Hoi, What Jimmy does or does not from within his own organisation has nothing to do with the Wikimedia Foundation. You know that.. Thanks, GerardM

On Thu, 9 Dec 2021 at 22:20, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:

Given the topic of human rights, I would like to point out that we have not had any reply on what happened to the $500k UAE award Jimmy Wales pledged he would use – every last penny – for human rights work with his Jimmy Wales Foundation.

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/jimmy-wales-uae-prize-money/

According to the Foundation's filed paperwork, only a far smaller amount ever arrived with said Foundation. It would be good to know that the remainder, too, was used in line with the public pledge made at the time.

For further details see my earlier post to this mailing list:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/...

Andreas

On Thu, Dec 9, 2021 at 6:38 PM Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:

...

Criticism of the process:

• No public consultation or even announcement was done before the policy

was finalized. No opportunity to influence the outcome was given.

• The policy was preceded by a human rights impact assessment,

commissioned by the WMF. The report was given to the WMF in July, but has still not been made public.

• No details are given on the mentioned "Human Rights Steering

Committee", including structure or membership.

• It looks like the policy wasn't even proofread before approval, and is

exceedingly ambiguous in parts.

• The policy is stated to act as a "North Star" guiding the efforts of

other parts of the movement as well, ignoring the WMF's actual position relative to the other groups and where movement guidance actually comes from.

Given the level of disassociation between this process and Wikimedia, it's hard to tell how to interpret these events. This looks to me like another example of the WMF simultaneously marginalizing itself from the movement while also pushing itself as a greater portion of activities. This is a problem.

(The merits of the actual text are separate from the process issues, and this criticism should not be taken as a position on the correctness/value of such a policy.)

-- Yair Rand

‫בתאריך יום ה׳, 9 בדצמ׳ 2021 ב-10:25 מאת ‪Richard Gaines‬‏ <‪ rgaines@wikimedia.org‬‏>:‬

...

Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation’s Global Advocacy team is excited to announce the approval of the Human Rights Policy https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Policy#Frequently_Asked_Questions by the Board of Trustees on 8 December 2021. Please read our blog post https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/12/09/what-the-wikimedia-foundations-new-human-rights-policy-means-for-our-movement/ about the policy and what it means for the Wikimedia Foundation’s work in the coming years on Diff. We invite you to join representatives of the Foundation’s Global Advocacy and Human Rights teams here http://meet.google.com/wio-vdkw-phd for a conversation hour tomorrow, 10 December, at 10:00 AM ET (15:00 UTC) to address any immediate concerns, questions, or suggestions regarding this policy or how it will be implemented. The session will be recorded for later viewing and you may submit questions by email to myself (rgaines@wikimedia.org) and Ziski Putz (zputz@wikimedia.org) ahead of or following the conversation hour. Additional conversation hours on this policy will be made available in the coming weeks.

Best regards,

*Ricky Gaines *(he/him/his) Senior Manager, Advocacy Audiences Wikimedia Foundation rgaines@wikimedia.org

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Greetings and salutations.

I am also excited and inspired by the release of the Human Rights Policy and on the occasion of Human Rights Day, wanted to contribute to this intriguing conversation.

Addressing the conflicts between the different policy instruments and their constitutive provisions, international human rights law and advocacy is a constant exercise in the balancing of rights, liberties, and other protections. I think isolating the right to a 'just and favorable remuneration clause’ from Article 23 itself and the Declaration of Human Rights as a whole is misleading, at the very least confusing. (See http://www.claiminghumanrights.org/work_definition.html http://www.claiminghumanrights.org/work_definition.html for more context). For a discussion faithful to the protection of human rights as an objective, and as a North Star - the issues related to volunteer work need to also incorporate the distinctions within the international human rights regime generally and policy instruments identified specifically.

The fundamental values of the right to work protections are primarily about discrimination amongst workers, and the support for societal protections of public benefits explicitly directed at state actors in relationship to citizens. The public policy issues specifically contemplated for work without pay is focused on forced labor, underaged labor, and as also mentioned in this thread - about the rights to collective bargaining. Distinctions regarding work towards public goods vs. private goods, modalities of motivation and reputation economies, household labor and volunteer expectations of paid employees are some starting points for thinking this through. An interpretation of the remuneration clause however requiring pay for all productive labor is not only untenable, but also in conflict with the recognition of various UN bodies of the importance and necessity of volunteer work to the progress towards sustainable development goals.

I do not intend to dismiss the admittedly complex considerations of open knowledge/open source economics was they relate to human rights. Not being a regular contributor to these discussions, I chime in because I agree that these questions shouldn’t be ignored. The foundational contribution in the issuance of Wikimedia's Human Rights Policy in fact enables the serious consideration of how these tensions play out in context, rather than minimizing them.

