Jimmy Wales wrote: "it is possible and welcomed to bring forward issues to board members at any time".
It would be most helpful to know where and how the Board in general would welcome such issues being raised and how much resource they will have to sustain those discussions. Attempting to raise issues at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard for example, has not met with great success: indeed, one Board member has written there "I honestly disagree that "additional effort" is a realistic opportunity",
It is fair to say that at least one other Board member has taken a very positive attitude, and we have had some constructive engagement for which I am duly grateful.
"Rogol"
I can only speak for myself that my user talk page in English Wikipedia is the best option.
On 11/13/16 5:21 PM, Rogol Domedonfors wrote:
It would be most helpful to know where and how the Board in general would welcome such issues being raised and how much resource they will have to sustain those discussions. Attempting to raise issues at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard for example, has not met with great success: indeed, one Board member has written there "I honestly disagree that "additional effort" is a realistic opportunity",
It is not right of you to quote only half that remark in a way that distorts the plain meaning of what was said. I will quote Alice's full comment:
Rogol, I honestly disagree that "additional effort" is a realistic opportunity. My personal opinion is that if something does not work the way you expect, it doesn't help just to do more of it. You need to do it differently to make a shift. Alice Wiegand (talk) 18:45, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
Alice was not arguing that the board shouldn't make great efforts to be in touch with the community, but rather saying that 'more effort' doesn't really capture the right range of options.
Dear Rogol,
On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 5:21 PM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote: "it is possible and welcomed to bring forward issues to board members at any time".
It would be most helpful to know where and how the Board in general would welcome such issues being raised and how much resource they will have to sustain those discussions.
I think it is fair to say that we lack good, efficient and scalable communication channels. We have discussed additional ones, commitment tracking possibilities, etc. at Wikimania with the communication staff (who, by the way, are extremely professional and skilled), and it is my understanding that while it is impossible to make rapid improvements, we can come back to this conversation in 2017 and possibly make some improvements.
I personally would love e.g. to see a system of Board members cmmitments tracking (useful for the Board, just as much as for communal control), or a system in which the community could upvote/downvote partiular ideas to discuss (like in a community's wishlist).
Until we have better tech available, I want to assure you that I want to be available, and apart from Meta, I gladly offer IRC or video conversations, or other media, to whoever feels it may be useful (let's track this committment of mine in the old-fashioned way for now).
best,
dariusz "pundit"
Hi Dariuz, I like how you're thinking. Perhaps the Board could make public use of Phabricator to triage and track issues.
Rogol, I share some of the frustration about communication problems. However, I'd also like to note that Dariuz, Christophe, and Natalia have been responsive to discussions here on WIkimedia-l, and that the general tone of WMF has become notably more cooperative with the community during the past several months. There is still much work to do, but much progress has been made. In the big picture I feel that WMF is heading in a good direction, and I'm grateful to the people who are working to make that happen.
Pine
On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 8:37 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
Dear Rogol,
On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 5:21 PM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote: "it is possible and welcomed to bring forward issues
to
board members at any time".
It would be most helpful to know where and how the Board in general would welcome such issues being raised and how much resource they will have to sustain those discussions.
I think it is fair to say that we lack good, efficient and scalable communication channels. We have discussed additional ones, commitment tracking possibilities, etc. at Wikimania with the communication staff (who, by the way, are extremely professional and skilled), and it is my understanding that while it is impossible to make rapid improvements, we can come back to this conversation in 2017 and possibly make some improvements.
I personally would love e.g. to see a system of Board members cmmitments tracking (useful for the Board, just as much as for communal control), or a system in which the community could upvote/downvote partiular ideas to discuss (like in a community's wishlist).
Until we have better tech available, I want to assure you that I want to be available, and apart from Meta, I gladly offer IRC or video conversations, or other media, to whoever feels it may be useful (let's track this committment of mine in the old-fashioned way for now).
best,
dariusz "pundit" _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 11:37 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
Until we have better tech available, I want to assure you that I want to be available, and apart from Meta, I gladly offer IRC or video conversations, or other media, to whoever feels it may be useful (let's track this committment of mine in the old-fashioned way for now).
