We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
Please participate at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft . Suggestions are welcome here or at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra... .
Thanks,
Matt Flaschen
On 08/06/2015 08:17 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
I forgot to mention (but this is in the draft), it also applies to physical spaces, including but not limited to hackathons.
Matt Flaschen
Hi Matthew. If you intend this to be binding, I suggest that you coordinate this with other work being done by WMF Community Advocacy and Legal. My hope would be to have a uniform Friendly Space Policy that is a TOS amendment and applies to all Wikimedia spaces.
A note on IRC channels: these are generally governed by Freenode with the assistance of volunteers, and not WMF. I imagine that a WMF policy that has community consensus would be enforced by IRC ops in Wikimedia-themed channels. In general, I think ops are good at keeping the peace.
Regards,
Pine
CA and legal are aware. While TOS or other more global polices are certainly an option I'm not actually sure that's the right move 'at the moment'. There is a lot of movement to look at options (which will include wide community discussion) and may lead in a direction like that but, in general, that is not a reason to delay implementation of processes like this which can, in fact, assist with the decision making and the tweaking. Once you've made a giant global policy tweaking it is really hard! Even when everyone agrees it needs it (and therefore the policy ends up being less and less enforced even where it should be). Yes a global policy would have a wide consultation or RfC type discussion before being but that's not the only thing we NEED here in order to get something that works. We need to see it in ACTION and be able to see what works and what doesn't work.
James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 5:50 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Matthew. If you intend this to be binding, I suggest that you coordinate this with other work being done by WMF Community Advocacy and Legal. My hope would be to have a uniform Friendly Space Policy that is a TOS amendment and applies to all Wikimedia spaces.
A note on IRC channels: these are generally governed by Freenode with the assistance of volunteers, and not WMF. I imagine that a WMF policy that has community consensus would be enforced by IRC ops in Wikimedia-themed channels. In general, I think ops are good at keeping the peace.
Regards,
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hi James,
It makes sense to me to have ground-up development of guidelines, as is happening in at least 3 venues that I know about. However, this also means policy/guideline fragmentation. Also, AFAIK we don't have clear mechanisms for deploying lightweight or limited-scope policies; anything with the word "policy" in its title requires a lot of work to create or change. That's good to a certain extent because consensus and widespread input hopefully will improve the outcome of the policy development. On the other hand, policy development takes time and patience.
Can I ask if there is any particular hurry to deploy a friendly space policy specifically for technical spaces? My personal sense is that the vast majority of technical discussions in most venues are civil, so I'm not sensing a need for an exception for technical spaces that results in a limited-scope policy being applied in advance of developing a global friendly space policy.
Pine
On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 10:13 PM, James Alexander jalexander@wikimedia.org wrote:
CA and legal are aware. While TOS or other more global polices are certainly an option I'm not actually sure that's the right move 'at the moment'. There is a lot of movement to look at options (which will include wide community discussion) and may lead in a direction like that but, in general, that is not a reason to delay implementation of processes like this which can, in fact, assist with the decision making and the tweaking. Once you've made a giant global policy tweaking it is really hard! Even when everyone agrees it needs it (and therefore the policy ends up being less and less enforced even where it should be). Yes a global policy would have a wide consultation or RfC type discussion before being but that's not the only thing we NEED here in order to get something that works. We need to see it in ACTION and be able to see what works and what doesn't work.
James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 5:50 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Matthew. If you intend this to be binding, I suggest that you
coordinate
this with other work being done by WMF Community Advocacy and Legal. My hope would be to have a uniform Friendly Space Policy that is a TOS amendment and applies to all Wikimedia spaces.
A note on IRC channels: these are generally governed by Freenode with the assistance of volunteers, and not WMF. I imagine that a WMF policy that
has
community consensus would be enforced by IRC ops in Wikimedia-themed channels. In general, I think ops are good at keeping the peace.
Regards,
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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On 08/07/2015 01:42 AM, Pine W wrote:
Hi James,
It makes sense to me to have ground-up development of guidelines, as is happening in at least 3 venues that I know about. However, this also means policy/guideline fragmentation.
In this case, I think a policy is more appropriate than a guideline. That way, no one can misunderstand and think they don't have to follow it.
Can I ask if there is any particular hurry to deploy a friendly space policy specifically for technical spaces? My personal sense is that the vast majority of technical discussions in most venues are civil, so I'm not sensing a need for an exception for technical spaces that results in a limited-scope policy being applied in advance of developing a global friendly space policy.
I encourage people to work on a global policy (which would be more complicated), but I don't think there's any need for the current work to be delayed on that account.
Thanks,
Matt Flaschen
On 08/06/2015 08:50 PM, Pine W wrote:
A note on IRC channels: these are generally governed by Freenode with the assistance of volunteers, and not WMF. I imagine that a WMF policy that has community consensus would be enforced by IRC ops in Wikimedia-themed channels. In general, I think ops are good at keeping the peace.
Yes, final enforcement mechanisms may vary depending on location. But I want the initial reporting location to be the same regardless, for simplicity.
Matt Flaschen
Matthew Flaschen wrote:
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
Who's we? This seems to be a pet issue of yours. I'm curious who else is supportive of this initiative to enact a binding policy.
MZMcBride
On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 7:32 AM MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Matthew Flaschen wrote:
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
Who's we? This seems to be a pet issue of yours. I'm curious who else is supportive of this initiative to enact a binding policy.
MZMcBride
What kind of standards for behavior we want and think are acceptable is a core concern of everyone in the Wikimedia and MediaWiki technical communities.
This kind of personally-directed and demeaning feedback ("This seems to be a pet issue of yours") is, perhaps ironically, precisely an example of why it would improve interaction in technical spaces to have some clearer ground rules.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
I'm curious who all 'we' is as well.
On 07/08/15 17:29, Steven Walling wrote:
On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 7:32 AM MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Matthew Flaschen wrote:
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
Who's we? This seems to be a pet issue of yours. I'm curious who else is supportive of this initiative to enact a binding policy.
MZMcBride
What kind of standards for behavior we want and think are acceptable is a core concern of everyone in the Wikimedia and MediaWiki technical communities.
This kind of personally-directed and demeaning feedback ("This seems to be a pet issue of yours") is, perhaps ironically, precisely an example of why it would improve interaction in technical spaces to have some clearer ground rules.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Steven Walling wrote:
What kind of standards for behavior we want and think are acceptable is a core concern of everyone in the Wikimedia and MediaWiki technical communities.
This kind of personally-directed and demeaning feedback ("This seems to be a pet issue of yours") is, perhaps ironically, precisely an example of why it would improve interaction in technical spaces to have some clearer ground rules.
Clearer ground rules for what? Is this proposed code of conduct intended to reiterate that stalking and harassment are bad or is the policy intended to be a tool of people intent on policing civility?
From reading this mailing list and some of the talk page discussion, it
seems I wasn't the only person who found the "we" language a bit strange.
When discussing a feature request or a bug fix of almost any kind, I generally focus on the problems and use-cases that are relevant to the task. A code of conduct page on mediawiki.org is a particular implementation, but there has not been sufficient discussion of what problem(s) this proposed solution is intended to solve.
Isarra asks on the talk page "What generally comes up now as problems, how do existing channels fail, and how will this resolve that?"
Bawolff writes "I guess, the biggest question I have along the why is it needed lines, is why (concretely) is the friendly space policy not enough, and what is the intended relationship between this policy and that one."
The responses to these posts has been incredibly unsatisfactory so far.
Some of the comments on the talk page such as "Why? Why wait for something bad to happen to call it out instead of saying 'these kinds of things are bad, don't do them here'." seem to support the notion that what we're currently in a classic case of a solution searching for a problem.
MZMcBride
Yes, civility is important and should be enforced.
-- brion
On Sunday, August 9, 2015, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
What kind of standards for behavior we want and think are acceptable is a core concern of everyone in the Wikimedia and MediaWiki technical communities.
This kind of personally-directed and demeaning feedback ("This seems to be a pet issue of yours") is, perhaps ironically, precisely an example of why it would improve interaction in technical spaces to have some clearer ground rules.
Clearer ground rules for what? Is this proposed code of conduct intended to reiterate that stalking and harassment are bad or is the policy intended to be a tool of people intent on policing civility?
From reading this mailing list and some of the talk page discussion, it seems I wasn't the only person who found the "we" language a bit strange.
When discussing a feature request or a bug fix of almost any kind, I generally focus on the problems and use-cases that are relevant to the task. A code of conduct page on mediawiki.org is a particular implementation, but there has not been sufficient discussion of what problem(s) this proposed solution is intended to solve.
Isarra asks on the talk page "What generally comes up now as problems, how do existing channels fail, and how will this resolve that?"
Bawolff writes "I guess, the biggest question I have along the why is it needed lines, is why (concretely) is the friendly space policy not enough, and what is the intended relationship between this policy and that one."
The responses to these posts has been incredibly unsatisfactory so far.
Some of the comments on the talk page such as "Why? Why wait for something bad to happen to call it out instead of saying 'these kinds of things are bad, don't do them here'." seem to support the notion that what we're currently in a classic case of a solution searching for a problem.
