Azerbaijani Wikipedia's Mass-Desysop Proposal

[thekohser]

Moderator's note: This post, and several posts to this thread from May 2019 (when action was finally taken on the issue), were split from this other thread entitled "Is Azerbaijan the new Kazakhstan?" Please note that the "mass-desysop proposal," referred to in the title for this thread, was not made until May 2019.

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If the reports are to be trusted, it sounds like some government operatives in Azerbaijan have fully taken over the admin corps on the Azerbaijani Wikipedia. However, fear not -- Jimbo has learned his lesson from his fiasco with an award of money to a Kazakh government operative. This time, he's going to hit hard and stamp out this injustice with all due speed!

I am studying all of this, seeking to understand how I might be most helpful.--Jimbo Wales 10:02, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

[tarantino]

Requests_for_comment/Do_something_about_azwiki#Proposal

Proposal

All admins/bureaucrats/interface admins will have their rights removed
No local admins/bureaucrats/interface admins for 6 months from close of RFC
During this time global sysops and stewards will patrol the wiki
No permanent local admins/bureaucrats/interface admins for 12 months from close of RFC
For stewards to assign temporary or permanent rights, elections must be conducted in a fair manner (allow all azwiki editors to participate), have the necessary levels of support, and not be affected by canvassing.
Stewards will conduct a review of long-term blocks of users

Several people participating in that discussion have accounts here, but must not have seen this thread where more serious issues with azwiki were outlined.

[Poetlister]

How many stewards speak Azerbaijani well enough to monitor the site?

[Midsize Jake]

How many stewards speak Azerbaijani well enough to monitor the site?

Is that a trick question? The answer is almost certainly zero, and it's not like they're going to pay anybody to do it.

They've basically screwed themselves here. For two years now, they've been going on and on about how awful it is that people in Turkey don't have access to the "sum of all human knowledge" and that this is a terrible tragedy that must be remedied! In fact, the Turks did them a huge favor - by simply blocking WP, Turkey allowed the WMF to look like the good guys without actually exposing how vulnerable their whole content-generation model really is to hostile takeover and control.

So, now they have the Azeris, who are basically Turks under another name (at least as far as Armenia is concerned), taking over the Azeri-language WMF-run website (not difficult, since nobody at the WMF speaks Azeri), and saying they can't publish factual information about the Armenian genocide (which they've been trained to treat as lies anyway) because doing so would get them arrested by their government. And now they're even trying to claim that it was really the Armenians who were guilty of "genocide" because a few of them resisted being slaughtered and managed to kill a few Ottoman gendarmes in the process. Great!

That leaves the WMF with four essential choices, all of them bad from their perspective:

• 1. Shut down the Azeri wiki completely (best choice, but now they're the ones denying people the "sum of human knowledge");
  2. Take over administration of the Azeri wiki themselves (most expensive, therefore never gonna happen);
  3. Do what Rschen7754 (T-C-L) has proposed (looks bad but at least kicks the can down the road);
  4. Do nothing and hope nobody notices the clusterf*ck.

Guess which one it'll be? If you guessed 1, 2, or 3, sorry, you are incorrect.

I suppose you could have a "2b" option too, which would be to lock the whole Azeri wiki down, fix it (again, this might cost them some money), and then continue to publish it in its locked-down state, forcing the Azeri government to block it as Turkey has done. It's not inconceivable that they could find a couple of volunteers who'd be willing to rewrite the most blatant stuff for free, but hey'd have to be pretty low-key about finding them.

[Poetlister]

So, now they have the Azeris, who are basically Turks under another name (at least as far as Armenia is concerned)

That's not far from the truth. There are varous peoples scattered around Asia wih languages not vastly different from Turkish, such as Kazakh, Turkmen and indeed Azeri. Naturally, the Turks do their best to cultivate close relations with these groups and in turn they support the Turks against the Armenians. It would be interesting to know if similar things are happening in some of these other Wikipedias. Anyone here fluent in Kazakh or Turkmen?

[WBG]

How many stewards speak Azerbaijani well enough to monitor the site?

Mardetanha is a native-speaker and Hakan is semi-proficient in the language.

[WBG]

They've basically screwed themselves here. For two years now, they've been going on and on about how awful it is that people in Turkey don't have access to the "sum of all human knowledge" and that this is a terrible tragedy that must be remedied! In fact, the Turks did them a huge favor - by simply blocking WP, Turkey allowed the WMF to look like the good guys without actually exposing how vulnerable their whole content-generation model really is to hostile takeover and control.

Nailed it.

