Requests for Comment/Global ban for Naleksuh

I'd like to start off this global ban request by saying that I wish this could've been avoided. Naleksuh was a helpful community member in the past. Their previous experience on Wikimedia and good amount of knowledge with MediaWiki came in hand sometimes and their contributions (such as de-Wikipedifying Twinkle) were appreciated. Sadly, this all has been eclipsed by an extreme deterioration in their behaviour which has created an extremely hostile and uncomfortable environment for everyone volunteering at Miraheze. What struck me as absolutely bonkers is that people who have interacted with Naleksuh just once have noted the displeasure it was to interact with them. Naleksuh has shown a continuing pattern of behavioral patterns which have gone unchecked and have further boiled up into worse issues.

Naleksuh was not always like this, they were initially a helpful person, but their contributions slowly began to deteriorate and their attitude began to become more conflictive, prone to causing arguments, and overall very hostile, a very key turning point being in January 2022 with the MirahezeBots debacle. While off Miraheze and thus not technically important in the aspect of fulfilling the requirements set forth in the Global bans policy regarding cross-project misconduct, it may be of use to note that Naleksuh faced consequences in the past. In February 2022, they received an indefinite block on a prominent online platform due to engaging in personal attacks and casting aspersions. Additionally, a governing committee issued an indefinite block in a manner that deviated from the standard case process. This private decision suggests the presence of an urgent matter that required immediate attention. The reasons behind Naleksuh's block remain undisclosed. It is also important to note that Naleksuh's conduct issues led to being blocked in various channels within a particular online community. Their disruptive behavior extends beyond a single incident and has affected multiple projects, including other platforms. Their disruptive behavior is not an isolated mistake but rather a very severe pattern of conduct issues which spans across multiple projects and has spread to Miraheze.

Naleksuh's conduct across Miraheze and Miraheze Spaces has been extremely negative, to say the least. Naleksuh has been hostile, rude, and their behavior is very unbecoming of a Miraheze wiki creator. It is also worth noting that they were previously an interface administrator and patroller, however they were indefinitely blocked here on Meta for conduct issues and had those revoked as well as a result. Additionally, they had their wiki creator revoked, however it was reinstated due to a technicality. It is also worth noting, that they had previously instigated an argument with a member of SRE, OrangeStar, that ultimately led yet yet another resignation of an essential volunteer in Miraheze, and a likely factor in the recent resignation of another Steward. He has been a heavy factor in loss of volunteer moral and has done immeasurable damage to the Miraheze platform. I had also blocked them from the #miraheze IRC namespace for a month from 16 March 2023 to 16 April 2023 after unbecoming conduct. However, as they have done in the past, removed my notice of it from their talk page, to evidently try to make their own actions or sanctions against them unknown to the members of the community, as they have done in the past as well.

Naleksuh has caused at least one user, a user who simply sought help, to have a very unpleasant encounter with them1 while another user, who has not officially volunteered in any role (they're mainly part of our friendly Discord regulars) commented about how the first time they encountered Naleksuh when they were a new user, they had a very unpleasant experience with them, assuming that they were a troll2. Yes, Naleksuh has repeatedly shown that he is unwilling to listen to the point and will always argue semantics and will wikilawyer and badger anyone who confronts him in order to prove that he is the victim.

With Naleksuh around, Miraheze feels like a battleground. They are beyond passionate when arguing their points. Their tone and demeanor tends to stir up issues frequently. Naleksuh will frequently dissect every single argument, go into the semantics, fight about wording, and many other things which make discussing things with them very unproductive, the literal equivalent to trying to reason which a brick wall. There have been proposals where Naleksuh stands alone and later claims that consensus on a failed RfC was in favor of whatever they proposed but that it wasn't implemented for a reason or another. Naleksuh is always quick to assume things without all the relevant information, quick to judge, and quick to judge harshly. They will pick fights and starts arguments when there is absolutely no reason to. They constantly assume bad faith, casts aspersions about users without any evidence to back up their claim and accuses people of harassment without substantial proof in order to provoke a reaction out of others. Naleksuh seems to believe he can do whatever he wants and get off scotch free which is essentially what has been happening, he is doing so much yet has received very little, if any, sanctions as appropriate to their level of disruption.

