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).

Hi Dariuz, I like how you're thinking. Perhaps the Board could make public use of Phabricator to triage and track issues.

On 15 November 2016 at 18:36, John Mark Vandenberg &lt;jayvdb(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: 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 3:36 AM, John Mark Vandenberg &lt;jayvdb(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: to 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(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

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).

* 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.

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.

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.