There are likely other places one might start, but it seems to me that the International Labor Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Right to Work (https://www.ilo.org/declaration/lang--en/index.htm https://www.ilo.org/declaration/lang--en/index.htm), identified as one of the core instruments in the Human Rights Policy, seem most promising. The related ILO "Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment, and labor underutilization” (https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---stat/documents/norm... https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---stat/documents/normativeinstrument/wcms_230304.pdf) (Oct., 2013) is instructive in parsing out the above referenced distinctions. The ILO Volunteer Work Measurement Guide (https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---stat/documents/publ... https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---stat/documents/publication/wcms_789950.pdf) (May, 2021) further guides how to operationalize these principles. The UN Handbook on Non-Profit Institutions in the System of National Accounts (https://unstats.un.org/unsd/publication/seriesf/seriesf_91e.pdf https://unstats.un.org/unsd/publication/seriesf/seriesf_91e.pdf) is also helping in getting to greater clarity and deliberative consensus.

Congratulations again to the Wikimedia communities for this important public step and commitment to global leadership on respect for human rights.

Thanks, Eddan

On Dec 9, 2021, at 8:06 PM, Bodhisattwa Mandal bodhisattwa.rgkmc@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,

I find a human rights policy based on major human rights documents of the world very conflicting and equally amusing in an organization which grows itself in an inherently exploitative system feeding on volunteer works. While volunteers from around the world, who generate contents and technologies every day, build partnerships to gather more human knowledge, man different committees to make important decisions for the movement and so on and without whom the Wikimedia movement would not exist at all, are not remunerated in any way, forget ensuring minimum wage for their time and effort or social protection, medical care etc. and the organization which collects weath based on these people's works talk about Universal Declaration of Human Rights whose Articles 23 and 25 say about right to just and favorable remuneration, social protection, equal pay for equal work etc. I would be very interested to see if this policy, mentioned as North Star, can guide the movement addressing the conflicting and complicated issue w.r.t. human rights in the future.

Regards, Bodhisattwa

On Thu, Dec 9, 2021, 20:55 Richard Gaines <rgaines@wikimedia.org mailto:rgaines@wikimedia.org> wrote: Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation’s Global Advocacy team is excited to announce the approval of the Human Rights Policy https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Policy#Frequently_Asked_Questions by the Board of Trustees on 8 December 2021. Please read our blog post https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/12/09/what-the-wikimedia-foundations-new-human-rights-policy-means-for-our-movement/ about the policy and what it means for the Wikimedia Foundation’s work in the coming years on Diff. We invite you to join representatives of the Foundation’s Global Advocacy and Human Rights teams here http://meet.google.com/wio-vdkw-phd for a conversation hour tomorrow, 10 December, at 10:00 AM ET (15:00 UTC) to address any immediate concerns, questions, or suggestions regarding this policy or how it will be implemented. The session will be recorded for later viewing and you may submit questions by email to myself (rgaines@wikimedia.org mailto:rgaines@wikimedia.org) and Ziski Putz (zputz@wikimedia.org mailto:zputz@wikimedia.org) ahead of or following the conversation hour. Additional conversation hours on this policy will be made available in the coming weeks.

Best regards,

Ricky Gaines (he/him/his) Senior Manager, Advocacy Audiences Wikimedia Foundation rgaines@wikimedia.org mailto:rgaines@wikimedia.org

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Hi everyone,

Thank you for your replies.

Sam makes some great points and suggestions. Indeed, the Movement’s free knowledge agenda is about freedom *to* which is why the first sentence of the policy says: “The Wikimedia Movement’s vision—of a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge—both relies upon and enables human rights. “ [1]

As I stated in the conversation hour [2], the Foundation urgently needs such a policy in order to meet our responsibility to protect members of our community from real, growing threats in the world. More governments are increasingly aggressive about trying to control and manipulate information spaces, including Wikimedia projects, and to threaten people who act to share knowledge, and govern free knowledge projects independently of their governments’ requirements. At the same time, as the Foundation globalizes and as the Movement works actively to increase participation across the world, a growing percentage of people who we are bringing into the projects are living in places where contributing to free knowledge projects is more difficult or dangerous than it is for people in North America or Western Europe or other places where the projects have the largest number of long-time volunteers. For this among other reasons, we believe it is urgent to have a policy that clearly articulates the Foundation’s responsibility to actively work to understand how our platforms and operations affect the rights of everyone who interacts with the projects, how we will work to mitigate threats and harms to members of the movement, and how we will work with people across the Movement to implement these policies over the coming years. We don’t believe that our responsibility to respect, protect and promote human rights is up for negotiation.

That said, as Ricky and I wrote in the blog post [3], the Foundation is absolutely committed to a long term process, in partnership with volunteers, extending into the coming months and years well beyond this thread, to discuss all the different ways in which the policy should be implemented.

There is a lot to digest in the responses we have received, not just on this thread but also from other volunteers who have reached out in different ways. We are compiling all of the suggestions and questions. We hope that we can find a number of ways to hold both real-time and asynchronous conversations, perhaps broken down by specific topics and concerns. In any case, we look forward to the concrete steps that need to be taken not only to implement the policy but to connect it to many other existing efforts that are all - fundamentally - about different aspects of human rights as Sam rightly points out.

Thanks so much and have a great weekend. Rebecca

[1] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Human_Rights_Policy [2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conversation_Hour_for_Human_Rights_Po... [3] https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/12/09/what-the-wikimedia-foundations-new-hum...

On Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 8:07 PM geni geniice@gmail.com wrote: <snip>

You and who's army? If one of the world's more questionable governments decides to target Wikipedians within its territory there's not a thing you can do about about it. You’re not France. You can’t threaten governments into submission (and if one of the most powerful states on earth can’t get Zara Radcliffe out you certainly can’t).

You’re not a mineral extraction company. You don’t have mercenaries on retainer to try and get your people out.

You policy is worse than useless. It doesn’t help at all but marginally increases the risk of being involved with Wikipedia as what can be seen as a harmless hobby writing about trains turns into being involved with a human rights campaigning organisation.

There seems to be a lot of distress in this email, and I'm sorry to see it. :( I hope I can speak thoughtfully to these issues without raising dangers or making it seem like your concerns - which are completely valid and which I share - are being minimized.

For those who don't know me, I'm the VP of Community Resilience and Sustainability https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability. For full disclosure, I'm not one of the team working on the Human Rights Policy directly, but one of the people who is working on that directly does report up through my line to me. I hired him. He is our Human Rights Lead in charge of working to intervene in exactly such situations. We hired him because we have faced exactly such situations, and we needed competent approaches for threats that would arise whether we wanted them to or not.

I'm only going to speak here to that element of this policy, since it is one of the specific areas of my focus.

I've spoken about our human rights interventions at the higher level in my office hours several times over the past year. (They are linked, with notes, from the page above.) The role rose when an early approach one of my teams led to collaborate across particularly high risk regions on finding resources for people in trouble https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Voices_under_Threat led us to find more critical need for direct support. We CANNOT threaten governments. We are NOT an extraction company. You are totally correct. We need to stay humble in our approaches. Instead, the Human Rights Team https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Team who supports threats on the ground is working on several initiatives to help that includes digital security training and importantly partnerships with organizations around the world who DO have these abilities.

Raising the danger of Wikimedians is something I take very, very seriously. Where I work, I can't help but be incredibly aware that no matter how it is seen, being involved with Wikipedia is not - for many - a harmless hobby writing about trains. Some of the people we've tried to support have joined it expecting precisely that, only to find that malign actors around them already perceived it differently and attempted to pressure or harm them to get what they wanted.

Our Global Advocacy and Policy teams have the hard job of trying to support an environment wherein knowledge remains free. I admire them for it and recognize the hard haul of what they're doing, in a shifting legislative landscape where this can't be taken for granted anywhere.

My focus is on the people who contribute. I think they must be *informed* - must know the risks when and where they engage - and must be supported in doing so *as safely as possible*. I think when things go wrong they need to have somebody who can help them. Our Human Rights Team is making connections so that when the things that go wrong come from organized persecution (<--best words I can think of to describe terrorism, government groups, etc. This is distinct from individuals being jerks to each other.)

We are short-staffed at the end of the calendar year and with the rising tide of illnesses globally again, but I do want to note that while I have contributed some information to the FAQ that will be issued by the Global Advocacy Team in due course, I know there's a lot of interest in precisely HOW we work with people who are persecuted.

Y'all, I'm very sorry, but I can't lay out our playbook. Geni is completely right that this can raise the threat level for people. I always think about the English Wikipedia's essay on BEANs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_stuff_beans_up_your_nose. I don't want to give people ideas or make it easier for them to exploit gaps in our ability to handle problems. For this reason, I've always struggled with whether it's better to* not *raise the specter of human rights violations to those who might not have considered that there are rights to violate here or to *not* inform the community at large that some people are violating those rights already. There are pros and cons for both approaches, and while I know we won't get the balance perfect I will myself keep trying to figure out how to do it right.

It's also true that it's not yet an "If this/then that" situation. My team also handles the emergency@ workflow, which is very straightforward - assess incoming concerns against a protocol developed by a professional external agency and pass it along to international responders as appropriate through well-defined contacts. Easy to lay out what we do, how we do it, why we do it the way we do it. There's nothing straightforward about this work. We are building out global systems, but work closely with individuals to understand the nature of the threat and to help them tap into safe existing systems for their support.

I'm pretty happy about this policy myself. We've been building out these capacities for a few years now, but there's a lot of ground still to cover. The policy helps (imo) support that our commitment to this remains top of mind. And I think it is the right time, with the systems we HAVE created, to discuss the manifestations of such abuse a little more publicly, in order to protect our people and to better understand as Wikimedians how our own systems may put people in danger.

Sorry for the lot of words. I really want this to remain a safe place for people to write about trains but also about other things. I also will have limited time to respond to follow-ups over the next few weeks for the reasons I mentioned above, but I am due for another office hour where I may be able to talk with those of you who want to about the aspects of our interventions that can be discussed without raising danger.

Warm regards, Maggie

Hi, Dan.

With respect to this - "And telling the community things like that "there's a secret playbook we have" is making everything worse. *Why* is there a secret playbook for a collaborative movement? That is not how collaboration and consensus work." - I *do* understand that there is a tension between transparency and safety at times, and I'm sure we can do the balance better. We have talked a bit about our approach with NDA-holding community groups and iterated a lot on our approach in non-public conversations with community members who have observed or experienced these kinds of issues on our platforms. We keep exploring ways to be more transparent. The reason that we do not discuss our protocols in responding to human rights threats against users is that not only Wikimedians can see them and make use of that information. I suspect these are similar reasons that there are other closed forums like the functionaries mailing lists and a private steward wiki. The Human Rights Team is, as their Meta page notes, planning to build out a Human Rights Interest group within the community, but we are a long way from being able to publicly discuss what we are and are not well equipped to handle without essentially highlighting weaknesses in our system and making community members more vulnerable to exploitation.

