I'm speaking as a volunteer, not as WMF staff, if that matters to you.
Adrian Raddatz wrote:
It should be pretty darn easy to make a policy on user interactions within technical spaces. There is certainly a practice which is already followed, so just codify it and call it a guideline or a generally accepted
document.
I would certainly support a page that people can read to find our expectations for interactions, and what happens if you're naughty.
That's what a Code of Conduct is. :)
It would be wonderful if it were as easy as you describe, but it hasn't proven to be.
It's taking longer because the WMF/Board did not initially take the approach of applying this 'top-down' style to the technical spaces.Those of us who have been involved (some, like myself before we became staff) want to do it with community involvement and with thoughtful discussion. Are we going to get it right the first time around? No, maybe not. Are we trying to design something with thoughtfulness and flexibility? Yes.
MZMcBride wrote:
And if we disregard any application of common sense, then yes, you could argue that a technical code of conduct is needed.
One could also argue that a disregard for common sense is exactly what permits individuals to violate our shared expectations of community behavior.
Yours, Chris Koerner clkoerner.com
On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 3:47 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
And if we disregard any application of common sense, then yes, you could argue that a technical code of conduct is needed. When you consider the actual context, however, it becomes pretty clear that this is unnecessary bureaucracy. The repeated concerns about outsized influence by Wikimedia Foundation employees have largely gone ignored.
i think so too. common sense replaces a lot of rules and policies :) donors money is imo better invested in writing good software supporting the mission than making policies. we have enough policies and rules of all kind, being a burden when contriuting, especially to newbies. i get a chicken skin of fright when i read the collaboration teams plans of putting bureaucracy into software, talking about "the largest wikis have the most complex workflows". the most complex and stable workflow i know is in wikinews, and we all know that wikinews died. i would really love if "collaboration" would be the main topic, not "process" and "rule". this is just so against the basic "wiki" idea, our core value.
best rupert
+1 P
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chris Koerner Sent: Monday, 21 November 2016 5:52 PM To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Discussion about proposed Technical Code of Conduct (TCC)
I'm speaking as a volunteer, not as WMF staff, if that matters to you.
Adrian Raddatz wrote:
It should be pretty darn easy to make a policy on user interactions within technical spaces. There is certainly a practice which is already followed, so just codify it and call it a guideline or a generally accepted
document.
I would certainly support a page that people can read to find our expectations for interactions, and what happens if you're naughty.
That's what a Code of Conduct is. :)
It would be wonderful if it were as easy as you describe, but it hasn't proven to be.
It's taking longer because the WMF/Board did not initially take the approach of applying this 'top-down' style to the technical spaces.Those of us who have been involved (some, like myself before we became staff) want to do it with community involvement and with thoughtful discussion. Are we going to get it right the first time around? No, maybe not. Are we trying to design something with thoughtfulness and flexibility? Yes.
MZMcBride wrote:
And if we disregard any application of common sense, then yes, you could argue that a technical code of conduct is needed.
One could also argue that a disregard for common sense is exactly what permits individuals to violate our shared expectations of community behavior.
Yours, Chris Koerner clkoerner.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I quite like the Phabricator guidelines. Can't those just be replicated to apply to all technical spaces? No more years of debate needed, or new arbcoms, or strange statements of principles, or exhaustive lists of inappropriate behaviour.
Adrian Raddatz
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 12:42 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
+1 P
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chris Koerner Sent: Monday, 21 November 2016 5:52 PM To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Discussion about proposed Technical Code of Conduct (TCC)
I'm speaking as a volunteer, not as WMF staff, if that matters to you.
Adrian Raddatz wrote:
It should be pretty darn easy to make a policy on user interactions within technical spaces. There is certainly a practice which is already followed, so just codify it and call it a guideline or a generally accepted
document.
I would certainly support a page that people can read to find our expectations for interactions, and what happens if you're naughty.
That's what a Code of Conduct is. :)
It would be wonderful if it were as easy as you describe, but it hasn't proven to be.
