Status of the Code of Conduct for technical spaces

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Quim Gil

8 Mar 2017 8 Mar '17

2:31 p.m.

Hi, let me share a status update about the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces, especially targeted to people not familiar with this CoC and/or Wikimedia technical spaces. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct The CoC drafting phase was completed yesterday [0], 18 months after a kick-off session at the Wikimania 2015 Hackathon. Since then, 142 unique editors have contributed to the Talk page through 147 sections, 21 voting rounds abut sections of the CoC announced through the main technical communication channels, and a total of 2,718 edits.[1] That Talk page has 88 watchers, about 20 editors have participated regularly in discussions, and about half of them heavily.[2] To put these numbers in context, MediaWiki.org counts 1,420 active editors, and Phabricator 829. The next step is to create the first Code of Conduct Committee, a process defined in the CoC itself.[3] A subset of the Technical Collaboration team at the Wikimedia Foundation [4] (which I am part of) is preparing an announcement about the search of candidates, inviting everyone to volunteer themselves or send us recommendations. We are tracking the progress of this task in Phabricator [5] and we will communicate major updates in the CoC Talk page and other technical venues as needed. I hope this clarifies the current situation. If you have questions or suggestions, please share them here or in the CoC Talk page. [0] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_Conduct#Removing_.27draft.27_st… [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_Conduct#Drafting_phase_data [2] http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=www.mediawiki&pa… [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct/Committee#Selection_of_new_m… [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Technical_Collaboration/Community_health [5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T159923 -- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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Samuel Klein

8 Mar 8 Mar

3:41 p.m.

Quim, Thank you for the update. This code of conduct isn't half-bad. //SJ On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 7:31 AM, Quim Gil <qgil(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

Hi, let me share a status update about the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces, especially targeted to people not familiar with this CoC and/or Wikimedia technical spaces. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct The CoC drafting phase was completed yesterday [0], 18 months after a kick-off session at the Wikimania 2015 Hackathon. Since then, 142 unique editors have contributed to the Talk page through 147 sections, 21 voting rounds abut sections of the CoC announced through the main technical communication channels, and a total of 2,718 edits.[1] That Talk page has 88 watchers, about 20 editors have participated regularly in discussions, and about half of them heavily.[2] To put these numbers in context, MediaWiki.org counts 1,420 active editors, and Phabricator 829. The next step is to create the first Code of Conduct Committee, a process defined in the CoC itself.[3] A subset of the Technical Collaboration team at the Wikimedia Foundation [4] (which I am part of) is preparing an announcement about the search of candidates, inviting everyone to volunteer themselves or send us recommendations. We are tracking the progress of this task in Phabricator [5] and we will communicate major updates in the CoC Talk page and other technical venues as needed. I hope this clarifies the current situation. If you have questions or suggestions, please share them here or in the CoC Talk page. [0] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_Conduct# Removing_.27draft.27_status [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_Conduct# Drafting_phase_data [2] http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang= www.mediawiki&page=Talk%3ACode+of+Conduct [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct/Committee#Selection_of_new_ members [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Technical_Collaboration/ Community_health [5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T159923 -- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266

Pine W

9:02 p.m.

I am not sure that I agree with that closure. There have been several concerns mentioned in the talk page and in email threads, and it's not clear to me that the document should be moving forward without an RfC on the whole document. If I had time to look into this further I would be considering reverting Brion's closure as premature in the absence of an RfC on the whole document. Unfortunately I'm buried in other issues at the moment and I would need to do a detailed look at the talk page and its archives before I felt certain about proceeding with a reversion. Someone who has the time to read the talk page carefully may wish to contest/revert the close. I'm not looking for more reasons to have drama about that document, but I'm very uncomfortable proceeding with that document without an RfC on the whole document. Pine

Samuel Klein

9 Mar 9 Mar

8:44 p.m.

