Wikivoyage talk:Wikivoyage and Wikipedia

Currently a draft

This is currently a draft. Shall we change that? It now has quite a lot of content, but we need consensus to make the change. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 01:15, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure why we even need this page; it overlaps Wikivoyage:Welcome, Wikipedians enough to be superfluous. K7L (talk) 14:44, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

I'll bring this up at vfd. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:11, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Don't. At most, the two pages should be merged, presumably with this one redirected. VfD is not the place to do anything but nominate a page for outright deletion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:45, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

I see. The problem is, I already did. Anyway, I think that's resolved now (see your messages to understand what I mean). --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:13, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Discussion on Wikipedia

Swept in from the pub

Just wanted to let other admins know about this discussion, if they haven't yet on English Wikivoyage. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:43, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Forgive me if I overlooked any details in that massive longwinded discussion, but what, if anything, does this have to do with Wikivoyage? — AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:32, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

My apologies if you, or anyone, looked through the discussion on the basis it was WV-related. It's not. I thought admins ought to know because it's related to admins on English Wikipedia, and the incidents that happened there could potentially happen here to admins in the same way. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:39, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

To save others the hour I just spent reading the discussion: in short, an English Wikipedia admin has been temporarily banned by the WMF, and due to privacy or harassment concerns the WMF is unable to explain the reasons for the ban to the community. A number of English Wikipedia editors, including some admins, are very upset about what they perceive as overreach or lack of transparency. To me it seems like a tempest in a teapot; certainly it does not require any action on our part. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:52, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

I do not think it is a tempest in a teapot, as it about the community losing trust in WMF, which is a serious matter. We do not have enough information, however, and this is just one event out of several, so I suppose there is no general need of reading the discussion. --LPfi (talk) 17:04, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

I’ve looked over the discussion quite a bit further in the interim and have some thoughts that are turning out to be quite longwinded. I will post again when I finish writing them out, but in summary: unlikely to affect Wikivoyage but ultimately probably good for Wikipedia. — AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:24, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

For the time being, I'm actually taking a temporary break from editing on Wikipedia (due to this incident). I think it was a wise decision because I have consequently restrained myself from getting involved in the discussion, where maybe I would have said things that were better not said. I've seen at least one WV user make statements on the issue, and those statements seem careful and well-thought out. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:29, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

In my opinion, the short answer is this is a bunch of Wikipedia drama not worth importing to Wikivoyage, and a longer answer is that Wikipedia culture has always suffered from its failure to take civility seriously, with the result that administrator status, a token level of "dedication to the project", a mostly benign edit history in mainspace etc. are routinely used to absolve (if you'll excuse the term) asshole behavior. And, judging from the way he's described in the comments as well as many of the diffs he alleges to have inspired this block, Fram seems to fall right alongside Tony1 and many others into the category of editors who, though their contributions are productive, are distinctly unpleasant to interact with on a personal level. It's not a stretch to imagine that, with this userban as well as recent innovations such as partial user blocks, superprotection, the "universal code of conduct" that's allegedly about to be deployed, etc., the WMF is sending a message to English Wikipedia that either they get serious about reining in poor conduct on the part of their editors or the WMF will do it for them. I say bravo, and it's about damn time.

As for Wikivoyage: one of the things that I've always loved about editing here is that we've never demurred at calling out bad behavior for what it is, and I don't think it's a coincidence that by comparison with Wikipedia, our community coexists and collaborates in relative harmony, is better able to put aside disagreements and forge compromise for the sake of consensus, and does not suffer nearly as much from editor turnover and attrition. This is the main reason why, if I'm right about the WMF's motivations, I doubt it would have much of an effect on Wikivoyage. What the WMF is pressuring Wikipedia to do, we've been doing all along of our own accord.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:26, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

I remember running into disputes with a Korean nationalist on WP before, and eventually having to take a break from WP because I had many Korean editors gang up and accuse me of being a Chinese supremacist and anti-Korea. That particular editor has since been banned for sockpuppetry, but it took a long time for action to be taken even though that user was extremely hostile to any users who weren't keen on lavishing Korea with glowing praise in articles. I hope WV doesn't have to ever deal with that kind of nationalism, and that we can take quick action when it happens, which I think we have a good track record of doing. The dog2 (talk) 06:44, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

For as long as I can remember, we always have, regardless of what country they are being chauvinistic for. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:52, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

AndreCarrotflower's description seems plausible. I think, however, that if WMF wants to send a message, it could have done so in plain writing, especially when asked for an explication. That might have invoked even more drama, and potentially a severe conflict, but sending messages to be interpreted by Kremlology is not the way to act in a community driven project. The role of WMF vs the role of the communities is also a very important issue – does WMF have the mandate to interfere with en-wp culture? This might not affect WV that much, but it is a serious issue for many of the other projects (you might remember the Jimbo vs Commons conflict over sexual images).

