Hey all,
The Trust & Safety team appreciates and has carefully reviewed the input provided here, in person during the event, and off-list. As the wider Wikimedia movement and offline Wikimedia events grow and mature, so must support for those events. That support takes many forms, but includes friendly/safe space policies (FSP).
This is not a need surfaced by the Foundation or by any specific group, but a request raised by countless event attendees and organizers. Attendees, regardless of culture and background, want to be sure that there is some baseline standard of behavior they can expect and that they are empowered to set their own boundaries within reason - and that those will be respected. Event organizers want help to set up a process like this and to ensure that it is appropriately communicated and enforced.
This type of support is ongoing from both multiple Foundation departments and many affiliates. Trust & Safety has, for example, been working on a collection of trainings and visual materials for event organizers which were recently published on Meta-Wiki[1] and used at Wikimania. The feedback so far from event organizers and attendees has been good (and we welcome more feedback on Meta!), but it is very clear that there is more that can and should be done from all directions.
The event has surfaced a number of issues relating to event safety, including how best to handle incidents when they are discussed publicly, and clarifying the distinction between friendly spaces situations and Trust & Safety issues (which may touch on FSP needs but are generally longer term situations) which are often being dealt with simultaneously. The support role we take on at large events such as Wikimania, which are attended by hundreds of people and run by relatively small organizing teams, can blur this line.
These and other items raised strike us as opportunities for a more structured discussion of how to improve the existing policy and the implementation expectations it sets.
Therefore, we will be facilitating a public review of our friendly space policies early in Q3 (January-March 2019). The facilitated process will aim to have a reviewed version of the FSP ready for final conversations and refinements around the time of the Wikimedia Conference 2019 in March.
In addition, the Board asked the Community Engagement department in April to produce a report on FSP violations reported to us, which will happen twice-yearly. The first of these is due December 21 for violations during the first half of our fiscal year, and so that will also will be available for the consultation period and cover incidents tracked since July 1st in appropriate form.
Again, we recognize that this is a important topic to get right, and we hope that these steps will help to improve these processes within the Wikimedia movement going forward.
James
James Alexander
Manager, Trust & Safety (Operations)
Wikimedia Foundation