Guild Wars Wiki talk:Sysop discretion log

Other uses

Can this log also be used for actions which are not permitted or forbidden by policy? For example, if I made a discretionary block or protected several templates and wanted feedback, could I create an entry in the log? If so, should there be separate sections for actions contradicting policy and actions merely outside of policy? -- Gordon Ecker 01:46, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I would not mind them here, but GWW:RFC and the admin notice board would serve that purpose as well. --Xeeron 12:10, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Currently, the purpose of the admin notice board is to allow users to quickly get into contact with any available admin due to an issue which requires administrative action, however its' scope could be expanded, with a new section for admins to post feedback requests. -- Gordon Ecker 01:26, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I think you should also be allowed to use this page whenever you are unsure. poke | talk 06:56, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

No policy disallows using it, just requires it in some cases.

I do think it's a good idea idea to use it anytime something may be controversial, even if it is in principle established use: the reason being the section below. Sure, the notice board can be used, but that implies any debate happens on the notice board too. Backsword 10:51, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Comments and challenges

Where should comments and challenges go? IMO they should go on the talk page rather than going in the log itself, with lengthly discussions being moved to their own subpages if necessary. -- Gordon Ecker 01:51, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes. --Xeeron 12:10, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I think a short note ("Challenged", "Contested" or similar) could be made on the log, and link to the discussion or subpage. That way it's easier to navigate and read up on discussions and decisions. - anja 12:23, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure. — ク Eloc 貢 21:29, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

User:Mafaraxas

→ moved from Log page

Words are only offensive if one decides they are. Fuck historical and cultural context. If the original ban had been done looking at my user talk and something more than my previous three edits, it would be pretty clear that a word appended to my signature does not suddenly change my personality from a semi-useful-contributor-turned-friendly-troll to a vehement anti-semite.

On another note, I am fine with sysop discretion, but it cannot be carried out based on little to no context. The purpose of discretion on wikis, as for law enforcement in real life, etc, is to allow those in power with greater knowledge of a situation act in what they feel is the best interests of all parties involved, even if it may contradict policy. The impression I gathered from Why's report above is that 'discretion' here was done as a personal request through an email, the 'investigation' that led to the ban, i.e. looking at three links, involved gathering less information than would be used for a normal ban in a case that wouldn't involve 'discretion'. I don't think that's what was intended for discretion when the pvxers that originally introduced the idea on gww had in mind. MAFARAXAS 15:38, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I stand by my decision. I will not tolerate people going around calling each other jew while implying greed and whatnot. If that makes me a lone paragon of good manners on the internet, so be it. — Why 10:23, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I fully support Why's block.

Some words are inappropriate for signatures, regardless of a contributor's history or intent. It's also spurious to suggest that Why (or any other currently active admin) would blindly follow an email request to ban someone without doing their own evaluation. I think this block is exactly what this wiki intends by empowering its admins with sysop discretion. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:56, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I should probably add that, by imposing such a lengthy block, I deliberately sought to set a precedent for future incidents like this. I feel that the fact that only the blockee has objected to the block should encourage all my fellow sysops to follow a similar zero-tolerance approach when dealing with matters like this, or even dealing with discriminatory or racist comments in general. — Why 01:39, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

"...encourage all my fellow sysops to follow a similar zero-tolerance approach when dealing with ... discriminatory or racist comments in general." I fully agree with this. G R E E N E R 01:58, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Always have and always will have zero tolerance for this kind of attitude against any person. Given your repeated refusal to listen to admins and obey policies, you deserved it, to be frank. ~FarloTalk 02:44, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Eh... I suppose. I had a longer post written up urging sysops to keep in mind the difference between joking and legitimate racism, but that's an argument I really don't care to pursue at this time. Blanket morality bans are easier to enforce, anyway, even if they are simply penalizing jokes between friends on user talk pages the majority of the time. Whatever helps you sleep better at night, I suppose. -Auron 02:59, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

its your wiki more than mine, but is this the right place to make those kinds of jokes in the first place? 24.130.140.36 03:21, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