(I dislike using WP to denote the English Wikipedia. The culture differs significantly between wikipedias.)

--LPfi (talk) 10:58, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

That was how I read it, too. I agree with André that Wikipedia (EN) has a civility problem (you can see it in the thread - the way some of them talk to and about each other is atrocious), which is perhaps due to being so much bigger and more complex, but the Foundation must know better ways of sending a message to their volunteers than a mysterious blocking followed by a number of evasively-worded statements that any politician would be proud of. It all comes down to who has what power, how that power is used, and whether those in a position of power are accountable to the people over whom they exercise that power. That is also why I pushed for a full discussion and drafting of the 'topic ban' policy, so that admins are accountable to the community in their application of power. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:22, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

(And by the way, the way we're handling that is far better than the way the Foundation appear to be handling whatever the issue with Fram is.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:25, 18 June 2019 (UTC))

I agree that, ideally, the Foundation would have provided more information or opportunity for community input. "You'll just have to trust us that the ban is warranted" (paraphrasing) does not comport with the wiki spirit of transparency. However, that wiki spirit exists within a world where there are laws about things like privacy and harassment, and unfortunately when those two things come into conflict with each other, the former has to defer to the latter. And one of the few things the WMF's official statement did make clear was that there are extenuating circumstances regarding Fram's ban that legally preclude them from disclosing more information publicly. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:13, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

I think all this is worth considering, since after all we're just as much a part of the WMF as Wikipedia is. The above points have given me, personally, more perspective about the situation. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:16, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

My perspective is that WMF overstepped here - while I believe that Fram could have been banned, it should have come from the Arbitration Committee that we elected for this role. The Foundation did eventually back down, and there are a lot of discussions that still have to be had. By the way, User:Doc James was involved in one of the statements as he is a member of WMF Board: [1] And yes, enwiki does have civility issues, but this wasn't the way to solve it. --Rschen7754 23:32, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Agree with User:Rschen7754 that Wikipedia has civility issues but that this was the wrong process. One needs the correct process to arrive at the correct result. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:39, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Update on the consultation about office actions

Swept in from the pub

Hello all,

Last month, the Wikimedia Foundation's Trust & Safety team announced a future consultation about partial and/or temporary office actions. We want to let you know that the draft version of this consultation has now been posted on Meta.

This is a draft. It is not intended to be the consultation itself, which will be posted on Meta likely in early September. Please do not treat this draft as a consultation. Instead, we ask your assistance in forming the final language for the consultation.

For that end, we would like your input over the next couple of weeks about what questions the consultation should ask about partial and temporary Foundation office action bans and how it should be formatted. Please post it on the draft talk page. Our goal is to provide space for the community to discuss all the aspects of these office actions that need to be discussed, and we want to ensure with your feedback that the consultation is presented in the best way to encourage frank and constructive conversation.

Please visit the consultation draft on Meta-wiki and leave your comments on the draft’s talk page about what the consultation should look like and what questions it should ask.

Thank you for your input! -- The Trust & Safety team 08:03, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

New tools and IP masking

Swept in from the pub

Hey everyone,

The Wikimedia Foundation wants to work on two things that affect how we patrol changes and handle vandalism and harassment. We want to make the tools that are used to handle bad edits better. We also want to get better privacy for unregistered users so their IP addresses are no longer shown to everyone in the world. We would not hide IP addresses until we have better tools for patrolling.

We have an idea of what tools could be working better and how a more limited access to IP addresses would change things, but we need to hear from more wikis. You can read more about the project on Meta and post comments and feedback. Now is when we need to hear from you to be able to give you better tools to handle vandalism, spam and harassment.

You can post in your language if you can't write in English.

Johan (WMF)

14:19, 21 August 2019 (UTC)