The countless disruptions here on Miraheze have made many volunteers re-evaluate whether they really want to continue to volunteer on a project where hostility is in the air. There is likely not a single, active volunteer who has not, at some point, had an unpleasant encounter with him. Disagreements occur between volunteers, that's normal, but the amount of arguments and disagreements that spawn with Naleksuh are too much. While most volunteers, in accordance with policy, work to amicably resolve disputes, anytime something pops up with Naleksuh, it is impossible to mediate with them as they will become extremely defensive, hostile, and will accuse you of harassing or witch-hunting them. The recent Community noticeboard thread regarding IRC Group Contacts exposed an issue, that behavioral policies are not being enforced as they should be. Naleksuh has gotten away with so many things they should've never slid by and as pointed by others, if a new user had done some of the things Naleksuh has done, they would've been locked a while ago, yet Naleksuh seems to have immunity from these policies which has further enabled this behaviour. This lack of proper enforcement of conduct policy led to the need for volunteers to 'vent' but had this behaviour been addressed early on, this issue would've never occurred. While this is not a justification for the messages which were leaked (which certainly weren't 'nice' by any mean), this did highlight that issues must be tackled head on, early on, decisively and in a manner according to policy to prevent any venting from being required. Now, we are gathered here to right a long-standing wrong, I hope the community agrees with this.

All evidence that has been collected and is relevant to this case has been listed below for all Miraheze users to view. Please do not edit the evidence list in any way without consulting me or another user involved with the creation of this request first.

This request comes because the record of contributions has been mirrored by a long record of rudeness, combativeness, insinuations against other users, partisan behavior including extremely unnecessary edits and fights about them, and consistently sparking drama. When these issues are brought up they are met with denial, downplaying, ignoring or 'reflecting' the issue back. This has resulted in a long cycle of Naleksuh appearing, stirring frustrations, and disappearing before meaningful consequences have formed or been able to stick. These incidents accompany or strongly overshadow what positive contributions are made.

This behavior primarily has taken place on Meta and IRC. To lesser extents it has taken on DevWiki and TestWiki. Aside from a personal project unrelated to this and a mixed history on Phabricator, this is the extent of Naleksuh's presence on Miraheze. The worst of this behavior has mainly, but not exclusively, been aimed at other volunteers including members of SRE, CVT and the meta adminship. I believe this record has caused real damage to volunteer morale and possibly retention.

This was written with suggestions by other members of the community to help compile the examples and refine the point. This is perhaps an extreme suggestion, but the evidence below speaks for itself, and personally if this is left to stand, it will only cause more issues and create precedence for not handling such users properly in the future. This comes as they have been unable to be handled globally by other functionary and policies but their violations and extreem and more than meet the critera for a community-imposed global ban.

