Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-10-15/CSN closed

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Community sanction noticeboard closed

By O, 15 October 2007

After a deletion discussion, the Community sanction noticeboard was phased out and marked as "historical". The underlying argument was that even though a reform had been attempted, the speed of banning users and number of forked discussions was too high. This led to the board's retirement and merge back into the administrators' noticeboard incidents board (AN/I), with the archives still subject to maintenance.

Nomination

On October 6, Picaroon nominated the page for deletion. The rationale for deletion (or retirement, rather) was that the page was only a solution to a nonexistent problem from AN/I. The nominator also stated that blocks and bans were only discussed for one day before action happens. In fact, even though the discussion process clearly stated that it was not a vote, discussions were held contrary to what was supposed to be done. Even the scope of users commenting is significant: only a small minority of users and administrators participated in discussions. Picaroon and others argued that this was not community-wide consensus, which is required for a discussion that deals with a user potentially losing editing privileges indefinitely.

Sjakkalle argued in favor of keeping the noticeboard:

Unpleasant as the discussion may be, discussion which concerns the banning of somebody must stay in order to maintain openness, and to have something to point to when someone questions the ban. Outright deletion is not a viable option. Now, on the issue of shutting down this noticeboard, I really don't understand what is going to improve if we send such threads to ANI instead of CSN. What is it that will make the banning threads at ANI more pleasant than here? If we want to abandon unpleasant community ban discussions, we might as well abandon community bans. By keeping this at a separate page we make it clear that community bans are really by the community, not merely a community of administrators. ... CSN is clearly a page with problems, the concerns in the nomination are correct observations, but shutting this down is not going to solve the problems, just move them to somewhere else.

On October 11, the discussion was closed with a result of "mark historical". Closer Titoxd noted that "Sjakkalle's point for not deleting the page [was] the most convincing, and was not successfully contested by anyone", but the strongest consensus was to merge the page with the incidents noticeboard.

The noticeboard was previously nominated for deletion in May 2007. However, that discussion was closed as no consensus, and reform was attempted, with little success. That failed attempt to reform CSN ultimately led to this second MFD that led to CSN being marked historical.

Also this week: From the editor — Wikimania 2008 — Board meeting — Two-million Commons — Job openings — CSN closed — Adminbot approved — License changes — WikiWorld — News and notes — In the news — WikiProject report — Features and admins — Technology report — Arbitration report
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