MZMcBride
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
+1.
At some point we seem to have got the idea that civility enforcement was a Bad Thing - that we lost out when it was enforced. That we were no longer allowed to say whatever the heck we want and this was Bad.
The problem is that even absent civility enforcement, there have always been repercussions - the difference is that they fall on the audience rather than the actor. That's pretty unfair, and it doesn't create a good working environment (and yes, this is a working environment, in the sense that it is an environment dedicated to producing things from work). It drives people away.
A community that drives people away is not a good community. A community where the base standard for admission is not technical skills, or enthusiasm, but the ability to tolerate anything that could plausibly be thrown, is not a good community. It is a place that will inevitably drive people away and we will /all/ be lesser for that, because fewer people means more work for each individual person. Civility enforcement means a wider community which means /less work/. Even if you see absolutely no point in these policies for you; even if you see absolutely no direct benefit to you - surely you can accept that there are some people who find it beneficial, who are more likely to participate with it present and enforced, and that more smart people inherently benefits you by reducing the workload?
I don't see any conflict between having this policy and having the friendly spaces policy. The friendly spaces policy is a generalised, broad-strokes policy for real-world events; the code of conduct is a policy specific to the nature of technical environments. Is it a perfect code of conduct? No! Does it need changes? Absolutely! But it has the potential to be much improved on the default, which is /no/ consistent policy for anything that happens outside meatspace.
On 9 August 2015 at 22:49, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
Yes, civility is important and should be enforced.
-- brion
On Sunday, August 9, 2015, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
What kind of standards for behavior we want and think are acceptable is a core concern of everyone in the Wikimedia and MediaWiki technical communities.
This kind of personally-directed and demeaning feedback ("This seems to be a pet issue of yours") is, perhaps ironically, precisely an example of why it would improve interaction in technical spaces to have some clearer ground rules.
Clearer ground rules for what? Is this proposed code of conduct intended to reiterate that stalking and harassment are bad or is the policy intended to be a tool of people intent on policing civility?
From reading this mailing list and some of the talk page discussion, it seems I wasn't the only person who found the "we" language a bit strange.
When discussing a feature request or a bug fix of almost any kind, I generally focus on the problems and use-cases that are relevant to the task. A code of conduct page on mediawiki.org is a particular implementation, but there has not been sufficient discussion of what problem(s) this proposed solution is intended to solve.
Isarra asks on the talk page "What generally comes up now as problems, how do existing channels fail, and how will this resolve that?"
Bawolff writes "I guess, the biggest question I have along the why is it needed lines, is why (concretely) is the friendly space policy not enough, and what is the intended relationship between this policy and that one."
The responses to these posts has been incredibly unsatisfactory so far.
Some of the comments on the talk page such as "Why? Why wait for something bad to happen to call it out instead of saying 'these kinds of things are bad, don't do them here'." seem to support the notion that what we're currently in a classic case of a solution searching for a problem.
MZMcBride
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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I'm putting on my admin and IRC channel op hats, and trying to figure out how this proposal makes those jobs easier or different. I think there are reasonable ideas in this proposal, but the second level escalation path should follow inside of the appropriate local scopes.
I'm cautious about explicitly assigning a global ban role to WMF as a part of a community policy; having WMF police the community is a cause of concern after WMF's previous actions like Superprotect. I have heard very mixed signals from WMF on this point which makes me think that WMF has divergent views among the staff.
Generally, I'm not seeing that this proposal in its current form is valuable in the policy sense. It might do better as an essay about social principles and advice about possible escalation paths. I do think this proposal helps us along the road to a global friendly spaces policy in the sense that the general outline is well organized.
I like the point someone made in this discussion about the distiction between legislating policy and making social change. I think that what is needed is the latter, and that the latter is a more complex conversation to have. I think that we need to figure out the desired social end state, then work backwards and figure out which tools should be used to enact change; policies are probably a part of the solution, but only a part.
Pine
On 10 August 2015 at 03:40, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm putting on my admin and IRC channel op hats, and trying to figure out how this proposal makes those jobs easier or different. I think there are reasonable ideas in this proposal, but the second level escalation path should follow inside of the appropriate local scopes.
I'm cautious about explicitly assigning a global ban role to WMF as a part of a community policy; having WMF police the community is a cause of concern after WMF's previous actions like Superprotect. I have heard very mixed signals from WMF on this point which makes me think that WMF has divergent views among the staff.
What? The policy does nothing about explicitly assigning a global ban role to the WMF; it mentions the pre-existing global ban rule, something that exists regardless of how people feel about superprotect.
Generally, I'm not seeing that this proposal in its current form is valuable in the policy sense. It might do better as an essay about social principles and advice about possible escalation paths. I do think this proposal helps us along the road to a global friendly spaces policy in the sense that the general outline is well organized.
Why? What would be necessary to change it?
I like the point someone made in this discussion about the distiction between legislating policy and making social change. I think that what is needed is the latter, and that the latter is a more complex conversation to have. I think that we need to figure out the desired social end state, then work backwards and figure out which tools should be used to enact change; policies are probably a part of the solution, but only a part.
Policies are a massive part of the solution. When we describe 'social change' or 'social standards' what we're talking about is social expectations that everyone implicitly recognises. Because they implicitly recognise those standards, and follow them, wahey! No need for big rules. How do you get to the stage where those standards percolate through and everyone knows about them? That's more complicated. That, actually, often does take rules - because while the end outcome is everyone just doing something because That's How We Do Things, you actually have to /start doing things/ for that to become the gestalt.
But, to be perfectly honest: Pine, this email that I am replying to here disappoints me tremendously. The Wikimedia community is not a special snowflake; it is not unique. The same is true of the technical community. The platform is different, the people are different, but the overarching social environment and goals are the same as any other technical community. And guess what? Other technical communities, almost all of them, have problems with harassment or microaggressions that they are confronting. And in many cases they have been working on those problems for a really long time, and have either dealt with them or are in the process of dealing with them. And they've learned a ton of useful things that they've upstreamed into places like the Geek Feminism wiki or the Contributor Covenant or various other standardised codes of conduct. Many, many smart minds working on these problems for a really long time, have decided that explicit codes of conduct are the way to go.
But we /can't/ have one for Wikimedia, you see, because we need to discuss it more. Yes, it's nice that you've come up with a policy, based on those other policies that have helped in those similar areas - but we need to discuss it more and justify why it should exist. And discuss it and discuss it and discuss it until all hope of getting anything done is lost and tough luck to the people who were marginalised or disenfranchised while we were chatting because the process is far more important than their feelings, even if it's a process consisting entirely of 'debating how much we care about feelings', but the /important/ thing is that rather than adopt a policy that almost every modern community has in some way, shape or form, we discussed whether it was necessary for us.
Discussions about the content of the policy is useful; Fae, for example, has provided some really helpful feedback (imo) about some ambiguities in the wording, and I have Strong Opinions about how we need to make the enforcement mechanism and its processes more explicit so everyone goes into a situation knowing what the path forward looks like. People have been submitting links to other implementations of the same principles that can be incorporated into our draft to make a better document. All of these are useful ways to contribute.
But we are BEYOND "ooh, I don't know whether this is useful ~even in theory~ or not" and the fact that such a discussion is going on is proof positive that we have a problem. Because there are marginalised voices speaking out within our community, and marginalised voices within the wider tech ecosystem, and pretty much all of them agree that yes, this is useful, in theory and in practice. And when we feel the need to debate, yet again, whether it has value, we are dismissing those lived experiences and demonstrating precisely the attitude that makes these environments unpleasant.
This policy is not for you. This policy is not for me. This policy is for the people who are marginalised and shoved aside and lack franchise in our existing processes and ways of interacting. So how about, for a change, we actually defer to those people. We accept that our perspectives are not as valuable in evaluating the health of a community as the perspectives of those people the community is shoving aside. And when those people say "a code of conduct helps" - as Ashe Dryden does, as Skud does, as Sumana does, as many, many others actually impacted by the unconscious biases our style of dialogue and working reinforces, we actually listen to them and start building a better policy and stop debating whether a policy has value.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Oliver Keyes wrote:
But we /can't/ have one for Wikimedia, you see, because we need to discuss it more. Yes, it's nice that you've come up with a policy, based on those other policies that have helped in those similar areas
- but we need to discuss it more and justify why it should exist.
There's nothing wrong with discussion and justification.
But we are BEYOND "ooh, I don't know whether this is useful ~even in theory~ or not" and the fact that such a discussion is going on is proof positive that we have a problem. Because there are marginalised voices speaking out within our community, and marginalised voices within the wider tech ecosystem, and pretty much all of them agree that yes, this is useful, in theory and in practice.
Who in our community is marginalised and speaking out? A number of people have asked for concrete examples of problems so that a proposed solution can meet the appropriate requirements. This is standard practice in almost any technical community: evaluate the problem(s) and then discuss potential solutions. That's not what seems to be happening here.
A proposed code of conduct like this is quite expensive to implement and enforce/maintain. I personally don't get the sense from reading your replies that you acknowledge the high cost.
