanup effort.
      • We need to sort out {{Net neutrality}} and the articles in it. These are not good articles to promote on the world stage when we are asking for scrutiny and engagement
    • Have a community discussion about the circumstances under which we will endorse other organizations' work
I want to support this proposal. I would change my "oppose" to "support" if asked, but I wish that we could be thoughtful about the problems with this and plan to collect whatever resources we can to make this work. I do not want to set a high standard for what we need to begin an awareness campaign. However, I think that Misplaced Pages should have a minimal standard, however we define it, and I think that what I am proposing above about making an effort to improve wiki content and to consider our relationship to and the notability of partners when calling their names is reasonable.
Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:32, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
I'm on board for improving Net neutrality and related articles. Will work on this soon. I do not think people in other orgs have an obligation to participate on our platform, but your arguments are significant and I'm processing them. -- econterms (talk) 21:40, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
I agree with most of what you are saying, but the time to act on this issue is limited. We can work towards improving what you mentioned, but if we don't act on the current situation now, any future efforts may be in vain. I also don't think this is a partnership with any of the above mentioned groups, we simply share the same goal. --Blervis (talk) 21:58, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
@Blervis and Econterms: How would you feel about removing mention of or links to other organizations? I would support this without the inactive partners, and if the wiki community came up with a few people to spend a few hours to revise the articles. Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:00, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
Hi @Bluerasberry: Re. the links to Fight for the Future and Public Knowledge, those can be removed - they're there simply as supplemental readings and are minor points in the proposal. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 02:29, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
@SuperHamster: I changed to support if the non-wiki partner organizations are removed. Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:40, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Last month, I noted that this was political, and shouldn't be broadcast through the entire encyclopedia. I like this pared-down version: it's significantly clearer, even if the technical issues involved are somewhat murky to this layman. However, the Wikimedia Foundation has already spoken about this, and no matter how much I agree with net neutrality, I cannot, in good conscience, support this proposal. Quite simply, it's a political issue, and there are other fora for issues of a political nature, including message boards, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, calling your Senators and leaving polite messages with the aides and staff, &c., &c., ad infinitum. So, the long and the short of it: again, no, it's too political. — Javert2113 (talk) 21:38, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
Addendum: I agree with Blue Rasberry; I'd love to support this, but it seems slightly unorganized. If we do go about this (that is, if this proposal passes), we cannot do so haphazardly, and that means planning (dun dun dun); and while I have some minor quibbles with Blue's notes, by and large, he's not wrong, though I do balk at the mention of a Misplaced Pages community endorsement (at least, that's how this editor understood it). One thing I'd like to emphasize, if I may, is his final point: community and collaboration. At all times, we must strive for consensus, even if we don't all agree. — Javert2113 (talk) 21:47, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
Erratum: Not "last month", but, rather, in late March. See the below challenge to validity from Guy Macon. — Javert2113 (talk; please {{ping}} me in replies) 22:58, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support I think it's okay for us to occasionally take targeted action against particularly egregious threats to the site. SOPA/PIPA were good examples. Process-wise, this is a significantly different proposal, so I am okay with it, although admittedly this is a bit soon after that one (and a bit down to the wire). More substantively, and I can say this at meta as well, but "We are asking for your support" in a banner looks awful similar to asking for a donation. I would worry many folks would dismiss it without clicking, even though it's not December. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:44, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Ian.thomson (talk) 21:51, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I didn't join Misplaced Pages to be a party to politics, and not every Misplaced Pages editor is either for/against Net neutrality. Adding this disenfranchises many people for that reason. For me personally, I have no interest in participating here if Misplaced Pages gets involved in ANY political issue. We are supposed to be here to build an encyclopedia, not champion a political cause, any political cause. This constant RFC after RFC is akin to shaking the magic 8 ball until it gives you the answer you want, and frankly, seems to be a form of bludgeoning the point. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:01, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Javert2113 and Dennis Brown and this is a political issue and feel there other fora are better for this.