Bruger:Sir48/Til Foundation

anthere9 [at] yahoo.com

Dear Anthere,

1. Abstract
The undersigned administrators and contributors to Danish Wikipedia want to express their severe dissatisfaction with the recent actions of mr. C*** B*** on da:wiki, following an OTRS request handled by him about giving anonymity to a Danish contributor and troublemaker. Mr. C*** B*** has secretly and off-wiki ordered this to be carried out without seeking any form of approval from the Danish community. In addition, mr. C*** B*** subsequently used a derogatory tone when handling polite comments and requests for clarification on his talk page on meta and made clear on the #da-wikipedia IRC-channel, that he was ready to expel anyone permanently, who questioned his acts.

As a result, deep concerns have been raised on da:wiki regarding our right to determine matters by local consensus on policy, when no Foundation issue is at stake, and the loss of confidence has resulted in the loss of several valued contributors.

We apologize for using your time on this matter but hope, that you will see into it and advice mr. C*** B*** to communicate in polite language, and also provide assurance that interference from the Foundation and its employees into matters that are not in any way crucial to anything else than the local community is left to be decided by that community according to consensus (and possibly) advice from outside.

2. Background

A da:wiki contributor named [RP], who originally used his name as the username on da:wiki has severely tested the patience of the community by repeated personal attacks and other transgressions. He is recognised as a spanner in the works also outside the wiki communities even by his own admission.

After a procedure for banning was initiated against him, he wished to change his username and make a new start, which was granted. However, his behavior under the new name soon showed the same pattern of behaviour, and a new banning procedure was initiated, requiring a coupling with the former procedure. In the meantime he was also blocked several times and is also presently under a block, which expires on February 18th, 2008.

Among his responses to this was to make the names and adresses of several administrators of da:wiki public on his website/blog. He also contacted OTRS to try to get his name removed entirely from the Danish Wikipedia.

This request was accepted by volunteer coordinator C*** B*** who appears to have performed only a cursory investigation into the case. On da:wiki, no policy for the right to delete a username has been adopted, since this subject had not been raised before.

After having dictated the removal of the username from all talk pages, C*** B*** was asked to explain the reasons in the Danish IRC-channel. He justified his actions using the Right to Vanish "policy", claiming that supposedly everyone on every Wikipedia has the right to vanish. This is certainly not the case, since http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Right_to_vanish&oldid=859108 clearly states "Your work, including 'signatures' (text indicating your authorship of comments) on all but your own user and talk pages, will usually not be changed or removed. To change these would be a major source of disruption."

B*** refused to discuss this on-wiki with the reason: "To reduce drama", but it is the opinion of the undersigned, that this should have taken place in order to establish a policy on da:wiki (and without mentioning the actual case, of course, since it originated from OTRS).

Since then, B*** has formulated a draft available at http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Bastique/Real_names_of_non-encyclopedic_individuals&oldid=860462 which seems to describe B***' understanding of "the right to vanish" but which we see as an attempt to build a case for denying local Wikipedias their independence and retroactively give B*** mandate for his actions on da:Wiki.

In addition, he has chosen to meet attempts to open a dialog on the matter on his talk page on meta with hostilility, for instance accusing the Danish administrator Lhademmor of illiteracy (http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ABastique&diff=858669&oldid=858667) and accusing another Danish administrator Pred of childish trolling (http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ABastique&diff=858667&oldid=858594) and reverting and removing the discussion entirely. As a follow-up, C*** B*** again appeared on the Danish IRC-channel and declared that he was ready to issue a permanent ban on everybody, who raised the issue again.

These actions and the very unfriendly behaviour displayed by have miffed several contributors from the Danish community, who ought to apologize for the tone used in his handling of this matter. In order to restore confidence, it would also be very helpful, if a statement of principle could be given to the effect that the local Wikipedia was left to handle its own internal affairs, when no real Foundation issues are at stake.

3. About da:wiki

For your information, the Danish Wikipedia is a rather succesful project, now having reached the 80.000-articles mark and improving in both quantity and quality. It has not until now been driven primarily by consensus on rules (like en:wiki, for example), but instead upon consensus regarding acts, reflecting a Danish/Scandinavian tradition of not reducing everything to "law".

The community is well-functioning with a suitable number of administrators and has proven quite capable of reaching consensus on a lot of other issues, including issues pertaining to individual contributors. This is regarded by us as a fundamental right, although we also appreciate the rights of the WMF to intervene, should its governing principles be violated.

Signed...