Forum:CT:Amending RFRUR and Blocking policy for elected positions

Forums > Consensus track archive > CT:Amending RFRUR and Blocking policy for elected positions
This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made in the Senate Hall or new Consensus track pages rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record.
The result of the debate was support vote 1, no consensus on vote 2. OOM 224 13:45, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Carrying on from Forum:SH:Amending RFRUR, I propose 1) amending the Requests for removal of user rights (RFRUR) rules and 2) revising a relevant clause about demoting blocked users in the Blocking policy.

Part 1: WP:RFRUR

1) The proposed changes to RFRUR are summarised in the relevant SH page, but the key practical changes to procedure are: to reword the rules for clarity, to restrict the creation of RFRURs to voting-eligible users, and to specify that a RFRUR is nullified and must be immediately archived if the relevant user no longer holds the relevant positions. Based on further feedback and in line with Forum:CT:Codifying Moderator Appointment closing the loophole where there isn't a mechanism for removing Discussions moderators, additional eligibility criteria for votes on Discussions moderators have also been added to the proposal.

Linked again here are the proposal's permalink and diff link.

Support

  1. OOM 224 18:18, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  2. Thannus raises a valid point but I don't see it absolutely necessary to require evidence by policy. One can always vote oppose on RFRUR if they aren't convinced. 01miki10 Open comlink 19:20, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  3. Yasen Nestorov (talk) 19:22, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  4. While I understand Thannus's concerns, if the vote below goes through and blocking no longer results in the a user's elected positions being removed, then in cases where a user is blocked based on sensitive evidence that cannot be shared publicly there may be no way for anyone to even start a vote to remove someone's roles, which is obviously a scenario to avoid. I trust the community to vote appropriately on RFRURs based on the evidence presented or the lack of evidence and so believe the process will remain fair. Ayrehead02 (talk) 20:35, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  5. After seeing the evidence required rule hurt more people than it helps, I'm okay doing away with it. NBDani TeamFireballLogo-Collider(they/them)Yeager's Repairs 20:57, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  6. I partially agree with below. But in the last calendar year we've been dealing with some truly crazy stuff, like doxxing, or offenses affecting mistreatment of minors (on the Fandom platform). Though those blocks in particular weren't admins, there may someday come a day when we do need to vote out an admin for something like that, and it's unfair to the victim to require the evidence to be presented. And if they're not comfortable with it being presented to the Internet—forever—then they're required to simply let whoever did such a thing to them remain in power. For such offenses, I believe such an outcome would be too close a return to Tope days when victims wouldn't speak up because he'd bully the everloving shit out of them, for lack of more refined phrasing.—spookywillowwtalk 21:13, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  7. Imperators II(Talk) 21:22, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  8. Yeah per above, while I also agree with Thannus to a degree. Sometimes it's just not something you can force someone to do Lewisr (talk) 21:52, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  9. Cade GalacticRepublicEmblem-Traced-TORkit Calrayn 04:34, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
  10. Bonzane10 Bonzane10-Sig 17:10, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
  11. CometSmudge (talk) 17:25, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
  12. Per miki. LucaRoR (Talk) 17:36, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
  13. Tommy-Macaroni (he/they) 14:45, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
  14. Booply (talk) 19:39, 7 March 2025 (UTC)
  15. I was sorta wary about this but what sealed the deal for me is that I can vividly recall what this website was like under Tope, and a proof requirement is exactly the sort of thing I can easily picture him cheerfully abusing to bully an RFRUR proposal down by accusing the evidence of being insufficient. Like Miki says, if an argument is unconvincing enough in of itself, one can always vote against the proposed removal. Fan26 (Talk) 20:48, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
  16. Per Dani. Master FredceriqueCommerce Guild(talk) (he/him) 07:37, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. Despite discussion on the SH and the revision OOM made to the particular bullet point of the proposed changes allowing users to basically request evidence be provided, I am still very dissatisfied with the removal of evidence being required altogether. As I elaborated on the Senate Hall thread, I am not necessarily arguing that evidence must include a full deep-dive investigation on the targeted user and I certainly agree that RFRURs have had a tendency to go overboard on including evidence that is often at times negligible or outright irrelevant. But not requiring any evidence at all opens this process up to potential abuse from bad actors who could either band together to oust a user over simple dislike if enough of them are power users, or to outright fabricate a claim without evidence against the user they are targeting—and as I am certain all of us know from just about two years ago when Immi did precisely the latter with Ecks, we are most certainly not immune to being fooled on a large, sitewide scale. The remainder of the changes to WP:RFRUR are ones I am satisfied with and fully support, but my vote for the point of evidence handling remains a firm no. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 19:04, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

Part 2: WP:BLOCK

2) To restore voter control over our elected positions, I also propose partially repealing the automatic revocation of certain elected positions* upon a user being blocked, which was introduced in January 2023. There is an existing loophole whereby any admin could hypothetically issue a block of any length to any other user, including another admin, that would result in not only preventing them from using their powers (which is all blocks do) but also the automatic loss of all their elected positions. Wookieepedia policies assume the community entrust admins with issuing blocks in accordance with the policies, including against other admins where absolutely necessary, but admins should not have the unilateral right to additionally remove all elected positions from other users and therefore prevent the community at large from having the final say via a vote. *Note that the restriction on social media is retained in line with the new Wookieepedia:Social Media Team#Account management rules, specifying that team members are expected to secure the site's social media accounts should a team member be potentially demoted.

The current iteration of the relevant clause under the Blocking policy is thus:

All blocked users shall have any authorities and permissions revoked, including Discord server access, review board membership, social media accesses, and user rights, including access to any bot. All blocked users should also be removed from the leadership and participant listing of any WookieeProjects.