I know that doesn't resolve the concern, but I do hope that it helps to clarify my own position better.

Warm regards, Maggie

On Mon, Dec 20, 2021 at 11:12 PM Dan Szymborski dszymborski@gmail.com wrote:

The fundamental problem here is that the WMF's response to everything is simply *reactive*. A policy is instituted, with zero real collaboration, little or no discussion, foggy goals, sparsely answered direct questions and then simply announced to the community in faux-press release fashion. And then when people in the community like Andreas Kolbe, who has been an important voice of caution on many issues, speak up, they're told that this isn't the specific bureaucratically appointed time to have a discussion.

Then, various WMF-affiliated people assure that we can talk about this, which is basically "this is our decision, not yours, but we'll be happy to tell you why we did this, though we're not going to change anything" with any substantive changes require near rebellion in the Wiki movement. And telling the community things like that "there's a secret playbook we have" is making everything worse. *Why* is there a secret playbook for a collaborative movement? That is not how collaboration and consensus work.

If I and my five friends are collaborating to make a fancy dinner, that involves *discussing*. It doesn't mean that I decide what the six dishes will be, inform the other five friends what my decision is, and then simply assuage them afterwards that I'd love to hear their input. If K says she doesn't like the parsnip dish I decided on, I don't say "well, I considered that as part of my decision, so that's that." If P asks why we don't have a dessert, I don't tell him that this is not the time of the dinner planning that we may talk about dish choices, but he can ask about it between 4 PM and 4:30 PM next Tuesday. My friends would get very angry at this very quickly.

The WMF likes the *idea* of this being a community-driven, collaborative project rather than actually doing the stuff that *makes* it a community-driven, collaborative project. How many times does this process have to repeat in identical fashion before we stop pretending that this *is* a community-driven collaborative project? If the goal is simply to be another generic top-down Silicon Valley information charity, just one that has somehow procured a gigantic unpaid workforce that the elites can command, then just state it outright so that people don't spend their free hours toiling in the delusion they're part of a movement.

Best,

Dan

On Mon, Dec 20, 2021 at 8:52 AM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

On Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 8:07 PM geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:

<snip>

...

You and who's army? If one of the world's more questionable governments decides to target Wikipedians within its territory there's not a thing you can do about about it. You’re not France. You can’t threaten governments into submission (and if one of the most powerful states on earth can’t get Zara Radcliffe out you certainly can’t).

You’re not a mineral extraction company. You don’t have mercenaries on retainer to try and get your people out.

You policy is worse than useless. It doesn’t help at all but marginally increases the risk of being involved with Wikipedia as what can be seen as a harmless hobby writing about trains turns into being involved with a human rights campaigning organisation.

There seems to be a lot of distress in this email, and I'm sorry to see it. :( I hope I can speak thoughtfully to these issues without raising dangers or making it seem like your concerns - which are completely valid and which I share - are being minimized.

For those who don't know me, I'm the VP of Community Resilience and Sustainability https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability. For full disclosure, I'm not one of the team working on the Human Rights Policy directly, but one of the people who is working on that directly does report up through my line to me. I hired him. He is our Human Rights Lead in charge of working to intervene in exactly such situations. We hired him because we have faced exactly such situations, and we needed competent approaches for threats that would arise whether we wanted them to or not.

I'm only going to speak here to that element of this policy, since it is one of the specific areas of my focus.

I've spoken about our human rights interventions at the higher level in my office hours several times over the past year. (They are linked, with notes, from the page above.) The role rose when an early approach one of my teams led to collaborate across particularly high risk regions on finding resources for people in trouble https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Voices_under_Threat led us to find more critical need for direct support. We CANNOT threaten governments. We are NOT an extraction company. You are totally correct. We need to stay humble in our approaches. Instead, the Human Rights Team https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Team who supports threats on the ground is working on several initiatives to help that includes digital security training and importantly partnerships with organizations around the world who DO have these abilities.

Raising the danger of Wikimedians is something I take very, very seriously. Where I work, I can't help but be incredibly aware that no matter how it is seen, being involved with Wikipedia is not - for many - a harmless hobby writing about trains. Some of the people we've tried to support have joined it expecting precisely that, only to find that malign actors around them already perceived it differently and attempted to pressure or harm them to get what they wanted.

Our Global Advocacy and Policy teams have the hard job of trying to support an environment wherein knowledge remains free. I admire them for it and recognize the hard haul of what they're doing, in a shifting legislative landscape where this can't be taken for granted anywhere.

My focus is on the people who contribute. I think they must be *informed*

• must know the risks when and where they engage - and must be supported in

doing so *as safely as possible*. I think when things go wrong they need to have somebody who can help them. Our Human Rights Team is making connections so that when the things that go wrong come from organized persecution (<--best words I can think of to describe terrorism, government groups, etc. This is distinct from individuals being jerks to each other.)