Rather than IRC or video, which both have significant problems for this type of open engagement, perhaps WMF could install a modern group chat system, like Zulip, or another Slack-like tool.
The enthusiasm for Discourse hasnt resulted in any significant adoption. I venture to suggest that this is because it isnt mobile friendly, and doesnt integrate with MediaWiki authentication. Their app is little more than a web-browser (and the WMF labs instance doesnt support the necessary API anyway.) https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T124691 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T150733
I've created a task about this problem for GCI and Outreachy which are about to start:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T150732
I see Slack is being used by Portuguese Wikipedia
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Slack
It would be good to hear their opinion on this tool?
On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 4:58 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Dariuz, I like how you're thinking. Perhaps the Board could make public use of Phabricator to triage and track issues.
+1
On 15 November 2016 at 18:36, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Rather than IRC or video, which both have significant problems for this type of open engagement, perhaps WMF could install a modern group chat system, like Zulip, or another Slack-like tool. ...snip...
There is conphrenece as part of our phabricator install, One example is the team that triages and handles site requests which can be seen here https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/Z398
On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 5:19 PM, K. Peachey p858snake@gmail.com wrote:
On 15 November 2016 at 18:36, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Rather than IRC or video, which both have significant problems for this type of open engagement, perhaps WMF could install a modern group chat system, like Zulip, or another Slack-like tool. ...snip...
There is conphrenece as part of our phabricator install, One example is the team that triages and handles site requests which can be seen here https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/Z398
I've used it quite extensively. I hope I make a fairly convincing case that Phabricator isn't a replacement for the chat, nor 'team' room, functionality that Slack and others provide.
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T150732
-- John Vandenberg
On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 3:36 AM, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 11:37 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
Until we have better tech available, I want to assure you that I want to
be
available, and apart from Meta, I gladly offer IRC or video
conversations,
or other media, to whoever feels it may be useful (let's track this committment of mine in the old-fashioned way for now).
Rather than IRC or video, which both have significant problems for this type of open engagement, perhaps WMF could install a modern group chat system, like Zulip, or another Slack-like tool.
The enthusiasm for Discourse hasnt resulted in any significant adoption. I venture to suggest that this is because it isnt mobile friendly, and doesnt integrate with MediaWiki authentication. Their app is little more than a web-browser (and the WMF labs instance doesnt support the necessary API anyway.) https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T124691 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T150733
I've created a task about this problem for GCI and Outreachy which are about to start:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T150732
I see Slack is being used by Portuguese Wikipedia
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Slack
It would be good to hear their opinion on this tool?
I would love to have a broader discussion about communication in the projects more generally. As you know, we currently have a few mechanisms (and please correct any mischaracterizations in the below):
* Conversation in the Talk: namespace (either in raw wikitext or Flow) - This is archived, and presumably subject to same code of conduct guidelines as parent wiki. It is public. Anonymous/IP editors are allowed.
* Echo - Unarchived transient notifications, very restricted by design. Could be made more general (but see below).
* Conversation on mailing lists - Also archived, often moderated. Public, although you can always send an unarchived private reply email to a particular sender. Anonymity is harder here, although possible with some effort. Code of conduct is "whatever the moderator will allow, if there is a moderator."
* Conversation on IRC - Deliberately not archived. Intended for casual conversation and informal negotiation. Public, although not searchable after the fact (unless you keep a private log). Anonymity is fairly easy -- in fact, it can be quite difficult to associate IRC nicks with on-wiki identities even if all parties are willing. No code of conduct, although there are ops who can boot you (sometimes).
* Phabricator - Archived task-oriented discussions, leaving to a desired outcome. Anonymous participation disallowed. Search possible in theory; in practice the implementation is quite limited. Some (security-sensitive) conversations can be private, but (AFAIK) an ordinary user does not have a means to create a private conversation. I'm not aware of an explicit code of conduct.
* OTRS - Similar to Phabricator, except that by default all conversations are private to OTRS staff and the submitter. I'm not aware of an explicit code of conduct, although this is mitigated by the fact that the conversations are not public which limits the possibility of abuse.