The problem with that logic is that nowhere is the "right place" to make any kinds of jokes. This is a wiki about a video game, but because of the friendly nature of the community, friends are generally allowed to joke amongst themselves without fear of retribution, just as they are allowed to discuss other video games and various real life activities (even though this isn't the "right place" for either of those discussions, either). The problem arises, apparently, when someone somewhere on the internet has a 1% chance of being offended by the joke, in which case it becomes a bannable offense. -Auron 04:23, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Talk pages aren't private, so there's no such thing here as joking between friends — no one should have to scroll up to understand the context of why a normally neutral descriptor appears to be used pejoratively. Second, there isn't a 1% chance that someone might be offended by seeing their race/color/creed used in that way, there's probably a 90% chance if it's someone who belongs to the referenced group but is not a member of the clique. I don't see any reason why we should consider it okay for people to call each other names...or to imply something icky about the group that they belong to (either from birth or because they chose it).

Finally, if people think that there's nowhere that is the "right place" to make these kind of jokes", they aren't looking very hard. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 04:42, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

User talk pages being public has nothing whatsoever to do with conversations being held between individuals. User talk pages often have conversations held between just two people, and occasionally they have lingo that makes no contextual sense to any passersby. The ability for a random third party to comment on a discussion does not make the discussion itself any less personal between the two involved parties. Conversations on the wiki, by nature, are not private - but this has no bearing on friends being able to converse with one another, and said conversation to thusly be between friends.

User talk pages are optional to read and difficult to find for the majority of wiki browsers, and thus they've never been held to the same content standards that normal articles are (hell, lower standards even than mainspace talk pages). Policing user talk content is definitely within a sysop's rights when a policy has been violated, or even in cases of general douchebagginess - but jokes between friends are neither. Penalizing that doesn't actually improve the content of the wiki at all. To give you an idea of how little they matter in the grand scheme of this wiki, if ANet was to release an Encyclopedia of GWW in book form, guess what wouldn't be in it? Good job, you guessed correctly; user talk pages.

"Second, there isn't a 1% chance that someone might be offended by seeing their race/color/creed used in that way, there's probably a 90% chance"

I like making up statistics. I see you like it too! Our pretend stats don't actually alter my argument at all, unfortunately.

"I don't see any reason why we should consider it okay for people to call each other names"

It's funny, we have a policy that covers this. It's called No Personal Attacks. You know what it doesn't cover? Comments that aren't personal attacks. Sysops are further enabled to use their brains to figure out which comments that aren't direct personal attacks are deliberately hurtful and which are simply stupid banter between idiots on their user talk pages. Sysops are encouraged to take action on the former. The only problem is, in this case, they aren't even trying to differentiate from the latter, and then pretending that's even remotely acceptable (hint; it isn't).

The entire purpose of cutting sysops free from the original constraints was to take the blinders off and let them fix what actually needed fixing to improve the wiki project as a whole, even if it wasn't specifically stated in a policy somewhere that they could. Putting the blinders back on by mindlessly following rhetoric ("a similar zero-tolerance approach when dealing with matters like this") is counterproductive and will only hurt the wiki in the long run. Hell, the inability of users and sysops alike to tell the difference between user talk pages and the entire rest of the wiki is already scaring me.

Again, obviously, I have no problem with Mafaraxas being banned for trolling or personal attacks or whatnot. The problem is people are trying to invent personal attacks where there are none, and trying to use the "omg people might get offended" card as justification to support their crusade, despite their crusade not having any benefit to the wiki whatsoever. A good friend linked this (old) article to me, and many of the points made are basically what I'm having issues with here. To give a small excerpt on topic as my closer, "It is no solution to define words as violence or prejudice as oppression, and then by cracking down on words or thoughts pretend that we are doing something about violence and oppression." -Auron 09:56, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

" I will not tolerate people going around calling each other jew while implying greed and whatnot." To be "dumb" is to be deaf and mute, but it is often referred to when one feels "retarded" is inappropriate. There are words even those with the best of intentions use which hold the potential to possess some "politically incorrect" connotations somewhere in the history of the English language. To be consistent, one would have to research them all. Unless, of course, you'd prefer conveniently ignoring what doesn't fit your personal standard of "inappropriate". Doing so would be half-assed self-righteousness, pardon the language. A lack of consistency is a very real and very big problem on this wiki.