We are short-staffed at the end of the calendar year and with the rising tide of illnesses globally again, but I do want to note that while I have contributed some information to the FAQ that will be issued by the Global Advocacy Team in due course, I know there's a lot of interest in precisely HOW we work with people who are persecuted.

Y'all, I'm very sorry, but I can't lay out our playbook. Geni is completely right that this can raise the threat level for people. I always think about the English Wikipedia's essay on BEANs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_stuff_beans_up_your_nose. I don't want to give people ideas or make it easier for them to exploit gaps in our ability to handle problems. For this reason, I've always struggled with whether it's better to* not *raise the specter of human rights violations to those who might not have considered that there are rights to violate here or to *not* inform the community at large that some people are violating those rights already. There are pros and cons for both approaches, and while I know we won't get the balance perfect I will myself keep trying to figure out how to do it right.

It's also true that it's not yet an "If this/then that" situation. My team also handles the emergency@ workflow, which is very straightforward

• assess incoming concerns against a protocol developed by a professional

external agency and pass it along to international responders as appropriate through well-defined contacts. Easy to lay out what we do, how we do it, why we do it the way we do it. There's nothing straightforward about this work. We are building out global systems, but work closely with individuals to understand the nature of the threat and to help them tap into safe existing systems for their support.

I'm pretty happy about this policy myself. We've been building out these capacities for a few years now, but there's a lot of ground still to cover. The policy helps (imo) support that our commitment to this remains top of mind. And I think it is the right time, with the systems we HAVE created, to discuss the manifestations of such abuse a little more publicly, in order to protect our people and to better understand as Wikimedians how our own systems may put people in danger.

Sorry for the lot of words. I really want this to remain a safe place for people to write about trains but also about other things. I also will have limited time to respond to follow-ups over the next few weeks for the reasons I mentioned above, but I am due for another office hour where I may be able to talk with those of you who want to about the aspects of our interventions that can be discussed without raising danger.

Warm regards, Maggie

-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

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Hi, Nosebagbear.

As I said in my first email on the subject (and I said a lot, so I'm not surprised if it gets missed!), I really can only speak to my part of this - I work with the Human Rights Team that does on the ground interventions. The lead of this team has been a substantial input to this process, but the work in the policy is far more expansive than my part. THAT human rights intervention is where we have a playbook to which I refer, and although we don't talk about how, it's not been intended to be a secret that it exists. I first posted about the team on Meta in 2020 and spoke about it at my second office hour, here <http://IRC office hours/Office hours 2020-10-15>. I believe it has come up in subsequent calls, and I have mentioned it in each office hour announcement (at least that I wrote myself). I don't think we can safely talk about HOW we are handling human rights threats to community members, but it's never been my intention to downplay that we're working on it!

I will let the Global Advocacy and Public Policy teams speak to the policy as a whole. But in terms of the questions you mailed in, I imagine they received others as well and are working to aggregate them.

Best, Maggie

On Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 7:31 AM nosebagbear@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Maggie,

Could you answer a few things, or at least provide your (and the team's) reasoning:

1. It has now been stated multiple times it was urgent to get a policy

like this. But you tell us there's a secret playbook already in play, and I can't imagine that has changed immediately just because there's now a visible policy, and with the break shortly occurring, the WMF other teams can't really decide major things with it in mind either. And it also took some time to (seemingly purely internally) write. So why is it taking so long to explain why we're having to wait until after Christmas break to discuss it? *Why is it retroactive discussion at all?*

2. The policy includes the line " use our influence with partners, the

private sector, and governments to advance and uphold respect for human rights." - you say you note the tension from needing to have such a playbook be hidden to remain functional and be a collaborative community.

I don't doubt your reasoning on the playbook, but this line is in effect "the policy team will lobby for better human rights"...but without us knowing the actual execution of methods, specifically raised areas, a complete listing of ongoing areas of focus and so on. There is already a concern that the WMF spends too much time trying to speak for the movement without actually knowing that their specific positions are backed by the movement as a whole. Doing it with this dichotomy in place surely seems even less wise.

3. Back, more generally, to the process issues. I emailed shortly after

this went public, at the time, some considerable time before the Christmas break. I just got a message saying they were collating questions and would answer in the new year. But most of my questions were on either "why was this procedure used" or "why was this paragraph included", rather than substantive content change proposals.

If even I know why I included any given thing in a regular old policy that I help draft and can thus answer questions rapidly, why was this not the case here. Surely the reasoning for each bit of content and failure to publicly consult are already known? So why the lag time?

Yours,

Richard (Nosebagbear) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

Greetings!

As Maggie said, the Global Advocacy/Public Policy team will be sharing more detailed answers to many questions about the Human Rights Policy in January. In the meantime, I thought I'd offer a bit more context that might be helpful.

I joined https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/27/wikimedia-foundation-announces-new-vice-president-for-global-advocacy-rebecca-mackinnon/ the WMF in late September as VP for Global Advocacy and am responsible for the final version of the Human Rights Policy approved by the Board of Trustees, building on a great deal of earlier work led by the WMF's Director of Public Policy (who reports to me) and the WMF's Human Rights Lead who reports to Maggie.

