Wikipedia talk:Community ban discussions

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[edit] Possible problems

Please help me bridge the gap, and get over the following issues:

  1. This isn't much different than what we already have. (People already ask for block reviews on the Administrator's noticeboard/Administrator's noticeboard/Incidents, or propose a ban on Community sanctions noticeboard.)
  2. You write: "Bulleted support/oppose statements are not allowed in discussion." Yeeeeeeeah... that's really gonna happen. For me, all I see this turning into is:
    Admin: Hey, I want people's opinions on this block.
    User1: I support this block.
    User2: Me too.
    User3: Support block.
    User4: That's a bad block.
    etc., etc., etc. Or if the Admin says, "I blocked them for these reasons (A, B, and C)", people will simply respond, "Yeah, that's a good block per 'nom'" (or whatever the term will be). People have tried to rid various pages (RfA, xfD, RFCN, et al.) of the bulleted/bolded votes to no avail. Why will this be different?
  3. Instruction creep? "Now, add this template to the page, and then make a subpage, and then..."
  4. Still not really getting the entire community involved in the "community bans" process.

These are just a couple of issues I would like explained. I don't doubt there are answers, but I just don't know them. Mahalo nui loa. --Ali'i 16:06, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

So, er, how is this supposed to replace WP:CSN? Practically speaking, I mean. What does this do that that doesn't do? - David Gerard 16:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
For now it's very similar with some of the existing problems of CSN rectified at least a little. This proposal still needs to be fleshed out and improved upon big time. MessedRocker (talk) 17:30, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 3 people can stop any ban?

If I'm understanding this correctly, all you need is 3 friends to get you out of a community ban? That makes community bans pretty much impossible. What is wrong with: "If an admin blocks you indefinitely and no admin is willing to unblock you, you are 'community banned'."? It's based on actual consensus, not voting, or "rough consensus" (aka, voting), and it doesn't actually require any policy beyond "admins can block people" and "admins can unblock people" (and making sure the definition of wheel warring allows unilateral unblocking of indefinitely blocked users) - if doesn't even need a name, really. This proposal and CSN are both just trying to add additional bureaucracy purely to compensate for lack of trust in admins and arbcom - if you don't trust admins or arbcom, suggest a new way of selecting them (if you can find one that hasn't been rejected a dozen times already), don't compensate by turning Wikipedia into a democracy. --Tango 17:19, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

That should actually be done first, and if there is controversy, it could be brought here. MessedRocker (talk) 17:24, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
If a consensus can't be achieved, it should go to ArbCom, not to a vote. --Tango 21:28, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Look at it the other way: If five users in good standing endorse the ban, then the user is banned, There are a great many people who could get banned that way before three friends appear. I think this a potential disaster--such a minute number of people is way insufficient for such action. Its not democracy, it's lynching. DGG (talk) 01:03, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I was assuming there was a minimum time before taking action. The proposal doesn't explicitly say that, but it does mention speedy closes, which wouldn't exist if there wasn't normally a minimum time. (Unless "speedy close" means closing with less than 5 endorsements, in which case, the idea is even worse - if it's suitable to close a case early, why bring the case up for discussion in the first place?). --Tango 12:44, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

This isn't an adequate replacement for WP:CSN, as it only addresses bans. What about editing sanctions? Also, it is even more a vote than WP:CSN... wasn't that the thing we were trying to fix? --Iamunknown 18:43, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

This can easily be adjusted for other types of sanctions. Very easily. As for making it less of a vote, we'll have to come up with something. MessedRocker (talk) 21:07, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How about this

Say A wants B to be community banned. If they are not into banning and waiting for someone to object (it's a bit audacious for some people's tastes), they could come here. They could announce their intentions, list evidence, and there can be discussions. These discussions could be used as a source of wider input ("sanity check -- does this dude deserve to be banned"), or if A tried to ban them but was met with opposition, then they could use this as a wider forum. Anyways, B's disruption would be evaluated, as well as whatever benefit to Wikipedia they may have. Based on the discussion (no bulleted support/oppose, and empty statements like "i concur!" would be discouraged), an admin (preferably uninvolved) would come along and see if the user is worth banning. Part of the discussion could be "as an uninvolved admin, would you ban this user?" The point is that banning-them-singlehandedly-and-praying-for-no-controversy would play a role in a way that's not as audacious (for those who don't like being that audacious). In short, it's brainstorming. MessedRocker (talk) 01:36, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Wait. The reason that people don't like CSN is that banning is a big deal, and thus shouldn't be decided by anything that even looks like voting. Why then should we even consider allowing "I did this and nobody complained therefore it remains"? -Amarkov moo! 03:26, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
MessedRocker's suggestion is an extension of what already happens to some extent on AN/I where an admin about to make a ban or having just made a ban asks whether others think the action was justified. 12:40, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
If you want a second opinion from another admin, you go to AN/I - people do that already, there is no need for a new process to achieve that. --Tango 12:46, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Forcibly changing the format is silly

You won't make people stop voting by removing bold text. If you want to prevent people from voting, you must do something about that, not just demand a format that doesn't look like voting. -Amarkov moo! 03:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This is an awful idea

This is effectively renaming the Community Sanction Noticeboard and tweaking it in some minor ways. It is not a good solution, and would suffer from precisely the same fundamental flaws that are leading to closing down the CSN - people voting for banning (and if you say they can't just add a bulleted "support", they will add a meaningless sentence of prose that amounts to the same thing), overnight banning, redundancy next to WP:AN/I and WP:AN (and worse, lower visibility and checking of circumstances). The volume of discussion on CSN at the moment is also not enough to make me think this would be needed. Neil ム 15:37, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually I oppose this for entirely different reasons. First, it presupposes that all community sanctions discussions are ban discussions. Then it conflates all bans with sitebans. Adding those two circumstances together would codify the very shortcomings that an effective community sanctions approach ought to remedy. Far too often, the community lets problems fester because arbitration is slow and excruciating and the malady spreads until good editors depart and complete sitebanning becomes necessary. A proactive consensus should be able to resolve that Editor A just needs to be banned from the Britney Spears biography, or that Editor B needs revert parole for six months, or Editor C should be under civility parole. If the outcome of a miserable arbitration case is nothing more than topic parole for a group of articles and if it's obvious to any sensible observer that the contentious subject needs it, then why shouldn't the community save everyone a lot of grief and just put some articles under parole? We ought to be working out rational and reliable ways to reduce the need for sitebans. DurovaCharge! 02:47, 11 October 2007 (UTC)