Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-03-23/News and notes
Lila Tretikov a Young Global Leader; Wikipediocracy blog post sparks indefinite blocks
Lila Tretikov receives Young Global Leader invitation from World Economic Forum
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The World Economic Forum – best known for its annual meeting of some of the world's top political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland – has invited outgoing Wikimedia Foundation executive director Lila Tretikov to become one of its Young Global Leaders.
The Young Global Leaders programme was set up in 2004 with the US$1 million of prize money received by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab from the Dan David Foundation. Described in Businessweek as "the most exclusive private social network in the world", the hundreds of Young Global Leaders have included actor Leonardo DiCaprio, Anderson Cooper, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Contacts between the World Economic Forum and the Wikimedia Foundation date back many years. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales was named a Young Global Leader in 2007 (as was his wife since 2012, Kate Garvey, whom he reportedly met in Davos). In 2008, the World Economic Forum named the Wikimedia Foundation a "technology pioneer", enabling it to send a representative to the Davos meeting (Florence Devouard attended in 2008, Sue Gardner in 2009).
Wales participated in various capacities in Davos over the years, including co-chairmanship of a Middle East forum in 2008, and in 2015 was a winner of the $1 million Dan David Prize. Today, he serves on the Young Global Leaders Foundation board, while WMF board member Guy Kawasaki is an "agenda contributor" at the World Economic Forum. Both Wales and Kawasaki are believed to have been among Tretikov's chief defenders in the recent leadership crisis at the Foundation.
Tretikov's nomination for the Young Global Leaders list would have occurred sometime before June 2015, given the World Economic Forum's nomination deadline for the class of 2016. Selection criteria include age (below 40 at the time of nomination) as well as "a recognized record of extraordinary achievement and a proven track record of substantial leadership experience. Typically, this means 5–15 years of outstanding professional work experience and a clear indication of playing a substantial leadership role for the rest of his or her career." The World Economic Forum list of the Young Global Leaders class of 2016, published March 16, still describes Lila Tretikov as "the Moscow-born head of the Wikimedia Foundation, the world's largest source of free knowledge".
Wikipediocracy blog post leads to indefinite user blocks on multiple Wikimedia projects
A recent blog post (removed, here is the updated version) on Wikipedia criticism site Wikipediocracy has sparked indefinite blocks of a volunteer contributor on multiple Wikimedia projects. The blog post drew attention to the fact that WayneRay, indefinitely blocked from participation in the English Wikipedia by the project's Arbitration Committee in 2012, was still a highly active contributor on Wikimedia Commons, with a history of problematic user interactions.
WayneRay provided unusually complete details of his identity on-wiki, creating and defending his own Wikipedia biography (archive), and maintaining a page with biographical information about himself on Commons (archive) that he linked on his Commons user page. A minor poet, publisher, and cultural figure in London, Ontario, he had garnered local media attention after being charged with child pornography offences and receiving a 23-month jail sentence in 2011. He was reported to have both shared and solicited child pornography online, at one point posing as a 14-year-old girl to obtain more photos.
Since publication of the Wikipediocracy blog post, volunteer administrators on Commons as well as English Wikinews, Wikisource, and Wikiquote have indefinitely blocked WayneRay. The Wikimedia Foundation's Manager of Trust & Safety, James Alexander, told the Signpost that his department is aware of the situation, and that he has been in touch with volunteer administrators on Commons.
An obvious question arising here is why an openly self-identifying user with a documented child pornography conviction was permitted to edit other Wikimedia projects, given his 2012 ArbCom block on the English Wikipedia and problematic user interactions in his edit history. It would make sense for ArbCom to forward information about problematic users to the Wikimedia Foundation, and for the Foundation then to review the relevant accounts' global contributions histories, performing WMF Office bans where appropriate. We put this question to James Alexander, who pointed out the difficulty of doing the job with limited resources:
We took over the child protection cases from ArbCom a little over a year ago or so (though parts of that transition started before that and parts lasted after). We did that at the same time as we were starting to look at the larger issue of Trust & Safety and problematic cases which the community was either overstretched, or unable to deal with for one reason or another (not through fault of their own but because of the legal and privacy complications etc.), similar to what we did when we set up the emergency@ system for threats of harm. Knowing that our bandwidth was already stretched to the maximum, one of the things we did at the time was to hire someone with Trust & Safety experience (Kalliope) to help, but unfortunately we still have significant resource constraints on what we can commit to and we still only have 2 people primarily focused on it (myself and Kalli), with the other 5 members of Support & Safety (previously Community Advocacy) committed to helping with investigations when possible.