The exact timing of the Human Rights Policy's depended on the Board of Trustees meeting schedule. They had a meeting in early December. The next meeting after that will not be until March. While approving the policy right before the holidays was indeed sub-optimal for reasons many have noted, waiting until March to enact it would be too late for WMF's annual planning cycle. Given that implementation of the policy has implications for how budget is allocated in the coming fiscal year, the consequences of delay beyond the December Board of Trustees meeting would be non-trivial for WMF's ability to anticipate, mitigate, and respond to threats to individuals as well as policy threats to the movement.

Maggie has written about sensitivities surrounding threats to individuals. Regarding policy threats to the movement, our response to those is not intended to be secret. The policy threats include regulatory and other threats by governments that the WMF has a long history of taking stands against, including censorship (an attack on freedom of expression as a human right) and surveillance (an attack on privacy as a human right). The Wikimedia Public Policy portal https://policy.wikimedia.org/ contains information about stances that WMF has taken, and will continue to take. That said, I would like to make an appeal for patience as we ramp up our team and build capacity to engage with the movement, and improve how we communicate about our work.

As many on this list know much better than I do, in 2019 Global Advocacy https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019/Global_advocacy was made a priority in the Medium-term plan https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019 for implementing the 2030 Movement Strategy ratified by the community. As of August 2021 the WMF Public Policy Team had only three people who were making solid progress on policy analysis, development, and engagement on policy issues such as those listed in the Public Policy portal. However, in order to be able to fulfill our objectives of engaging with the community and other stakeholders on our advocacy work, the team badly needed further staff capacity and strategic leadership. Now the team has grown to seven people, but for most of the past three months we have been swamped with onboarding, hiring more people so that we can actually execute on our goals, responding to time-sensitive policy developments in Europe https://medium.com/wikimedia-policy/european-parliament-vote-on-the-digital-services-act-supports-a-free-non-commercial-internet-664ab4fdd1db, Asia https://wikimediapolicy.medium.com/net-neutrality-is-at-risk-in-the-republic-of-korea-b7e9781f6dbc, and Latin America https://www.apc.org/en/pubs/international-civil-society-warns-about-dangers-exercise-rights-bill-regulate-digital-platforms, and showing up in various international fora to defend the interests of our community including on copyright, intermediary liability protections, and net neutrality. All of these things affect the community's ability to access and share free knowledge, which is itself a human right. All of the policy positions taken by our global advocacy team are intended to defend the digital rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights (a subset of human rights, per the excellent Wikipedia article on the subject) of our community members.

Frustratingly, our systems for publishing and communicating about our global advocacy work, and building processes for communicating and collaborating with the the broader community, are either stalled or non-existent as of today. But my job, and that of some new colleagues who are even newer me, and others not yet hired, is to change that as soon as humanly feasible with available resources. My priority for the next couple months is to put people and processes in place so that we can start to publish regularly updated information about our work on the website. We need to create a regular newsletter about what we are doing. We need to share more information on Meta, update it regularly and participate in discussions about it there. We need to establish channels and a productive process to figure out how WMF staff and people across the broader movement can all work together to defend our right to share free knowledge and participate in the governance of free knowledge projects without fear. We have a massive amount of work to do. I look forward to rolling up my sleeves in January to improve communication and collaboration with the community on our global advocacy work in general, and on the implementation of our human rights policy in particular.

I hope that some of this context is helpful, even if inevitably incomplete and unsatisfactory. My colleagues and I look forward to many more exchanges and conversations in the coming year.

Best wishes to all for a happy new year.

Rebecca

Rebecca MacKinnon Vice President, Global Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation Phone/Signal: +1-617-939-3493 Twitter: @rmack

On Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 6:45 AM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:

Link fail. >_< here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2020-10-15 (Sorry for the noise!)

On Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 8:43 AM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

Hi, Nosebagbear.

As I said in my first email on the subject (and I said a lot, so I'm not surprised if it gets missed!), I really can only speak to my part of this - I work with the Human Rights Team that does on the ground interventions. The lead of this team has been a substantial input to this process, but the work in the policy is far more expansive than my part. THAT human rights intervention is where we have a playbook to which I refer, and although we don't talk about how, it's not been intended to be a secret that it exists. I first posted about the team on Meta in 2020 and spoke about it at my second office hour, here. I believe it has come up in subsequent calls, and I have mentioned it in each office hour announcement (at least that I wrote myself). I don't think we can safely talk about HOW we are handling human rights threats to community members, but it's never been my intention to downplay that we're working on it!

I will let the Global Advocacy and Public Policy teams speak to the policy as a whole. But in terms of the questions you mailed in, I imagine they received others as well and are working to aggregate them.

Best, Maggie

On Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 7:31 AM nosebagbear@gmail.com wrote:

...

Hi Maggie,

Could you answer a few things, or at least provide your (and the team's) reasoning:

1. It has now been stated multiple times it was urgent to get a policy

like this. But you tell us there's a secret playbook already in play, and I can't imagine that has changed immediately just because there's now a visible policy, and with the break shortly occurring, the WMF other teams can't really decide major things with it in mind either. And it also took some time to (seemingly purely internally) write. So why is it taking so long to explain why we're having to wait until after Christmas break to discuss it? *Why is it retroactive discussion at all?*

2. The policy includes the line " use our influence with partners, the

private sector, and governments to advance and uphold respect for human rights." - you say you note the tension from needing to have such a playbook be hidden to remain functional and be a collaborative community.