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 22:19, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. Misplaced Pages should not meddle in political issues, not only because many editors are not here for this but also because of the unwanted attention this kind of stance is likely to generate. Building an encyclopedia has nothing to do with that. José Luiz 22:25, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose – It is tempting to use Misplaced Pages as a means to promote public policy. However, I would advise extreme caution whenever we consider doing it. There is a very good reason why we don't normally get involved in politics, and that is because it is also part of our mission to provide a neutral resource where readers can find out more about a topic without getting the feeling that someone is trying to sway their views in a particular direction. It is our goal to create a place where readers can decide for themselves what they should believe based on a neutral description of what reliable sources have said. The moment our editorial community forms a consensus to take a stance on a political topic, we are betraying that mission by admitting that we have a conflict of interest with respect to some political topics, so we better be certain that if we don't take the stance, Misplaced Pages's ability to function will be fatally compromised. That, in my view, is the cost of taking political stances for Misplaced Pages, and I'm not sure enough evidence has been presented thus far to justify that cost for this issue. Mz7 (talk) 22:33, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support If we're not prepared to lend exposure to issues that threaten it, we can't claim to be working for free knowledge available to all. — OwenBlacker (talk; please {{ping}} me in replies) 22:39, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
    • @OwenBlacker: On what basis do you assume that giving the US Government increased control over the Internet in some vague way "working for free knowledge available to all"? And why the US government? Why not the EU? The Internet is not broken and does not need fixing, and Misplaced Pages was built on internet freedom, not government regulations. The recently repealed Obama-era net neutrality rules adopted a vague but sweeping "general conduct" standard that gave the FCC the power to crack down on perceived bad behavior by internet providers and web site owners without providing any real details about what would trigger enforcement. How is this good for Misplaced Pages? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:57, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Fuck yeah. Net neutrality is 100% in alignment with Misplaced Pages's core mission. The only reason not to do this would be if the Foundation say it jeopardises 501(c)(3) status. Guy (Help!) 22:47, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment on the false dichotomy underlying statements like "Misplaced Pages shouldn't get involved with politics" or "Misplaced Pages shouldn't be political" - The question should be whether this is something that furthers the mission of Misplaced Pages or is otherwise in the best interests of the people involved with writing/reading Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages is political, and not just because of this kind of initiative. An encyclopedia that anyone can edit is political, the way we use sources and define which sources are reliable is political, how we understand neutrality is political, the decision to cover a subject one way rather than another is political, not running ads on the site is political, having as part of our mission being accessible to everyone is political, not privileging academic credentials is political, our consensus-building processes are political... it's just that these politics are not, for parts of the world most participants here live in, nicely split along partisan lines in contemporary discourse. For many other parts of the world, however, these things we take for granted are explicitly political in a similar sense. Climate change has been politicized in the United States, too, and we have dealt with that in a way that really bugs one side because we determined that doing so is in accordance with Misplaced Pages's principles/mission/purpose, not because we decided to get political. This is likewise not a decision of whether to "get political." We are already political. The question isn't whether this is relevant to American politics, but whether this is or is not something that matters for Misplaced Pages's principles/purpose. Oppose if you decide that it is not, oppose if you think net neutrality isn't all that meaningful or if you think this particular aspect of net neutrality isn't something that matters for Misplaced Pages, oppose if you don't think we should have messages outside of articles that don't themselves follow Misplaced Pages content policies, oppose if you think our article needs to improve first, but don't oppose "because politics." It's just more nuanced than that. — Rhododendrites \\ 22:40, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
    • No, it really really isn't. We shouldn't be taking political stands as an encyclopedia. Period. --Trovatore (talk) 23:08, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
      • I'm fine with disagreement but this doesn't address at all any of Rhododendrites' thoughtful remarks, it just says "uh-uh". In many parts of the world, the encyclopedia's very existence is a political stand. We are a neutral encyclopedia but we don't exist in a neutral world, unfortunately. Gamaliel (talk) 23:25, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
        • Rhododentrites instructed me not to oppose the initiative because it's political, but I do oppose it because it's political. It really is just that simple. We should not be taking political stands as an encyclopedia. As for the existence being a political stand, I'm sorry, I think that's nonsense. --Trovatore (talk) 23:49, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
          • Agreed. In fact, the attitude expressed above "... Misplaced Pages is political..." is part of the problem, because such bias constantly and consistently finds it's way into articles, and must be regularly fought against. Misplaced Pages can't even keep it's own entries neutral, why then should it try to take on the internet? GenQuest 14:15, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
