Reading what people have said on this and the previous thread and bearing in mind Sarah’s request for actionable ideas about the Commons problem that sparked these threads, I make a suggestion below about what this organisation could do to have an impact.

This is bigger than Gender Gap - as various people including Russavia and the two Sarahs have said before. Bigger in terms of who it affects (women and others too); bigger in terms of needing a organisation wide effort to have an effect. I see it as an organisational problem and that means individuals, however passionate, can have little effect without an organisational strategy to "change workplace behaviour" (if you understand editors to be "workers"), so that people of good will can get on with it.

The policy under discussion should cover the whole Wiki project but especially Commons, where workload and categorisation problems add to policy compliance problems. Evidently, we have the means to get the policy going. Policies, however, only inform practice. They are not practice itself. To produce change we need to identify what we are doing that contributes to the problem and change that.

Is suggest framing our response as a whole-of-organisation technology, policy and curation project that is needed as a result of organisational growth. Then:

1. Write the policy, including the references to safe work places and adherence to the educational goal, taking account of other best practice policies in other workplaces;

2. Align it with the mission and other legal requirements such as privacy;

3. Reform the Commons software;

4.  Implement the software and the policy.

The first task seems to be already underway - with the Board, the meta page and this group contributing.

The second task means looking into the related legal issues and especially emphasising the overall educational goal. (Every project, Wikimedia included, is entitled to its goal and scope; every worker is entitled to safety.)

The third task – reforming the software is obviously a big project in itself but one that I think would help resolve many of the downstream problems (the bullying, policy breaches and categorisation backlog. The cataloguing backlog is like the task that libraries are faced with as they cope with the need to digitise their collections. Such an approach also intersects with the need identified by User:Multichill (Next generation categories) to solve the architecture problem. 

This is how the Board and the community together should tackle this problem. Therefore - what I suggest is that the board request that the WMF allocate funds specifically to a whole-of-commons software revamp project. This is not the same as the 'image filter' report from the other year, but the more fundamental issue that MediaWiki is not designed to be a Digital Asset Management software. Either we need to allocate specific funds to do that, or we need look at different software entirely. All the discussion of specific content problems are symptoms of the fact that the software isn't designed to handle the goal that Commons sets out to achieve.

The fourth task is to implement and the new software and continue assertively implementing the organisation’s new policy regarding harassment.

Summary

Overall, we need a change management project with a new piece of software at its heart - the sort of thing that organisations routinely have to do. Indeed, the WMF is currently doing one with the Visual Editor. However, it does need planning: for example, write the policy, align the goals, reform the software and follow-through. (Organisations often fail at implementation.)

 

The objectives would be to:

-        institute an appropriate cataloguing system;

-        catch up on the backlog of Commons work;

-        reset the organisational norms.

 

Whiteghost.ink

P.S. If it is any consolation, we are just the same as other large organisations with a mainly male membership - the army, the Catholic Church, and all-male residential colleges, for example. Constant monitoring is needed in each such organisation, as repeated and scarcely credible levels of bullying, harassment and even criminal behaviour flare up or become entrenched practice. It threatens the overall mission, the organisation's reputation and the good work of most of its members, as well of course, as the well-being of some individuals, not all of them women. This is a behavioural trend that needs constant monitoring and from time to time, major interventions, such as serious policy reviews and/or sackings. I have worked with a couple of leaders who have struggled with this. Each organisation has its own context - the Army has its enforced aggression, the Church has its enforced celibacy and we have the internet's anonymity along with no authority over anyone.