It's taking longer because the WMF/Board did not initially take the approach of applying this 'top-down' style to the technical spaces.Those of us who have been involved (some, like myself before we became staff) want to do it with community involvement and with thoughtful discussion. Are we going to get it right the first time around? No, maybe not. Are we trying to design something with thoughtfulness and flexibility? Yes.
MZMcBride wrote:
And if we disregard any application of common sense, then yes, you could argue that a technical code of conduct is needed.
One could also argue that a disregard for common sense is exactly what permits individuals to violate our shared expectations of community behavior.
Yours, Chris Koerner clkoerner.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Yes common sense, one would hope, would generally suffices. But when common sense is questioned it is also nice to have something more concrete to point to.
James
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 4:06 AM, Adrian Raddatz ajraddatz@gmail.com wrote:
I quite like the Phabricator guidelines. Can't those just be replicated to apply to all technical spaces? No more years of debate needed, or new arbcoms, or strange statements of principles, or exhaustive lists of inappropriate behaviour.
Adrian Raddatz
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 12:42 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
+1 P
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chris Koerner Sent: Monday, 21 November 2016 5:52 PM To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Discussion about proposed Technical Code of Conduct (TCC)
I'm speaking as a volunteer, not as WMF staff, if that matters to you.
Adrian Raddatz wrote:
It should be pretty darn easy to make a policy on user interactions within technical spaces. There is certainly a practice which is already followed, so just codify it and call it a guideline or a generally accepted
document.
I would certainly support a page that people can read to find our expectations for interactions, and what happens if you're naughty.
That's what a Code of Conduct is. :)
It would be wonderful if it were as easy as you describe, but it hasn't proven to be.
It's taking longer because the WMF/Board did not initially take the approach of applying this 'top-down' style to the technical spaces.Those
of
us who have been involved (some, like myself before we became staff) want to do it with community involvement and with thoughtful discussion. Are
we
going to get it right the first time around? No, maybe not. Are we trying to design something with thoughtfulness and flexibility? Yes.
MZMcBride wrote:
And if we disregard any application of common sense, then yes, you could argue that a technical code of conduct is needed.
One could also argue that a disregard for common sense is exactly what permits individuals to violate our shared expectations of community behavior.
Yours, Chris Koerner clkoerner.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2016.0.7859 / Virus Database: 4664/13447 - Release Date:
11/21/16
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I think it is worth thinking about the problem from a user experience (UX) standpoint as well. Our projects have a complex interplay of social and technical factors. Thinking though the situation end-to-end is worthwhile: say I was just the victim of harassment or witnessed harassment on the projects/phabricator/IRC/etc. How do I report it? Where does the report go? What steps are involved in reviewing the report? If the harassment is genuine, what steps are required to address the situation (revert/block/...)? If the harassment is judged acceptable (maybe it's borderline, maybe just deserves a warning, maybe the report is itself an attempt at harassment), what steps are required to address? Then can other patrollers/reviewers see that action has been taken?
And how did I know what the right thing to do was, at each step? Was the process discoverable?
This is the core issue from my perspective. Uniform codes of conduct (to the greatest extent possible) ensure that we can do our best to address the end-to-end user experience uniformly as well, and that we have (as far as possible) *one* mechanism to report, *one* mechanism to review, *one* mechanism to address, etc. From a software engineering perspective, this ensures that we don't have any unexpected gaps that can be exploited, that folks' experiences are equally good regardless of what form the harassment takes/protections are equally robust against malicious reporting, and that we exhaust our available resources reinventing the wheel a dozen times.
Usually the way this sort of process works out in practice is that someone works on generic "best practices" recommendations and tools, and then individual communities are encouraged to adopt the best practices, possibly with amendments/patches as appropriate for their communities. Then we periodically review the amendments/patches are see if we can roll them into the centralized best practices, etc. This ensures a healthy balance between deduplication of work and individual communities' innovation.