= Evidence =

General Misconduct

 * Stewards'_noticeboard/Archive_36 (Meta): The evidence privided by DeeM28 in their request to Stewards for revocation of Naleksuh's wiki creator rights, which ultimately led to a block on Meta, but not revocation of their wiki creator rights.
 * Special:Diff/256758 (Meta): This message by Zppix illustrates how decisions were made unilaterally by Naleksuh without any consultation with existing Stewards. Naleksuh is not a Steward, nor has he ever been, but he somehow sees fit to edit the MediaWiki:Group-steward.js file to remove a change that was approved by an existing Steward. This could have constituted grounds for revocation of the interface administrator right under the current guidelines.
 * T8622 (Phabricator): Tied to the section on MirahezeBots, an angry Naleksuh tells a MediaWiki Engineer to 'stay away' from tasks that they create despite MediaWiki Engineers role being to handle those requests. Naleksuh is warned to refrain from this behavior as it violates the Code of Conduct.
 * T8655 (Phabricator): This behavior continues in this task when Naleksuh removes the same MediaWiki Engineer as a subscriber from the task.
 * T9389 (Phabricator): Once again, Naleksuh removes the same MediaWiki Engineer as a subscriber from the task.
 * T9393 (Phabricator): Tied to the above, Naleksuh removes RhinosF1 as subscriber from a task and is told to stop doing that.
 * Special:Diff/302355 (Meta in relation to IRC): This message paints a picture of Naleksuh being rude and disrespectful, as mentioned above, to many users through the Discord/IRC relay (exact message links will be provided below), including disobeying a request from a Discord moderator. An IRC channel operator and Discord moderator, Reception123, had to leave this message. As pointed out in the message, Naleksuh accused users of lying and gaslighting, and as pointed out, called a user an asshole. These are clear violations of the Volunteer Conduct Policy, the Miraheze Spaces Code of Conduct, and the Global Conduct Policy.
 * Image Exhibit A (Miraheze Spaces): This message shows Naleksuh calling a user on Discord an asshole for trying to correct them in an error they made. This is a clear violation of the Miraheze Spaces Code of Conduct.
 * Image Exhibit B (Miraheze Spaces): This message accuses a Steward on Miraheze of lying about something they said, which is assuming bad faith, a clear violation of the Miraheze Spaces Code of Conduct.
 * Image Exhibit C (Miraheze Spaces): This message shows Naleksuh accusing a Steward of attempting to gaslight him, without any evidence to back up his claim, and assuming bad faith yet again.
 * Image Exhibit D (Miraheze Spaces): This message shows Naleksuh being insulting and rude to a user on a public Miraheze channel. While it is understandable to be frustrated with a user over a disagreement, the Miraheze Spaces Code of Conduct and the Volunteer Conduct Policy prohibit being disrespectful to another user. "Be respectful" is a major point on the Volunteer Conduct Policy, and Naleksuh has repeatedly violated that clause, again with this comment.
 * Image Exhibit E (Miraheze Spaces): Unrelated from the above IRC discussion, but Naleksuh yet again assumes bad faith of a trusted user on Miraheze, NotAracham, when he accuses NotAracham of hat-collecting and being like Dmehus. Dmehus, for the record, had a series of bad actions that led to the trust that he had with the community disappearing. Dmehus was not a bad person, but made mistakes, one accusation was hat collecting. Naleksuh is trying to make it seem as if NotAracham is a hat collector and untrustworthy of advanced rights. Yet again, assuming bad faith and making baseless accusations.
 * Image Exhibit F (Miraheze Spaces): Well, we seem to enter the racism zone here. While of course this is just an idea, Naleksuh seems to be suggesting that Miraheze operates as an English-only wiki farm. While it's true that Miraheze is operated by primarily English-speaking users, a major amount of our platform speaks other languages. One of our current global rollbackers is a primarily Japanese-speaking user. So it's a bit nationalist of Naleksuh to try and prohibit foreign language usernames just because they're not easy to type for those with an English keyboard.
 * Special:Diff/324361 (Meta): This is an official decision made jointly by Discord moderators and IRC channel operators to ban Naleksuh from with unanimous approval. This follows a heated conversation in which Naleksuh argued petty semantics and annoyed basically everyone surveying the argument. I'll post only one screenshot as the discussion is long, but there are plenty of logs for those that wish to see the full conversation. The logs can be found here.
