Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Anti-harassment/UserBlind mode

Random proposal ►◄ Anti-harassment  The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

UserBlind mode

• Problem: Certain discussions, particularly those dealing with individual user conduct issues, are difficult to participate in in an unbiased manner and without generating side-effects like occasional animosity between editors. The fact that users know that particular other users have passed negative judgement on them can make it difficult for those users to work together in the future. The concern over this can also cause people to avoid dealing with conduct issues entirely.
• Who would benefit: All contributors, but more directly those dealing with reports of conduct issues (including Arbitration Committees and users active in fora like enwiki's ANI, AE, etc). Also contributors to wikis with "unblockable" users which the community has difficulty fairly judging.
• Proposed solution: A "UserBlind" mode, in which all visible usernames would replaced by tokens, eg "[USER #23]", effectively anonymizing other users while the mode is enabled. This would allow fair assessments of conduct reports in a impersonal manner. Not only would the person passing judgement on the actions not know whose actions they are (thus evading bias), the person whose actions are being judged would not have reason to think that the commenting user has anything against them in particular, thus avoiding inter-user tension.
• More comments: Links: Proof of concept, VPM post
• Phabricator tickets:
• Proposer: Yair rand (talk) 05:51, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

• @Yair rand: - how would individuals handle verifying evidence and doing further investigation with this process? Neither AN or ArbCom can function like judges where evidence is just provided - it needs to be cross-checked (in ANI, the closer doesn't do investigation, but everyone else participating would follow it down the rabbit hole). Additionally, when I'm reviewing people for certain roles, such as at RfA, then I need to be able to review their ANI participation to know the quality of their judgement. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:02, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Voting

•  Support ValeJappo【〒】 18:33, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Oppose It is often important to know who is commenting on an user conduct dispute - there are users who either can be trusted in their comments and those which can't. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:50, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

  @Jo-Jo Eumerus: I'm sorry, I think you (and maybe some others here) may have misunderstood the proposal. The proposal is for a mode that users could enable, so they could look at a page without seeing the names behind the actions/comments, when this would be helpful. In situations where it would be counterproductive, it could just be not used. --Yair rand (talk) 21:46, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

•  Oppose MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 19:31, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support _ I use this already as script and it is truely a benefit for my work. -- Marcus Cyron (talk) 19:39, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support I have positively contributed in the past, only to see my contributions removed by previous editors of the page I was seeking to improve. They acted as if they "owned" the page and dismissed my arguments. I gave up because I'm too busy with other things in my life than editing Wikipedia. Too bad, as I am an expert in the area I was trying to improve. Cerniagigante (talk) 19:57, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Oppose I don't think this would be a useful tool. It's likely to lead to further distrust among the community. Plus when a strong conflict emerges, many people are aware of who is defending which position. Everyone will be guessing who is under user1 and so forth. --Braveheidi (talk) 20:30, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Oppose Suitable as a user script, you can choose, but don't promote it.--YFdyh000 (talk) 23:23, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Editor760 (talk) 23:28, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support UncleMartin (talk) 01:30, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support --Ciao • Bestoernesto • ✉ 02:00, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support AnotherOnymous (talk) 03:13, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Oppose per Braveheidi and Jo-Jo Eumerus. Firestar464 (talk) 05:04, 9 December 2020 (UTC)