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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
Dear Maria, this is great news and thank you for this announcement! Really happy to see that happening at last. Warm regards, Nattes à chat
Envoyé de mon iPhone
Le 2 févr. 2021 à 12:59, María Sefidari maria@wikimedia.org a écrit :
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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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
Maybe I've missed something, but there is still an open consultation process on Commons, and one of the points raised there is that of a Wikimedian who operates a website (although a blog would be equally applicable) seriously libelling another Wikimedian. As it stands this UCoC is silent on such issues. Are you implying that the Foundation tolerates such attack sites?
Phil
--- New Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail replacement - get it here: https://www.oeclassic.com/
----- Original Message ----- From: María Sefidari maria@wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, wikimediaannounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: 02/02/2021 11:58:26 Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Board Ratification of Universal Code of Conduct
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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
Phil, The consultation process on Commons is about the next phase "discussions around enforcing the new code" as written by María. I fail to see any possible way to connect her message to your conclusion. Chico Venancio
Em ter., 2 de fev. de 2021 às 10:34, Phil Nash via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> escreveu:
Maybe I've missed something, but there is still an open consultation process on Commons, and one of the points raised there is that of a Wikimedian who operates a website (although a blog would be equally applicable) seriously libelling another Wikimedian. As it stands this UCoC is silent on such issues. Are you implying that the Foundation tolerates such attack sites?
Phil
New Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail replacement - get it here: https://www.oeclassic.com/
*----- Original Message -----* *From:* María Sefidari maria@wikimedia.org *Reply-To:* Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org *To:* Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, < wikimediaannounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org> *Sent:* 02/02/2021 11:58:26
*Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Board Ratification of Universal Code of Conduct
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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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
Excellent! My brother in Chile sent me a news story about this, so... word is already getting around. Thank you Maria + all who worked on this. S
On Tue, Feb 2, 2021 at 6:59 AM María Sefidari 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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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
The community has not approved the WMF's UCoC. It is not a Wikimedia policy, it is not binding, it has no authority. The WMF does not control the Wikimedia projects, and has no jurisdiction in this area.
The community rejected this over and over again. It is harmful that the Board is pretending they can do this unilaterally.
-- Yair Rand
בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-6:59 מאת María Sefidari < maria@wikimedia.org>:
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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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
The WMF continues its steady departure from the community.
It is quite sad to see.
On Feb 2, 2021, at 2:27 PM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
The community has not approved the WMF's UCoC. It is not a Wikimedia policy, it is not binding, it has no authority. The WMF does not control the Wikimedia projects, and has no jurisdiction in this area.
The community rejected this over and over again. It is harmful that the Board is pretending they can do this unilaterally.
-- Yair Rand
בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-6:59 מאת María Sefidari <maria@wikimedia.org mailto:maria@wikimedia.org>: 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
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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
While I often agree with you, Yair Rand, in this case I think you're mistaken. Aside from the long-ago "community vote" on licensing (which was pretty much required based on the prior licensing scheme), every Wikimedia-wide policy has been authorized by the WMF Board of Trustees. That includes the terms of use and the privacy policy. As the technical owners of the infrastructure, the WMF Board does have the right (if not the responsibility) to identify the manner in which the websites it supports and hosts can be used, and I think this principle is actually pretty widely held, at least in the abstract (i.e., hosting organizations can and should apply standards on the services they host). In every policy-related case that I have reviewed going back to the very earliest days, there has been at least some level of community discussion, and there have always been detractors of every policy the Board has approved; that has not made the policies either invalid or unworkable.
I've never been convinced that including a mixture of required, forbidden, and aspirational standards all in one document is a good idea, and I personally struggle to see how including essentially unenforceable aspects of the UCoC will do anything other than weaken the effectiveness of rest of the document. For example, I cannot imagine anyone being sanctioned in any way for "failure to thank" or "failure to mentor", although both of these are considered expectations in the "Civility" section; and one thing that a Uniform Code of Conduct would logically have is a uniform enforcement scheme.
Nonetheless, I do believe that it is within the Board's scope and responsibility to approve this and other global policies designed to protect the WMF, the projects, the users of the websites, and the content managers/editors/etc (what we often call "the community").