* Slack on ptwiki, apparently?
* Conpherence as part of Phabricator. (I don't have enough experience with the last two to categorize them.)
We are missing currently missing:
* Conversations anchored to specific editing tasks, like "comments" in google docs.
* Integrated conversation associated with an editing session (like the integrated chat in google docs)
* Integrated real-time chat -- like IRC, but anchored to on-wiki identities, so I can send a "you still around and editing?" message before reverting or building on a recent change.
* Workflow-oriented chat. Like the task-oriented chat in Phabricator, but integrated with on-wiki activities such as patrolling or admin tasks.
* Probably other forms of conversation!
WHAT'S EVEN MORE IMPORTANT, THOUGH:
We have no comprehensive code of conduct/mechanisms to combat harassment, vandalism, and abuse. Harassment or vandalism which is stopped in one communication mechanism can be transferred to another with impunity. IRC in particular is seen as a space where (a) private discussions can happen (good), but (b) there are no cops or consequences.
This is not really just a question of installing <some software package>. This is a challenge to the community to do the hard work of figuring out our social contracts and what sort of conversations we want to support and enable, which sorts of abuse we want to control, and what sorts of filters to give users.
We can easily go too far -- I recommend reading http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/opinion/what-were-missing-while-we-obsess-... for context. A global panopticon [1] where no one can hold private conversation is equally harmful to our project. We need to find the balance between private and public conversations. At the moment the mechanism of that balance is roughly "IRC and Talk pages". I think we can do better. I think we can also build better tools for individual users to allow them more control over what speech they will be subjected to---again striking a balance to avoid the creation of impenetrable filter bubbles. It's hard!
Not completely incidentally, I've proposed a related topic for the Dev Summit in January, nominally on the subject of "safe spaces" but practically encompassing the general question of user groups, communication, harassment and abuse. We're in the "assess community interest" phase for dev summit topic proposals, so if this conversation interests you, please go over to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T149665 and subscribe, comment, or "award token". Thanks! --scott
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticism#Panopticism_and_information_techno...
Also, don’t forget that Facebook groups are used quite a bit, especially for language communities that have emerged in the last several years.
Love it or hate it, Facebook as a way of linking together Wikimedians across languages is a big plus (eg. projects like #100wikidays).
-Andrew
On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 4:57 PM, C. Scott Ananian cananian@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 3:36 AM, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 11:37 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
Until we have better tech available, I want to assure you that I want
to
be
available, and apart from Meta, I gladly offer IRC or video
conversations,
or other media, to whoever feels it may be useful (let's track this committment of mine in the old-fashioned way for now).
Rather than IRC or video, which both have significant problems for this type of open engagement, perhaps WMF could install a modern group chat system, like Zulip, or another Slack-like tool.
The enthusiasm for Discourse hasnt resulted in any significant adoption. I venture to suggest that this is because it isnt mobile friendly, and doesnt integrate with MediaWiki authentication. Their app is little more than a web-browser (and the WMF labs instance doesnt support the necessary API anyway.) https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T124691 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T150733
I've created a task about this problem for GCI and Outreachy which are about to start:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T150732
I see Slack is being used by Portuguese Wikipedia
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Slack
It would be good to hear their opinion on this tool?
I would love to have a broader discussion about communication in the projects more generally. As you know, we currently have a few mechanisms (and please correct any mischaracterizations in the below):
- Conversation in the Talk: namespace (either in raw wikitext or Flow)
- This is archived, and presumably subject to same code of conduct
guidelines as parent wiki. It is public. Anonymous/IP editors are allowed.
- Echo
- Unarchived transient notifications, very restricted by design. Could
be made more general (but see below).
- Conversation on mailing lists
- Also archived, often moderated. Public, although you can always send
an unarchived private reply email to a particular sender. Anonymity is harder here, although possible with some effort. Code of conduct is "whatever the moderator will allow, if there is a moderator."
- Conversation on IRC
- Deliberately not archived. Intended for casual conversation and
informal negotiation. Public, although not searchable after the fact (unless you keep a private log). Anonymity is fairly easy -- in fact, it can be quite difficult to associate IRC nicks with on-wiki identities even if all parties are willing. No code of conduct, although there are ops who can boot you (sometimes).
