Hi Peter,
I hear and understand your worries. I’d like to reassure you that we are very aware of the fact that no single person and no selected group of people can speak for the community as a whole. This is one of the big challenges all such efforts have to tackle. Representation here is not meant in the sense of legal or political representation. But by speaking for themselves, we hope that volunteers and staff coming from different language communities, holding different roles within the movement and bringing different experiences of engagement with the movement into the process will at least bring diverse valuable perspectives to the creation of the draft for the Universal Code of Conduct.
Before they start drafting, they are already now working their way through a reading kit which will make them familiar with the input from the movement strategy process as well as prior community consultations our team has done at regional Wikimedia conferences and Wikimania as well as through facilitated conversations with 19 different language communities. The data is published on Meta here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Community_feedback... and here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Initial_2020_Consu.... This community feedback will inform the drafting process.
This draft will then be brought to the communities for review starting August 24, as outlined in the timeline here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct#Timeline. We are still looking for ways to make more people aware of this important part of the process. Please spread the word of this upcoming community comment period, to help us get wider participation!
I hope the above makes sense to you, looking forward to your engagement with the draft end of August and in September,
Christel Steigenberger (she/her)
Trust and Safety Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/