Risker/Anne
On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 17:28, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
The community has not approved the WMF's UCoC. It is not a Wikimedia policy, it is not binding, it has no authority. The WMF does not control the Wikimedia projects, and has no jurisdiction in this area.
The community rejected this over and over again. It is harmful that the Board is pretending they can do this unilaterally.
-- Yair Rand
בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-6:59 מאת María Sefidari < maria@wikimedia.org>:
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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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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Anne/Risker:
I've never been convinced that including a mixture of required, forbidden, and aspirational standards all in one document is a good idea, and I personally struggle to see how including essentially unenforceable aspects of the UCoC will do anything other than weaken the effectiveness of rest of the document.
Dear Risker,
This is exactly my concern about the UCoC. Thank you for your words, which, as usually, point to the essence of the subject.
Someone who tries to achieve too much, will finally achieve nothing. In parts, the document reads like the job description for a paid social media manager, not like a basic guideline for volunteers who decide themselves how much time they want or can to invest in their hobby.
On the other hand, I do agree that the owner of a wiki has a responsibility to provide basic rules, and I do regret that the global community did not create such a code itself. It did not happen in ... 20 years!
We will see how this all will turn out in practice. Even if you can, theoretically, get banned for not helping a (problematic) newbie, we hope that the enforcers will know how to wisely use the new instrument. The acceptance within the community will depend more on that than on the exact content or wording.
Kind regards Ziko
Am Mi., 3. Feb. 2021 um 03:34 Uhr schrieb Risker risker.wp@gmail.com:
While I often agree with you, Yair Rand, in this case I think you're mistaken. Aside from the long-ago "community vote" on licensing (which was pretty much required based on the prior licensing scheme), every Wikimedia-wide policy has been authorized by the WMF Board of Trustees. That includes the terms of use and the privacy policy. As the technical owners of the infrastructure, the WMF Board does have the right (if not the responsibility) to identify the manner in which the websites it supports and hosts can be used, and I think this principle is actually pretty widely held, at least in the abstract (i.e., hosting organizations can and should apply standards on the services they host). In every policy-related case that I have reviewed going back to the very earliest days, there has been at least some level of community discussion, and there have always been detractors of every policy the Board has approved; that has not made the policies either invalid or unworkable.
I've never been convinced that including a mixture of required, forbidden, and aspirational standards all in one document is a good idea, and I personally struggle to see how including essentially unenforceable aspects of the UCoC will do anything other than weaken the effectiveness of rest of the document. For example, I cannot imagine anyone being sanctioned in any way for "failure to thank" or "failure to mentor", although both of these are considered expectations in the "Civility" section; and one thing that a Uniform Code of Conduct would logically have is a uniform enforcement scheme.
Nonetheless, I do believe that it is within the Board's scope and responsibility to approve this and other global policies designed to protect the WMF, the projects, the users of the websites, and the content managers/editors/etc (what we often call "the community").
Risker/Anne
On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 17:28, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
The community has not approved the WMF's UCoC. It is not a Wikimedia policy, it is not binding, it has no authority. The WMF does not control the Wikimedia projects, and has no jurisdiction in this area.
The community rejected this over and over again. It is harmful that the Board is pretending they can do this unilaterally.
-- Yair Rand
בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-6:59 מאת María Sefidari <maria@wikimedia.org>:
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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
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@Risker: The Global sysop policy was created through a sequence of proposals, considerable debate and editing, and a vote in which over 1800 contributors participated. The Global ban policy had an RFC on Meta. Afaik, the Board also had no involvement in the Steward policy, the global checkuser and oversight policies, or the policies for Global Rollback, Abuse Filter helpers, or New wiki importers global user groups.
The Terms of Use were drafted with a lengthy community editing process, although the Board did the final approval. The 2014 amendment to the ToU also had a long community discussion, with over 1000 supporters of the change, with the Board implementing the community-supported amendment. The community's decisions were critical to these, and the Board did not unilaterally impose anything on the community.
I do not see any reason for the community to listen to the Board on the UCoC. I doubt anyone thinks that the Board or WMF has a better idea of how to put together conduct policies than the community. Certainly the complete failure to notice basic flaws in the document attest to that. Maybe at some point in the future the community can put together a clear set of basic global conduct rules, but the WMF's UCoC is not it.
