Modification of WMF protection brought to Arbcom
Philippe Beaudette's July 2013 application of pending changes level two (PC2) on the article Conventional PCI—an action taken under his job as the Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Community Advocacy and its rarely used office actions policy—has escalated to the Arbitration Committee after an editor upgraded it to full protection.
In this case, pending changes were applied after a DMCA takedown notice was issued to the Foundation. The notice forced the WMF to remove links to PCI's Local Bus Specifications revisions 2.1, 2.2, and 3.0, according to its official policy governing takedown notices:
| “ | In some cases, the Foundation may be required to remove content from a Wikimedia Project due to a DMCA take-down notice. ... to retain safe harbor status, the Foundation is required to comply with validly formulated notices even if they are spurious. ... As a matter of policy, the Wikimedia Foundation will terminate, in appropriate circumstances, the accounts of repeat infringers as provided under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. 512). … In the event that material is removed due to a DMCA notice, the only recourse for restoring such material is to file a counter-notice with the Foundation. ... Please note that filing a counter-notice may lead to legal proceedings between you and the complaining party to determine ownership of the material. | ” |
English Wikipedia administrator Kww objected to the nature of the protection, since an extensive discussion determined that PC2—which requires review before edits from autoconfirmed and anonymous editors—"should not be used" on the English Wikipedia. While Kww will typically downgrade PC2-protected articles to PC1 or semi-protection, in this case he increased the level of protection (to "fully protected"—only admins can edit) to avoid PC2 from being active on an English Wikipedia article. Doing so put him into conflict with the Foundation for the second time in recent memory; in September, Kww implemented what the Foundation called "badly flawed" code blocking the VisualEditor.
In response, Beaudette wrote Kww that he "just spoke to the legal team about your actions and asked them what to do. ... We select the level of action very specifically and with a great deal of care. If you have a problem with it, you're invited to contact us prior to taking action. That's the minimum standard expected of any admin when overriding an action, much less an office action." Beaudette advised that "On any other wiki, I'd be removing your tools right now. However, on this wiki, because there is a functional Arbitration Committee, I'm going to, instead, refer this to them for them to determine what sanction to take."
As of publishing time, the Committee is voting 6–1 to admonish Kww for "for knowingly modifying a clearly designated Wikimedia Foundation Office action." The motion continues that Kww did so without "any emergency and without any form of consultation", and declines his request for a full case, as it would involve a review of an inviolable office action.