This policy is not for you. This policy is not for me. This policy is for the people who are marginalised and shoved aside and lack franchise in our existing processes and ways of interacting.
Can you please be more specific here? Who lacks franchise in our existing processes and ways of interacting? Can you name a specific problem or problems that have come up in the past? How would having this proposed code of conduct have helped? It's reasonable, prior to creating additional bureaucracy, for people to push back and ask whether it's necessary.
MZMcBride
On 10 August 2015 at 14:18, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
A proposed code of conduct like this is quite expensive to implement and enforce/maintain. I personally don't get the sense from reading your replies that you acknowledge the high cost.
In practice, EVERYONE ELSE WHO'S ADOPTED ONE hasn't found this.
In 2015, any tech organisation *without* a good, solid code of conduct of this sort is seriously backward and questionable. It's something you have to seriously justify not having, and so far there haven't been serious justifications offered as to why Wikimedia is a special snowflake in this regard.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 10 August 2015 at 14:18, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
A proposed code of conduct like this is quite expensive to implement and enforce/maintain. I personally don't get the sense from reading your replies that you acknowledge the high cost.
In practice, EVERYONE ELSE WHO'S ADOPTED ONE hasn't found this.
I'm curious which comparable organizations you're referring to. I think many groups have an easier time implementing codes of conduct because they're dealing with a largely homogenous group and/or there's usually a clear power structure in place (e.g., full-time staff who are paid to act as discussion moderators). Volunteer-run sites that are more global in nature, such as Reddit or even the English Wikipedia, have had incredible difficulty implementing a code of conduct, as I understand it.
In 2015, any tech organisation *without* a good, solid code of conduct of this sort is seriously backward and questionable. It's something you have to seriously justify not having, and so far there haven't been serious justifications offered as to why Wikimedia is a special snowflake in this regard.
I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. We already have:
* https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick [*] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith * https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_policy
Is yet another page really needed?
MZMcBride
[*] This page was moved to Meta-Wiki by you over a decade ago. Given that you're pointing out that it's currently 2015, it seems reasonable to note that we've had similar (in spirit, anyway) pages to the one being proposed for quite some time.
On 11 August 2015 at 00:10, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
I'm curious which comparable organizations you're referring to.
Pretty much any open source project with an organisation. You've already been referred to e.g. the Geek Feminism wiki on this point, so if you haven't read up there already then it comes across as sealioning to ask yet another person the same question.
Is yet another page really needed?
it's been pointed out by multiple people in this thread already that we're after a change in behaviour rather than more text, so you bringing this up again this late comes across as "I didn't hear that".
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 11 August 2015 at 00:10, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
I'm curious which comparable organizations you're referring to.
Pretty much any open source project with an organisation. You've already been referred to e.g. the Geek Feminism wiki on this point, so if you haven't read up there already then it comes across as sealioning to ask yet another person the same question.
I didn't ask yet another person, I asked the person who shouted that everyone else has already inexpensively solved this issue. Is there a similarly derogatory phrase that I can use for you to describe your behavior of pointing to an entire wiki as an "answer" to a question?
it's been pointed out by multiple people in this thread already that we're after a change in behaviour rather than more text, so you bringing this up again this late comes across as "I didn't hear that".
I've been mostly keeping up with the talk page discussion on mediawiki.org. I think this quote nicely sums up my feelings: "My experience with mw and wikimedia development as a whole has been such that these areas have overall come across as far more civil than most 'content' projects I've interacted with, and yet the latter tended to have policies out the wazoo." Our actual experience, hard-earned over time, makes it pretty clear that having a lot of policies doesn't address behavioral issues (and I think you and I agree on that).
Regarding "this late," this thread is less than a week old, so I honestly have no idea what the hell you're talking about there. Is it really too late to suggest that one of the _dozens_ of similar pages that we already have might fill the same niche as this proposed code of conduct?
MZMcBride
On 08/10/2015 07:10 PM, MZMcBride wrote:
I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. We already have:
As you know, none of those are binding policies that apply to all Wikimedia technical spaces.
This only applies to in-person events.
This is more or less reasonable, but it's not even a guideline. It's just an essay,
This does not apply to the vast majority of Wikimedia technical spaces, and does not have the same (or particularly similar) content.
This is only binding on staff and board members, not the whole community. It's also not specific enough about both what is problematic behavior and how we solve it.
Matt Flaschen
On 8/10/15, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 08/10/2015 07:10 PM, MZMcBride wrote:
I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. We already have:
As you know, none of those are binding policies that apply to all Wikimedia technical spaces.
This only applies to in-person events.
This is more or less reasonable, but it's not even a guideline. It's just an essay,
This does not apply to the vast majority of Wikimedia technical spaces, and does not have the same (or particularly similar) content.
This is only binding on staff and board members, not the whole community. It's also not specific enough about both what is problematic behavior and how we solve it.
Matt Flaschen
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
While you're right we don't have a "binding" policy as of yet, I don't think this should be conflated with us having no rules.
As long as I can remember, there has been an informal rule, of "Comment on the code [or proposal], not the contributor", particularly on the wikitech-l mailing list. Which certainly falls short of many of the concerns that this proposal intends to address (Although that line is included in the proposal), however I just want it to be stated that we are not starting from a state of total anarchy.
After reflecting on the proposed policy a little bit, and various comments I've read, here's how I feel:
Broadly speaking:
*Scope is too vague. This is making some people nervous, especially commons, who really should not feel affected by this policy at all *Unclear what is "broken". Most answers seem to boil down to some sort of due diligence concern in case something is happening, or "everyone is doing it", which is rather unsatisfactory to the people asking the question. A concise rationale for what we want to accomplish with this, backed up with citations to other people who've dealt with similar issues, would perhaps alleviate some concerns. **People who are hindered by the status quo, don't feel comfortable coming forward with their experience. Which is 100% understandable, but nonetheless makes it difficult to judge the appropriateness of the policy. *Unclear how the policy is going to be enforced (For serious violations), which engenders questions of if it will be enforced fairly. The lack of specification in the enforcement section probably means it will be enforced by the WMF, probably behind closed doors. Will WMF be biased involving disputes where a staff member is a party.
-- bawolff
On 08/12/2015 05:13 AM, Brian Wolff wrote:
While you're right we don't have a "binding" policy as of yet, I don't think this should be conflated with us having no rules.
We do have some social conventions, and sometimes these work, but they don't always.
There have been instances (on both Wikimedia projects and other projects) where people have explicitly used the lack of a binding policy to justify their behavior. The experience of other projects suggests that making the policy binding and specific helps.
As long as I can remember, there has been an informal rule, of "Comment on the code [or proposal], not the contributor", particularly on the wikitech-l mailing list. Which certainly falls short of many of the concerns that this proposal intends to address (Although that line is included in the proposal), however I just want it to be stated that we are not starting from a state of total anarchy.
I agree.
*Scope is too vague. This is making some people nervous, especially commons, who really should not feel affected by this policy at all
This has been addressed. Commons, Wikipedia, etc. are now clearly excluded.
*Unclear what is "broken". Most answers seem to boil down to some sort of due diligence concern in case something is happening, or "everyone is doing it", which is rather unsatisfactory to the people asking the question. A concise rationale for what we want to accomplish with this, backed up with citations to other people who've dealt with similar issues, would perhaps alleviate some concerns.
I've added such a citation. I would summarize as three reasons:
* We have had concrete violations in the past which this would have provided a tool to address.
* It provides clear guidance (the preference is that people behave respectfully to begin with).
* It sends a message to potential participants: "We welcome you", and backs that with more than empty words.
*Unclear how the policy is going to be enforced (For serious violations), which engenders questions of if it will be enforced fairly. The lack of specification in the enforcement section probably means it will be enforced by the WMF, probably behind closed doors. Will WMF be biased involving disputes where a staff member is a party.
Enforcement is still to-be-determined.
Matt Flaschen
On 12 August 2015 at 23:00, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
Enforcement is still to-be-determined.
This does need to be sorted out ahead of time. Here's today's horrible example:
http://kovalc.in/2015/08/12/harassers.html
- d.
David's example is, unfortunately, probably a good one to keep in mind.
Regarding enforcement, WMF's traditional approach is that staff discipline is handled on a track that's independent of community enforcement actions, and the WMF in-house actions are almost entirely opaque which is in contrast to the more transparent process of community enforcement. Because staff and community are comingling in these technical spaces, it may be best to have more harmonious and more transparent linkage between community and staff investigations and enforcement procedures. This might require the involvement of WMF Legal and/or HR to sort out how this system will work.
For the purpose of developing enforcement procedures that will apply to staff and to community members in similar if not identical ways, I would like to suggest setting up a working group that includes WMF HR, WMF Legal, WMF technical staff (broadly construed), community technical contributors (broadly construed), and community admins and IRC ops who may be involved in investigations and enforcement of this proposed code of conduct. Enforcement in these circumstances is complicated, and I think that a working group would be best positioned to propose a legally sound solution for consideration by staff and community alike.
Pine On Aug 12, 2015 3:42 PM, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 12 August 2015 at 23:00, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
Enforcement is still to-be-determined.
