@Risker: The Global sysop policy was created through a sequence of
proposals, considerable debate and editing, and a vote in which over 1800
contributors participated. The Global ban policy had an RFC on Meta. Afaik,
the Board also had no involvement in the Steward policy, the global
checkuser and oversight policies, or the policies for Global Rollback,
Abuse Filter helpers, or New wiki importers global user groups.
The Terms of Use were drafted with a lengthy community editing process,
although the Board did the final approval. The 2014 amendment to the ToU
also had a long community discussion, with over 1000 supporters of the
change, with the Board implementing the community-supported amendment. The
community's decisions were critical to these, and the Board did not
unilaterally impose anything on the community.
I do not see any reason for the community to listen to the Board on the
UCoC. I doubt anyone thinks that the Board or WMF has a better idea of how
to put together conduct policies than the community. Certainly the complete
failure to notice basic flaws in the document attest to that. Maybe at some
point in the future the community can put together a clear set of basic
global conduct rules, but the WMF's UCoC is not it.
(And a fun fact: The Board approved the UCoC on December 9, the same day as
the bylaws change, and yet again violated the Board's rules about
publishing resolutions within a week, for the at least 19th time in the
past year, out of 24 known resolutions.)
(Also, contrary to the recent WMF blog post on the UCoC, the WMF also does
not "administer Wikipedia", a mistake they have made for the second time
now.)
-- Yair Rand
בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-21:34 מאת Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com
>:
While I often agree with you, Yair Rand, in this case
I think you're
mistaken. Aside from the long-ago "community vote" on licensing (which was
pretty much required based on the prior licensing scheme), every
Wikimedia-wide policy has been authorized by the WMF Board of Trustees.
That includes the terms of use and the privacy policy. As the technical
owners of the infrastructure, the WMF Board does have the right (if not the
responsibility) to identify the manner in which the websites it supports
and hosts can be used, and I think this principle is actually pretty widely
held, at least in the abstract (i.e., hosting organizations can and should
apply standards on the services they host). In every policy-related case
that I have reviewed going back to the very earliest days, there has been
at least some level of community discussion, and there have always been
detractors of every policy the Board has approved; that has not made the
policies either invalid or unworkable.
I've never been convinced that including a mixture of required, forbidden,
and aspirational standards all in one document is a good idea, and I
personally struggle to see how including essentially unenforceable aspects
of the UCoC will do anything other than weaken the effectiveness of rest of
the document. For example, I cannot imagine anyone being sanctioned in any
way for "failure to thank" or "failure to mentor", although both of
these
are considered expectations in the "Civility" section; and one thing that a
Uniform Code of Conduct would logically have is a uniform enforcement
scheme.
Nonetheless, I do believe that it is within the Board's scope and
responsibility to approve this and other global policies designed to
protect the WMF, the projects, the users of the websites, and the content
managers/editors/etc (what we often call "the community").
Risker/Anne
On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 17:28, Yair Rand <yyairrand(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The community has not approved the WMF's
UCoC. It is not a Wikimedia
policy, it is not binding, it has no authority. The WMF does not control
the Wikimedia projects, and has no jurisdiction in this area.
The community rejected this over and over again. It is harmful that the
Board is pretending they can do this unilaterally.
-- Yair Rand
בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-6:59 מאת María Sefidari <
maria@wikimedia.org>:
Hi everyone,
I’m pleased to announce that the Board of Trustees has unanimously
approved a Universal Code of Conduct for the Wikimedia projects and
movement.[1] A Universal Code of Conduct was one of the final
recommendations of the Movement Strategy 2030 process - a multi-year,
participatory community effort to define the future of our movement. The
final Universal Code of Conduct seeks to address disparities in conduct
policies across our hundreds of projects and communities, by creating a
binding minimum set of standards for conduct on the Wikimedia projects that
directly address many of the challenges that contributors face.
The Board is deeply grateful to the communities who have grappled with
these challenging topics. Over the past six months, communities around the
world have participated in conversations and consultations to help build
this code collectively, including local discussions in 19 languages,
surveys, discussions on Meta, and policy drafting by a committee of
volunteers and staff. The document presented to us reflects a significant
investment of time and effort by many of you, and especially by the joint
staff/volunteer committee who created the base draft after reviewing input
collected from community outreach efforts. We also appreciate the
dedication of the Foundation, and its Trust & Safety policy team, in
getting us to this phase.
This was the first phase of our Universal Code of Conduct - from here,
the Trust & Safety team will begin consultations on how best to enforce
this code. In the coming weeks, they will follow-up with more instructions
on how you can participate in discussions around enforcing the new code.
Over the next few months, they will be facilitating consultation
discussions in many local languages, with our affiliates, and on Meta to
support a new volunteer/staff committee in drafting enforcement pathways.
For more information on the process, timeline, and how to participate in
this next phase, please review the Universal Code of Conduct page on
Meta.[2]
The Universal Code of Conduct represents an essential step towards our
vision of a world in which all people can participate in the sum of all
knowledge. Together, we have built something extraordinary. Today, we
celebrate this milestone in making our movement a safer space for
contribution for all.
On behalf of the Board of Trustees,
María Sefidari
Board Chair
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Draft_review
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
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