            • such bias - what bias are you talking about? The idea that Misplaced Pages is political is a bias? It's naive/simplistic to think there's some "politics" bogeyman that has infested our encyclopedia that can/should be contained before it dashes some objectivist fantasy about platonic apolitical truths. My point wasn't just about articles, but articles as part of the larger Wikipedian enterprise -- its own qualities and the world it exists in. You have extracted the words "Misplaced Pages is political" from what I wrote, but responded to those words as though I used them in the way I was arguing against. — Rhododendrites \\ 14:51, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose I read the first of the four articles linked above by Guy Macon — the debate between Yoo and Wu. While I personally think the Yoo's arguments were more compelling, This discussion is not (or should not be) a simple vote on whether, on balance, regulation and supportive net neutrality is a good idea. In my opinion, there are some decent arguments on both sides, and as is almost always the case when considering a regulatory proposal the devil is in the details. Delivering a banner in support of net neutrality is not simply a statement that a majority of Misplaced Pages editors support the concept, but that the support is so overwhelming that we feel it is appropriate to make that statement in the voice of Misplaced Pages (as was the case with SOPA). I don't think that's remotely the case. On page 577 of the linked article, Yoo makes a similar point:

At this point, it is impossible to foresee which architecture will ultimately represent the best approach. When it is impossible to tell whether a practice would promote or hinder competition, the accepted policy response is to permit the practice to go forward until actual harm to consumers can be proven. This restraint provides the room for experimentation upon which normal competitive processes depend. It also shows appropriate humility about our ability to predict the technological future

--S Philbrick(Talk) 22:55, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

  • Oppose I don't think that Misplaced Pages should be involved in any kind of activism, period. It isn't clear that Net Neutrality is going to have any detriment on Misplaced Pages's goals or functionality, and we should not get involved. This RfC is also too soon after the last one. The proposal is in violation of Misplaced Pages's core concept of conveying information from a neutral pint of view; picture the proposed banner at the top of the Net neutrality page. Does anyone accept that as being NPOV? — Insertcleverphrasehere 23:41, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strongest oppose possible as a US citizen without resorting to armed rebellion Not that I dont support net neutrality, and I am taking steps to protect it, its the 2018 mid terms and I have plans to vote against my current representatives due to their ambivalence regarding the issue. Keep politics off Misplaced Pages. L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 00:20, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
I would like to clarify that unlike GM I support Net Neutrality as the only way to save us from the whims of for-profit ISPs, but this is the en.wiki not the US.wiki, something our Tommy editor friends love to remind us. L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 01:42, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
@L3X1: To clarify, the proposal is for a banner that will only be shown to US viewers, unless I'm misunderstanding your point. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 01:48, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
...which is yet another reason for opposing the idea. The resulting increased US government control over the Internet will affect pretty much all English-speaking countries. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:12, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Wintonc7 (talk) 00:44, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose Stop trying to involve[REDACTED] in politics. Natureium (talk) 00:51, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Misplaced Pages should remain non-partisan and non-political. — GodsyCONT) 01:00, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong support. I'm baffled by the folks above saying that net neutrality wouldn't affect Misplaced Pages. As for involving Misplaced Pages in politics, the existence of Misplaced Pages itself is political. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:02, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
    • I'm going to flat contradict you on that. The existence of Misplaced Pages is not political. --Trovatore (talk) 01:40, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
      • And you likewise. Everything is political. We aren't above that. Our licensing, our mission, our assessment of sources, protection of individuals by our BLP policies, the concept of neutrality itself, where we are hosted, where we can't be hosted. All of it is political. We're kidding ourselves by denying that. Seddon 03:04, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
        • This is rapidly becoming a very silly argument about definitions. Perhaps we could say that Misplaced Pages is not about advocating, implementing, or influencing government policy, hm? These things can be tangentially related to our goals under certain circumstances, but participating in activism related to these topics can be problematic. Our differing definitions of "political" do not change that. --Yair rand (talk) 04:10, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
            • In my view there is only a single political question: How, if at all, should the state's monopoly on the use of force be used? Net neutrality is a position on that question. It says that the state should use its monopoly on the use of force to prevent certain economic transactions, by players deemed to have market power, to prevent certain results deemed undesirable.
              The existence of Misplaced Pages, per se, takes no position on how the state's monopoly should be used.