(And a fun fact: The Board approved the UCoC on December 9, the same day as the bylaws change, and yet again violated the Board's rules about publishing resolutions within a week, for the at least 19th time in the past year, out of 24 known resolutions.)
(Also, contrary to the recent WMF blog post on the UCoC, the WMF also does not "administer Wikipedia", a mistake they have made for the second time now.)
-- Yair Rand
בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-21:34 מאת Risker <risker.wp@gmail.com >:
While I often agree with you, Yair Rand, in this case I think you're mistaken. Aside from the long-ago "community vote" on licensing (which was pretty much required based on the prior licensing scheme), every Wikimedia-wide policy has been authorized by the WMF Board of Trustees. That includes the terms of use and the privacy policy. As the technical owners of the infrastructure, the WMF Board does have the right (if not the responsibility) to identify the manner in which the websites it supports and hosts can be used, and I think this principle is actually pretty widely held, at least in the abstract (i.e., hosting organizations can and should apply standards on the services they host). In every policy-related case that I have reviewed going back to the very earliest days, there has been at least some level of community discussion, and there have always been detractors of every policy the Board has approved; that has not made the policies either invalid or unworkable.
I've never been convinced that including a mixture of required, forbidden, and aspirational standards all in one document is a good idea, and I personally struggle to see how including essentially unenforceable aspects of the UCoC will do anything other than weaken the effectiveness of rest of the document. For example, I cannot imagine anyone being sanctioned in any way for "failure to thank" or "failure to mentor", although both of these are considered expectations in the "Civility" section; and one thing that a Uniform Code of Conduct would logically have is a uniform enforcement scheme.
Nonetheless, I do believe that it is within the Board's scope and responsibility to approve this and other global policies designed to protect the WMF, the projects, the users of the websites, and the content managers/editors/etc (what we often call "the community").
Risker/Anne
On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 17:28, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
The community has not approved the WMF's UCoC. It is not a Wikimedia policy, it is not binding, it has no authority. The WMF does not control the Wikimedia projects, and has no jurisdiction in this area.
The community rejected this over and over again. It is harmful that the Board is pretending they can do this unilaterally.
-- Yair Rand
בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-6:59 מאת María Sefidari < maria@wikimedia.org>:
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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
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the WMF also does not "administer Wikipedia", a mistake they have made for the second time now.
a very risky mistake too, hope legal is taking note as it also demonstrates why its necessary to have a practical and public difference in naming between Wikimedia and Wikipedia
On Wed, 3 Feb 2021 at 17:38, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
@Risker: The Global sysop policy was created through a sequence of proposals, considerable debate and editing, and a vote in which over 1800 contributors participated. The Global ban policy had an RFC on Meta. Afaik, the Board also had no involvement in the Steward policy, the global checkuser and oversight policies, or the policies for Global Rollback, Abuse Filter helpers, or New wiki importers global user groups.
The Terms of Use were drafted with a lengthy community editing process, although the Board did the final approval. The 2014 amendment to the ToU also had a long community discussion, with over 1000 supporters of the change, with the Board implementing the community-supported amendment. The community's decisions were critical to these, and the Board did not unilaterally impose anything on the community.
I do not see any reason for the community to listen to the Board on the UCoC. I doubt anyone thinks that the Board or WMF has a better idea of how to put together conduct policies than the community. Certainly the complete failure to notice basic flaws in the document attest to that. Maybe at some point in the future the community can put together a clear set of basic global conduct rules, but the WMF's UCoC is not it.
(And a fun fact: The Board approved the UCoC on December 9, the same day as the bylaws change, and yet again violated the Board's rules about publishing resolutions within a week, for the at least 19th time in the past year, out of 24 known resolutions.)
(Also, contrary to the recent WMF blog post on the UCoC, the WMF also does not "administer Wikipedia", a mistake they have made for the second time now.)
