Dear all,
I would like to share some ideas regarding UCoC and experience while I was acting as an administrator of Chinese Wikipedia chatting groups. Please first allow me to introduce myself: I used to be a former drafter of Chinese Wikipedia IRC protocol (Zhwiki’s IRCPOL) but abandoned to continue the work for the reason of massive problems existing in Chinese Wikipedia members that makes me feel unable and powerless to change through improving local protocols.
Within my knowledge and experience, and apart from political disputes, I have found several problems that might not or seldom occurred in the anglophone communities:
1. Non-Universal Usage: The rules as to harassment stated that "Behaviour can be considered harassment if it is beyond what a reasonable person would be expected to tolerate in a global, intercultural environment". That requires the administrators for the knowledge of "reasonable man test". Such a test is widely and commonly used, and regarded as the objective test in the common law world. However, it is unfriendly for people from countries adopting legal systems other than the common law system. Those people shall be familiar with the test which is relatively depending on a subjective judgment of an admin on a certain issue. The uncertainty of the test is confirmed in various appeal cases in which the House of Lords held that the Court of Appeal made mistakes in adopting this test. Without a declaration of the certain standards or necessary training, I think it is inappropriate to use the term "reasonable man" since the test, which was already being adopted in Zhwiki’s IRCPOL before the UCoC was well-drafted and completed, has been proved its unfriendliness to those who come from China and Taiwan where both jurisdictions are of the Continental Law.
2. Connective Penalties in Instant Messaging (IM) and on Wikimedia Projects The user’s behaviours in IM may affect people’s view of that user. However, it is unclear whether the restriction on Wikimedia Projects can be given directly to a user breached the UCoC or, breached policies and guidelines in IM (such as canvassing). Without Safe and Trustee team or Stewards or Ombudsman Commission, can the administrators (admins) use the messages in IM as evidence to punish the wrongdoers in Wikipedia or other projects? I wish the Community and the Board may clarify that in UCoC.
3. Refusal of User Rights: Some admins disagree with the point that users have the right of freedom of speech but adopted the rules of "Wikipedia:User access level" which the right for using instant messaging is a user access level and can be withdrawn. That causes admins to prefer to use the restriction and penalty which is beyond the reasonable proportionality for groups' order and peacefulness. That may cause the problem of admins’ preference on rules to be adopted for punishment purpose rather than for educational purpose in certain events. For example, I have seen that several Chinese Wikipedian involved in oral conflicts which the admin somehow prefer to warn and mute both sides for the reason of civility, instead of dispute resolving. User rights might be a blocker for admins and bureaucrats to think of a reasonable penalty and apply the Code in an appropriate manner.
4. Problems with Administrators & Bureaucrats: It is common and usual for admins and bureaucrats to directly being granted equivalent power. But it is also somehow dangerous and problematic since some Wikimedia project communities lost its capability which they ought to review the competency of their executive members. Even worse, the Community might force the candidates to think and act in the particular way which the Community encouraged (such as "politics first, articles then") but we may consider as unreasonable. That may be caused by the reason of either politics, gender, region or any other issue. On that ground, the executive members may keep the same view or even hold bias on an issue. It is foreseeable that such a scenario will make Chapter 3.2 of UCoC in-executable as the same as the saying goes "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" (English: who watches the watchmen). This, for users, especially for outsiders who are interested in Wikipedia, might be a bad experience and without in-time and reasonable remedies.
Among all, I think issue 2 is the most important and essential to solve. I wish the Community and the Foundation may consider the aforementioned factors and add more terms to restrict and prevent of the unwanted condition.
Thank you for your time and patience.
Best Regards, Arthur Cheung User:だ＊ぜ (Dasze) Board Member of Wikimedia Community User Group Hong Kong (WMHKG) Telegram: @Dasze
William Chan william@wchan.hk 於 2021年2月3日 P.M.8:31 寫道：
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 mailto: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+ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT+ -- faewik@gmail.com mailto:faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 11:58, María Sefidari <maria@wikimedia.org mailto: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 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Draft_review
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
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