So, now they have the Azeris, who are basically Turks under another name (at least as far as Armenia is concerned), taking over the Azeri-language WMF-run website (not difficult, since nobody at the WMF speaks Azeri), and saying they can't publish factual information about the Armenian genocide (which they've been trained to treat as lies anyway) because doing so would get them arrested by their government. And now they're even trying to claim that it was really the Armenians who were guilty of "genocide" because a few of them resisted being slaughtered and managed to kill a few Ottoman gendarmes in the process. Great!

There is evidence that certain administrators have a blatant COI with the Government-of-Azerbaijan, (to put it mildly). The wiki has been effectively taken over by fringe nationalists, some of whom have user-boxes that proclaim of the entire Armenia being part of Azerbaijani territory.

4. Do nothing and hope nobody notices the clusterf*ck.

I pray that one day or the other, WMF suffers from a PR disaster.

[Poetlister]

I pray that one day or the other, WMF suffers from a PR disaster.

It's had one or two, like Essjay and John Seigenthaler, but has survived. I can't see that the Azeri Wikipedia would be a significant problem compared to those two.

[doggie015]

Moderator's note: This post and the one following it were posted as a new thread and then merged into the existing one on June 4, 2019.

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In case you missed it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ion_report is rather clear on what would certainly have the WMF paying closer attention to the admins of other wikis as the community is currently voting on a proposal for MASS DESYSOP, removing the mop from EVERY admin, and handing responsibility to global sysops and admins for 6 months.

Key points include the following

Copyright violations have not been fully cleaned up, in part due to block threats issued by Cekli829 when users take issue with the copyvios.

Improper blocks. Cekli829 freely admitted on the RfC page to blocking a user due to a Facebook comment.

Using admin tools for PoV pushing, including Armenian Genocide denial. The title of azwiki's article on the Armenian Genocide is w:az:Qondarma Erməni soyqırımı, which translates to "So-called Armenian genocide". Admin White Demon says this is "Because many references, which show that it is 'qondarma', are given in the article". An attempt by Winged Blades of Godric to move it to a more neutral title was reverted by Cekli829, who also blocked WBG for a week. This is part of a pattern; the wiki also has a category of w:az:Kateqoriya:Erməni saxtakarlığı, meaning "Armenian fraud".

Accusations of undisclosed paid editing, sockpuppetry, and canvassing in requests for adminship.

The original proposer wrote that this mass desysop is necessary because azwiki's desysop procedures failed to provide any accountability for these actions (a majority vote of administrators is required to carry out any desysop)

TL;DR

[The Garbage Scow]

I saw that. So they're moving to universally desysop every admin on that Wiki and start from scratch. That should be entertaining!

[Poetlister]

It's a pretty small wiki. There are two crats and 15 other admins. Of those, one is obviously some sort of pseudo account as it has no edits.

[Beeblebrox]

Isn't Cekli829 the guy who runs for Steward every year and comes in dead last every year?

[C&B]

Well, sort of. He hasn't run since 2017, but he ran every year before that from 2012 when he was disqualified. Beat Out!

[Poetlister]

Isn't Cekli829 the guy who runs for Steward every year and comes in dead last every year?

It seems that we've had a lucky escape then. He sounds like he'd be a terrible steward.

[C&B]

He sounds like he'd be a terrible steward.

Particularly for the Armenians...

[Poetlister]

He sounds like he'd be a terrible steward.

Particularly for the Armenians...

Hm, the Armenians have two wikis. So, now I look, do the Azeris.

[fiona]

It's a pretty small wiki. There are two crats and 15 other admins. Of those, one is obviously some sort of pseudo account as it has no edits.

It's an abuse bot. All projects have them now. It's like cluebot, but everywhere.

[Bezdomni]

Interesting. I've just run across some Azeri activists removing information about French twinnings with Artsakh cities: it looks like a Qatari in Doha did most of it, but this Parishan (T-C-L) fellow -- who also wants to add an Azeri-only summary of Tulsi Gabbard's position on the Armenian situation (recognition of genocide / her trip to Artsakh back when it had a different name) -- seems to have been the first to get started on it (on the Shusha page) and the only one to provide a (paywall protected) source.

I would have thought it more logical to note the twinnings existed for several years and then were overturned, but that's not how it has been done. ^^

another day on Wikipedia...

[Poetlister]

I would have thought it more logical to note the twinnings existed for several years and then were overturned, but that's not how it has been done. ^^

another day on Wikipedia...

Logic rarely has anything to do with it, especially when extreme POVs are involved.