 * Image Exhibit G (Miraheze Spaces): Screenshot of the above. Naleksuh is shown using rude sarcasm and while not an extremely violating screenshot, is good enough to show patterns of behavior that have continued.
 * Special:Diff/324698 (Meta): It seems that we're filing revocation requests here for users whose opinions we don't necessarily agree with? In any case, Naleksuh is content to file a revocation of rights here for something that Reception123 didn't even do. He also cites an email written by him to John (up until recently an SRE member and Steward) regarding his recent IRC ban, alleging that he has been harassed and discriminated against, and also gaslighted. For the record, Naleksuh has not been any of those 3 things. Many would argue that in fact he's been given too much leniency.
 * Special:Diff/317379 (Meta): This becomes the start of an edit war, where Naleksuh is trying to prevent "outing" a user when frankly, the user exists on Meta as a global sysop and has their Discord tag prominently displayed on their user page. Additionally, I was given permission by Raidarr to add them to the page, but apparently wasn't valid enough for Naleksuh. An edit war ensued, eventually Raidarr was kept, but it just goes to show how Naleksuh acts. The passive aggressivity by him in the edit reasoning as well is also quite incriminating.
 * Special:Diff/303929 (Meta): Comparing a new volunteer to another user, a previous Steward, and using their name as a disparaging term ('repeats of the Dmehus issue').
 * Special:Diff/248910 (Meta): Naleksuh removes a proposal from an RfC he feels is 'harassment' while citing Wikipedia policy as a basis.
 * Special:Diff/248958 (Meta): Naleksuh deletes a comment left by a user they don't like from their talk page.
 * User talk:Raidarr#Log summaries (Meta): While performing a global block, at the end of the standard 'Cross-wiki abuse' global block message, Raidarr added 'detected creation of quite a few accounts with disruptive actions. Cease.' Naleksuh began scrutinizing the seemingly harmless comment in a very negative light. Evidently continuing a pattern of
 * Special:Diff/233045 (Meta): Reverting a Meta administrator who edited deletion dropdown reasons, something arguably outside of a Meta interface administrators' purview. The users on the talk page who commented on this disapproved with Naleksuh reverting a Meta administrator.
 * User_talk:Bbbtest#Please_do_NOT_edit_war_/_cite_offsite_propaganda_for_users_tidying_noticeboards (Meta): Extremely hostile towards a new user. Naleksuh's comments are very aggressive and mocks the user ("You might like my header, because saying NOT in all caps is really cool").
 * User talk:Chrs#Wiki requests (Meta): Naleksuh disagrees with Chrs in relation to one of the wiki requests they approved. Instead of attempting to respectfully resolve the situation, Naleksuh starts the conversations with insults, "these notes are decent at best". They continue to badger Chrs after they have provided satisfactory explanations in relation to their recent actions. Yet again and again, Naleksuh continues to badger Chrs.
 * testwiki:Special:Diff/49085 (TestWiki) - Continuing a pattern of making fights out of nothing and arguing semantics, Naleksuh brings up the age old debate around what a functionary is. The term, on Wikimedia, is defined as someone who has access to CheckUser or Oversight. On Miraheze however, this term is not defined and carries no specific meaning though commonly, some will refer to functionaries as anyone in an advanced community role (Local admins, Stewards, etc.).
 * testwiki:User talk:Naleksuh#Blocking Syde BOT (TestWiki) - Naleksuh blocked an account by the name of "Syde BOT" as, according to them, it violated TestWiki policy as it was not an approved bot. A consul sent them a message, asking why they assumed bad faith (it can be inferred bad faith was assumed) yet Naleksuh did not really reply to the core question. Instead, they focused on the term 'bad faith' for the majority of their message and essentially deflected from answering.
 * [2022-06-26 19:31:13]  Your gaslighting attempt is unsuccessful (Miraheze Spaces) - Naleksuh assumes bad faith and accuses Reception123 of "gaslighting" after Reception123 was under the mistaken impression that a proposal was initiated by Naleksuh
 * [2022-01-16 18:24:29]  @Owen, are you aware dmehus has been repeatedly lying about you? Please DM me (Miraheze Spaces) - Naleksuh publicly accuses Dmehus of a serious offence (lying) without providing any evidence or allowing the Dmehus to defend himself