-- Yair Rand
בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-21:34 מאת Risker <risker.wp@gmail.com >:
While I often agree with you, Yair Rand, in this case I think you're mistaken. Aside from the long-ago "community vote" on licensing (which was pretty much required based on the prior licensing scheme), every Wikimedia-wide policy has been authorized by the WMF Board of Trustees. That includes the terms of use and the privacy policy. As the technical owners of the infrastructure, the WMF Board does have the right (if not the responsibility) to identify the manner in which the websites it supports and hosts can be used, and I think this principle is actually pretty widely held, at least in the abstract (i.e., hosting organizations can and should apply standards on the services they host). In every policy-related case that I have reviewed going back to the very earliest days, there has been at least some level of community discussion, and there have always been detractors of every policy the Board has approved; that has not made the policies either invalid or unworkable.
I've never been convinced that including a mixture of required, forbidden, and aspirational standards all in one document is a good idea, and I personally struggle to see how including essentially unenforceable aspects of the UCoC will do anything other than weaken the effectiveness of rest of the document. For example, I cannot imagine anyone being sanctioned in any way for "failure to thank" or "failure to mentor", although both of these are considered expectations in the "Civility" section; and one thing that a Uniform Code of Conduct would logically have is a uniform enforcement scheme.
Nonetheless, I do believe that it is within the Board's scope and responsibility to approve this and other global policies designed to protect the WMF, the projects, the users of the websites, and the content managers/editors/etc (what we often call "the community").
Risker/Anne
On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 17:28, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
The community has not approved the WMF's UCoC. It is not a Wikimedia policy, it is not binding, it has no authority. The WMF does not control the Wikimedia projects, and has no jurisdiction in this area.
The community rejected this over and over again. It is harmful that the Board is pretending they can do this unilaterally.
-- Yair Rand
בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-6:59 מאת María Sefidari < maria@wikimedia.org>:
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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
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The servers are owned by WMF. And they can then state basic rules that all must apply to. And especially for hatred and threats they must by law enforce a proper policy
We have seen Facebook and Twitter be more proactive and the law in EU goes further with demanding basic acceptable language and behaviour for what is being done on a service providers platform.
The community can not override law or what the platform provider deem to be necessary. We cab discuss how they came to this decision, but the UCoC have been discussed in length and the communities have influence in the appointments of a majority of the members in the Board
Anders
So have facebook and Teittwer done Den 2021-02-03 kl. 10:37, skrev Yair Rand:
@Risker: The Global sysop policy was created through a sequence of proposals, considerable debate and editing, and a vote in which over 1800 contributors participated. The Global ban policy had an RFC on Meta. Afaik, the Board also had no involvement in the Steward policy, the global checkuser and oversight policies, or the policies for Global Rollback, Abuse Filter helpers, or New wiki importers global user groups.
The Terms of Use were drafted with a lengthy community editing process, although the Board did the final approval. The 2014 amendment to the ToU also had a long community discussion, with over 1000 supporters of the change, with the Board implementing the community-supported amendment. The community's decisions were critical to these, and the Board did not unilaterally impose anything on the community.
I do not see any reason for the community to listen to the Board on the UCoC. I doubt anyone thinks that the Board or WMF has a better idea of how to put together conduct policies than the community. Certainly the complete failure to notice basic flaws in the document attest to that. Maybe at some point in the future the community can put together a clear set of basic global conduct rules, but the WMF's UCoC is not it.
(And a fun fact: The Board approved the UCoC on December 9, the same day as the bylaws change, and yet again violated the Board's rules about publishing resolutions within a week, for the at least 19th time in the past year, out of 24 known resolutions.)
(Also, contrary to the recent WMF blog post on the UCoC, the WMF also does not "administer Wikipedia", a mistake they have made for the second time now.)