- Phabricator
- Archived task-oriented discussions, leaving to a desired outcome.
Anonymous participation disallowed. Search possible in theory; in practice the implementation is quite limited. Some (security-sensitive) conversations can be private, but (AFAIK) an ordinary user does not have a means to create a private conversation. I'm not aware of an explicit code of conduct.
- OTRS
- Similar to Phabricator, except that by default all conversations are
private to OTRS staff and the submitter. I'm not aware of an explicit code of conduct, although this is mitigated by the fact that the conversations are not public which limits the possibility of abuse.
Slack on ptwiki, apparently?
Conpherence as part of Phabricator. (I don't have enough experience
with the last two to categorize them.)
We are missing currently missing:
- Conversations anchored to specific editing tasks, like "comments" in
google docs.
- Integrated conversation associated with an editing session (like the
integrated chat in google docs)
- Integrated real-time chat -- like IRC, but anchored to on-wiki
identities, so I can send a "you still around and editing?" message before reverting or building on a recent change.
- Workflow-oriented chat. Like the task-oriented chat in Phabricator,
but integrated with on-wiki activities such as patrolling or admin tasks.
- Probably other forms of conversation!
WHAT'S EVEN MORE IMPORTANT, THOUGH:
We have no comprehensive code of conduct/mechanisms to combat harassment, vandalism, and abuse. Harassment or vandalism which is stopped in one communication mechanism can be transferred to another with impunity. IRC in particular is seen as a space where (a) private discussions can happen (good), but (b) there are no cops or consequences.
This is not really just a question of installing <some software package>. This is a challenge to the community to do the hard work of figuring out our social contracts and what sort of conversations we want to support and enable, which sorts of abuse we want to control, and what sorts of filters to give users.
We can easily go too far -- I recommend reading http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/opinion/what-were- missing-while-we-obsess-over-john-podestas-email.html for context. A global panopticon [1] where no one can hold private conversation is equally harmful to our project. We need to find the balance between private and public conversations. At the moment the mechanism of that balance is roughly "IRC and Talk pages". I think we can do better. I think we can also build better tools for individual users to allow them more control over what speech they will be subjected to---again striking a balance to avoid the creation of impenetrable filter bubbles. It's hard!
Not completely incidentally, I've proposed a related topic for the Dev Summit in January, nominally on the subject of "safe spaces" but practically encompassing the general question of user groups, communication, harassment and abuse. We're in the "assess community interest" phase for dev summit topic proposals, so if this conversation interests you, please go over to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T149665 and subscribe, comment, or "award token". Thanks! --scott
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticism#Panopticism_and_ information_technology _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 5:32 PM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
Love it or hate it, Facebook as a way of linking together Wikimedians across languages is a big plus (eg. projects like #100wikidays).
Ooh, man, you're pushing my hot button topics! I proposed https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T149666 for the dev summit; my "big picture" vision here is that we start using our machine translation tools to tie our projects more tightly together, so we feel more like "one project aided by a bunch of babel fish" and less like "a thousand separate projects, each in their own tower".
So, bringing it back to chat -- and perhaps Shadow Namespaces ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T149666) -- one goal might be to build discussions into our platform in a way which can be cross-platform, with integrated machine translation aids to allow near-seamless multilingual conversations, thereby bridging barriers between our communities. Of course the vandalism and anti-harassment and user filter tools would need to be multilingual in the same way... --scott
On 11/17/2016 04:57 PM, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
I would love to have a broader discussion about communication in the projects more generally. As you know, we currently have a few mechanisms (and please correct any mischaracterizations in the below):
As people may know, we are working on a Code of conduct for technical spaces.
It will cover on-wiki communication in the technical spaces (including talk pages), technical mailing lists, technical IRC channels, and Phabricator (including Conpherence).
There are some existing guidelines in place. It's a very fragmented picture (most guidelines only apply to one form of communication (e.g. IRC), and sometimes only a single IRC channel), which is part of what the tech CoC will improve. I also don't necessarily endorse these older guidelines.