Revenge campaign to exterminate MirahezeBots based on a grudge
Naleksuh had a dispute with the MirahezeBots (now FOSSBots) team. To further his goal of completely eradicating them off the face of the earth, Naleksuh engaged in countless activities to attempt to suppress all mentions of them.

A little background: MirahezeBots (now FOSSBots, formerly ZppixBots) was an independent service run by Miraheze users which hosted various bots of utility to the Miraheze community (such as MirahezeBot, the IRC <-> Discord relay, the recent changes feed bot present in many IRC channels, etc.). Naleksuh disagrees with how Fosshost, MirahezeBot's hosting provider, was run, in part because of Fosshost's relationship with Andrew Lee and in part because Naleksuh was also just recently banned off their IRC namespace. In the previously linked MirahezeBots Phabricator task, Naleksuh also voices this dislike for them but Sario528, a then wiki creator and also volunteer at MirahezeBots mentions that they have a good working relationship with Fosshost and so they're fine remaining with Fosshost (note: Sario528 also volunteered for Fosshost at the time).

Naleksuh approached RhinosF1 with an offer for hosting a few days before MirahezeBots' 'christmas freeze' (a period in which the MirahezeBots team doesn't make any code changes and such). RhinosF1 asked Naleksuh to sign a Miraheze NDA in the meanwhile as it was assumed Naleksuh would have access to this server. After the 'christmas freeze' period concluded (sometime around 4 January, 2022), the proposal was put before all members of the MirahezeBots team who rejected the proposal unanimously (save for a member of the team who could not make it to the vote) on the basis that Fosshost was likely to provide more stable hosting than Naleksuh and also because concern was voiced that this offer was made purely out of spite against Fosshost; in the course of this discussion, some private messages between Naleksuh and RhinosF1 regarding this topic were shared by RhinosF1 in the vote channel. Naleksuh is informed of the team's rejection of his offer and immediately objects, threatening to escalate this to on-wiki review which the MirahezeBots team belived would lead to harm to the project. Naleksuh is asked to not do this and that if such an action caused harm to the team, he could be sanctioned. On 6 January, in the same previously linked Phabricator task, Naleksuh makes two comments which are deleted by RhinosF1 and thus begins his full out war against MirahezeBot.