This does need to be sorted out ahead of time. Here's today's horrible example:
http://kovalc.in/2015/08/12/harassers.html
- d.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 08/12/2015 06:41 PM, David Gerard wrote:
On 12 August 2015 at 23:00, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
Enforcement is still to-be-determined.
This does need to be sorted out ahead of time.
See my proposal at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra... . There are some details to be refined, but I like having a single initial point of contact.
Matt Flaschen
On 14 August 2015 at 22:45, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 08/12/2015 06:41 PM, David Gerard wrote:
On 12 August 2015 at 23:00, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
Enforcement is still to-be-determined.
This does need to be sorted out ahead of time.
See my proposal at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra... . There are some details to be refined, but I like having a single initial point of contact.
+1 - this looks a good start. Having *something* that can deal with the cases you can hardly believe and yet not fall apart at the social-mechanism gaming that wikicranks are so good at is an excellent start.
- d.
I was trying to adapt such policy for technical spaces for two years, It is serious issue and it happens a lot, If it didn't happen to you, that doesn't mean it's not happening or doesn't worth being addressed. I'm working to adapt a CoC for pywikibot if this one fails [1] If you think it needs more work to be a feasible policy, I think so too, let's discuss on the talk page but if you think we don't need such policy, you are entitled to your opinion and that doesn't mean you are right. I feel we have this long discussion because some people from WMF is working on the CoC and there is the spirit of "Since WMF did the superprotect, it hates the community" between us.
I just want to point out to so many CoCs that big tech communities have and remind us importance of the issue. * contributor-covenant: Adapted by AngularJS, Eclipse and more [2] * Open Code of Conduct: Adapted by Github, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter. [3] * Djanog CoC [4] * Python CoC [5] * Ubuntu CoC [6] * Geek feminism [7] * And much more [8]
[1]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikibot/Code_of_conduct_RFC [2]: http://contributor-covenant.org/ [3]: https://github.com/todogroup/opencodeofconduct [4]: https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/reporting/ [5]: https://www.python.org/community/diversity/ [6]: http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct [7]: http://geekfeminism.org/about/code-of-conduct/ [8]: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Code_of_conduct_evaluations
Best
On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 2:53 AM David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 August 2015 at 22:45, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 08/12/2015 06:41 PM, David Gerard wrote:
On 12 August 2015 at 23:00, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
Enforcement is still to-be-determined.
This does need to be sorted out ahead of time.
See my proposal at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra...
. There are some details to be refined, but I like having a single
initial
point of contact.
+1 - this looks a good start. Having *something* that can deal with the cases you can hardly believe and yet not fall apart at the social-mechanism gaming that wikicranks are so good at is an excellent start.
- d.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
that is an impressive list, amir. WMF hast its terms of use: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use (TOU) . admitted, an illegible monster compared to the simple statements below, like contributor covenant. i honestly do not think that an open movement like the wikimedia movement should invent any new terms, licenses, codes, but influence existing ones. by putting your stuff on the mediawiki.org site you and all contributors are bound to the TOU. and we already see that the many rules contradict each other in little areas, they cannot be updated fast enough without an army of persons. the terms of use e.g. suggest to use CC-BY-SA 3.0, which lead to a collection of law suites in germany, while CC-BY-SA 4.0 would have prevented at least some of them, see here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-July/078685.html .
rupert
On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 10:57 AM, Amir Ladsgroup ladsgroup@gmail.com wrote:
I was trying to adapt such policy for technical spaces for two years, It is serious issue and it happens a lot, If it didn't happen to you, that doesn't mean it's not happening or doesn't worth being addressed. I'm working to adapt a CoC for pywikibot if this one fails [1] If you think it needs more work to be a feasible policy, I think so too, let's discuss on the talk page but if you think we don't need such policy, you are entitled to your opinion and that doesn't mean you are right. I feel we have this long discussion because some people from WMF is working on the CoC and there is the spirit of "Since WMF did the superprotect, it hates the community" between us.
I just want to point out to so many CoCs that big tech communities have and remind us importance of the issue.
- contributor-covenant: Adapted by AngularJS, Eclipse and more [2]
- Open Code of Conduct: Adapted by Github, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter. [3]
- Djanog CoC [4]
- Python CoC [5]
- Ubuntu CoC [6]
- Geek feminism [7]
- And much more [8]
Best
On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 2:53 AM David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 August 2015 at 22:45, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 08/12/2015 06:41 PM, David Gerard wrote:
On 12 August 2015 at 23:00, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
Enforcement is still to-be-determined.
This does need to be sorted out ahead of time.
See my proposal at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra...
. There are some details to be refined, but I like having a single
initial
point of contact.
+1 - this looks a good start. Having *something* that can deal with the cases you can hardly believe and yet not fall apart at the social-mechanism gaming that wikicranks are so good at is an excellent start.
On 16 August 2015 at 04:06, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
that is an impressive list, amir. WMF hast its terms of use: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use (TOU) . admitted, an illegible monster compared to the simple statements below, like contributor covenant. i honestly do not think that an open movement like the wikimedia movement should invent any new terms, licenses, codes, but influence existing ones. by putting your stuff on the mediawiki.org site you and all contributors are bound to the TOU. and we already see that the many rules contradict each other in little areas, they cannot be updated fast enough without an army of persons. the terms of use e.g. suggest to use CC-BY-SA 3.0, which lead to a collection of law suites in germany, while CC-BY-SA 4.0 would have prevented at least some of them, see here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-July/078685.html .
I don't understand how the terms of use or copyright license relate in any way to codes of conduct.
If you mean "we should be looking for good examples of existing enforcement mechanisms or language", I absolutely agree, and that is part of what the Code of Conduct is trying to do.
rupert
On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 10:57 AM, Amir Ladsgroup ladsgroup@gmail.com wrote:
I was trying to adapt such policy for technical spaces for two years, It is serious issue and it happens a lot, If it didn't happen to you, that doesn't mean it's not happening or doesn't worth being addressed. I'm working to adapt a CoC for pywikibot if this one fails [1] If you think it needs more work to be a feasible policy, I think so too, let's discuss on the talk page but if you think we don't need such policy, you are entitled to your opinion and that doesn't mean you are right. I feel we have this long discussion because some people from WMF is working on the CoC and there is the spirit of "Since WMF did the superprotect, it hates the community" between us.
I just want to point out to so many CoCs that big tech communities have and remind us importance of the issue.
- contributor-covenant: Adapted by AngularJS, Eclipse and more [2]
- Open Code of Conduct: Adapted by Github, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter. [3]
- Djanog CoC [4]
- Python CoC [5]
- Ubuntu CoC [6]
- Geek feminism [7]
- And much more [8]
Best
On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 2:53 AM David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 August 2015 at 22:45, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 08/12/2015 06:41 PM, David Gerard wrote:
On 12 August 2015 at 23:00, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
Enforcement is still to-be-determined.
This does need to be sorted out ahead of time.
See my proposal at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra...
. There are some details to be refined, but I like having a single
initial
point of contact.
+1 - this looks a good start. Having *something* that can deal with the cases you can hardly believe and yet not fall apart at the social-mechanism gaming that wikicranks are so good at is an excellent start.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 6:24 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 16 August 2015 at 04:06, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
that is an impressive list, amir. WMF hast its terms of use: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use (TOU) . admitted, an illegible monster compared to the simple statements below, like contributor covenant. i honestly do not think that an open movement like the wikimedia movement should invent any new terms, licenses, codes, but influence existing ones. by putting your stuff on the mediawiki.org site you and all contributors are bound to the TOU. and we already see that the many rules contradict each other in little areas, they cannot be updated fast enough without an army of persons. the terms of use e.g. suggest to use CC-BY-SA 3.0, which lead to a collection of law suites in germany, while CC-BY-SA 4.0 would have prevented at least some of them, see here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-July/078685.html .
I don't understand how the terms of use or copyright license relate in any way to codes of conduct.
If you mean "we should be looking for good examples of existing enforcement mechanisms or language", I absolutely agree, and that is part of what the Code of Conduct is trying to do.
i mean that we duplicate text in hundreds of slightly differing rules,
guidelines, policies, terms, codes, in different languages. this inflation of texts is very special to the wikimedia movement. my personal expectation would be that movement paid persons do have as main task to reduce the complexity for volunteers, readers, writers, photographers, coders, etc. and as second task, they support innovative techniques. we should not forget it takes time to write stuff, and it takes exponentially more time to read it. if we make a wikimedia policy, it has the potential to be read by 1 billion people. reading policies and writing policies can be considered as waste because it is not the mission of wikipedia, not the mission of WMF :) coming back to the example terms of use, they state: *Civility* – You support a civil environment and do not harass other users. paragraph 4 vastly elaborates on it. a 90% duplicate of the code of conduct. brion, civility _is_ enforced already today by the terms of use, nothing new necessary.
how does this relate to copyright license? directly not really, but i tried to hint that i would expect a technical solution from a technical person. as example where our written rules go wrong i cited the thread about licenses and reuse in commons, in two aspects. ONE, updating a lot of policies is a sisyphus task, and the WMF fails already today. the terms of use include still the old CC license, using the new one would prevent law suits in germany. TWO, you oliver, matt, quim and other technicians, would have the responsibility to come up with technical solutions to exactly this community problem, not paper. can we add metadata to images: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-July/078782.html. problem would be solved by a technical implementation and maybe adapting the license. which, in my biased opinion, has a huge impact and solves the problem at source for 120 million german speaking persons, and probably in many other countries as well.
best, rupert
brion, civility _is_ enforced already today by the terms of use, nothing new necessary.