-- Yair Rand
בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-21:34 מאת Risker <risker.wp@gmail.com mailto:risker.wp@gmail.com>:
While I often agree with you, Yair Rand, in this case I think you're mistaken. Aside from the long-ago "community vote" on licensing (which was pretty much required based on the prior licensing scheme), every Wikimedia-wide policy has been authorized by the WMF Board of Trustees. That includes the terms of use and the privacy policy. As the technical owners of the infrastructure, the WMF Board does have the right (if not the responsibility) to identify the manner in which the websites it supports and hosts can be used, and I think this principle is actually pretty widely held, at least in the abstract (i.e., hosting organizations can and should apply standards on the services they host). In every policy-related case that I have reviewed going back to the very earliest days, there has been at least some level of community discussion, and there have always been detractors of every policy the Board has approved; that has not made the policies either invalid or unworkable. I've never been convinced that including a mixture of required, forbidden, and aspirational standards all in one document is a good idea, and I personally struggle to see how including essentially unenforceable aspects of the UCoC will do anything other than weaken the effectiveness of rest of the document. For example, I cannot imagine anyone being sanctioned in any way for "failure to thank" or "failure to mentor", although both of these are considered expectations in the "Civility" section; and one thing that a Uniform Code of Conduct would logically have is a uniform enforcement scheme. Nonetheless, I do believe that it is within the Board's scope and responsibility to approve this and other global policies designed to protect the WMF, the projects, the users of the websites, and the content managers/editors/etc (what we often call "the community"). Risker/Anne On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 17:28, Yair Rand <yyairrand@gmail.com <mailto:yyairrand@gmail.com>> wrote: The community has not approved the WMF's UCoC. It is not a Wikimedia policy, it is not binding, it has no authority. The WMF does not control the Wikimedia projects, and has no jurisdiction in this area. The community rejected this over and over again. It is harmful that the Board is pretending they can do this unilaterally. -- Yair Rand בתאריך יום ג׳, 2 בפבר׳ 2021 ב-6:59 מאת María Sefidari <maria@wikimedia.org <mailto:maria@wikimedia.org>>: 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> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines> and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l>, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org>?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines> and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l>, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org>?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines> and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l>, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org>?subject=unsubscribe>
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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+
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 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+ -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 11:58, María Sefidari 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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
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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
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
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Dear all,
Please allow me to add a solution to issue 1 as a brilliant colleague reminded my mistake for not putting any solution for that problem.
My ideal solution is to replace the word "reasonable person" with some equivalent words like "common sense" though that is not accurate as "reasonable man". The criteria will not be removed along with the replacement of the word "reasonable person". The 7 examples in current version are definitely not problematic and I would encourage to make such a list.
The reason is that for users from out of common law world, they might need a little bit training to get the sense of judgment. That is a waste of manpower and time and, makes the Code not universal enough. I would like to see more documents, even with examples, to explain and form the mind of "commons sense". That great fellow said we may make some FQA, and I think that is a great solution.
I apology for any inconvenience caused by that. If there is any other issue, you may find me on Telegram or by email.
Best Regards, Arthur Cheung User:だ＊ぜ (Dasze) Board Member of Wikimedia Community User Group Hong Kong (WMHKG) Telegram: @Dasze
Arthur Cheung arthurcheunglw@gmail.com 於 2021年2月20日 P.M.11:50 寫道：
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 mailto: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
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
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In what way would this clarify anything? Common sense is not so common, and sometimes is not even rational. Reasonable person at least provides some conditions for testing, though is also clearly not very useful in a multicultural environment.
Cheers,
Peter
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Arthur Cheung Sent: 20 February 2021 20:33 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board Ratification of Universal Code of Conduct
Dear all,
Please allow me to add a solution to issue 1 as a brilliant colleague reminded my mistake for not putting any solution for that problem.
My ideal solution is to replace the word "reasonable person" with some equivalent words like "common sense" though that is not accurate as "reasonable man". The criteria will not be removed along with the replacement of the word "reasonable person". The 7 examples in current version are definitely not problematic and I would encourage to make such a list.
The reason is that for users from out of common law world, they might need a little bit training to get the sense of judgment. That is a waste of manpower and time and, makes the Code not universal enough. I would like to see more documents, even with examples, to explain and form the mind of "commons sense". That great fellow said we may make some FQA, and I think that is a great solution.
I apology for any inconvenience caused by that. If there is any other issue, you may find me on Telegram or by email.
Best Regards,
Arthur Cheung User:だ＊ぜ (Dasze)
Board Member of Wikimedia Community User Group Hong Kong (WMHKG)
Telegram: @Dasze
Arthur Cheung arthurcheunglw@gmail.com 於 2021年2月20日 P.M.11:50 寫道：
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 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+
A "reasonable person test" has in it a bias because what is reasonable in one culture may not be in another especially when it comes to language use like this tourist promo in Australia https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-08/c-u-in-the-nt-tourism-slogan-causes-s... , Common sense is equally troublesome for the same reason. Whatever the UCoC says it is, it's going to be how to implement it in a fair and just manner.