Of course, as happens when you open up badly needed channels like that, the previously unmet demand grew enormously once people realized we were available to help. The number of global ban requests or other issues to evaluate has subsequently grown as part of this, requiring us to prioritize it somewhat brutally at times. Child protection, of course, is incredibly high on that prioritization. Other than emergency threats of harm or other highly time sensitive crises, it goes to the top of the list as soon as we get a report. However, the resource issue has prevented us from making any more methodical 'proactive' steps to look into potential cases that have not yet been brought to our attention, although this is undoubtedly something we'd love to be able to do.
In the end, as in most things, the community is still usually the first line of defense. We want to help as much as possible and to continue to increase that help as we gain more bandwidth through new resources and efficiencies. They are often best situated, however, to see when something needs to be looked at, to escalate matters when needed to our attention, and sometimes the best overall first responders (such as for most content related issues).
Ray's Wikipedia biography, which for several years contained a reference to the child pornography conviction – at times edit-warred over, then removed by Herostratus in August 2014 – has been nominated for deletion (the article had previously survived a 2006 deletion request). At the time of this writing, there is a clear consensus for deletion.
Brief notes
- Event ban policy created: The Foundation has created an event ban policy, described as "a set of guidelines and procedures regarding identifying and handling users who are banned from Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) sponsored or funded events, in the interest of maintaining the physical and mental well-being of the participants. This policy, and the suggested processes pursuant to this policy, are applicable to in-person events, taking place in physical spaces." Chapters, projects, user groups and affiliates are encouraged to adopt and adapt this policy when holding in-person events.
- WMF Office desysop: In a rare move, the Foundation temporarily desysopped Commons administrator Denniss for restoring a comment made by a globally banned editor and taking punitive action against another contributor who had repeatedly removed the comment. Denniss may seek admin rights again through a Request for Adminship after thirty days. In a statement posted on the Commons Village Pump, James Alexander said "we will not tolerate sanctions against contributors attempting to enforce a global ban in good faith or of users who edit war or, otherwise, attempt to prevent them from doing so."
- New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator, Widr.
Discuss this story
"Limited resources"?
Although I really don't see any evidence of "limited resources" preventing us from doing a first-class job of child protection, if indeed we don't have the resources to protect children we should immediately cancel all Wikimanias and most travel to free up more resources for what should be a higher priority. I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:44, 27 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wayne Ray is not an isolated case
That Wikipediocracy blog post is very prescriptive and points out a number of things that were missed in one particular case. That's fine (and it has lead to some action on Commons) but the larger issue may have been lost in the rush to local corrective action. Wayne Ray is just one person who has been blocked by ARBCOM under similar circumstances. I am at a loss to understand why the WMF could not simply block these people on all WMF projects immediately. They globally blocked over 50 accounts yesterday as spammers or sockpuppets of User:Russavia, so it's obviously not that big a deal. @Jalexander-WMF: why can't you block these accounts right now? It would seem like a poor use of your "limited resources" to re-investigate cases already dealt with by ARBCOM. Limited Resources (talk) 16:39, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To the contrary, this kind of initiative is unjustifiable and foolhardy. The user was making decent contributions on multiple projects until recently - projects which had not adopted the English Wikipedia's specific language about banning "identification" as pedophiles. Now to some people it is disturbing that this person possessed 60-70 images illegal in Britain and disseminated them on a Yahoo group. (note that Britain does not necessarily go by the same laws as the U.S. does, and their overall reputation on censorship lately has been anything but good) But Wikipedia will proudly allow people who have gone to jail for murder to start contributing again when they get out. It looks to me like some self-important person in the WMF has set himself up as judge, jury, executioner, doctor, and psychiatrist, deciding that they can tell from the news report about a folder of images they've never seen that this poet must be a confirmed and untreatable pedophile and hence a danger worse than a killer. Now if you people want a cause, why don't you go witch-hunting for Crips and Bloods trying to post about their organizations, then gradually work up to the Mexican Mafia, ISIS, Contras, Ukrainian far-right militias, Syrian resistance, Anonymous, U.S. Army and so forth. You'd have a better chance of protecting people (especially with the last one).
P.S. Note that the WMF of today would proudly ban Allen Ginsberg from any form of participation in any project, without even a second thought. Is that something to be proud of? Wnt (talk) 17:50, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]