              Now, it is true that some people have a more expansive notion of "political" than I do. They're entitled to that view. As Yair rand says, we can still formulate the view that Misplaced Pages should not take political positions in a narrower sense. --Trovatore (talk) 04:22, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
        • Freedom of speech and open access licensing are political in a sense, but they are far from partisan politics. Net neutrality is similar. I believe this is the kind of policy that is directly tied to Misplaced Pages's core values, and that we should feel proud to share our views on in a public way once every few years.--Pharos (talk) 04:26, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose Just as I opposed the SOPA/PIPA blackout years ago, Misplaced Pages must remain above the politics of any one (or group of) country. Courcelles (talk) 01:10, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Guy Macon. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 01:12, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose: We are here to build an encyclopedia, and nothing else. That mission is better served by maintaining our impartial image than picking fights. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:20, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Mozucat (talk) 02:49, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose while it's tempting to say that Misplaced Pages shouldn't take political positions, I feel that's largely unrealistic. However, I don't support this proposal, which seems to be unilaterally encouraging people to contact their senators about a bill that is unlikely to be signed by Trump. It is too low-impact to justify a promo of this sort, which must remain rare. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:37, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • I would disagree, it is only a few votes away in the senate, and if it were to pass there, attitudes throughout Washington would be changed. It already has significant popular support, and a "Yes" vote in the senate could signal that. Ultimately our support or lack thereof may prove the deciding factor. -Blervis (talk) 14:17, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
We are not the WMF. We are the English Misplaced Pages community. We can, and sometimes do, disagree with the Foundation with regards to what best serves our shared mission. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:08, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support -- the Australia Fair Use campaign demonstrates that these targeted communications activities, act as a way to communicate to a very focused audience the importance of an open public forum/environment for making Misplaced Pages work. Misplaced Pages is political, in that it radically challenges a number of assumptions about knowledge: one of them, "what is the purpose of the internet". Like SOPA/PIPA, net neutrality is an important pre-requisite for our mission -- and its appropriate for our communities in the United States to support it, when it becomes a political issue. Sadads (talk) 12:33, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
So let me get this straight. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was a controversial effort to increase the power of the United States government to control and censor the Internet (including the Internet in Australia), so you opposed it, and Net Nuetrality is a controversial effort to increase the power of the United States government to control and censor the Internet (including the Internet in Australia), so you... support it?
From The Fear-Based Campaign to Control the Net:
"Unfortunately, as the internet has taken on an ever more central role in our personal and economic lives, the temptation to seize control apparently became too much for the FCC. The political left is invested in the narrative of internet service providers as privacy-violating boogeymen—and the FCC as a heroic digital guardian—not because there is any evidence to support the position but as a means to exercise more control."
From Here’s why the Obama FCC Internet regulations don’t protect net neutrality:
"The FCC staff did their best with what they were given but the resulting Order was aimed at political symbolism and acquiring jurisdiction to regulate the Internet, not meaningful 'net neutrality' protections. Aside from some religious ISPs, ISPs don’t want to filter Internet content. But the Obama FCC, via the 'net neutrality' rules, gives them a new incentive: the Order deregulates ISPs that filter."
--Guy Macon (talk) 14:08, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strongly Oppose per what is becoming a perennial request, that is a call to a political-ized action by Misplaced Pages. Most of us are here to make an encyclopedia. As the proposer/supporter, what is YOUR agenda? GenQuest 13:37, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
To ensure we can keep writing this encyclopedia and to ensure people can keep reading it. Seddon 13:51, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
And giving the US government more power and control over the Internet accomplishes this ... how? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:08, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages was getting along just fine before the net neutrality law went into effect, and seems to be getting along just fine since the expiration of it. I don't understand where this nebulous 'ensurance' of which you speak comes from. GenQuest 14:29, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. There seems to be too much focus among respondents on the goals of net neutrality and not the specific effects. I did research over the net neutrality debate for a speech class not particularly long ago, and I confess not being impressed by what I read. The ban on paid prioritization is pointless, as its effects already exist and are implemented without a paywall; instead it depends on the ability to purchase the relevant hardware. For example, it is relatively common for major websites to purchase dedicated servers at ISPs to expedite the speed at which they are processed. This website does a good job of explaining the details. Proposed net neutrality regulations fail to address this aspect of prioritization. The second issue raised, content blocking, is also not particularly important; I have only found one instance when an ISP used its status as an ISP to disrupt access to a website, and that's with Comcast throttling BitTorrent because the latter is extensively used to host copyright violations of movies. Misplaced Pages does a satisfactory job of policing copyright problems, and its popularity and humanitarian mission would make any attempt to throttle it deeply unpopular.