I'm not worried about "WMF capture" of the process -- if that happens, the communities are free not to adopt the WMF code of conduct. IMO it's a good sign that the foundation is actively hiring and paying people to work on these problems, since they are common to all the projects. That's the sort of work we are funding the foundation to do. What would be more concerning to me would be fragmented efforts that prevent us from efficiently addressing issues or making progress, or communities failing to recognize harassment as a central concern. So long as the WMF and the communities are both actively working on the issues, cross-pollination will only lead to a stronger end result. --scott
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 11:15 AM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
Yes common sense, one would hope, would generally suffices. But when common sense is questioned it is also nice to have something more concrete to point to.
James
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 4:06 AM, Adrian Raddatz ajraddatz@gmail.com wrote:
I quite like the Phabricator guidelines. Can't those just be replicated
to
apply to all technical spaces? No more years of debate needed, or new arbcoms, or strange statements of principles, or exhaustive lists of inappropriate behaviour.
Adrian Raddatz
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 12:42 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
+1 P
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chris Koerner Sent: Monday, 21 November 2016 5:52 PM To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Discussion about proposed Technical Code of Conduct (TCC)
I'm speaking as a volunteer, not as WMF staff, if that matters to you.
Adrian Raddatz wrote:
It should be pretty darn easy to make a policy on user interactions within technical spaces. There is certainly a practice which is already followed, so just codify it and call it a guideline or a generally accepted
document.
I would certainly support a page that people can read to find our expectations for interactions, and what happens if you're naughty.
That's what a Code of Conduct is. :)
It would be wonderful if it were as easy as you describe, but it hasn't proven to be.
It's taking longer because the WMF/Board did not initially take the approach of applying this 'top-down' style to the technical
spaces.Those
of
us who have been involved (some, like myself before we became staff)
want
to do it with community involvement and with thoughtful discussion. Are
we
going to get it right the first time around? No, maybe not. Are we
trying
to design something with thoughtfulness and flexibility? Yes.
MZMcBride wrote:
And if we disregard any application of common sense, then yes, you could argue that a technical code of conduct is needed.
One could also argue that a disregard for common sense is exactly what permits individuals to violate our shared expectations of community behavior.
Yours, Chris Koerner clkoerner.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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11/21/16
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-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Very coherent perspective, Scott. Thinking the process through from an end-to-end user experience perspective and making that explicit seems like the right direction to me.
I also agree that it is a good sign that the WMF is dedicating resources to something that our communities have wanted us to do for awhile now.
I remember listening to Jimmy on stage in London for the Closing Ceremony at Wikimania https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/en_masse a couple of years ago talk about how we needed to work on these issues. It starts at about the 5 minute mark. I remember he received genuine applause. Far from a bureaucratic process, this code strikes me as a healthy boundary.
Warmly, /a
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 12:11 PM, C. Scott Ananian cananian@wikimedia.org wrote:
I think it is worth thinking about the problem from a user experience (UX) standpoint as well. Our projects have a complex interplay of social and technical factors. Thinking though the situation end-to-end is worthwhile: say I was just the victim of harassment or witnessed harassment on the projects/phabricator/IRC/etc. How do I report it? Where does the report go? What steps are involved in reviewing the report? If the harassment is genuine, what steps are required to address the situation (revert/block/...)? If the harassment is judged acceptable (maybe it's borderline, maybe just deserves a warning, maybe the report is itself an attempt at harassment), what steps are required to address? Then can other patrollers/reviewers see that action has been taken?
And how did I know what the right thing to do was, at each step? Was the process discoverable?
This is the core issue from my perspective. Uniform codes of conduct (to the greatest extent possible) ensure that we can do our best to address the end-to-end user experience uniformly as well, and that we have (as far as possible) *one* mechanism to report, *one* mechanism to review, *one* mechanism to address, etc. From a software engineering perspective, this ensures that we don't have any unexpected gaps that can be exploited, that folks' experiences are equally good regardless of what form the harassment takes/protections are equally robust against malicious reporting, and that we exhaust our available resources reinventing the wheel a dozen times.
