Hi Phoebe,
Thank you very much for the update.
Recommendations 7 and 9 are important points, and I am glad there is some work being done on them.
Do let us know again how things are progressing!
Best, Andreas
--- On Sun, 20/2/11, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
From: phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content -- update To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: "Andreas Kolbe" jayen466@yahoo.com Date: Sunday, 20 February, 2011, 19:35 On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 5:26 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
Could Phoebe, Jan-Bart or Kat please give us an update
on the activities of
the working group looking into the recommendations
resulting from the 2010
Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content?
Have any conclusions been drawn, and are there any
plans or discussions about
implementing any of the recommendations?
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/215066?search_string=w...
Andreas
Hi Andreas! Thanks for asking. Sorry for the slow reply, I've been away on holiday the last couple of days and have not been online.
Also, my apologies for not posting an update before you asked. Things have been slowly moving but as yet no conclusions.
Here is what has happened since I sent my last update:
Over the winter holidays the membership of the working group changed due to the workload of other board committees. Jan-Bart and Kat stepped down and were replaced by Matt, Jimmy and Bishakha; I am still involved and agreed to chair the group. Of course any recommendations for statements or resolutions will go to the whole board. The Harrises are still involved as consultants on a "paid-as-needed" basis; if we want them to do any further research or facilitation they are available.
In my last message, I wrote that "The working group will be examining the recommendations more closely, soliciting Board member feedback on each of the recommendations to a greater degree than there was time for in the in-person meeting, working with the community and finally making a report to the full Board. The working group is expected to recommend next steps, including providing fuller analysis of the recommendations."
We did the first part of this (board member feedback); and are currently working on the analysis part. As you know the various recommendations fall into three kinds: philosophical, community-facing (such as changing specific community practices), and technical. I asked the WMF tech staff to spend some time looking into the recommendations that require technical work (7 & 9)* so that we can have more information about what's feasible and possible, and what it would take on the wmf/tech side and the community side. This does not mean they're developing these features now; it means I asked for possible specifications (since I am unfamiliar with what it would take in MediaWiki to make this happen) so the working group can make a more informed recommendation. The WMF won't develop anything without a board request.
You may notice that the "working with the community" part has been largely absent this winter. Beyond carefully reading** all of the public discussion to date, the working group has not actively worked with the community (at large) or specific community members. This is because I wanted to first focus on getting all of the board feedback and getting background information, and that has taken longer than I hoped. Of course we're not under the illusion that any changes can be made in how this organization works with controversial content (or even happily keeping the status quo) without community discussion (which there has been a lot of), consensus (which the recommendations were meant to help catalyze but afaik has not yet emerged), and hard work. I'd still suggest the meta talk pages along with commons policy pages as a good place to discuss the issue; and people can still help the working group by working on summarization, analysis, and procedure advice for going forward.
I'll say that the board does not yet have a formal position on this whole issue, and so I am hesitant to say much about that for fear of it being *taken* as an official board position.
You may read this message and think "ok, they're doing something" or you may read this message and think "the board has totally lost the way/not done their job on this issue" or you may not care :) Either way, feel free to write me or us, publicly or privately. Our next step as a working group will be a report to the board, likely at the march meeting.
-- phoebe
** I have also been working on summarizing all this discussion; a big job.