Consequently, I don't believe that Misplaced Pages is threatened by the issues purported by net neutrality supporters, and agree with TonyBallioni's statements that it could feasibly benefit from the regulations not existing. I will also argue that US regulatory agencies have histories of issuing absurd, impossible orders to enforce regulations, and that in this regard Misplaced Pages may actually be threatened by regulatory creep. I will also echo the sentiments expressed by numerous editors above: using Misplaced Pages to host a banner gives the impression that net neutrality is supposed by the Misplaced Pages community as a whole, and the controversy of this and previous RfCs clearly indicates that this is not the case. Furthermore, wading into activism for political issues undermines the project's appearance of being a neutral, independent source of information. Between the sacrifice of perceived neutrality and the lack of tangible benefits to the project, I must consider the promotion of net neutrality to be a net malus. —Compassionate727  14:11, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose: The entire discussion is turning into a political soapbox. While the Wikimedia Foundation can make political statements on behalf of itself, Misplaced Pages is a community project, and all of its decisions should reflect the consensus of its users and our core policies. In fact, a proliferation of support for net neutrality would actually place undue weight on the corresponding POV, as it will not equally promote counterarguments. Unlike SOPA, which was a much more clear-cut issue, Net neutrality is a more contentious issue, and in fact, the WMF had previously been involved in initiatives that blatantly violate its principles. ViperSnake151  Talk  17:12, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose for all the reasons mentioned above. Contact me for further information. Brian Everlasting (talk) 15:30, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong support There are plenty of times when one would be right to worry about "expansion of government power", but this is not one of them. Regulating industry for the purpose of protecting the citizens is a good thing for a government to do. (And, no, we can't trust the Free Market(TM) to save us when consumers have no choice among providers; nor is it all hypothetical: Comcast throttling BitTorrent — which blocked legitimate content as well as piracy — is only one example of ISP bad behavior .) I'm here to build an encyclopedia, but I'd like for people to be able to read that encyclopedia without Wikimedia having to slide cash under the table to Comcast and Verizon. And, frankly, in the current climate of the United States, wanting to build an encyclopedia — that is, holding education to be worthy and facts to be important — is itself a political act. XOR'easter (talk) 16:17, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
I assume your reference to Comcast-BitTorrent is partially directed at me, as I'm the one who mentioned it, so I should take the time to reply. I'm aware of the ACLU page, and in fact relied extensively on it in my research. But the other examples provided there aren't relevant, and I'll explain why:
  • AT&T's censoring of portions of the Eddie Vedder concert utilized the fact that AT&T was the official sponsor and sole provider of that concert. Their censoring actually made sense and was in my view justified, as the fact that they were a sponsor would have made it appear as though they were endorsing that political message when they weren't.
  • Verizon's discrimination against NARAL Pro-Choice America affected their text-messaging service, meaning that it involved their status as a cellular provider, not an ISP. Cell services are already regulated for this, and fall outside the scope of net neutrality anyway.
  • Telus is a Canadian ISP, so any regulations passed here don't seriously affect them.
The other claims you make have already been addressed elsewhere. —Compassionate727  20:57, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
Expanding a little. tl:dr; The personal is political. "free knowledge is inherently radical"
Here's my reasoning. I'm a socially left (US left) leaning person living out the outskirts of a moderately sized urban center. Grew up rural. I'm more central (US central) when it comes to government, regulation, capitalism, etc.
I have two choices for my ISP. Both are large companies. Most folks, across the United States where this proposal will be most impactful, have an ISP like mine. ISPs, the large ones especially, can be considered government approved monopolies. Decades ago, taxpayers funded the initial cable to wire up the country. In exchange these companies are given exclusive status to prevent other companies from laying down their own wire. AT&T, as one of the oldest telecom companies in the country, just rents use of their wires to other ISPs, big and small.