Usually the way this sort of process works out in practice is that someone works on generic "best practices" recommendations and tools, and then individual communities are encouraged to adopt the best practices, possibly with amendments/patches as appropriate for their communities. Then we periodically review the amendments/patches are see if we can roll them into the centralized best practices, etc. This ensures a healthy balance between deduplication of work and individual communities' innovation.
I'm not worried about "WMF capture" of the process -- if that happens, the communities are free not to adopt the WMF code of conduct. IMO it's a good sign that the foundation is actively hiring and paying people to work on these problems, since they are common to all the projects. That's the sort of work we are funding the foundation to do. What would be more concerning to me would be fragmented efforts that prevent us from efficiently addressing issues or making progress, or communities failing to recognize harassment as a central concern. So long as the WMF and the communities are both actively working on the issues, cross-pollination will only lead to a stronger end result. --scott
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 11:15 AM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
Yes common sense, one would hope, would generally suffices. But when
common
sense is questioned it is also nice to have something more concrete to point to.
James
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 4:06 AM, Adrian Raddatz ajraddatz@gmail.com wrote:
I quite like the Phabricator guidelines. Can't those just be replicated
to
apply to all technical spaces? No more years of debate needed, or new arbcoms, or strange statements of principles, or exhaustive lists of inappropriate behaviour.
Adrian Raddatz
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 12:42 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
+1 P
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org]
On
Behalf Of Chris Koerner Sent: Monday, 21 November 2016 5:52 PM To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Discussion about proposed Technical Code
of
Conduct (TCC)
I'm speaking as a volunteer, not as WMF staff, if that matters to
you.
Adrian Raddatz wrote:
It should be pretty darn easy to make a policy on user interactions within technical spaces. There is certainly a practice which is already followed, so just codify it and call it a guideline or a generally accepted
document.
I would certainly support a page that people can read to find our expectations for interactions, and what happens if you're naughty.
That's what a Code of Conduct is. :)
It would be wonderful if it were as easy as you describe, but it
hasn't
proven to be.
It's taking longer because the WMF/Board did not initially take the approach of applying this 'top-down' style to the technical
spaces.Those
of
us who have been involved (some, like myself before we became staff)
want
to do it with community involvement and with thoughtful discussion.
Are
we
going to get it right the first time around? No, maybe not. Are we
trying
to design something with thoughtfulness and flexibility? Yes.
MZMcBride wrote:
And if we disregard any application of common sense, then yes, you could argue that a technical code of conduct is needed.
One could also argue that a disregard for common sense is exactly
what
permits individuals to violate our shared expectations of community behavior.
Yours, Chris Koerner clkoerner.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/
mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- (http://cscott.net) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 3:59 PM, Anna Stillwell astillwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Very coherent perspective, Scott. Thinking the process through from an end-to-end user experience perspective and making that explicit seems like the right direction to me.
I also agree that it is a good sign that the WMF is dedicating resources to something that our communities have wanted us to do for awhile now.
I remember listening to Jimmy on stage in London for the Closing Ceremony at Wikimania https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/en_masse a couple of years ago talk about how we needed to work on these issues. It starts at about the 5 minute mark. I remember he received genuine applause. Far from a bureaucratic process, this code strikes me as a healthy boundary.
A brief reminder to subscribe/comment/award token at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T149665 to encourage discussion of this, from an end-to-end UX perspective, at the developer summit in January. (This plug was on the previous thread; I'm just repeating it here on Pine's forked thread.) --scott
(The parent topic, "Building a sustainable user experience together" was closed as a main topic at the dev summit due to lack of interest, but "[s]pecific session proposals still might be pre-scheduled, based on their own merit." So a bit of lobbying on behalf of this particular proposal seems worthwhile to ensure it gets a slot and broader attention.)
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org