- Conversation in the Talk: namespace (either in raw wikitext or Flow)
- This is archived, and presumably subject to same code of conduct
guidelines as parent wiki. It is public. Anonymous/IP editors are allowed.
Worth remembering that many important projects don't *have* a code of conduct or equivalent, and on those that do, it's often not enforced.
- Echo
- Unarchived transient notifications, very restricted by design. Could
be made more general (but see below).
Right, this not a user-user communication system (though it will notify you *of* user-user communications, sometimes with snippets included).
- Phabricator
- Archived task-oriented discussions, leaving to a desired outcome.
Anonymous participation disallowed. Search possible in theory; in practice the implementation is quite limited. Some (security-sensitive) conversations can be private, but (AFAIK) an ordinary user does not have a means to create a private conversation. I'm not aware of an explicit code of conduct.
Conpherence allows either public or private conversations.
There are currently guidelines (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_management/Phabricator_etiquette). The Code of Conduct for technical spaces will cover Phabricator as well.
We have no comprehensive code of conduct/mechanisms to combat harassment, vandalism, and abuse. Harassment or vandalism which is stopped in one communication mechanism can be transferred to another with impunity. IRC in particular is seen as a space where (a) private discussions can happen (good), but (b) there are no cops or consequences.
Yeah, I agree this is an issue, and is why the technical code of conduct will have one central reporting place (so you always know where to report, and they can consider multi-space harassment).
This is important stuff. Thank you for talking and thinking about it.
Matt Flaschen
As a reminder: IRC is governed by Freenode. Channels can have their own rules, and there are widely varying systems of internal governance for Wikimedia IRC channels. I think it's important to note that WMF and the Wikimedia community are guests on Freenode, and I'm uncomfortable with the proposition to extend a WMF policy into IRC channels without explicit consent from the ops of those channels; it seems to me that the TCC would be a per-channel opt-in on IRC, not a WMF blanket standard.
Speaking more generally, I am wary of WMF encroachment into what I should be fundamentally community-governed spaces. I have not heard a lot of objections from the community to the proposed technical code of conduct, and I've heard some arguments for and against the rationale for having it; my main concern is that I would prefer that the final document be ratified through community-led processes.
Thanks,
Pine
On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 5:34 PM, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 11/17/2016 04:57 PM, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
I would love to have a broader discussion about communication in the projects more generally. As you know, we currently have a few mechanisms (and please correct any mischaracterizations in the below):
As people may know, we are working on a Code of conduct for technical spaces.
It will cover on-wiki communication in the technical spaces (including talk pages), technical mailing lists, technical IRC channels, and Phabricator (including Conpherence).
There are some existing guidelines in place. It's a very fragmented picture (most guidelines only apply to one form of communication (e.g. IRC), and sometimes only a single IRC channel), which is part of what the tech CoC will improve. I also don't necessarily endorse these older guidelines.
- Conversation in the Talk: namespace (either in raw wikitext or Flow)
- This is archived, and presumably subject to same code of conductguidelines as parent wiki. It is public. Anonymous/IP editors are allowed.
Worth remembering that many important projects don't *have* a code of conduct or equivalent, and on those that do, it's often not enforced.
- Echo
- Unarchived transient notifications, very restricted by design.Could be made more general (but see below).
Right, this not a user-user communication system (though it will notify you *of* user-user communications, sometimes with snippets included).
- Phabricator
- Archived task-oriented discussions, leaving to a desired outcome.Anonymous participation disallowed. Search possible in theory; in practice the implementation is quite limited. Some (security-sensitive) conversations can be private, but (AFAIK) an ordinary user does not have a means to create a private conversation. I'm not aware of an explicit code of conduct.
Conpherence allows either public or private conversations.
There are currently guidelines (https://www.mediawiki.org/wik i/Bug_management/Phabricator_etiquette). The Code of Conduct for technical spaces will cover Phabricator as well.
We have no comprehensive code of conduct/mechanisms to combat harassment,
vandalism, and abuse. Harassment or vandalism which is stopped in one communication mechanism can be transferred to another with impunity. IRC in particular is seen as a space where (a) private discussions can happen (good), but (b) there are no cops or consequences.