It really isn't except for extreme cases. There's a difference between a policy enforced from above saying you're not allowed to do various things, most of which would probably land you in jail, and a widely agreed upon commitment to certain standards of behaviours.
how does this relate to copyright license? directly not really, but i tried to hint that i would expect a technical solution from a technical person. as example where our written rules go wrong i cited the thread about licenses and reuse in commons, in two aspects. ONE, updating a lot of policies is a sisyphus task, and the WMF fails already today. the terms of use include still the old CC license, using the new one would prevent law suits in germany.
How is this relavent? Whether or not to update licenses is a complicated question, with lots of pros and cons. It is not necessary just laziness preventing someone from doing this, its possibly intentional. For example, MediaWiki is intentionally GPLv2, not GPLv3. (Depending on the license, it might even not be legally allowed - CC-BY-SA 3.0 sates "You may Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work only under the terms of this License. ...You may Distribute or Publicly Perform an Adaptation only under the terms of: .. later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License", so maybe only adaptions but not the original work is allowed to be relicensed not the original work, but then again anytime someone edits wikipedia, they are adapting the work. IANAL and this is way off topic)
TWO, you oliver, matt, quim and other technicians, would
have the responsibility to come up with technical solutions to exactly this community problem, not paper. can we add metadata to images: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-July/078782.html. problem would be solved by a technical implementation and maybe adapting the license. which, in my biased opinion, has a huge impact and solves the problem at source for 120 million german speaking persons, and probably in many other countries as well.
This seems totally irrelevant to the code of conduct.
-- bawolff
On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 2:40 PM, Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
For example, MediaWiki is intentionally GPLv2, not GPLv3.
MediaWiki is not intentionally GPLv2. It merely is v2 now and the community cannot come to a consensus on whether to change it, thus it remains in its current stagnant state.
And this is exactly what rupert is talking about: policies and other important documents and decisions like this very rarely are brought into the modern age, either because the WMF does not have resources to update them or because the community cannot come to a decision on what updates to make or not make.
*-- * *Tyler Romeo* Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2016 Major in Computer Science
On 8/22/15, Tyler Romeo tylerromeo@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 2:40 PM, Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
For example, MediaWiki is intentionally GPLv2, not GPLv3.
MediaWiki is not intentionally GPLv2. It merely is v2 now and the community cannot come to a consensus on whether to change it, thus it remains in its current stagnant state.
I would consider that intentional. The status quo is intentionally staying as it is, because there isn't agreement to change it. (I'll be honest though, I don't really remember what the result was last time the whole GPL version thing was discussed)
Unintentional I would define as - everyone thinks its a good idea to switch, but nobody could be bothered to update the wiki page.
-- bawolff
Le 23/08/2015 01:09, Brian Wolff a écrit :
On 8/22/15, Tyler Romeo tylerromeo@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 2:40 PM, Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
For example, MediaWiki is intentionally GPLv2, not GPLv3.
MediaWiki is not intentionally GPLv2. It merely is v2 now and the community cannot come to a consensus on whether to change it, thus it remains in its current stagnant state.
I would consider that intentional. The status quo is intentionally staying as it is, because there isn't agreement to change it. (I'll be honest though, I don't really remember what the result was last time the whole GPL version thing was discussed)
Unintentional I would define as - everyone thinks its a good idea to switch, but nobody could be bothered to update the wiki page.
To be fair, the license is GPLv2 or later.
I am myself opposed to switch to GPLv3. Given the amount of code I own in MediaWiki core, I think I am in a position to veto such a switch.
But I am not a lawyer.
On 8/26/15, Antoine Musso hashar+wmf@free.fr wrote:
Le 23/08/2015 01:09, Brian Wolff a écrit :
On 8/22/15, Tyler Romeo tylerromeo@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 2:40 PM, Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
For example, MediaWiki is intentionally GPLv2, not GPLv3.
MediaWiki is not intentionally GPLv2. It merely is v2 now and the community cannot come to a consensus on whether to change it, thus it remains in its current stagnant state.
I would consider that intentional. The status quo is intentionally staying as it is, because there isn't agreement to change it. (I'll be honest though, I don't really remember what the result was last time the whole GPL version thing was discussed)
Unintentional I would define as - everyone thinks its a good idea to switch, but nobody could be bothered to update the wiki page.
To be fair, the license is GPLv2 or later.
I am myself opposed to switch to GPLv3. Given the amount of code I own in MediaWiki core, I think I am in a position to veto such a switch.
But I am not a lawyer.
-- Antoine "hashar" Musso
[At the risk of getting off topic].
I think what is usually meant by switching to GPLv3, is to pick some arbitrary point in time to say all future commits are GPL3 only. Commits prior to that continue to be dual licensed (in essence). So really only people committing after the cut off point need to agree.
But from a community politics perspective we need to all agree (Or at least a majority) [I too am not a fan of switching, although I mostly just don't care].
But I am also not a lawyer.
-- bawolff
On 21 August 2015 at 21:11, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 6:24 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 16 August 2015 at 04:06, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
that is an impressive list, amir. WMF hast its terms of use: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use (TOU) . admitted, an illegible monster compared to the simple statements below, like contributor covenant. i honestly do not think that an open movement like the wikimedia movement should invent any new terms, licenses, codes, but influence existing ones. by putting your stuff on the mediawiki.org site you and all contributors are bound to the TOU. and we already see that the many rules contradict each other in little areas, they cannot be updated fast enough without an army of persons. the terms of use e.g. suggest to use CC-BY-SA 3.0, which lead to a collection of law suites in germany, while CC-BY-SA 4.0 would have prevented at least some of them, see here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-July/078685.html .
I don't understand how the terms of use or copyright license relate in any way to codes of conduct.
If you mean "we should be looking for good examples of existing enforcement mechanisms or language", I absolutely agree, and that is part of what the Code of Conduct is trying to do.
i mean that we duplicate text in hundreds of slightly differing rules,
guidelines, policies, terms, codes, in different languages. this inflation of texts is very special to the wikimedia movement. my personal expectation would be that movement paid persons do have as main task to reduce the complexity for volunteers, readers, writers, photographers, coders, etc. and as second task, they support innovative techniques. we should not forget it takes time to write stuff, and it takes exponentially more time to read it. if we make a wikimedia policy, it has the potential to be read by 1 billion people. reading policies and writing policies can be considered as waste because it is not the mission of wikipedia, not the mission of WMF :) coming back to the example terms of use, they state: *Civility* – You support a civil environment and do not harass other users. paragraph 4 vastly elaborates on it. a 90% duplicate of the code of conduct. brion, civility _is_ enforced already today by the terms of use, nothing new necessary.
how does this relate to copyright license? directly not really, but i tried to hint that i would expect a technical solution from a technical person. as example where our written rules go wrong i cited the thread about licenses and reuse in commons, in two aspects. ONE, updating a lot of policies is a sisyphus task, and the WMF fails already today. the terms of use include still the old CC license, using the new one would prevent law suits in germany. TWO, you oliver, matt, quim and other technicians, would have the responsibility to come up with technical solutions to exactly this community problem, not paper. can we add metadata to images: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-July/078782.html. problem would be solved by a technical implementation and maybe adapting the license. which, in my biased opinion, has a huge impact and solves the problem at source for 120 million german speaking persons, and probably in many other countries as well.
We shouldn't be adopting a technical code of conduct because it's irrelevant because it already exists and ANYWAYS it's far more important that a C++ and R programmer who does data vis for our Search team work out how to insert metadata into images.
Okay.
best, rupert _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
I saw this today, I wonder if it's relevant to the thread:
http://www.perpendicularangel.com/2015/08/no-i-dont-trust-your-conference-wi...
Of course we're talking about stuff beyond conferences, but it still applies I'd think.
- d.
David, thanks for this find.
THIS is why the Code of Conduct is needed. I recognized myself in this blog. I remembered avoiding any aspect of socialization at conferences I had to attend for work, and simply didn't even consider attending conferences for any other purpose. I remembered how readily "the guys" assumed that any woman there was there for more than just networking and learning. I remembered having my butt pinched, my breasts "accidentally touched", my questions ignored or laughed at. I remember how the buzz of background conversation is always much louder when the speaker is a woman than when the speaker is a man.
It's changed for me. Not because there's any less of all of this going on. No, it's because my hair is grey and I'm now old enough to be the mom of half the people in the room at any male-dominated conferences I attend; and outside of Wikimedia events, the conferences I go to are usually full of conservative businesswomen, and alcohol is rarely involved.
So yeah...you need a code of conduct. Because if I was even 15 years younger, I'd never go to a Wikimedia conference.