Dear Pine, I see your concern, but it seems exaggerated. There was an early suggestion of a final RfC on the complete draft. That changed, as stated and debated last April: there would be a code of conduct, no two ways about it. The subject for consensus was only what it said, topic by topic. There are pros and cons to that change, but that's a valid way to do things, especially with such a gradual & public review of the text. A year-old process change, even if awkward, is not grounds for reverting brion's close (!) or forum-shopping the conversation. The current code is as clean and thorough as any I've seen, a model for other communities, thanks to discussion in drafting. Even the bits left on the cutting room floor were well done. It seems reasonable to try it, see how it works, revise it. Hats off to those working on this, and thanks Quim for continuing to share updates here for us wikizens not subscribed to the technical lists. Warmly, Sam

Antoine Musso

10:36 p.m.

Le 08/03/2017 à 20:02, Pine W a écrit :

...

The RfC has been going on for almost two years already. Given the flood of announces on a wide range of mailing lists, I don't see how one could have missed it. There are a lot of things I dislike with that document but really I summarize it as: {BE NICE} Else you get banned. Please don't start a drama. -- Antoine "hashar" Musso

Pine W

11 Mar 11 Mar

12:11 a.m.

Looking at the talk page briefly, I'm seeing few objections to the close and it appears that no one has reverted it, so it's likely to stick. I remain skeptical of the process (not to say that it's all bad; Matt certainly did a lot of outreach on mailing lists), but I wouldn't suggest using this as a template for good policy development methodology. Since the plan is to move forward with this, I wish for the best. I'm not a fan of anarchy and there have been a few incidents in technical spaces in which I felt there were conduct problems. Hopefully this policy will be a net benefit. Pine

Isarra Yos

11:53 p.m.

On 09/03/17 20:36, Antoine Musso wrote:

...

The RfC has been going on for almost two years already. Given the flood of announces on a wide range of mailing lists, I don't see how one could have missed it.

The flood might be exactly how. Keep being inundated with notices, many people are likely to just start ignoring all of the notices. This is a problem for a lot of things, though. -I

Chris "Jethro" Schilling

18 Mar 18 Mar

10:15 p.m.

Well, folks are free to ignore invitations to comment; there are indeed a lot of discussion notices for various matters, so I don't blame them if they world rather volunteer their time in other places. But they cannot then also argue that they didn't know about it. If people want to know what's going on in our projects, it's their responsibility to follow places where announcements are posted and read them. - Chris On Mar 11, 2017 3:53 PM, "Isarra Yos" <zhorishna(a)gmail.com> wrote: On 09/03/17 20:36, Antoine Musso wrote:

...

The RfC has been going on for almost two years already. Given the flood of announces on a wide range of mailing lists, I don't see how one could have missed it.

The flood might be exactly how. Keep being inundated with notices, many people are likely to just start ignoring all of the notices. This is a problem for a lot of things, though. -I _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik i/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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>

Pine W

10:39 p.m.

David Gerard

11:15 p.m.

You mean, "how to deal with people who complain they weren't consulted then turn around and complain they were excessively consulted"? At this point, the appropriate thing would be to put forward a plausible solution rather than complain they did the thing you claimed they hadn't sufficiently done. - d. On 18 March 2017 at 20:39, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Chris, That last paragraph assumes that people (1) know where to look and (2) have hours to spend watching countless channels for announcements. On the other hand, there's also a problem of burying people in so many announcements, surveys, and consultations that people start to tune it all out. This is part of a larger set of communications and "information overload" problems that I'm hoping that WMF will address, particularly during its next Annual Plan. Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Pine W

11:52 p.m.

My point is more or less the same one that you're making. Communications (too much and too little) and information overload are both challenges. I don't think there's going to be a silver bullet solution, but I hope that WMF will invest effort into addressing this set of problems during the next Annual Plan. Some of this is WMF-specific, but some of it also relates to how we've organized ourselves in the community through organic growth and over time we've developed so many channels that one wonders if we would benefit from some consolidation and pruning. Pine On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 2:15 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Chris, That last paragraph assumes that people (1) know where to look and (2)

have

hours to spend watching countless channels for announcements. On the

other

hand, there's also a problem of burying people in so many announcements, surveys, and consultations that people start to tune it all out. This is part of a larger set of communications and "information overload"

problems

that I'm hoping that WMF will address, particularly during its next

Annual

Plan. Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/

wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l

New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Chico Venancio

19 Mar 19 Mar

12:55 a.m.