"User talk pages are optional to read and difficult to find for the majority of wiki browsers..." I feel this wiki would perform better as a wiki without userspaces, entirely. However, I also know the chances of such a thing are so poor that it is laughable. Regardless of however often sysops like to wield their beloved quote "...the purpose of this wiki is to document the game..." like a weapon against any talk space editors they don't like (while maintaining the double-standard simply by commenting on those very talk pages), you fight so ardently for your userspaces even through all of the problems they cause.

" Policing user talk content is definitely within a sysop's rights when a policy has been violated, or even in cases of general douchebagginess..." If "douchebagginess" alone were truly a bannable offense, half of the sysop team should consider vacation time. Just sayin'. 76.106.245.213 12:16, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Users have been banned for douchebag behavior on multiple occasions. It falls quite easily under the heading of "disrupting the wiki," and it's perfect for nailing the trolls that toe the line but never quite cross it. Discretion is, indeed, a wonderful thing when used correctly.

I don't actually see the merit in removing userspace entirely - very little gain and quite a lot lost, both in terms of friendly banter that keeps the community friendly, and editors that find their way to Recent Changes and being a help to the wiki from just editing their userpage. Userspace-created drama is not nearly as prevalent as you seem to think, and tbh, it's minor stuff that's quickly dealt with. A policy violator with nothing in his contrib list but a whole bunch of talk space bullshit is an easy ban. One with constructive mainspace edits is a much harder ban. Either way, this isn't really the place to discuss this. You can suggest it on the userspace policy talk, but you'll honestly get the same response from everyone; the userspace does more good than you seem to give it credit for, and not nearly as much bad as you give it credit for. -Auron 12:36, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Another place this quote fits so well: "I didn't block ___ because I am loathe to block people for responding to comments on their own talk pages, unless they are violating some other rule." Couple that with: "User talk pages are optional to read and difficult to find for the majority of wiki browsers..." and you have my argument against the possibility of a user disrupting their own talk page or the mainspace via said talk page. Your argument then falls under this category: "Don't let it get to you bro, "disruption" is basically a carte blanche to ban the people the sysops don't like.", which is unethical. Discretion would be a wonderful thing IF used correctly. Yes, an easy ban is that of a user whose entire list of contributions consists of absolutely nothing but obvious trolling on talk pages. However, even the most hated trolls on or from this wiki have contributed positively to the mainspace at least once. Grammatical fixes, trivia, notes, bugs, images, you name it. Are they easy bans simply because their list of edits you don't like is longer?

The gain in removing the userspace lies more in consistency. Again, I quote: "The point of the wiki is to document the game..." Again, several sysops wield that quote like a weapon against any talk page edit(or) they don't like. Again, they talk on talk pages about things unrelated to the game or wiki. If what lies in that quote truly were the case, there would be no point to userspaces. Enforcing a rule without following it is hypocrisy.

You bring up another good point. Flippancy is another big problem on this wiki. If one makes an honest suggestion, regardless of however seemingly obvious the answer, it should be considered. If moving the discussion there will award me nothing but ignorance, then where? I agree that my proposal holds a lesser chance of fruition than you sympathizing with a banned user, and I wasn't actually seeking to push it. I was just making a point. True, this has gotten off-topic. I'm not signed in for a reason, though I'm sure you have the knowledge and authority to link the IP, but if you'd like to respond then moving this portion to your talk page would probably be best. 76.106.245.213 13:47, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Since I've been quoted above and on my user page, I've put a response/clarification to my quote here. It isn't really pertinent to this situation, but since I feel I may have been quoted out of context, I wanted to bring it up. --Rainith 02:03, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it still fits. 76.106.245.213 03:14, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I think this entire discussion has been filled with false dichotomies. Either the wiki's for documenting the game, or there's no such thing as off-topic. Either anything goes in userspace, or userspace might as well be eliminated altogether. Either all speech must conform to rigid, politically correct guidelines, or it doesn't matter if I pepper my speech with slurs and epithets. Either I agree with a ban/non-ban, or it must have been motivated by bias/favoritism/drunk-on-power/etc. Life is more nuanced than this, even life on a wiki. It's an appreciation of that nuance that's an often-overlooked criterion for adminship.