Risker/Anne
On 22 August 2015 at 20:03, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I saw this today, I wonder if it's relevant to the thread:
http://www.perpendicularangel.com/2015/08/no-i-dont-trust-your-conference-wi...
Of course we're talking about stuff beyond conferences, but it still applies I'd think.
- d.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
(anonymous) wrote:
[...]
So yeah...you need a code of conduct. Because if I was even 15 years younger, I'd never go to a Wikimedia conference.
Wikimedia conferences are already governed by the so-called "Friendly space policy" (cf. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy).
Tim
On 22 August 2015 at 22:36, Tim Landscheidt tim@tim-landscheidt.de wrote:
(anonymous) wrote:
[...]
So yeah...you need a code of conduct. Because if I was even 15 years younger, I'd never go to a Wikimedia conference.
Wikimedia conferences are already governed by the so-called "Friendly space policy" (cf. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy).
Tim
That's very recent - December 2014 for the "general" one - and it certainly wasn't considered to apply at Wikimania 2014 (this is from direct knowledge of an incident). Who was the local "code of conduct" person at Wikimania 2015? Was their information published? Was it advertised in the handouts for the session? (Hint - it's on the Wikimania2015 website, but not on written materials that I received.)
Perhaps more importantly....who were the local contacts at Hackathon 2015? I can't even dig that one up in the event documentation.
A policy that exists but has no clear or visible support isn't worth the bytes it's written with.
Risker/Anne
On 23 August 2015 at 03:52, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps more importantly....who were the local contacts at Hackathon 2015? I can't even dig that one up in the event documentation. A policy that exists but has no clear or visible support isn't worth the bytes it's written with.
+1
Don't forget this bit - enforcement is the difference between a policy that does anything, and someone writing another million words of well-meaning rules on a wiki somewhere.
- d.
On 08/22/2015 10:52 PM, Risker wrote:
Perhaps more importantly....who were the local contacts at Hackathon 2015? I can't even dig that one up in the event documentation.
A policy that exists but has no clear or visible support isn't worth the bytes it's written with.
This is a good point. The Friendly space policy needs to be enforced (in addition to the code of conduct being drafted now).
I'll be on the look out, to ensure our in-person events properly cite the Friendly space policy and list these contacts. I hope other people do the same.
Thanks,
Matt Flaschen
On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 1:52 AM, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 08/22/2015 10:52 PM, Risker wrote:
Perhaps more importantly....who were the local contacts at Hackathon 2015? I can't even dig that one up in the event documentation.
https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hackathon#Event_Organizers
See also in the first paragraph of that page: "All participants of Hackathon are expected to respect and abide by the Wikimania Friendly Space Policy https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy. Individuals not cooperating with this policy may be asked to leave the event."
A policy that exists but has no clear or visible support isn't worth the
bytes it's written with.
On 28 August 2015 at 06:05, Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 1:52 AM, Matthew Flaschen <mflaschen@wikimedia.org
wrote:
On 08/22/2015 10:52 PM, Risker wrote:
Perhaps more importantly....who were the local contacts at Hackathon
2015?
I can't even dig that one up in the event documentation.
https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hackathon#Event_Organizers
See also in the first paragraph of that page: "All participants of Hackathon are expected to respect and abide by the Wikimania Friendly Space Policy https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy. Individuals not cooperating with this policy may be asked to leave the event."
A policy that exists but has no clear or visible support isn't worth the
bytes it's written with.
It should be in the email sent to all participants in advance (which it isn't), and the identities of those who will be available to support the policy must be clear. Simply pointing to the list of organizers is not sufficient - it's not uncommon for some hackathon organizers to not actually be in attendance, and it is rare that there is always an organizer available for all of the hours the hackathon runs, particularly since most hackathons include at least one overnight session. In short, organizers != those skilled to handle friendly space policy violations.
"May be asked to leave" is a good option, but there's no suggestion that other options exist.
Risker/Anne
On 8/22/15, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
David, thanks for this find.
THIS is why the Code of Conduct is needed. I recognized myself in this blog. I remembered avoiding any aspect of socialization at conferences I had to attend for work, and simply didn't even consider attending conferences for any other purpose. I remembered how readily "the guys" assumed that any woman there was there for more than just networking and learning. I remembered having my butt pinched, my breasts "accidentally touched", my questions ignored or laughed at. I remember how the buzz of background conversation is always much louder when the speaker is a woman than when the speaker is a man.
It's changed for me. Not because there's any less of all of this going on. No, it's because my hair is grey and I'm now old enough to be the mom of half the people in the room at any male-dominated conferences I attend; and outside of Wikimedia events, the conferences I go to are usually full of conservative businesswomen, and alcohol is rarely involved.
So yeah...you need a code of conduct. Because if I was even 15 years younger, I'd never go to a Wikimedia conference.
Risker/Anne
Thank you for writing this. I really appreciate you sharing your experiences.
Your comments have convinced me that I should support the proposal, where previously I had mixed feelings. The types of behaviours you describe are absolutely unacceptable.
-- Bawolff
Why we need a committee?
I think admins can enforce if necessary.
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2015 00:30:40 -0600 From: bawolff@gmail.com To: wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [Engineering] Code of conduct
On 8/22/15, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
David, thanks for this find.
THIS is why the Code of Conduct is needed. I recognized myself in this blog. I remembered avoiding any aspect of socialization at conferences I had to attend for work, and simply didn't even consider attending conferences for any other purpose. I remembered how readily "the guys" assumed that any woman there was there for more than just networking and learning. I remembered having my butt pinched, my breasts "accidentally touched", my questions ignored or laughed at. I remember how the buzz of background conversation is always much louder when the speaker is a woman than when the speaker is a man.
It's changed for me. Not because there's any less of all of this going on. No, it's because my hair is grey and I'm now old enough to be the mom of half the people in the room at any male-dominated conferences I attend; and outside of Wikimedia events, the conferences I go to are usually full of conservative businesswomen, and alcohol is rarely involved.
So yeah...you need a code of conduct. Because if I was even 15 years younger, I'd never go to a Wikimedia conference.
Risker/Anne
Thank you for writing this. I really appreciate you sharing your experiences.
Your comments have convinced me that I should support the proposal, where previously I had mixed feelings. The types of behaviours you describe are absolutely unacceptable.
-- Bawolff
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Admins? And who are those? Please build a listing of every admin for every possible technical venue relating to Wikimedia.
While you're at it, we're going to need them to have a shared hivemind so enforcement is consistent between venues. They're also going to need to communicate about sanctions so that behaviour spilling over to multiple venues can be factored in. And while you're doing /that/ please make sure they all have an appropriate protocol for appealing things and passing issues upwards.
Or we could have a committee.
I get that this is a technical environment and we are all, myself included, used to being able to chip in anywhere with some utility. But please have some respect for the people coming up with these ideas. The idea of a code of conduct and an associated committee is coming from smart people, and it did not spring fully-formed from their brow like Athena from Zeus. It came from literal decades of work by many, many other smart people in a vast number of communities that have tried a ton of options. And when we say "why don't we just do obvious_thing_x?" we are demonstrating a total failure to respect the expertise other people have in this sort of process, which is generally /not/ our expertise, and failing to do research to boot. If it helps, imagine that instead of talking to this group about behavioural policies, you were explaining to C.Scott or Subbu why their idea for a parser is overly complicated and they /totally/ don't need to be doing $THING.
So my suggestion - and this is something I have tried to follow myself when I don't understand the point of something in the form "bad things are happening, why don't we do X" is to literally google "why isn't [the obviously simple thing I thought of] a good idea?", and see what smart people have already written. It saves from forcing marginalised individuals to repeat, for the fiftieth time in a thread, why X is a good approach here, and I tend to learn something along the way.
On 23 August 2015 at 04:29, Steinsplitter Wiki steinsplitter-wiki@live.com wrote:
Why we need a committee?
I think admins can enforce if necessary.
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2015 00:30:40 -0600 From: bawolff@gmail.com To: wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [Engineering] Code of conduct
On 8/22/15, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
David, thanks for this find.
THIS is why the Code of Conduct is needed. I recognized myself in this blog. I remembered avoiding any aspect of socialization at conferences I had to attend for work, and simply didn't even consider attending conferences for any other purpose. I remembered how readily "the guys" assumed that any woman there was there for more than just networking and learning. I remembered having my butt pinched, my breasts "accidentally touched", my questions ignored or laughed at. I remember how the buzz of background conversation is always much louder when the speaker is a woman than when the speaker is a man.
It's changed for me. Not because there's any less of all of this going on. No, it's because my hair is grey and I'm now old enough to be the mom of half the people in the room at any male-dominated conferences I attend; and outside of Wikimedia events, the conferences I go to are usually full of conservative businesswomen, and alcohol is rarely involved.
So yeah...you need a code of conduct. Because if I was even 15 years younger, I'd never go to a Wikimedia conference.
Risker/Anne
Thank you for writing this. I really appreciate you sharing your experiences.
Your comments have convinced me that I should support the proposal, where previously I had mixed feelings. The types of behaviours you describe are absolutely unacceptable.