Pine, Of course we could benefit from consolidation and pruning of communication channels. This has been the case for at least a decade, how to do that without alienating part of the community that uses the pruned channels is a very difficult task, however. Nevertheless, this does not mean one can claim he did not get involved with an issue because it was communicated too many times over too many places, or rather, though one can claim that it is unlikely he will be taken seriously. Chico Venancio 2017-03-18 18:52 GMT-03:00 Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

Chris, That last paragraph assumes that people (1) know where to look and (2)

have

hours to spend watching countless channels for announcements. On the

other > hand, there's also a problem of burying people in so many

announcements,

> surveys, and consultations that people start to tune it all out. This

part of a larger set of communications and "information overload"

problems

that I'm hoping that WMF will address, particularly during its next

Annual

Plan. Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/

wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l

New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Chris "Jethro" Schilling

2:51 a.m.

FYI, Edward Galvez has been maintaining this calendar that has been going for a while that chapters and staff have been using for various consultations, surveys, and RfCs. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement/Calendar Seems to me this is a good approach to avoid the issue of "my inbox is inundated with so many notices" while also informing community members with what is going on. - Chris Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)> Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home> On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 4:52 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Chris, That last paragraph assumes that people (1) know where to look and (2)

have

hours to spend watching countless channels for announcements. On the

other > hand, there's also a problem of burying people in so many

announcements,

> surveys, and consultations that people start to tune it all out. This

part of a larger set of communications and "information overload"

problems

that I'm hoping that WMF will address, particularly during its next

Annual

Plan. Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/

wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l

New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Rogol Domedonfors

2:45 p.m.

"Jethro" On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 8:15 PM, you wrote:

...

But they cannot then also argue that they didn't know about it. If people want to know what's going on in our projects, it's their responsibility to follow places where announcements are posted and read them. - Chris

Gerard Meijssen

2:56 p.m.

Hoi, Please ..

...

From my perspective we should not talk about secondary topics like this. We

should certainly not be this aggressive. I said it before and I say it again. When you are interested in what we aim to achieve talk about WHAT we can do to do better and let HOW we can do better from an organisational point of view be only supportive of our objectives. Thanks, GerardM On 19 March 2017 at 13:45, Rogol Domedonfors <domedonfors(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

"Jethro" On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 8:15 PM, you wrote:

But they cannot then also argue that they didn't know about it. If people want to know what's going on in our projects, it's their responsibility

follow places where announcements are posted and read them. - Chris

Really? As a Community Organiser within the Community Engagement part of the Foundation, do you not believe that the Foundation has some kind of responsibility too? Perhaps the Foundation, with its tens of millions of dollars and hundereds of staff, and its ownership and control of the means of communcation, might consider whether it can organise its engagement with a disparate community on a more sophisticated basis than telling the volunteers that it's their responsbility to know how to engage effectively with the Foundation? Let me ask to to reread your comments from the point of view of a volunteer whose work builds the projects and ask yourself whether the attitude embodied in your comment is not just ever so slightly sub-optimal? Are you completely satsifed that there is nothing at all that the Foundation could or should do to improve the engagement it has with the community? "Rogol" _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Chris "Jethro" Schilling

6:06 p.m.