Let me start by saying that the point of the wiki is to document the game. This is one of those simple facts that's actually blindingly obvious from the outside, yet gets murkier as one delves a bit below the surface. Nonetheless, it remains true. How does that reconcile with the existence of userspace, with the little everyday chatter that occasionally pops up on talk pages and is permitted (at least until it balloons out of proportion and takes over), and so forth? Wouldn't it be better to force editors to focus on the work and nothing else? And there's the important word right there: work. Building, maintaining, and improving the wiki is work, sometimes hard work, and unpaid work at that. It's been proven again and again that people are more productive when they're happy, when they enjoy what they do, when they're given creative freedom, and when they can take pride in what they accomplish. Some amount of structure is still necessary, on the open internet moreso than an actual workplace just because of the much lower barrier of entry, to maintain an environment where people can work without being overwhelmed by chaos or unpleasantness, but that's where the balancing act comes in, both for the community in making the rules and for the sysops in applying them. Where some users may users may find an environment where they can't use racist language overly restrictive censorship, other users may find an environment where use of that language is the standard to be too hostile for them to be comfortable with, and still others may find any use of ableist language such as lame or dumb to be offensive. The key here is balance of differing needs. Nuance.

To address user talk pages specifically, let me start with the oft-repeated mantra, then I'll try to explain what that actually means: "your" user talk page isn't yours, it's the community's. So WTF is that supposed to mean? Even though a user talk page has your name on it and you certainly have more control over it than any other talk page on the wiki, you don't have complete or even final authority over it because it's not provided for your benefit, but rather for the benefit of other users who may need to contact you. While the drama that can happen on user talk pages may be the most visible, I've personally used them to ping other users, especially in my early days, when they reverted me, or I disagreed with their edit, or I just wanted their input due to their previous involvement on a page, when they don't necessarily have the relevant article talk page on their watchlist, and let me tell you, user talk pages are a fantastic and invaluable tool for the betterment of the wiki when used for that purpose. Sure, they're also used for casual chitchat, and we don't generally crack down on that unless it's spamming the hell outta RecentChanges, or there's rule-breaking or a fight or otherwise creating generally hostile environment (see previous paragraph), but that's because we're not dicks. At least we try not to be dicks unnecessarily, when it comes to sysopping (personal dickery is a whole different can of worms). Again, balancing and nuance.

What may seem arbitrary at first glance is different sysops with different backgrounds and personalities attempting to enforce these often complicated and subtle balances based on policies, guidelines, and their own judgment, colored by the standards of their own experiences online and off, to find the middleground that's most beneficial to the entire wiki. Not everyone's going to be happy with any given decision, and sometimes there will be those on one side or the other (or occasionally on both extremes) who simply cannot understand how any decision other than the one they think is right could be reached short of corruption or incompetence. For sysops, that's just part of the job (also unpaid work, I'll note). We do our best, and there are mechanisms in place when it's clear someone is falling short, both self-policing and community intervention.

To bring the whole thing back onto the specific topic, there's the first false dichotomy Mafaraxas brought up: either Maf is (as self-described) a semi-useful contributor whose occasional friendly trolling and joking around causes no trouble, or Maf is a vehement anti-semite persona non grata due to his (former) signature. Previous blocks both for signature silliness and for calling someone a jew (the latter having expired less than 2 weeks before the most recent block) show easily enough that this isn't some isolated case and you really should have known it wasn't going to fly. As for being an vehement anti-semite: no one's accused you of being so. No one's accused you of being anything. Who you are simply doesn't matter; it's what you put on the wiki that matters, and putting that signature on the wiki is unacceptable.

I stand by Why's block in this case. - Tanetris 18:50, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

What I get from this is: "It's okay to ban a regular editor for inappropriate usage of certain words on the talk page linked to their IP, but it is also okay for sysops to get away with the same thing (inappropriate language) simply because 'they work here for free' and 'it's okay, we got dis'." You've usually destroyed my every concern on any issue you've commented on, Tanetris, but this time I'm either missing something or it still just isn't right. 76.106.245.213 01:23, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I've explained this badly then.

