Re: [Wikimedia-l] Statement by Wikimedia Board on Healthy Community Culture, Inclusivity, and Safe Spaces

I want to thank the Board for this letter, and for their focus on this problem. What specific work should we be doing to make progress around this issue? Harassment is a complex problem, and there are no easy solutions. Nor is there likely to be a single solution; improvement will have to be made through a number of initiatives and coordinated approaches. Wikimedia volunteers have offered many different approaches to the problem, through consultations, workshops, the Inspire campaign, conference sessions, and discussion. The Support and Safety team has been collating these ideas, exploring the issue in the broader context of online communities, and delving into academic research on the topic. categories/areas for improvement: - Better blocking tools and detection - the Wikimedia community works hard on the front lines keeping our users safe from harassment, through monitoring noticeboards and recent changes for problems, investigating “sock” accounts used to abuse contributors, and placing blocks on problematic users. Improvements to blocking tools, and the ability to detect harassing comments sooner can empower contributors to be more effective at these tasks. - Reporting and evaluation tools - The current systems for reporting harassment are overburdened and can be unclear to users, and there are limited tools that admins and stewards can use to evaluate the cases and make good decisions. New tools, developed in collaboration with functionaries and communities, can improve the experience of reporting, investigating and managing harassment cases. - Training for better handling of both in-person and online harassment - Better training can give contributors the tools and skills to handle harassment situations quickly and empathetically, document cases, and provide good advice to targets of harassment. - Policy and enforcement - Wikimedia communities have developed a variety of processes, policies, and approaches to dealing with behavioural problems. As a movement, we need to identify which are working well, and share those successes. We also need to identify where our approaches are not working well, identify the problems, and try new solutions based on research and data. - Coordination with other platforms on harassment approaches and tools, and keeping up with current academic research - Our communities are not the only ones struggling with the problem of online harassment. We need to work more closely with other platforms, researchers, online communities, and experts to make sure we are aware of successful techniques, new research, and useful tools. The above areas are not the only areas where improvement can be made - right now, contributors are brainstorming other approaches through the Community Wishlist process.[1] We also encourage contributors to reach out to the Support and Safety team at ca(a)wikimedia.org with ideas, or contact me privately at pearley(a)wikimedia.org. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016_Community_Wishlist_Survey On Thu, Dec 8, 2016 at 12:26 PM, Sydney Poore <sydney.poore(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Patrick Earley Senior Community Advocate Wikimedia Foundation pearley(a)wikimedia.org (1) 415 975 1874