I don't like the government sanctioning monopolies. That's a little libertarian sounding, I realize. If the government is going to do it though? They better regulate them. A government-sanctioned monopoly should follow the same restriction the government itself does for it's own utilities. That includes this kind of neutrality. I want companies like Comcast to have less power to coerce and distort the market. This is a complex, nuanced matter. While you might be against regulation in other areas, such as energy, or financial markets, or whatever - accepting this one actually works in our favor as a community, project, and movement. Ckoerner (talk) 18:08, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Question - Maybe I'm missing it, but what is the timeline for this discussion? If the event people would "take action" about is on the 9th, today is the 7th. Is there a plan for a specific point to stop discussion ans assess consensus about this? — Rhododendrites \\ 16:47, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Answer It doesn't have the votes here, desn't have the votes in congress, would likely be vetoed if it did have the votes, and would not accomplish what this RfC claims that it would accomplish. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:24, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • The question was not "Would someone be willing to restate their opinion, but with the word 'answer' in front of it?" Alternatively, someone quoted Inigo Montoya elsewhere in this thread in a way that seems relevant re: "answer". — Rhododendrites \\ 20:42, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • I think these things normally run for 30 days or so? It would take a truly extraordinary consensus to justify accelerating the timeline to two or three days, just because of the timing of the vote in the Senate. I don't see that here; it's not clear there will be a consensus at all, but certainly there is no evidence of the sort of overwhelming consensus that could justify such a radical departure from our normal procedures. --Trovatore (talk) 20:55, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • An RfC typically runs for 30 days, yes. This is not technically an RfC, and I imagine that's intentional, given the time constraints. It would not be the first time we have had a discussion on a shorter timescale, but I do tend to agree that there should be a pretty clear consensus in such cases. — Rhododendrites \\ 21:05, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose - Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, not a platform for political statements supported by a majority of the few editors who happen to show up in a discussion on this page. That's regardless of the merits of the issues or how Misplaced Pages might be affected by them. We are Misplaced Pages editors, not political activists (although each of us is free to be a political activist off-wiki). In my view, this proposal should go the way of the proposal to show an anti-Trump statement before the U.S. presidential election. Furthermore, I think we should consider an explicit policy against using the encyclopedia as a platform for political statements. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:18, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support as critical to Misplaced Pages's mission. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:48, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
    • So it is your position that a US government regulation that did not exist until 26 February 2015 and was repealed on 14 December 2017 (and pretty much not enforced during most of the 2 years, 9 months and 19 days it was on the books) is somehow "critical to Misplaced Pages's mission"? Critical?' In the words of Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means." --Guy Macon (talk) 20:13, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
    • Net neutrality has de facto existed since the beginning of the internet. Net neutrality law is a more recent response to threats to the status quo that made a crazy project like Misplaced Pages possible, and you can disagree about any specific regulation, but the principle indeed remains critical to an open internet.--Pharos (talk) 20:28, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support: This issue affects Misplaced Pages and its users directly. It also has significant impacts for users who access the internet via smaller ISPs who are not affiliated with the major telecom companies. While in general WP needs to remain NPOV, it does not need to be silent on matters that relate to its core mission. Montanabw 20:26, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support shoy (reactions) 20:45, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose One of the pillars Misplaced Pages is built on is having a neutral POV. There are many other outlets that can voice opinions on Net Neutrality, however I do not feel that Misplaced Pages should be one of them with this message front and center as this proposal would be. RickinBaltimore (talk) 20:50, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - let twitter and facebook do things like this. This feels too close to an ad or as Rick above says, a POV statement. I like WP because it is above politics or conflicts - it is a font of knowledge, nothing more. There ARE exceptions, mainly during the donation drive. But, this should not be an exception, imo. ‡ Єl Cid of ᐺalencia 20:54, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 20:58, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose this is an apolitical project, as much sympathy as I might have for this. The SOPA/PIPA blackout set a bad precedent that shouldn't be repeated. Mélencron (talk) 21:04, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strongly Oppose Net Neutrality is just a means to allow big content providers to dictate what gets distributed. Indyguy (talk) 21:09, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose Am agnostic about NN, but I find the apocalyptic scenarios unpersuasive and often tinged by hysteria. Misplaced Pages's neutrality shouldn't be thrown away for such a hobby-horse. NPalgan2 (talk) 21:16, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose It's best for the WMF not to get involved in matters that can be perceived as being political issues. BillHPike (talk, contribs) 21:17, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • support--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:19, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong support - In the interest of being accessible to all, it would be remiss for Misplaced Pages to not get involved in issues of accessibility to the Internet. You can't be neutral on a moving train. Etzedek24 21:23, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Misplaced Pages isn't everything. It doesn't have to take a stance on a question external to Misplaced Pages. We shouldn't speak as a united voice because essential to our nature is objectivity. Bus stop (talk) 21:48, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Napplicable (talk) 21:54, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong Support Accessibility is extremely important. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:47, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong Support per User:Fuzheado. OhKayeSierra (talk) 00:53, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose While I am sympathetic to net neutrality, the debate about it is a partisan matter, and with extreme exceptions, Misplaced Pages should remain neutral and not involve itself in political affairs. Narutolovehinata5 01:50, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support, while I'm opposed to the idea of Wiki(p|m)edia being involved in politics or activism in general, the exception is when something is a direct threat to our mission. A lack of net neutrality threatens efforts like Misplaced Pages, for not-for-profit entities to make information and knowledge freely available. In this case, then, we should speak in favor of net neutrality and against any type of preferred traffic being permissible. Seraphimblade 02:02, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose: per NPalgan2. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:31, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - making knowledge freely accessible to everybody is the most political, the most power changing, act that anybody can do. And it is our mission. Making all internet content equally accessible is the only way we can accomplish our mission - otherwise we can be censored for "economic reasons", i.e we may not be profitable to ISPs. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:51, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per above, I don't think it is appropriate for Misplaced Pages to be making political statements. And for the record, I do strongly support net neutrality. -FASTILY 03:05, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Complete and utter Oppose this is an encyclopaedia, not a political party, an activist group nor a debating society. Let us concentrate on the task of making the sum of human knowledge available and leave the politics out of it. No matter how much some of us feel that some political issue is important, it does not belong here. -Nick Thorne 07:40, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Very, Very Strong Support. Wikimedia's mission depends in part to net neutrality, so if they support it, this banner is fine. I don't get what all of the opposes are about. Are people being bought out by ISPs and big businesses? This is sarcastic, just so people don't take this last comment at face value.But in all seriousness, this isn't a political question. It's a question about whether ISPs can throttle access to sites like Misplaced Pages, thereby compromising its mission. And it's not really even a political question with that much opposition from the general public. Polls have shown that more than 80% of Americans do support net neutrality. epicgenius (talk) 11:12, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
This is certainly a political question because it boils down to an issue of free enterprise vs government regulation. ISPs provide services people want and if people want access to Wikimedia or anything else they will get it. As far as your 80% poll, I suggest that if that is true, it can be attributed to the benevolent-sounding name and ignorance. The US has supported spending on reducing poverty for over 50 years, but if you asked people if they would support "Spending $22 trillion with no improvement" would they support that? How you ask the question is important. MB 12:37, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
Yes, the wording is definitely important. But it doesn't change the concept of net neutrality which is to protect against unethical practices such as some content being prioritized over others. Here are some more surveys with different wording that support the idea that the vast majority of those who know about net neutrality support it. Net neutrality opponents argue that ISPs can self-police, but that's obviously not true. The truth is that without net neutrality, there is theoretically nothing to stop ISPs from burying Misplaced Pages links in favor of sponsored content, or even fake news stories. That really is against Misplaced Pages's mission.In regards to being a political question, normally I'd agree that this would be a political dispute that should be kept off Misplaced Pages. However, net neutrality is an issue that directly affects this project. A banner is not even asking much. If net neutrality is such a politically charged situation, by that reasoning we shouldn't have had that huge anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA blackout six years ago. That was basically the same thing, except the entire project was inaccessible for 24 hours. A banner is not as obtrusive, it's simply asking to consider how Wikimedia projects would be like without net neutrality. epicgenius (talk) 13:03, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

I challenge the validity of this too-soon RfC

It has only been a month since the last time this proposal was rejected. See Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 147#Net neutrality. Editors should not be allowed to ask the same question over and over, hoping for a different result. This RfC should be closed and the proponent should be asked to wait at least a few months before asking again. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:34, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

I am having trouble finding any meaningful difference between
Could we perhaps link to www.businessesfornetneutrality.com in a banner at the top of all pages?
...and...
Proposal: A US-only CentralNotice in support of Net Neutrality.
