There was an attempt to address the civility problem on Wikipedia English with a top down approach at the very start of Sue Gardner's time at WMF. Sue, Jimmy Wales, myself, and a group of half dozen other people talked about it in a closed group. It failed because a top down approach is not effective on Wikipedia because policies can not be enforced from the top. Policies need to be made that a large part of the community agrees at proper and enforceable. 

I would be willing to assist a group that wants to take another run at it. But there are significant challenges with enforcing a civility policy on a global community where cultural norms differ at great deal. So, we need to be careful that an attempt to assist one group of users does not make it harder for other groups of people who are also under represented on Wikipedia English.

Sydney

Sydney

Sydney

Sydney Poore
User:FloNight
Wikipedian in Residence
at Cochrane Collaboration


On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 2:58 PM, Leigh Honeywell <leigh@hypatia.ca> wrote:
The more I hear about this, the more I think this is something that
WMF needs to address at an institutional level (Board etc.) to resolve
these process issues and loopholes. Has this ever been taken "up the
chain"?

-Leigh

On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 11:28 AM, Risker <risker.wp@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> You know, I sat on Arbcom for five years, and there were several occasions
>> when I practically begged those complaining about the behaviour of certain
>> individuals to initiate a case....but nobody wanted to do that...
>
>
> Well, you know I did actually take one of the worst misogynists on en.wiki
> to ArbCom,[1] and it was such a horrible experience that I decided to never
> do it again. After giving up a month of my life to the case and enduring
> constant harassment during the process, all of the evidence that I
> painstakingly assembled, presented, and defended was completely ignored by
> ArbCom, and instead he was banned for a year for making a legal threat. He
> is now free to return on the condition that he simply agrees not to make any
> more legal threats. You were actually on that ArbCom panel, Risker, so I
> don't really understand your argument that taking incivil editors to ArbCom
> is a good idea. To me it is worse than a waste of effort, it is actually
> counterproductive and an invitation to be relentlessly harassed.
>
> 1.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Alastair_Haines_2&oldid=360884518
>
> Ryan Kaldari
>
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--
Leigh Honeywell
http://hypatia.ca
@hypatiadotca

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