Re: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation commitment of support for LGBT+ volunteers

Hi Maggie, Thanks for publishing this nice and clear restatement of WMF's commitment to a safe and non-hostile environment for Wikimedia LGBT+ volunteers and those of our community who are a part of minority groups that we see unfairly targeted with harassment, hounding and aggression across our projects. This positive response was impressively fast after working together to share and discuss better responses to the feedback from members of our WM-LGBT+ user group, which benefits from a highly varied global membership. There will be many readers of this email list that have no direct experience of the problematic behaviours or the systematic "unwelcoming" environment that can be experienced across our projects by minority groups. Here are two illustrative examples that should raise an eyebrow. These samples are easy to understand and show this is not a question of folks being too "thin-skinned": * Userboxes and user pages may include unwelcoming statements in the guise of open discrimination through to unpleasant "jokes". Many users are under the impression that user pages and user talk pages are semi-private and fair game for free speech and is tolerated even to the extent of being direct hate speech. Examples include using swastika or fascist images and claiming membership of hate groups. This is "tolerated" and some are embedded in templates used for years as well as on specific user pages. When a LGBT+ Wikimedia contributor is faced with user pages that openly and proudly are against LGBT+ people to exist or have a family life, the project in total has to be judged unsafe and hostile. Within our User Group, it is not uncommon to find LGBT+ contributors are scared to even try editing LGBT+ related topics on these Wikipedias.[1] * Articles in multiple languages exist that promote nonsensical and defamatory race theories, such as claiming that Nenets (an ethnic group native of arctic Russia) are part of a "neo-Mongoloid" race of humans. These articles appear to deliberately misuse modern genetic research and several have relied on user-created unverifiable and anti-science "genetic maps" hosted on Commons. Some volunteers have been persistently and politely raising these many cases using local Wikipedia discussion, and externally with the WMF with the facts about these defamatory Wikipedias for over a decade. The most common experience is to be dismissed as a fringe lobbyist through to administrators warning you from continuing to try to correct these issues. There has been no systemic response to correct this damaging misinformation, and the Wikipedias the misinformation is hosted on remain corrupted with hostile and racist minority views.[2] Links: 1. * https://fa.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D9%88%DB%8C%DA%A9%DB%8C%E2%80%8… User interest templates, including a userbox with Hitler portrait, translates to "This user likes Adolf Hitler". * https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Matt_Paletto User page on Spanish Wikipedia which uses an anti-LGBT rainbow flag for showing they are against same-sex marriage. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Matt_Paletto Same user displays the anti-LGBT flag on the Polish Wikipedia stating they are against same-sex couples adopting children. There are at least 11 users on the Polish Wikipedia that use the anti-LGBT flag on their user pages, not as a "joke". * On the English Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Barumbarumba displays a different anti-LGBT symbol to state they are against the "LGBT movement". There are 17 users that have this symbol on their user pages across different Wikipedias. 2. * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T256115 Tracking task for systemic promotion of scientific racism, raised 6 months ago. There has been no non-volunteer action to date. * https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%96%B0%E3%83%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B4%E3%83%AD… Japanese Wikipedia with a "neo-Mongoloid" article. I hope this is helpful for those not normally involved in these issues to wonder how we might better show respect and avoid defamation of minorities, whilst never having to censor our coverage of all (verifiable) human knowledge. Cheers, Fae -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LGBT Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group On Tue, 8 Dec 2020 at 15:24, Maggie Dennis &lt;mdennis(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: Resilience and Sustainability at the Wikimedia Foundation.[1] I oversee the Foundation’s Trust and Safety teams (operations and policy), the Community Development team, and the upcoming Foundation Human Rights lead. Group along with several Trust and Safety personnel, including Global Head Jan Eißfeldt, to understand some of the challenges faced by the members of the group as volunteers in our international movement.[2] It is apparent that many volunteers openly identifying as LGBTQIA+ are targeted and attacked for their identities, with transgender, non-binary, queer, and queer feminist editors in particular at higher risk for such abuse. The members of the group who met with us voiced concerns about the safety and wellbeing of other marginalized communities and groups as well. restate, reinforce, and firmly assert our commitment to supporting the LGBTQIA+ volunteers in our movement, as well as others who face exclusion and hostility on the basis of identity factors.[3] anyone may play a part in not only receiving but curating and sharing knowledge. What volunteers have been able to accomplish in Wikimedia projects is extraordinary, but the movement will never reach its full potential if we do not close the diversity gap which our communities defined so ably in the Movement Strategy process.[4] There continue to be barriers in our movement for LGBTQIA+, women, indigenous communities, and other underrepresented groups. We as a movement have been called upon by a broad and diverse group of our own movement members to promote inclusivity and reduce harms to our participants. Trustees to (among other requests) facilitate the drafting of the Universal Code of Conduct called for in the Movement Strategy recommendations.[5] This collaboratively drafted document underwent significant community review in September and October and is currently under review by the Board. We will next be launching a second phase of that work in January, meant to result in enforcement pathways that will make our projects safe spaces for all volunteers. plans facilitated support for the LGBT+ User Group and other Wikimedia affiliate organizations focused on marginalized communities to come together to discuss better mechanisms for supporting volunteers who are targeted on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, race, religion, ethnicity or other identify factors. We expect to solidify plans and launch conversations in January and will be putting out information on how to participate. address the needs of the LGBT+ User Group and others. The Foundation’s Community Resilience & Sustainability function will be connecting more closely with the LGBT+ User Group going forward to ensure that the Foundation’s staff better understand the needs of this community, especially but not solely in our professional Trust & Safety work. our movement and want to be sure that we do not, through lack of understanding, ourselves do harm. This includes: conducting community surveys, structures now, even as we build other enforcement pathways in the UCoC, identity factors are properly recognized and addressed in our Trust & Safety systems, and excited and energized by that conversation and looking forward to finding ways to improve. I hope others in the community will join in the publicly hosted UCoC discussions starting early in the new year to improve the safety of all community members. It will help to ensure that volunteers across the movement, and in all movement spaces online and off, have an opportunity to contribute safely. People should feel welcomed to contribute to our collective and important mission of delivering the sum of all knowledge to everyone. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability/202…, where translation is being enabled today. If you are interested in helping translate, please do! https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/UN%20Strategy%20and%20Pl… . https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme… https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Draft_review _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>