What makes them different? Is it the added US-only provision, or the slightly different wording in support on Net Neutrality? I didn't see any responses to the previous RfC that said "I would support it if the notice was US only" or "I would support it if you dropped the businessesfornetneutrality.com link". Generally, for a new RfC to be posted after a month, one would expect the new RfC to address some issue identified in the previous RfC. In my considered opinion, this is substantively the same proposal. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:30, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
I would support the banner which states: "Wikipedians are opposed to the advancement of government control over our internet!". Misplaced Pages, however, does not speak with one voice here. Let's get over it, and get back to writing an encyclopedia. Can someone close this waste of editor time and energy which will NEVER REACH CONSENSUS and is beating a dead horse? GenQuest 16:40, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages, however, does not speak with one voice here. Can someone close this waste of editor time? Pot, meet kettle. Just let the discussion play out first. Maybe there will be consensus for one side or the other, but no one will know unless the discussion runs its course. epicgenius (talk) 13:13, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment No matter what issue exists, on any topic at all, it is likely unwise for Misplaced Pages to take any stance on any issues based on "consensus of editors" on any Misplaced Pages page. The potential morass is vast. The gain is de minimis. And where iterated versions of such things get placed here on a monthly basis, the value of any "consensus" is Wertlos. Guy Macon is correct. Collect (talk) 19:45, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Of course it is too soon. Saying "Plenty of editors above disagree." is either disingenuous because you want your side to "win at any cost", or moronic. Bludgeoning the community until it grows weary of these discussions is not how you form a consensus. In the past it has been clear that a majority do not want to get involved in ANY politics. Saying the slightly different wording changes everything is bunk. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:06, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

This would not accomplish what this RfC claims that it would accomplish

According to this legal analyses,
"The CRA would not undo the FCC’s decision to classify broadband internet access service as an information service. That classification decision was the result of an adjudication and is embodied in an order, not a 'rule' subject to the CRA. Nor would the CRA permit Congress to restore the net neutrality rules that the FCC eliminated in the Restoring Internet Freedom Order.
Thus, the CRA joint resolutions of disapproval recently introduced in the Senate (S.J.Res.52) and House (H.J.Res.129) can neither return broadband Internet access service providers to Title II regulation nor restore prohibitions on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. In fact, the result of an enacted CRA resolution in this case would be to disapprove the FCC’s transparency rule — the only substantive rule adopted in the Restoring Internet Freedom Order — and prevent the FCC from adopting substantially similar transparency requirements in the future. In short, the CRA resolution exercise represents nothing more than empty political theater rather than a serious legislative effort to preserve Internet openness."
Related: The Process for Using the Congressional Review Act to Protect Net Neutrality, Explained. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:35, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
So, a blog post written on a law firm's website, by a lawyer that represents communications companies against the FCC. Always nice to grab extra attention with a new subsection for such things.. — Rhododendrites \\ 21:10, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
(Snark ignored.) Actually, it was published on Law360. As a convenience to the reader I searched out a non-paywall version.
Do you have a source that disputes the sourced claim that the CRA allows review and possible overruling of new federal regulations issued by government agencies and does not allow the overruling of a repeal of an old regulation as a result of an adjudication?
Do you have a single example of the CRA being used to force an agency to adopt a rule as opposed to disapproving a rule? See Congressional Review Act. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:14, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
(Psst...saying something is ignored is the opposite of ignoring it.) ―Mandruss ☎ 23:27, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist Geonotice

A watchlist geo-notice targeted to the US is now in effect advertising this discussion, saying "Please participate in a discussion about whether to temporarily display a banner in support of Net Neutrality to U.S. readers only." As there is a very tight timeframe here and the notice is neutrally worded, this seems acceptable to me, though I assume some of the other participants here will disagree. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:57, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

  • I've asked this this be removed from watchlists ASAP. I view this as an attempt to get around the obvious no consensus here as it all but adevrtises this banner despite the fact that there is no consensus for it. This is already advertised on CENT. There is no need to further advertise it, and IMO, doing so undermines the discussion. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:10, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

RfC on notability of compilation albums

I've started an RFC at WT:NMUSIC about the notability of individual compilation albums from large series, such as Now That's What I Call Music!. Your opinions and !votes are requested. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:22, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Discussion about including video summaries of diseases

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:31, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Categories:
Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals) Add topic