Perhaps it is the buoyancy and resilience at large wikis (in terms of participants' nationality and political tenancy) that seem to shade the importance of UCoC.

The problem at other languages of Wikipedia where the language is used primarily at only one or free country, the need quickly surfaces as nationalism and other of extremism, such as denial of mass concentration camps (cough, some Chinese), or historical revisionism (cough, some Croatian) quickly implies the need of UCoC.

Some may argue that UCoC is not something needed, but the fact that CoC doesn't exist on all language projects created the need for one to be made, both for legal and moral reasons.




On Wed, 3 Feb 2021, 19:21 Fæ, <faewik@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for sharing for the WMF board María,

Though I have been highly critical of aspects of the Universal Code of
Conduct, the consultation process has been widely cast and approached
using reasonable, logical, methods. Those WMF employees running those
consultations have tried to keep an open mind and tried not to censor
or mute critical feedback. It's not an easy task.

Most, maybe over 90% of folxs that subscribe to this email list have
in mind the English, French, Spanish, German Wikipedias when making
comments, but from the perspective of the WMLGBT+ user group, our
members frequently raise abuse and harassment cases in minority
language projects where the admin 'corps' may be a small club and
where members of minority groups are genuinely scared of hostile
repercussions from editing on controversial topics such as local
politics and rights for minority groups. It may feel especially unsafe
for those who have been targeted and previously outed themselves
during edit-a-thons or similar. Our user group is an important
supportive resource so that some of those affected can discuss their
experience on our off-wiki groups, without having to publicly
"victimize" themselves and without needing to litigate an Arbcom case
or painfully compile evidence for WMF T&S. Sometimes those cases turn
in to on-wiki action, more often nothing happens on-wiki but the
contributor feels better by having a safe space to talk and are
welcome to stay anonymous.

Even on the bigger projects, we see user pages with alt-right and
anti-LGBT+ opinions being expressed with hostile userboxes, extremist
icons and statements to the effect that "this user opposes XXX rights
for XXX minority groups" and these users happen to be well
established, with many years within that Wikimedia project, or having
functionary roles like sysop rights, or access to OTRS. A significant
step forward to making our projects more open and accessible for all
good-faith contributors is the UCoC section on "Abuse of power,
privilege, or influence". Those of us that have been around the
projects for a few years are aware of cases of sysops that routinely
abused their authority, bullied their way in disagreements and they
were eventually de-sysopped after the pattern of abuse became too
blatant and extreme for anyone to ignore any longer. In very rare
cases on minority projects, the local community and/or processes were
not up to the task of holding those with tools to account, and we saw
T&S take necessary and entirely justifiable action. We hope to see the
UCoC firmly set the a basic minimal standard to ensure these cases of
abuse are identified and acted on locally and promptly, without
forcing extreme measures. We know that for each extreme case that gets
dealt with, there are several more that remain unsatisfactory and
those abusers and harassers are never held to account, but continue as
"life long" authority holders.

The UCoC publication is welcome. Its existence is not a threat to the
autonomy and authority of Wikimedia projects, because there's nothing
in the UCoC that any project should resist having policies and
procedures to address. If your sysops, check users, stewards,
bureaucrats, Arbcom members or Founder don't want to comply with the
very basic good governance and good behaviours spelt out in the UCoC,
hurry up and show them the door, they never were competent.

The implementation discussions to follow may become complex and
heated, but I'm sure that most of us now suspect that on our better
run projects it means no changes to policies at all, just do for real
what those policies say, rather than making excuses for bad behaviour
from those with big hats or a self-perpetuating mobile peanut gallery
of jokey lads.

Thanks
Fae
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT+
--
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 11:58, María Sefidari <maria@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> I’m pleased to announce that the Board of Trustees has unanimously approved a Universal Code of Conduct for the Wikimedia projects and movement.[1]  A Universal Code of Conduct was one of the final recommendations of the Movement Strategy 2030 process - a multi-year, participatory community effort to define the future of our movement. The final Universal Code of Conduct seeks to address disparities in conduct policies across our hundreds of projects and communities, by creating a binding minimum set of standards for conduct on the Wikimedia projects that directly address many of the challenges that contributors face.
>
> The Board is deeply grateful to the communities who have grappled with these challenging topics. Over the past six months, communities around the world have participated in conversations and consultations to help build this code collectively, including local discussions in 19 languages, surveys, discussions on Meta, and policy drafting by a committee of volunteers and staff. The document presented to us reflects a significant investment of time and effort by many of you, and especially by the joint staff/volunteer committee who created the base draft after reviewing input collected from community outreach efforts. We also appreciate the dedication of the Foundation, and its Trust & Safety policy team, in getting us to this phase.
>
> This was the first phase of our Universal Code of Conduct - from here, the Trust & Safety team will begin consultations on how best to enforce this code. In the coming weeks, they will follow-up with more instructions on how you can participate in discussions around enforcing the new code. Over the next few months, they will be facilitating consultation discussions in many local languages, with our affiliates, and on Meta to support a new volunteer/staff committee in drafting enforcement pathways. For more information on the process, timeline, and how to participate in this next phase, please review the Universal Code of Conduct page on Meta.[2]
>
> The Universal Code of Conduct represents an essential step towards our vision of a world in which all people can participate in the sum of all knowledge. Together, we have built something extraordinary. Today, we celebrate this milestone in making our movement a safer space for contribution for all.
>
> On behalf of the Board of Trustees,
>
> María Sefidari
> Board Chair
>
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Draft_review
>
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
>
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