 * Community_noticeboard/Archive_27 (Meta): Two days after this previous incident, Naleksuh begins a Community noticeboard thread discussing the service.
 * #miraheze logs, 2022-01-16 (Miraheze Spaces): Naleksuh asks Owen to get on IRC to discuss the previously mentioned topic about MirahezeBots using the Miraheze name incorrectly.
 * Naleksuh, who has a long standing dispute with Dmehus, accuses him of lying to Owen without any proof ([17:24:29])
 * DarkMatterMan4500 asks what makes Naleksuh think that and that he hasn't seen that. Naleksuh condescendingly replies "That's nice" ([17:28:25]).
 * Naleksuh accuses MirahezeBots of taking actions unilaterally without community consensus via an on-wiki vote on botswiki by holding "a conversation that should have been held on-wiki off-wiki" ([21:09:00]) and also accuses MirahezeBots of being thinking they are above Miraheze Terms of Use ([21:16:55]). Naleksuh seems to want to force MirahezeBots to an 'on wiki vote' regarding --- which may not make sense as certain decisions, such as technical ones, have historically, by Miraheze and other organisations, been reserved by the technical team.
 * RhinosF1 states that the MirahezeBots project is free to decide where to hold discussions. RhinosF1 states that Owen (evidently using Owen as a metonymy for the Board) is aware of them using the Miraheze name and that he would never use it without Owen knowing. Naleksuh then begins to you cast aspersions saying 'I never suggested you did, but now that you've mentioned it, yes, you would infact do exactly that' suggesting he believes RhinosF1 to be dishonest ([21:32:37]).
 * RhinosF1 continues to state that MirahezeBots is free to choose where they hold discussions and make calls. Naleksuh automatically assumes he deflected his question and asks if RhinosF1 doesn't want to claim on-wiki that the project is run by the community because 'you know it is a lie?' ([21:33:54])
 * RhinosF1 points out that the wiki is used for documentation only ([21:35:17]), that they mostly organise things via their Phabricator instance ([21:11:51], [21:35:42]), and that no precedent exists for MirahezeBots on-wiki votes ([21:34:33]).
 * File:MirahezeBots.png (Meta): During this, despite most users not voicing concern against MirahezeBots, Naleksuh uploads this out of scope image to Meta where he claims Miraheze as a whole appears to be against the MirahezeBots service. ([21:41:57])
 * RhinosF1 believes Naleksuh's sudden change in attitude towards MirahezeBot is due to their rejection of Naleksuh's hosting offer and he reiterates their reasons for declining Naleksuh's offer to which Naleksuh replies that is 'bullshit' ([21:44:31]).
 * Raidarr asks what is being argued in the channel to which Naleksuh casts aspersions and says 'Honestly, I have no idea. The conversation stopped but RhinosF1 started it again. Probably didn't meet the quota for enough people bothered in one day' when it is evident that Naleksuh is the one who began the conversation again as they replied to RhinosF1 when he pinged Owen two hours earlier (RhinosF1 pinged Owen at 19:10:28 and Naleksuh replied to this ping at 21:09:00).
 * Raidarr points out 'Your impatience, aggression and frankly incivil approach makes it difficult to identify what 'bullshit' and 'what the thread is about' even are [...] it seems you are the single user on Miraheze who has this problem'.
 * RhinosF1 states he is tired of dealing with the issue and Naleksuh says 'You are getting tired? You were the one being incivil to me' ([21:49:58]; a continuing pattern of Naleksuh always being a victim).
 * It is revealed that the Board requested MirahezeBots changed its name and RhinosF1 explained that the plans hadn't advanced as he was waiting for something which fell through but vowed to make sure that the plans finally did come to fruition (which did occur a few months later).
 * A casual browser, corwin, who was associated with the Fosshost project, chimes in when Naleksuh mentions 'no legal paperwork', and makes the joke 'Sup?  legal paperwork?  whom are we suing?' Naleksuh appears to have long standing issues with corwin as they then begin badgering corwin with messages such as "Why are you curious?", "I didn't even know you were here", and "You are a non-Miraheze contributor, aren't you? Do you have an account?"
 * corwin asks "how did this get to be about me suddenly?" and suggests Naleksuh find another venue to rant if the topic he is disgruntled about is a private matter.
 * Naleksuh said they did already but blamed RhinosF1 for 'drag[ging] it here' and explains why they're arguing.
 * corwin states 'so this rant is about behaviour of a developer who's conduct dissapointed you? Did it occur to you to provide a techable moment by demonstrating the mutual respect you feel you didn't receive?'
 * Naleksuh asks corwin why they're interested in the topic if they don't contribute to Miraheze.
 * corwin states 'I find online harassment to be a facinating subject. For example, one thing I've seen in my (purly unscientific) observations, is that the harassers are rarely important contributers in the forums they frequent, while the targets usually are.'
 * Naleksuh then hints that that corwin is a harasser as they haven't made any 'substantial contributions to Miraheze'.
 * corwin states that they are a user and Naleksuh begins to argue semantics (something that'll pop up very often).
 * Special:Diff/238804 (Meta): Naleksuh removed mentions of the fact that MirahezeBots was used to log meetings, calling the service (then composed of various active Miraheze volunteers) an 'awful group'
 * #miraheze, 06:37:52 (Miraheze Spaces): Asking when the relay bot would be kicked. They then confused WikiAuthBot (a Discord bot not run by Miraheze or Fossbots) as a Fossbots bot and declared it wouldn't be back. After learning it wasn't a Fossbots bot, they said it could remain.
 * #miraheze, 03:24:13 (Miraheze Spaces): Continuing a gravedance for FOSSBots, even though there was no real reason to, given that the shutdown was occurring. Continuing to trash FOSSBots served no purpose, yet Naleksuh continued with the repeated insults.

= Image Exhibits =


 * PROPOSED BY: Universal Omega (talk) 19:30, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Proposal 1 (Global ban for Naleksuh)
Naleksuh is globally banned. Access to the Miraheze platform and all services the company employs the use of, including Discord, IRC, Phabricator, and Github are revoked by the Miraheze community, indefinitely. All user rights held by Naleksuh across Miraheze are revoked by the community. All appeals are subject to Miraheze's policy on community-imposed bans.

Support
Per everything outlined above. Universal Omega (talk) 19:30, 6 June 2023 (UTC)