On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 6:49 PM, Florence Devouard fdevouard@gmail.com wrote:
Removing a COI is not the only issue at stake Sarah.
Would WMF get involved into such a process, it would also possibly change its legal reponsibility. Right now, WMF does not get involved in the editorial process, which allows to claim WMF is only hosting the content. If WMF is somewhat involved in an editorial process which results in paying the authors, then WMF might lose the "host" status.
Flo
​Hi Flo, I've heard so many contradictory positions about that over the
years that I have no idea what the implications would be.
Moving away from the very complex issue of paid editing, Brion opened the thread with different views of what a high-tech organization is, one of which involves lack of diversity, overemphasis on engineering, and exploitation of staff and users at the cost of their physical and emotional health. He argued that the WMF should instead cultivate and support staff and volunteers.
So what can we do to move the WMF away from the bad aspects of high-tech organizations and toward a position where the health of the paid and unpaid workforces is actively nurtured?
I've made a small start by suggesting software [1] that asks editors how long they want to spend on the site when they log in, along with options to be logged out automatically and not logged in again for a set time (following a suggestion from a former Google engineer in the *New York Review of Books*). [2]
I would love to see the WMF agree never again to discuss trapping editors in feedback loops intended to keep them editing, but instead to help them plan and monitor their interactions with Wikimedia sites. Another idea is for opt-in software that asks how you're feeling every few hours – "Are you feeling angry? Is it time for a break?" – or when you log out: "How did your interactions today make you feel?" Questions could be asked that would be useful to the WMF in its gender-gap, anti-harassment and other initiatives (once the data is anonymized).
These are examples of how WMF engineers could show that the WMF is committed to being an ethical high-tech organization.
Sarah
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tech&oldid=15386522#Request
[2] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/02/25/we-are-hopelessly-hooked/