Yeah, I agree this is an issue, and is why the technical code of conduct will have one central reporting place (so you always know where to report, and they can consider multi-space harassment).
This is important stuff. Thank you for talking and thinking about it.
Matt Flaschen
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik i/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 10:30 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
As a reminder: IRC is governed by Freenode. Channels can have their own rules, and there are widely varying systems of internal governance for Wikimedia IRC channels. I think it's important to note that WMF and the Wikimedia community are guests on Freenode, and I'm uncomfortable with the proposition to extend a WMF policy into IRC channels without explicit consent from the ops of those channels; it seems to me that the TCC would be a per-channel opt-in on IRC, not a WMF blanket standard.
Speaking more generally, I am wary of WMF encroachment into what I should be fundamentally community-governed spaces. I have not heard a lot of objections from the community to the proposed technical code of conduct, and I've heard some arguments for and against the rationale for having it; my main concern is that I would prefer that the final document be ratified through community-led processes.
I agree that changes here should involve heavy community participation, which is a reason I'm trying to initiate broader discussion.
We have been moderately successful in "outsourcing" real time chat to a third-party (IRC and Freenode) in the past, but it does leave us out of control of what may become a fundamental technology for our platform. Certainly we could simply embed a web-based IRC client in talk pages, for instance. That would continue the status quo. It's certainly one point in the possible solution space, and I'm not foreclosing that. I just think we should discuss discussions holistically. What are the benefits of disclaiming responsibility for real time chat? What are the benefits of the freenode conduct policy? What are the disadvantages?
We could also "more tightly integrate chat" without leaving IRC or Freenode. For the [[en:MIT Mystery Hunt]] many teams build quite elaborate IRC bots that layer additional functionalities on top of IRC. Matt's email mentioned a "central reporting place". We could certainly allow IRC channels to opt-in to a WMF code of conduct and opt-in to running a WMF bot providing a standardized and consistent reporting mechanism/block list/abuse logger. That's another point in the solution space.
My personal dog in the race is "tools". I totally love community-led processes. But I am concerned that WMF is not providing the communities adequate *tools* to make meaningful improvements in their social environments. Twitter rolled out a new suite of anti-abuse features this week (https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/15/twitter-online-abuse-mute-features/) so sadly the WMF platform is now behind twitter in terms of providing a healthy working environment for our contributors. We need to step up our game. As you note, the first step is this discussion involving the community to take a broad look at discussions on our platform and determine some basic social principles as well as architectural planks and commonalities. Hopefully we can then follow that up with an aggressive development effort to deploy some new tools and features. I believe this will be an iterative process: our first tools will fall short, and we'll need to continue "discussing discussions", revisiting assumptions, and building improved tools.
But we can't allow ourselves to stand still. --scott
On 11/17/2016 10:30 PM, Pine W wrote:
As a reminder: IRC is governed by Freenode. Channels can have their own rules, and there are widely varying systems of internal governance for Wikimedia IRC channels. I think it's important to note that WMF and the Wikimedia community are guests on Freenode, and I'm uncomfortable with the proposition to extend a WMF policy into IRC channels without explicit consent from the ops of those channels; it seems to me that the TCC would be a per-channel opt-in on IRC, not a WMF blanket standard.
I just wanted to note that this is a (draft) community policy, being approved by the community. The community has already approved a large fraction of it. It's not a (draft) WMF policy.
(It is subject to Legal requirements like some other community policies, but it seems this will only affect a small section.)
Thanks,
Matt Flaschen
On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 2:21 PM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote: "it is possible and welcomed to bring forward issues to board members at any time".
To Jimmy and the board:
This statement is, frankly, very much belied by the facts.
In 2014, I delivered a letter signed by *one thousand people* to every member of the board. And yet, the existence of that letter has never been formally acknowledged, much less have its requests been formally addressed.
One thousand people.
As long as that communication goes unacknowledged, many of us will have little faith in assurances that communication to board members is a viable, productive pursuit.
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org