Everyone, admin and non-admin, is doing free work for the wiki. That second paragraph there is about every single editor: from those who create whole swaths of articles from scratch, to those who tidy up grammar and spelling and punctuation, to those who revert vandalism, to those who point out a mistake on a talk page, to those who never touch the edit button but encourage their friends to go look at the wiki. All of them (all of you) do unpaid work for the wiki, and it's the admins' job to try to accomodate that. Everyone gets some leeway (though how much leeway is going to be relative when you consider the vastly different cultures and mores each editor may start from); everyone gets second, third, sometimes 10th chances depending whether they're honestly trying to help or are just here to stir crap. In the 4 year history of the wiki, I can probably count on one hand the number of users with genuine contrib histories who have actually managed to get permabanned.

By the same token, everyone (again, that's every editor, all of you) needs an environment in which they're able to work (and again, your user talk page is still part of fellow editors' work environment). This is where it gets horrendously complicated, because one person's comfortably casual is another person's uncomfortably hostile, and one person's refreshingly peaceful is another's oppressingly censored. There are compromises, sometimes ones that look inconsistent, less often (but still sometimes) ones that are inconsistent, largely because sysops are different individual human beings and not a hive mind. The only way to avoid that would be to go all the way to one extreme or the other, either anarchy or 1984, in either case alienating the vast majority of users and leaving the wiki worse off.

Now, while it's getting off-topic for Maf's case here, I'd be remiss not to address the heart of your objections: admins and non-admins being held to different standards. Theoretically, no. Now you can take the rest of this as excuses, but it's my opinion that most if not all of the divide between that theory and what you see (that's the general "you" not just you personslly) is an issue of perception. Let's face it: when a sysop just barely toes the line and other sysops let it slide, it's a lot more visible than sysops letting some random unknown user or IP slide. You'd think the reverse would be true as well, that a sysop getting reprimanded or even blocked (it's happened) would be highly visible, yet it's generally dismissed as too little too late by those who already have their expectations set. Another point is that users with a useful contrib history of any sort do tend to get cut more slack than those who stick solely to their own userspace or trolling talk pages; for fairly obvious reasons, sysops tend to have useful contrib histories before ever becoming sysops, so in that sense they do get a bit more slack than the average 3-edit user, but then so do a lot of non-admins. Again, there's a perception issue that the non-admins who get slack must then be friends of admins: plainly and simply untrue. We cut slack where we believe it's fair and reasonable to cut slack. One more angle to consider is that admins generally have a fairly good idea where the other admins draw the line (and thus what they can "get away" with). Let's say, for example, that I'm fine with the word "fuck" but not with the word "fag". Auron, who's well aware of this because he's watched me sysop for the past X years, posts "Shut the fuck up." RandomUser372 sees this, figures it's fine because nothing happens to Auron, and posts "Shut up fag." which RandomUser372 considers a perfectly equivalent phrase. I either warn or ban RandomUser372 (depending on circumstances and if this has been an issue before), yet continue to do nothing to Auron. Here we have a perception that I'm letting Auron get away with something because he's a sysop, but that's really all it is: perception.

Further and further off-topic to this section: would it be better if sysops demonstrated better conduct than what they can "get away" with? Generally, at least in my opinion. For me personally, I do usually try to hold myself to a higher standard even outside adminly duties than I probably need to, but that's myself. Would it make sense to deny admins from being admins if they can't (or choose not to) adhere to similarly higher standards? That's a question that I believe remains up to the community, reflected in RfAs and RfRs. As for when they do step genuinely out of line beyond what reasonable slack would allow, they do get smacked same as everyone else, though probably more rarely than some would prefer.

Hope that answers you a bit better. - Tanetris 22:32, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Much, thank you. 76.106.245.213 00:29, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Admins can and have been banned for misconduct as well. It's a rare occurrence, but sometimes they have streaks of stupid that warrant banning for - and the bans do get placed (totally not speaking from experience here obv). -Auron 03:39, 12 September 2011 (UTC)