The hardest thing is explaining why something is offensive to someone who's never experienced the culture, Wikipedia does sit in conflict with "not censored" policy that allows for abusive issues to be written and discussed. Over 15 odd years I have seen a lot of barrows being pushed that are more about trolling than real productive story telling, and an almost equal amount where trolling is attributed to what are legitimate topics in need of discussion.
Potential tests:
1. when is the image of a severed head acceptable 2. when does the Charlie Hebdo line get crossed 3. what about the that image of Jimmy and the people who pushed that envelope, many of whom are now banned or just left 4. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-08/c-u-in-the-nt-tourism-slogan-causes-s... 1. while it is still generally offensive, the nuances means it's also culturally kind of ok
What is offensive today will change tomorrow, and it will be different from yesterday. Perhaps the test should be more: A person who when erring on the side of caution can appreciate that there is offense.
On Sun, 21 Feb 2021 at 14:46, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
In what way would this clarify anything? Common sense is not so common, and sometimes is not even rational. Reasonable person at least provides some conditions for testing, though is also clearly not very useful in a multicultural environment.
Cheers,
Peter
*From:* Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Arthur Cheung *Sent:* 20 February 2021 20:33 *To:* Wikimedia Mailing List *Subject:* Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board Ratification of Universal Code of Conduct
Dear all,
Please allow me to add a solution to issue 1 as a brilliant colleague reminded my mistake for not putting any solution for that problem.
My ideal solution is to replace the word "reasonable person" with some equivalent words like "common sense" though that is not accurate as "reasonable man". The criteria will not be removed along with the replacement of the word "reasonable person". The 7 examples in current version are definitely not problematic and I would encourage to make such a list.
The reason is that for users from out of common law world, they might need a little bit training to get the sense of judgment. That is a waste of manpower and time and, makes the Code not universal enough. I would like to see more documents, even with examples, to explain and form the mind of "commons sense". That great fellow said we may make some FQA, and I think that is a great solution.
I apology for any inconvenience caused by that. If there is any other issue, you may find me on Telegram or by email.
Best Regards,
Arthur Cheung User:だ＊ぜ (Dasze)
Board Member of Wikimedia Community User Group Hong Kong (WMHKG)
Telegram: @Dasze
Arthur Cheung arthurcheunglw@gmail.com 於 2021年2月20日 P.M.11:50 寫道：
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 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+ -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 11:58, María Sefidari 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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
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It's so great to see the Universal Code of Conduct come to fruition. As a movement we were severly lagging behind others in adopting a code of conduct, and I'm glad to see we've reached parity. This is a step in the right direction.
Dan
On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 11:59, María Sefidari 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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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
Congrats to everyone (and I'm talking about 50+ people here) who helped to make this possible!
On Mon, 22 Feb 2021 at 15:00, Dan Garry (Deskana) djgwiki@gmail.com wrote:
It's so great to see the Universal Code of Conduct come to fruition. As a movement we were severly lagging behind others in adopting a code of conduct, and I'm glad to see we've reached parity. This is a step in the right direction.
Dan
On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 11:59, María Sefidari 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
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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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As Gnangarra has stated and what I want to state, the reasonable man test has in it a bias. I have also stated that we may use some equivalent words, not a must for using "common sense". I understand the limitation of "common sense", and would like to state such a word is definitely not the best solution. Yet, I cannot find a proper solution to replace the word "reasonable person", as I am also using English logic to think of the articles of UCoC. I therefore highly encourage people using other languages may give their suggestions as choices.
In the way we find the alternative word of "reasonable person", I also encourage to make more examples to help people make their mind clearer. The examples do help people to find the pattern and form their sense.
Arthur Cheung User:だ＊ぜ (Dasze) Board Member of Wikimedia Community User Group Hong Kong (WMHKG)
Dan Garry (Deskana) djgwiki@gmail.com 於 2021年2月22日 P.M.10:59 寫道：
It's so great to see the Universal Code of Conduct come to fruition. As a movement we were severly lagging behind others in adopting a code of conduct, and I'm glad to see we've reached parity. This is a step in the right direction.
Dan
On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 at 11:59, 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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