by Pa Nautilus

About a week ago, we put up a blog post about Paul Benjamin Austin, a particularly creepy Wikipedia editor. If you were wondering why someone here didn’t just report him to the Wikimedia Foundation’s Trust & Safety department, it’s because we knew someone already had. You’re about to learn just how incompetent that group was in handling the complaint.

The person who brought Paul Benjamin Austin to our attention complained to Trust & Safety about Paul Benjamin Austin. “Senior Trust and Safety Specialist” Kalliope Tsouroupidou handled the case. Her email response reads as follows:

Thank you for reaching out to the Trust & Safety team.

We have taken a look at the concerns you have raised, though this doesn’t look like a situation that T&S may be able to act on at this time. Office actions [1] tend to be considered when the local communities have already exhausted all their options in handling a situation. After a quick look I see that the community has been able to handle this [2] so far, so we would not like to usurp their autonomy in continuing to do so.

Should this cause on-wiki issues that the community is unable to handle, we will be happy to consider a conduct investigation on our end.

While it is reassuring to know that Trust and Safety would prefer not to usurp the community’s authority, it must be pointed out that Tsouroupidou has investigated the wrong user. She has linked to a complaint about edit warring involving a user named “Benjamin au.” It may seem like confusing “Benjamin au” with “Paul Benjamin Austin” is simply an innocent mistake, but even the most cursory examination should have alerted Tsouroupidou that something was not right. “Benjamin au” made a total of 10 edits,

…continue reading Trust & Safety?