Requests for Comment/Community Disputed Wiki Closures

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

This proposal is a good-faith idea and well articulated; however, procedurally, this is a curious combination of being a mix of the status quo and, thus, largely, but not necessarily wholly, procedurally duplicative. There seems to be some confusion with regard to the Steward convention, which I learned of prior to my becoming a Steward, at Requests for adoption whereby manually closed wikis are generally ineligible for adoption at Requests for adoption. Generally being the key, operative word. My understanding is that convention developed over the years to deal with requests to reopen manually closed wikis after there some was a general agreement or decision having been made, ideally on-wiki somewhere, from the wiki's recently active contributors to close the wiki. At the same time, it likely developed to deal with private or largely very personal wikis not specifically addressed in policy. In any case, the convention actually exists to ensure closure decisions are done with community input having been given due consideration, not to otherwise pre-empt that process. So, in other words, there seems to be a misunderstanding in the thinking that manually closed wikis were not ever eligible for adoption or that Dormancy Policy could be upended merely by manually closing a wiki. Generally speaking, when wikis are manually closed, there is always some sort of agreement, whether implicit or explicit, to close the wiki, so there is no issue, but assuming this RfC was brought about in reference to freshwebsiteswiki and rottenwebsiteswiki, since that was quite clearly not the case here, it is reasonable for a Steward to reopen the wiki, as has been done in both cases, an update for which will be shared shortly at stewards' noticeboard. As an aside, the whole Requests for adoption process is actually itself not codified in the Dormancy Policy; rather, it is the mechanism by which Stewards have reopened wikis and granted rights in accordance with such wikis closed in accordance with Dormancy Policy. We're looking at replacing that process with a Request to reopen wikis process, and where rights are required, a local discussion would then follow. Dmehus (talk) 04:27, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

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Given the recent incidents on 'Qualitpedia' wikis, I'd like to hard code a policy preventing wikis being closed without community consensus and allow the community to stage a steward backed 'coup' if one happens.

• WHERE a wiki is closed by someone locally holding 'managewiki' rights
• GIVEN the community (users listed as active users at the time of closure holding (auto)confirmed and that are human) dispute the closure
• AND no local policy allows the closure
• The community MAY open a single discussion on metawiki or another appropiate on wiki venue
• THAT facilitates the reopening of the wiki
• AND removal of any user that took part in the closing of the wiki
• THEREBY appointing new local admins & crats OR restoring old ones not partaking in the closure
• AND ALSO THEREBY reopening the wiki for us

Notes & Clarifications

• local policy allowing the closure MUST only be deemed valid if placed more than 24 hours before the closure and was added with the allowance of existing policy or via local community consensus.
• Any vote to add new admins will either by evaluated by stewards where no local policy exists or follow local policy.

• local policy SHOULD be deemed null & void if it simply is a unilateral desicion of users which must be removed.

• Each point (reopening, replacement admins, desysop of current admins) MUST be clearly detailed in the vote and MAY be done as seperate votes.
• Community consensus SHOULD be determined by Stewards.
• Other appropiate wiki venues MUST be subject to Steward & that venue's admin team's guidance
• The terms SHOULD, MUST and MAY are defined by RFC 2119

Support

1.  Support as proposed ~ RhinosF1 - _(chat)^{· acc· c} - (on) 16:26, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   This is absolutely necessary. --Raidarr (talk) 16:35, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

    Strong support Honestly, the closure of 2 of those wikis were done behind my back, and without consensus whatsoever. DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) (contribs) 16:59, 25 August 2021 (UTC) Striked. Moved to oppose. DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) (contribs) 17:42, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   As a bureaucrat at the time of closure, you could either just re-open the wikis or if rights have been removed, request a Steward re-open the wikis and restore your rights, unless this action was contrary to local policy, any Steward would do it if asked. John (talk) 17:16, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   Except, all of our rights were removed as a result of this unfair closure. DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) (contribs) 17:18, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   You did not read my message it seems. "or if rights have been removed, request a Steward re-open the wikis and restore your rights, unless this action was contrary to local policy, any Steward would do it if asked." John (talk) 17:19, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   Whoops, I guess you're right. I have a tendancy to skim through the page at times. DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) (contribs) 17:20, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

2.  Strongest support We need Rotten and Fresh Websites Wikis back as fast as possible. —MarioMario456 17:05, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   Having this discussion take its course would add an extra 1–2 weeks onto re-opening the wikis, it would be quicker to just open a discussion to re-open the wikis rather than allow an RfC to take place that allows the discussion that anyone can open right now to occur. John (talk) 17:13, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   John And where exactly would we do that on? DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) (contribs) 17:16, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   Any place the relevant community are able to discuss. Meta is acceptable - SN or even CN would be acceptable. Otherwise, any other relevant wiki where it can be shown there is a link between the relevant community and those participating. John (talk) 17:18, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Oppose

