Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-07-31/Discussion report
New proposals in aftermath of Fram ban
Fram aftermath
In June, when the
Following the Wikimedia Foundation's ban on Fram but before the release of the statement from the board, the message box at the top of
Resysop debate continues
Wikipedians have continued to discuss changes to Wikipedia's policy on
Controversial close for azwiki admin case
Last issue, we reported on a proposal to desysop all the admins on the Azerbaijani Wikipedia. On July 3, the RfC on Meta was closed by steward Mardetanha with the following statement (typos have been corrected):
After some discussion with fellow stewards, I am closing this RFC. There is mild support to desysop all admins on azwiki, but from what we see it is not going to fix the problem, as some of the admins have been chosen recently, and one has been reelected during this RFC. Desysopping all of them is not going to do any good to the community, but we have to ask all azwiki admins to be more careful and make sure that they are following rules and guidelines and our norms. As a result of the RFC, one problematic admin [Cekli] has been desysopped, and if he wants to gain his access back, he has to go through another RFA, but to fix the problem and make azwiki better, I will be traveling to Azerbaijan this month (with WMF support) to help and discuss the issues in more detail, and we will try help azwiki admins to not repeat mistakes from the past. I am really hopeful azwiki admins have heard the concerns and will do their best to address them.
This close led to accusations of supervoting from several English Wikipedia editors, with several issues being raised with the close:
- The closer erroneously claimed "mild support" when in fact there was near-unanimous support for a mass desysop, and then proceeded to ignore this clear consensus because "it is not going to fix the problem".
- The closer may have a conflict of interest, because he is receiving support from the WMF to travel to Azerbaijan to have an off-wiki meeting with some of the admins, and because he says he is friends with many azwiki editors.
- The nature of this meeting is a step in the wrong direction, with much of the Wikimedia community saying that more on-wiki accountability is needed, rather than conducting business through third-party messaging platforms such as Facebook.
- The closer has refused to respond to serious complaints regarding the close.
Proposals have been considered to overturn this close, but none have been officially made as of press time.
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