I think the calendar I mentioned above on Meta probably could be improved in some ways. If a lot of folks start using it, it will become quite long, for one. An archiving system for each month might be a good idea. What ways could there be to sort or segment the calendar that would be useful for volunteers to search and parse important discussions, surveys, and consultations? - Chris On Mar 19, 2017 7:57 AM, "Gerard Meijssen" <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hoi, Please .. From my perspective we should not talk about secondary topics like this. We should certainly not be this aggressive. I said it before and I say it again. When you are interested in what we aim to achieve talk about WHAT we can do to do better and let HOW we can do better from an organisational point of view be only supportive of our objectives. Thanks, GerardM On 19 March 2017 at 13:45, Rogol Domedonfors <domedonfors(a)gmail.com> wrote:

"Jethro" On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 8:15 PM, you wrote: > Well, folks are free to ignore invitations to comment; there are

indeed a

lot of discussion notices for various matters, so I don't blame them if they world rather volunteer their time in other places.

> But they cannot then also argue that they didn't know about it. If

people

want to know what's going on in our projects, it's their responsibility

follow places where announcements are posted and read them. - Chris

means

of communcation, might consider whether it can organise its engagement

with

a disparate community on a more sophisticated basis than telling the volunteers that it's their responsbility to know how to engage

effectively

with the Foundation? Let me ask to to reread your comments from the

point

of view of a volunteer whose work builds the projects and ask yourself whether the attitude embodied in your comment is not just ever so

slightly

sub-optimal? Are you completely satsifed that there is nothing at all

that

the Foundation could or should do to improve the engagement it has with

the

community? "Rogol" _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Leila Zia

7:18 p.m.

Hi all, This thread is diverging more and more away from its original subject. Please open a new thread if you're interested in discussing items not directly related to Quim's email re CoC. This can help the audience of this list with discovery of relevant content and discussions later on. Thanks, Leila On Mar 19, 2017 09:07, "Chris "Jethro" Schilling" <cschilling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

Hoi, Please .. From my perspective we should not talk about secondary topics like this.

should certainly not be this aggressive. I said it before and I say it again. When you are interested in what we aim to achieve talk about WHAT

can do to do better and let HOW we can do better from an organisational point of view be only supportive of our objectives. Thanks, GerardM On 19 March 2017 at 13:45, Rogol Domedonfors <domedonfors(a)gmail.com> wrote:

"Jethro" On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 8:15 PM, you wrote: > Well, folks are free to ignore invitations to comment; there are

indeed a > > lot of discussion notices for various matters, so I don't blame them

they world rather volunteer their time in other places.

> But they cannot then also argue that they didn't know about it. If

people > > want to know what's going on in our projects, it's their

responsibility

> to > > follow places where announcements are posted and read them. > > > > - Chris > > > > Really? As a Community Organiser within the Community Engagement part

> the Foundation, do you not believe that the Foundation has some kind of > responsibility too? Perhaps the Foundation, with its tens of millions

dollars and hundereds of staff, and its ownership and control of the

means

of communcation, might consider whether it can organise its engagement

with

a disparate community on a more sophisticated basis than telling the volunteers that it's their responsbility to know how to engage

effectively

with the Foundation? Let me ask to to reread your comments from the

point

of view of a volunteer whose work builds the projects and ask yourself whether the attitude embodied in your comment is not just ever so

slightly

sub-optimal? Are you completely satsifed that there is nothing at all

that

the Foundation could or should do to improve the engagement it has with

the

Quim Gil

9 Mar 9 Mar

2:07 p.m.

As a complement to my update yesterday, the call for candidates to form the first Code of Conduct Committee has been sent to wikitech-l, mediawiki-l, engineering, labs-l, analytics, wiki-research-l, and design. It will be advertised in other technical spaces in the next hours. You can read it i.e. at https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2017-March/087731.html The next logical update here will be the presentation of a list of candidates to be reviewed by the Wikimedia technical community and anyone else willing to chime in. If you want to follow this process closely, you can check https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_Conduct#Bootstrapping_the_Code_… or subscribe to the Phabricator task linked there. -- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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participants (11)

Antoine Musso
Chico Venancio
Chris "Jethro" Schilling
David Gerard
Gerard Meijssen
Isarra Yos
Leila Zia
Pine W
Quim Gil
Rogol Domedonfors
Samuel Klein