-- Bawolff
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Sun, Aug 23, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
"bad things are happening, why don't we do X" is to literally google "why isn't [the obviously simple thing I thought of] a good idea?", and see what smart people have already written
Ironically, I tried to be devil's advocate by searching "why isn't a code of conduct a good idea", and pretty much every result was an article on how code of conducts *are *a good idea.
That aside, I think most of the people in this thread are already well-aware that "admins" is a very generic term, and that even so, most definitions of the word "admins" would probably not be a good enforcing body for a code of conduct.
*-- * *Tyler Romeo* Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2016 Major in Computer Science
On 8/23/15, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Admins? And who are those? Please build a listing of every admin for every possible technical venue relating to Wikimedia.
While you're at it, we're going to need them to have a shared hivemind so enforcement is consistent between venues. They're also going to need to communicate about sanctions so that behaviour spilling over to multiple venues can be factored in. And while you're doing /that/ please make sure they all have an appropriate protocol for appealing things and passing issues upwards.
Or we could have a committee.
I get that this is a technical environment and we are all, myself included, used to being able to chip in anywhere with some utility. But please have some respect for the people coming up with these ideas. The idea of a code of conduct and an associated committee is coming from smart people, and it did not spring fully-formed from their brow like Athena from Zeus. It came from literal decades of work by many, many other smart people in a vast number of communities that have tried a ton of options. And when we say "why don't we just do obvious_thing_x?" we are demonstrating a total failure to respect the expertise other people have in this sort of process, which is generally /not/ our expertise, and failing to do research to boot. If it helps, imagine that instead of talking to this group about behavioural policies, you were explaining to C.Scott or Subbu why their idea for a parser is overly complicated and they /totally/ don't need to be doing $THING.
So my suggestion - and this is something I have tried to follow myself when I don't understand the point of something in the form "bad things are happening, why don't we do X" is to literally google "why isn't [the obviously simple thing I thought of] a good idea?", and see what smart people have already written. It saves from forcing marginalised individuals to repeat, for the fiftieth time in a thread, why X is a good approach here, and I tend to learn something along the way.
Really, you're going to tell people to STFW on a thread about conduct?
No, because that would be gratuitous and unnecessary language that contributes nothing to the discussion. But if you meant: "really, you're going to suggest, optionally, that people do research before hitting send and consider the possibility that this is not their area of expertise, where it is other peoples'", absolutely.
To be clear; this is not /my/ area of expertise either. This is precisely why I try to make "search for it before commenting on it" a rule I adhere to. But I have seen people I respect and care about end up absurdly worn out by having to explain, again and again, what are (to them) basic things to people who have been fortunate enough to not be in a situation where they have to think about process, or the consequences of power imbalances, or similar subjects, and that is not an outcome I like to contribute to. I imagine it isn't an outcome other people particularly want either. And it is, in and of itself, something that is chilling; if the onus is on the marginalised to explain basic elements of this over and over then it swiftly becomes a game in which winning is too costly on time and energy to play. So I try to google and search and, when I see a proposal that seems like there's a really obvious solution the speaker missed, step back and go: "wait. Maybe it's more complicated than that. I should find out before saying anything".
On 23 August 2015 at 15:23, Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/23/15, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Admins? And who are those? Please build a listing of every admin for every possible technical venue relating to Wikimedia.
While you're at it, we're going to need them to have a shared hivemind so enforcement is consistent between venues. They're also going to need to communicate about sanctions so that behaviour spilling over to multiple venues can be factored in. And while you're doing /that/ please make sure they all have an appropriate protocol for appealing things and passing issues upwards.
Or we could have a committee.
I get that this is a technical environment and we are all, myself included, used to being able to chip in anywhere with some utility. But please have some respect for the people coming up with these ideas. The idea of a code of conduct and an associated committee is coming from smart people, and it did not spring fully-formed from their brow like Athena from Zeus. It came from literal decades of work by many, many other smart people in a vast number of communities that have tried a ton of options. And when we say "why don't we just do obvious_thing_x?" we are demonstrating a total failure to respect the expertise other people have in this sort of process, which is generally /not/ our expertise, and failing to do research to boot. If it helps, imagine that instead of talking to this group about behavioural policies, you were explaining to C.Scott or Subbu why their idea for a parser is overly complicated and they /totally/ don't need to be doing $THING.
So my suggestion - and this is something I have tried to follow myself when I don't understand the point of something in the form "bad things are happening, why don't we do X" is to literally google "why isn't [the obviously simple thing I thought of] a good idea?", and see what smart people have already written. It saves from forcing marginalised individuals to repeat, for the fiftieth time in a thread, why X is a good approach here, and I tend to learn something along the way.
Really, you're going to tell people to STFW on a thread about conduct?
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 8/23/15, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
No, because that would be gratuitous and unnecessary language that contributes nothing to the discussion. But if you meant: "really, you're going to suggest, optionally, that people do research before hitting send and consider the possibility that this is not their area of expertise, where it is other peoples'", absolutely.
To be clear; this is not /my/ area of expertise either. This is precisely why I try to make "search for it before commenting on it" a rule I adhere to. But I have seen people I respect and care about end up absurdly worn out by having to explain, again and again, what are (to them) basic things to people who have been fortunate enough to not be in a situation where they have to think about process, or the consequences of power imbalances, or similar subjects, and that is not an outcome I like to contribute to. I imagine it isn't an outcome other people particularly want either. And it is, in and of itself, something that is chilling; if the onus is on the marginalised to explain basic elements of this over and over then it swiftly becomes a game in which winning is too costly on time and energy to play. So I try to google and search and, when I see a proposal that seems like there's a really obvious solution the speaker missed, step back and go: "wait. Maybe it's more complicated than that. I should find out before saying anything".
Well maybe they aren't explaining very good. This is a long thread, I think I've read most of it, its possible I've forgotten something, but - I don't really recall anyone addressing the topic of why a committee is better than the combined group of admins (For the record, I don't think the "admins" would work well for various reasons, I just don't see that its been discussed). Instead of saying its been discussed 50 times, why not link to one of those 50 times? Maybe the person asking the question just missed it. Maybe the person asking the question interpreted the email differently than you, and on a closer examination would be able to see what you mean. Maybe you misremembered the email, and the person's question hasn't been answered. Whatever the case, actually citing the email would allow the conversation to move forward better.
As for googling - google can be somewhat random which documents it returns depending on how you phrase the question. Is it really that much harder to link to whatever argument you think will come up? In this particular instance, searching for "Why should code of conducts not be enforced by admins" and "Why should code of conducts not be enforced by large bodies" which are the most obvious query for Steinsplitter's question, come up with nothing. But even if they did come up with something relavent, linking directly allows people to know for sure which arguments are being talked about, and evaluate them properly.
-- bawolff
On 23 August 2015 at 15:23, Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/23/15, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Admins? And who are those? Please build a listing of every admin for every possible technical venue relating to Wikimedia.
While you're at it, we're going to need them to have a shared hivemind so enforcement is consistent between venues. They're also going to need to communicate about sanctions so that behaviour spilling over to multiple venues can be factored in. And while you're doing /that/ please make sure they all have an appropriate protocol for appealing things and passing issues upwards.
Or we could have a committee.
I get that this is a technical environment and we are all, myself included, used to being able to chip in anywhere with some utility. But please have some respect for the people coming up with these ideas. The idea of a code of conduct and an associated committee is coming from smart people, and it did not spring fully-formed from their brow like Athena from Zeus. It came from literal decades of work by many, many other smart people in a vast number of communities that have tried a ton of options. And when we say "why don't we just do obvious_thing_x?" we are demonstrating a total failure to respect the expertise other people have in this sort of process, which is generally /not/ our expertise, and failing to do research to boot. If it helps, imagine that instead of talking to this group about behavioural policies, you were explaining to C.Scott or Subbu why their idea for a parser is overly complicated and they /totally/ don't need to be doing $THING.
So my suggestion - and this is something I have tried to follow myself when I don't understand the point of something in the form "bad things are happening, why don't we do X" is to literally google "why isn't [the obviously simple thing I thought of] a good idea?", and see what smart people have already written. It saves from forcing marginalised individuals to repeat, for the fiftieth time in a thread, why X is a good approach here, and I tend to learn something along the way.
Really, you're going to tell people to STFW on a thread about conduct?
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
-- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Brian Wolff wrote:
Well maybe they aren't explaining very good. This is a long thread, I think I've read most of it, its possible I've forgotten something, but
- I don't really recall anyone addressing the topic of why a committee
is better than the combined group of admins (For the record, I don't think the "admins" would work well for various reasons, I just don't see that its been discussed).
I agree that we should have a better and more thorough evaluation of enforcement options. A committee of three to five people is a specific potential solution, but from what I've read on the draft talk page and elsewhere, there hasn't been much discussion about alternate options.
Defining various options for enforcing a code of conduct besides having a committee and providing reasons for why these options are or are not feasible/available/best would be helpful, in my opinion. This might include surveying how other codes of conduct are enforced (or not), which some discussion participants have already made efforts to do.