I don't doubt your reasoning on the playbook, but this line is in effect "the policy team will lobby for better human rights"...but without us knowing the actual execution of methods, specifically raised areas, a complete listing of ongoing areas of focus and so on. There is already a concern that the WMF spends too much time trying to speak for the movement without actually knowing that their specific positions are backed by the movement as a whole. Doing it with this dichotomy in place surely seems even less wise.

3. Back, more generally, to the process issues. I emailed shortly after

this went public, at the time, some considerable time before the Christmas break. I just got a message saying they were collating questions and would answer in the new year. But most of my questions were on either "why was this procedure used" or "why was this paragraph included", rather than substantive content change proposals.

If even I know why I included any given thing in a regular old policy that I help draft and can thus answer questions rapidly, why was this not the case here. Surely the reasoning for each bit of content and failure to publicly consult are already known? So why the lag time?

Yours,

Richard (Nosebagbear) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

I think there is some poor wording being used ignoring nuances of the English language and how different people speak it. One point that hits hard for me is the way its being framed as "policy" rather than "principles". Policy is too strong a word for its something that is beholden with political obligations that shifts the WMF away from the core pillars. For many jurisdictions the term policy is going to translate into activism, advocacy, even into the realm of labelling all Wikimedians as lobbyists, or trouble makers.

Whereas if we take as a principle it sets this as an expectation of our community and our internal activities, it does not cross that line into areas which cause concern, dissent, and fear within governments, GLAMs, government agencies with whom we need to work. It also limits the risk to communities who are charitable organisations, and individuals that want to contribute without the fear of being labelled as a subversive.

Its one thing to consider what we do and put guides in place its another for the WMF to step into areas, or push our contributors into positions that have implications beyond sharing knowledge.

On Tue, 21 Dec 2021 at 22:02, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:

On Mon, Dec 20, 2021 at 11:12 PM Dan Szymborski dszymborski@gmail.com wrote: <snip)

...

The WMF likes the *idea* of this being a community-driven, collaborative project rather than actually doing the stuff that *makes* it a community-driven, collaborative project. How many times does this process have to repeat in identical fashion before we stop pretending that this *is* a community-driven collaborative project? If the goal is simply to be another generic top-down Silicon Valley information charity, just one that has somehow procured a gigantic unpaid workforce that the elites can command, then just state it outright so that people don't spend their free hours toiling in the delusion they're part of a movement.

Best,

Dan

There's a misunderstanding here, I think. The Wikimedia movement and the Wikimedia projects are community-driven and collaborative. The WMF itself is not and has never been. People who expect the WMF to be managed by consensus, determined by RfC, are destined to always be disappointed. The WMF certainly knows many people in the Wikimedia world have that expectation, and I suppose they considered and rejected the possibility of engaging in a community process for this policy. My criticism of the policy itself is that it contains very aspirational statements; I would have preferred it to be focused on what practical actions the WMF can take, and build a policy around how and when those actions will be taken.

In any case, the WMF is not a governance experiment. The projects are, to some extent, although that is not their *purpose*. Expecting every policy and decision to be workshopped with "the community" is essentially demanding the WMF be dissolved. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

Greetings, "... urgently needs such a policy in order to meet our responsibility to protect members of our community from real, growing threats in the world. More governments are increasingly aggressive about.... [entire paragraph]" — If that's the objective, that is a great and welcome move in my opinion. Thank you. I have these questions/observations: 1) Okay, we have an "urgent" policy. What is the plan and procedure to safeguard the human rights of someone? Example: If a Wikimedian's human right is in danger for using Wikimedia's/OSM's disputed map[1], what's the "exact" procedure? I do understand that the implementation plan is to be made (around 13:48 of the video[2]) and I fully understand that it is going to be difficult on a global scale. However the execution plan and procedure will be more important. 2) I do understand "Our Human Rights Policy relates to *all *of the rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.", and UDHR has several components and rights. 3) "Human Rights Interest Group" (around 18:45 of the video), I would suggest continuing documenting the procedure timeline and on Meta-Wiki as much as possible. This documentation helps everyone. 4) (around 20:00 of the video) "Three people on the Wikimedia-l mailing list asked ..." I am one of the three I don't think we/I asked about royalty etc. What we speak about is about Wikimedians' lives in different socio-economic backgrounds. This is connected with editor retention, community health, (and human rights). I'll be very happy to discuss it separately on my Meta-Wiki talk page[3] or elsewhere.

Over-all I thank you for initiating work on this, and the clarification.

[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T215073 [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conversation_Hour_for_Human_Rights_P... [3] The discussion will be too long, happy to discuss separately on talk page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Titodutta

ইতি,/Regards টিটো দত্ত/User:Titodutta (মাতৃভাষা থাক জীবন জুড়ে)

শনি, ১১ ডিসেম্বর, ২০২১ তারিখে ৬:০০ AM টায় এ, rmackinnon@wikimedia.org লিখেছেন:

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your replies.

