As a reminder: IRC is governed by Freenode. Channels can have their own rules, and there are widely varying systems of internal governance for Wikimedia IRC channels. I think it's important to note that WMF and the Wikimedia community are guests on Freenode, and I'm uncomfortable with the proposition to extend a WMF policy into IRC channels without explicit consent from the ops of those channels; it seems to me that the TCC would be a per-channel opt-in on IRC, not a WMF blanket standard.
Speaking more generally, I am wary of WMF encroachment into what I should be fundamentally community-governed spaces. I have not heard a lot of objections from the community to the proposed technical code of conduct, and I've heard some arguments for and against the rationale for having it; my main concern is that I would prefer that the final document be ratified through community-led processes.
Thanks,
Pine
On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 5:34 PM, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 11/17/2016 04:57 PM, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
I would love to have a broader discussion about communication in the projects more generally. As you know, we currently have a few mechanisms (and please correct any mischaracterizations in the below):
As people may know, we are working on a Code of conduct for technical spaces.
It will cover on-wiki communication in the technical spaces (including talk pages), technical mailing lists, technical IRC channels, and Phabricator (including Conpherence).
There are some existing guidelines in place. It's a very fragmented picture (most guidelines only apply to one form of communication (e.g. IRC), and sometimes only a single IRC channel), which is part of what the tech CoC will improve. I also don't necessarily endorse these older guidelines.
- Conversation in the Talk: namespace (either in raw wikitext or Flow)
- This is archived, and presumably subject to same code of conductguidelines as parent wiki. It is public. Anonymous/IP editors are allowed.
Worth remembering that many important projects don't *have* a code of conduct or equivalent, and on those that do, it's often not enforced.
- Echo
- Unarchived transient notifications, very restricted by design.Could be made more general (but see below).
Right, this not a user-user communication system (though it will notify you *of* user-user communications, sometimes with snippets included).
- Phabricator
- Archived task-oriented discussions, leaving to a desired outcome.Anonymous participation disallowed. Search possible in theory; in practice the implementation is quite limited. Some (security-sensitive) conversations can be private, but (AFAIK) an ordinary user does not have a means to create a private conversation. I'm not aware of an explicit code of conduct.
Conpherence allows either public or private conversations.
There are currently guidelines (https://www.mediawiki.org/wik i/Bug_management/Phabricator_etiquette). The Code of Conduct for technical spaces will cover Phabricator as well.
We have no comprehensive code of conduct/mechanisms to combat harassment,
vandalism, and abuse. Harassment or vandalism which is stopped in one communication mechanism can be transferred to another with impunity. IRC in particular is seen as a space where (a) private discussions can happen (good), but (b) there are no cops or consequences.
Yeah, I agree this is an issue, and is why the technical code of conduct will have one central reporting place (so you always know where to report, and they can consider multi-space harassment).
This is important stuff. Thank you for talking and thinking about it.
Matt Flaschen
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