Proposed revision:

If applicable, blocked users shall be removed from Wookieepedia's Discord server, be removed from the leadership and participant listing of any WookieeProjects, and have their membership of Social Media Team revoked. Any bots associated with blocked users should also be blocked.

Since affected users would just be blocked from exercising their user rights, which have to be granted and revoked by the community at large, rather than demoted by blocking, this would also mean the part about blocking in the proposed amendment to RFRUR in vote 1 ("in extreme circumstances, being blocked" and "Pursuant to the Blocking policy, a user who is blocked shall have any authorities and permissions revoked, including their user rights.") shall be removed.

Support

  1. OOM 224 18:18, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  2. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 19:04, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  3. There have been and there will be admins who abuse their rights. 01miki10 Open comlink 19:20, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  4. Yasen Nestorov (talk) 19:22, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  5. The current policy is a huge loophole just waiting to be abused. While the loophole's de facto effects may not, in the best case scenario, be big, this needs to be fixed. Two hypothetical scenarios: 1) a majority of the current administrators (>= 50% is enough) decide they want to get rid of another admin and don't want to go through the RFRUR process. One of them issues a block, automatically stripping the targeted admin from their rights. Overturning an administrator majority requires a majority vote (we currently have 13 admins), which means that 7 admins conspiring is enough to have an admin removed without community input. 2) a rogue administrator decides to block one or more fellow administrators. Because the targets have their admin rights removed automatically, they can no longer vote to overturn their own blocks. Suddenly, the rogue administrator(s) are now in the majority and there are not enough remaining admins to overturn the blocks. Even though these are theoretical scenarios where bureaucrats and/or Fandom staff may step in to overturn such hypotheticals, I think local policy needs to be written so as to not allow this potential administrator abuse. The only scenario where I feel instant removal is warranted is if the user is globally blocked, in which case the demotion is a fait accompli. In all other cases, the decision rests with the community and unilateral administrator decisions should not have the power to overturn the will of the community. In my opinion, there should be a rule where an admin getting blocked automatically triggers an RFRUR and if required, their administrator privileges are revoked during the duration of the vote (if the blocked admin unblocks themselves and obviously starts harming the site). Regardless, I think this issue would have warranted more discussion before being taken to the CT. Xd1358 (Talk) 22:53, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  6. Per ecks, do agree with a (perm) global-block exception, because I mean, that's not one Wook admin abusing and mass-blocking but rather the company just going "Nope." and whether we like it or not we kinda just have to accept that. Or even if we don't accept it, they're just gonna time out for inactivity later down the road. So in gblock cases that aren't successfully appealed, it's essentially redundant. And also agreed with temp revoke during a RFRUR if someone repeatedly unblocks themselves and, say, starts spamming NSFW links or something out of spite (it would make sense that we shouldn't let that continue a full two weeks). Though, SMT is a whole diff scenario since the effects of someone going crazy can't really be reversed if the accounts get hijacked again, so will note that I'm glad this proposal has a carved exception for that (and a defined policy for immediate reinstatement already on its own page, should a vote fail).—spookywillowwtalk 00:31, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
  7. Cade GalacticRepublicEmblem-Traced-TORkit Calrayn 04:34, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
  8. Bonzane10 Bonzane10-Sig 17:12, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
  9. Per spooky, I think there should be exceptions, which include malicious conduct during the block (such as unblocking oneself), but Ecks raises an extremely valid point. LucaRoR (Talk) 17:36, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
  10. Lewisr (talk) 04:14, 28 February 2025 (UTC)
  11. Booply (talk) 19:39, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. I've been thinking about this quite a bit since the Senate Hall went up and still haven't come up with an ideal solution, which is why I didn't post there before this vote went up, but I don't think this is the best way to handle this. I agree that there definitely exists the potential for abuse of the current set up in order to oust someone from their roles unfairly, but I think I'd go with more targeted ways of preventing that rather than requiring all blocked admins to be removed by vote as there's a lot of scenarios where the immediate removal is preferable, most likely the majority of cases. It would be functionally pointless for any elected user who was permanently blocked or blocked by Fandom to retain their positions for example and in cases where the blocking is for something extremely clear and public - overt bigotry, harassment, inappropriate conduct with minors, or similar - immediately removing the user from any position of authority is an important point of making the community feel safe from them and sending a clear message that such behaviour isn't tolerated in our leadership. Having to have that user on the leadership roster for two weeks after an incident has occurred is also an extremely bad look for the community as a whole and would likely lead to public backlash. There's also the possibility that the block could be shorter than the two-week timeframe of the vote, which would potentially allow an admin to return from a block while the vote is still on going, realise they are going to lose their position and then use their retained rights to cause damage to the site before they're removed. It'll need further discussion, but at the very least I'd want to see policy retaining loss of rights for permanently blocked users, suspension of rights until any vote is over for blocked admins, and possibly a system based on rights being restored if a block is overturned rather than being retained in the first place. In the meantime, the decision still technically sits with the community on this since users can simply re-elect anyone the think should retain the role. Ayrehead02 (talk) 20:35, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  2. Well said. Imperators II(Talk) 20:46, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  3. CometSmudge (talk) 17:25, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
  4. Per Ayre. Tommy-Macaroni (he/they) 14:45, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
  5. I'm always conservative-minded when it comes to Wookieepedia's operational policies, so I agree this needs to be hashed out just a smidge more. Not opposed to it on principle, merely the specifics. Fan26 (Talk) 20:51, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
  6. Ayre has convinced me that there are way too many holes in this for it to become policy as-is. Master FredceriqueCommerce Guild(talk) (he/him) 07:37, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Discussion