Sam makes some great points and suggestions. Indeed, the Movement’s free knowledge agenda is about freedom *to* which is why the first sentence of the policy says: “The Wikimedia Movement’s vision—of a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge—both relies upon and enables human rights. “ [1]

As I stated in the conversation hour [2], the Foundation urgently needs such a policy in order to meet our responsibility to protect members of our community from real, growing threats in the world. More governments are increasingly aggressive about trying to control and manipulate information spaces, including Wikimedia projects, and to threaten people who act to share knowledge, and govern free knowledge projects independently of their governments’ requirements. At the same time, as the Foundation globalizes and as the Movement works actively to increase participation across the world, a growing percentage of people who we are bringing into the projects are living in places where contributing to free knowledge projects is more difficult or dangerous than it is for people in North America or Western Europe or other places where the projects have the largest number of long-time volunteers. For this among other reasons, we believe it is urgent to have a policy that clearly articulates the Foundation’s responsibility to actively work to understand how our platforms and operations affect the rights of everyone who interacts with the projects, how we will work to mitigate threats and harms to members of the movement, and how we will work with people across the Movement to implement these policies over the coming years. We don’t believe that our responsibility to respect, protect and promote human rights is up for negotiation.

That said, as Ricky and I wrote in the blog post [3], the Foundation is absolutely committed to a long term process, in partnership with volunteers, extending into the coming months and years well beyond this thread, to discuss all the different ways in which the policy should be implemented.

There is a lot to digest in the responses we have received, not just on this thread but also from other volunteers who have reached out in different ways. We are compiling all of the suggestions and questions. We hope that we can find a number of ways to hold both real-time and asynchronous conversations, perhaps broken down by specific topics and concerns. In any case, we look forward to the concrete steps that need to be taken not only to implement the policy but to connect it to many other existing efforts that are all - fundamentally - about different aspects of human rights as Sam rightly points out.

Thanks so much and have a great weekend. Rebecca

[1] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Human_Rights_Policy [2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conversation_Hour_for_Human_Rights_Po... [3] https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/12/09/what-the-wikimedia-foundations-new-hum... _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

To the question of who, how, whether, and for what, individuals should receive direct financial support for their volunteer contributions - I leave that to the discussions of movement Strategy and Charter.

To the specific question of if the eventual revenue raised via ‘Wikimedia Enterprise’ commercial services should be directed towards that outcome:

We (the ‘Enterprise team), and also the WMF board in their statement on the matter [1], have been quite clear in the design of the project that its revenues will go into the same processes, and receive the same oversight and decision-making as any other revenue - including however those processes might change over time with movement strategy implementation.

It would be an unhelpful precedent to direct revenue from one specific input, towards one specific purpose. By analogy: we don’t allocate “revenue from X Wikipedia language banners in Y will pay for Z project”.

- Liam / Wittylama

P.S. just for clarity: the commercial service of ‘Wikimedia Enterprise’ is the *service* (API access, customer service agents, SLA contract), and NOT the content.

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Wikim...

On Sun, 19 Dec 2021 at 18:28, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Tito and all,

Tito said, in part,

1. Okay, we have an "urgent" policy. What is the plan and procedure to

...

safeguard the human rights of someone? Example: If a Wikimedian's human right is in danger for using Wikimedia's/OSM's disputed map[1], what's the "exact" procedure? I do understand that the implementation plan is to be made (around 13:48 of the video[2]) and I fully understand that it is going to be difficult on a global scale. However the execution plan and procedure will be more important.

...

4. (around 20:00 of the video) "Three people on the Wikimedia-l mailing

list asked ..." I am one of the three I don't think we/I asked about royalty etc. What we speak about is about Wikimedians' lives in different socio-economic backgrounds. This is connected with editor retention, community health, (and human rights). I'll be very happy to discuss it separately on my Meta-Wiki talk page[3] or elsewhere.

As for the first question, it is early days, but could you give some indication what you think you can do to safeguard someone's human rights in another country? You could open communication channels to human rights organisations, perhaps, and inform them of problematic cases. Is this the kind of action you have in mind? I must say I sympathise with what Geni says in his mail – surely the WMF is quite limited in what it can do. Geni's point about the WMF potentially being perceived as a hostile campaigner (or, I would add, even a US foreign policy instrument), thus increasing the risks of participation for individuals, is worth pondering as well.

As Tito says, there was also a question about the feasibility of royalties. This mentioned Tito's and others' posts here, though I think the questioner was only using those questions about healthcare and minimum pay as a springboard for their own question. They wondered whether there was any way to get royalties or licence fees from re-users who use more than a certain volume of Wikimedia data, and to provide support to volunteers in this manner. The answer was that it didn't seem likely. But it occurred to me that the for-profit Wikimedia Enterprise is doing a similar thing, charging large re-users for API services. So couldn't some of the profits from that business be used in the way the questioner suggested? The money would come from much the same companies.

Andreas _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

Hi Sam - thanks so much for your feedback. The policy has been posted to Meta for comment (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Human_Rights_Policy) and notes from the Dec 10 Conversation Hour have also been posted on Meta (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Notes_from_Human_Rights_Policy_Conversation_...). Translations are forthcoming and will be posted directly to Governance/Foundation Wiki. Happy holidays!