On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 at 09:30, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
1. For privacy reasons,I don't think that they
need to be on video.
Sue had them on IRC. In the Wikimedia Cafe several of us use audio
only.
It was great to have it in person. Conferencing is a great opportunity to
have a more humane experience in this binary environment.
Also there was an IRC channel. IRC however shares one's IP - unless a cloak
is set up, which is not trivial -, so how is that "privacy"?
I don't understand why some imaginary "privacy reasons" have to trump good
things, such as the openness of this meeting.
In any way, being on video was optional and questions on both IRC and
Youtube chats were answered. It was really well organized, professional, I
would say.
2. I'm digesting what Maggie said about the incidents of last July.
I'm not sure that the version of events that was
communicated to her
captures how I would describe the multiple bad decisions that
happened, and I'm not inclined to believe that the problems can be
summed up as poor communications. I don't mean to put words in
Maggie's mouth, and I don't think that she was trying to provide a
comprehensive view of her briefing, but I also have concerns regarding
what I heard in her summary, and I would encourage Maggie to probe
extensively into what happened while she was on leave.
I don't think we can expect the WMF to admit the SANFRANBAN was motivated
by staff members' needs, not by the intent to protect the community and
address hostility in the admin ranks. Nor do I care, that's in the past and
the focus now is to create in collaboration with the communities better,
transparent and accountable processes instead of the secretive office
actions.
I would have more faith in the integrity of WMF if
there had
been an outside review as I describe here, including public
It doesn't answer any of your questions, but I've just stumbled upon this
and thought you might be interested: 2019 Governance Review
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Board_Veritas_Governance_Recommendations_Final_Public_Copy.pdf
an outside review as I describe here, including public
accountability for the actions of individual
staff,
> *much as we do on English Wikipedia for administrators and functionaries*.
Emphasis mine. What kind of public review is there on enwiki? WP:DESYSOP2019
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/2019_community_sentiment_on_binding_desysop_procedure
?
I recall a few admins alleged it would be "abused", so better not have it
(aka. no consensus).
In practice not even policy violations can be reported, unless you are a
well-known admin or established editor, or want to get banned.
Regarding functionaries: the Ombudsman Commission had *9 cases older than
one year *at the end of March (ref
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission/2020/Report_Jan-Mar>)
and *24 unsolved cases* altogether.
This trend has been ongoing for years, in 2018 first half there were 2
cases closed (in 6 months!) and 12 open...
Besides, the OC only reports the number of cases, nothing else in public.
What kind of "public accountability" is there for functionaries?
As I see both sides need to improve accountability and the capability for
self-review. Holding people accountable does not mean, however, that heads
need to fall, admins be desysoped and employees fired. That approach
creates a battlefield environment: fight for yourself till the last
breath, then be gone. That's not healthy. Accountability means to recognize
that the results of our actions (not just mistakes) could be better and to
learn from it, improve and (on an advanced level) fix the mistakes. That
last part seldom happens, but the first step is to recognize the mistakes
and that's the step we are at now.
I appreciate that Maggie has shown a much more open and transparent
approach than we've experienced in the office actions consultation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Office_actions/Community_consultation_on_partial_and_temporary_office_actions/09_2019>.
This gives me more faith that the implementation of these recommendations
will be more for the benefit of the whole community than one small group.
Aron Manning (Demian)