1.  Oppose on the basis that this seeks to achieve little. The proposal seeks to create a policy that is already in place without any undue mis-interpretation. This seeks to codify the fact the community are able to decide what the community wishes to happen with a wiki, and seeks to enforce Stewards into enforcing such a decision - something codified already at Stewards. Whether this policy passes or fails has no material impact on the effective functioning of the global community as any community member can open such a discussion already, garner the consensus and Stewards must enforce it. Further, this is written seemingly as an instrument and not a policy therefore passing this wouldn't create a policy, but create a procedural precedent that the community can re-open a wiki if consensus exists, something that happens already. Therefore, I oppose procedurally until this takes the form of a policy and not an instrument. A few other unaddressed queries:
   • "GIVEN the community (users listed as active users at the time of closure holding (auto)confirmed and that are human) dispute the closure" what counts under this clause? One user disagreeing?
   • "AND no local policy allows the closure" If the closure is allowed by policy, but majority community consensus is against, this would effectively mean the community can not overrule the closure even if the consensus of the community is contrary to the closure. This would set a precedent of limiting the power of community consensus, reducing the current freedoms allowed.
   • "Community consensus SHOULD be determined by Stewards." If there is a vote because the relevant people determining consensus on the wiki do not seem to be respecting the consensus of the community, why would we give the power to said people to determine if the new consensus that goes against their outcome correct? If this is happening in a global sense and there is an obvious dispute between community and those who are responsible for it, current policy states Stewards must work to resolve the dispute. John (talk) 16:46, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   Shows me for not looking before supporting. If there is nothing in spirit that can't be covered by the existing policy per John's arguments, I'll revoke my support in a few hours and simply stress it on the Stewards' noticeboard where an active example of community and staff dispute is at play. --Raidarr (talk) 16:56, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   Current policy states Stewards should assist communities in managing disputes - this sounds about as disputey as any dispute I have ever seen. If I was still a Steward, nothing in policy would prevent me assisting the community in re-opening these wikis and ensuring they remain open for the duration of the community to discuss the fates of either the wikis or the users involved. John (talk) 17:12, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   John If I could say something here, one of the admins also caused quite an issue here at the beginning of this month, and I just couldn't tolerate it any longer. DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) (contribs) 17:04, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   I do not see the relevance of that statement to my perfectly procedural opposition to this. John (talk) 17:12, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

2.  Oppose I am compelled by John's procedural explanation, and would rather see that play out naturally for precedence rather than add additional policy. --Raidarr (talk) 17:24, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
3.  Strongest oppose Per John and Raidarr DuchessTheSponge (talk) 17:28, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
4.  Strongest oppose per above comments. I’m mostly impartial but I do agree with John’s comment in particular. ChessPiece21 (talk) 17:29, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
5.  Weak oppose Yeah, John's right here. I feel like I overreacted a bit in here. DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) (contribs) 17:43, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
6.  Oppose Isn't this covered in the Dormancy Policy?
   14 days after a wiki has been automatically closed (minimum 74 days inactivity) it will be eligible for adoption by any good-faith user. The user must meet certain activity guidelines (on any wiki), have read-rights on the wiki (if the wiki is private) and provide a reason for requesting the adoption. Also, a user may not just request the adoption of every wiki.
   After a week, a steward will look at the adoption request again. If there are multiple users who requested adoption, a steward will decide who may adopt the wiki based on opinions from other users and the involvement of the user on the wiki in question. After an adoption request has been accepted, the user will gain administrator and bureaucrat rights on the wiki, be able to request features and configuration changes for the wiki, and will have the option of removing rights from old users.
   - PercyUK (talk) 22:32, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

   No, current Stewards decline adoption requests where it was manually closed. ~ RhinosF1 - _(chat)^{· acc· c} - (on) 07:19, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

   I think this is something that should be clarified on the policy page in order to avoid confusion as we have just seen. --DeeM28 (talk) 15:22, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

   Setting to private + closed has been invoked specifically to prevent community adoption for an otherwise open wiki. Not sure I'd make a proposal on it, but I think it's worth stating. --Raidarr (talk) 15:28, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

7.  Weak oppose Even though I do support codification of practices in order to avoid misunderstandings I would tend to agree that in this case it is not necessary to further codify this and agree with what John has said above. --DeeM28 (talk) 15:22, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Comments

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section