MZMcBride
On 10 August 2015 at 09:18, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Oliver Keyes wrote:
But we /can't/ have one for Wikimedia, you see, because we need to discuss it more. Yes, it's nice that you've come up with a policy, based on those other policies that have helped in those similar areas
- but we need to discuss it more and justify why it should exist.
There's nothing wrong with discussion and justification
But we are BEYOND "ooh, I don't know whether this is useful ~even in theory~ or not" and the fact that such a discussion is going on is proof positive that we have a problem. Because there are marginalised voices speaking out within our community, and marginalised voices within the wider tech ecosystem, and pretty much all of them agree that yes, this is useful, in theory and in practice.
Who in our community is marginalised and speaking out?
Several people involved in drafting the initial version of this, and in subsequent discussions, fall into marginalised groups. I'm not comfortable outing them because it's not my role and I'd like to respect their wish to avoid this discussion as it stands right now.
A number of people have asked for concrete examples of problems so that a proposed solution can meet the appropriate requirements. This is standard practice in almost any technical community: evaluate the problem(s) and then discuss potential solutions. That's not what seems to be happening here.
Indeed, but approaching social problems like technical problems is not a great lens to look at it through; people and machines are very different things.
A proposed code of conduct like this is quite expensive to implement and enforce/maintain. I personally don't get the sense from reading your replies that you acknowledge the high cost.
As the person who lead the drive to get my language community to implement and enforce an anti-harassment policy and who has previously (in other communities, admittedly) sat on committees tasked with handling violations of community guidelines, I am most definitely aware of the cost. The cost of setting these up is why I got pretty much nothing done in June.
This policy is not for you. This policy is not for me. This policy is for the people who are marginalised and shoved aside and lack franchise in our existing processes and ways of interacting.
Can you please be more specific here? Who lacks franchise in our existing processes and ways of interacting? Can you name a specific problem or problems that have come up in the past? How would having this proposed code of conduct have helped? It's reasonable, prior to creating additional bureaucracy, for people to push back and ask whether it's necessary.
Honestly, anyone who lacks confidence, be that genuine confidence or confidence driven by insecurity. Our discussions tend to be incredibly aggressive - not in the sense of rargh hulk smash but in the sense that the processes for making change are highly adversarial. It is /a/ way of working but it is not /the/ way, and it combines very unhealthily with (for example) the gender essentialism taught in most human societies. Or to put it another way, we trend towards dominance-based decision-making and different demographic groups (a) react differently to this, (b) are perceived differently iff engaging themselves due to unconscious bias, and (c) find this more or less familiar and welcoming.
On specific examples; sure, here's one just from me. It's actually fairly mild, imo.
I am a not-terrible programmer, in my opinion (and, more weirdly, in the opinion of some other people. At some point that will stop shocking me). A few years ago when I was first learning to code I threw...I think it was a MySQL query I was playing around with, up on the internet in the hopes someone could fix a particular bug in it. Then I wandered into #mediawiki to find a long term MediaWiki developer - a staffer, even! - who had pulled this query out and decided that the best thing to do with it was to throw it in front of hundreds of people and ridicule it extensively, for no particular reason than that it was funny to him how bad it was. That wasn't a "healthy amount of constructive criticism" and it certainly wasn't contributing to the development of the software; I'd like to think a policy around treating people like, well, people, would've stopped that sort of attitude being totally acceptable.
The consequence of this is that, absent localisation tweaks and one occasion in which one of the apps had a toe-curlingly bad choice of language, I have utterly avoided going anywhere near MediaWiki. I contribute big chunks of our Hadoop ETL code, a ton of stuff around data extraction and visualisation platforms, but I refuse to go anywhere near MediaWIki - because the last time I did, I was humiliated in public because a bored developer's got a kick out of it. And I am, frankly, scared of going anywhere near MW - despite the fact that I come from a background that pre-programs me to sort of uncomsciously assume that I have a right of entry or admission in any environment I want. These sorts of experiences scared the hell out of me; I can't imagine how deeply unpleasant they'd be to people /without/ that problematic social conditioning.
MZMcBride
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Just to clarify a few points: I support the concept of having a global friendly spaces policy. I'm ambivalent and reluctant when it comes to the particular proposal that we're discussing here. And I think that we should keep in mind that any policy's usefulness for social change will be much higher if it has community consensus.
Two emails that I'm revisiting in my thought process are from Frances. I agree that personal attacks can be demoralizing and uncivil, and they do happen in our communities on occasion. I'm unclear about how to word a policy that spells out how to AGF and prohibit the kind of incivility in Oliver's example. Would it make sense, I wonder, to copy some of English Wikipedia's highly developed policies into technical spaces like WP:NPA? This gets us back into the rules creep and policy fragmentation problems. Maybe that's an acceptible opportunity cost. I think there might be greater support for a specific NPA proposal than for a broader proposal. I could see myself voting in favor of appling English Wikipedia's WP:NPA to technical spaces. I think that this would address a specific issue, and could be a net positive.
If there are other specific kinds of problems that are ongoing in technical spaces and which would be improved by legislating policy, I would like to hear about them. In my personal travels in technical spaces, my experience is that the vast majority of people are civil most of the time. I think a general statement of principles about civility could be fine. I'm curious to hear if more legislation for technical spaces is needed than that. Personally, I think that a global policy might work better.
Pine
I'm not sure why we would be using enwiki as a model for civility, or civility enforcement ;). As said in my email, there are a lot of examples being brought up on the talk page of tech-specific or tech-centric codes of conduct. I'd suggest we avoid fragmenting the discussion and move it there; I'm sure there are elements in those which would provide the clarity you seek.
On 10 August 2015 at 12:09, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Just to clarify a few points: I support the concept of having a global friendly spaces policy. I'm ambivalent and reluctant when it comes to the particular proposal that we're discussing here. And I think that we should keep in mind that any policy's usefulness for social change will be much higher if it has community consensus.
Two emails that I'm revisiting in my thought process are from Frances. I agree that personal attacks can be demoralizing and uncivil, and they do happen in our communities on occasion. I'm unclear about how to word a policy that spells out how to AGF and prohibit the kind of incivility in Oliver's example. Would it make sense, I wonder, to copy some of English Wikipedia's highly developed policies into technical spaces like WP:NPA? This gets us back into the rules creep and policy fragmentation problems. Maybe that's an acceptible opportunity cost. I think there might be greater support for a specific NPA proposal than for a broader proposal. I could see myself voting in favor of appling English Wikipedia's WP:NPA to technical spaces. I think that this would address a specific issue, and could be a net positive.
If there are other specific kinds of problems that are ongoing in technical spaces and which would be improved by legislating policy, I would like to hear about them. In my personal travels in technical spaces, my experience is that the vast majority of people are civil most of the time. I think a general statement of principles about civility could be fine. I'm curious to hear if more legislation for technical spaces is needed than that. Personally, I think that a global policy might work better.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
For the record: I'm very happy to know that we're drafting an explicit code of conduct.
Yes, Matt may not have expressed himself completely clearly in his initial email. Yes, an ironclad, fully developed, pan-Wikimedia code would be even better. Yes, developing and enforcing any new policy imposes some extra coordination costs on the community. But I don't think any of that blocks the project or outweighs its benefits.
————— Neil P. Quinn https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Neil_P._Quinn-WMF, product analyst Wikimedia Foundation +1 (202) 656 3457
On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 9:13 AM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm not sure why we would be using enwiki as a model for civility, or civility enforcement ;). As said in my email, there are a lot of examples being brought up on the talk page of tech-specific or tech-centric codes of conduct. I'd suggest we avoid fragmenting the discussion and move it there; I'm sure there are elements in those which would provide the clarity you seek.
On 10 August 2015 at 12:09, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Just to clarify a few points: I support the concept of having a global friendly spaces policy. I'm ambivalent and reluctant when it comes to the particular proposal that we're discussing here. And I think that we
should
keep in mind that any policy's usefulness for social change will be much higher if it has community consensus.
Two emails that I'm revisiting in my thought process are from Frances. I agree that personal attacks can be demoralizing and uncivil, and they do happen in our communities on occasion. I'm unclear about how to word a policy that spells out how to AGF and prohibit the kind of incivility in Oliver's example. Would it make sense, I wonder, to copy some of English Wikipedia's highly developed policies into technical spaces like WP:NPA? This gets us back into the rules creep and policy fragmentation problems. Maybe that's an acceptible opportunity cost. I think there might be
greater
support for a specific NPA proposal than for a broader proposal. I could see myself voting in favor of appling English Wikipedia's WP:NPA to technical spaces. I think that this would address a specific issue, and could be a net positive.
If there are other specific kinds of problems that are ongoing in
technical
spaces and which would be improved by legislating policy, I would like to hear about them. In my personal travels in technical spaces, my
experience
is that the vast majority of people are civil most of the time. I think a general statement of principles about civility could be fine. I'm curious to hear if more legislation for technical spaces is needed than that. Personally, I think that a global policy might work better.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
-- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hmm. I think enwiki has the benefit of having the widest reach and most extensive development of its policies under a consensus model. On the other hand, I think that the enwiki example shows that more rules don't necessarily lead to friendlier communities. As I said earlier, I think that our goal here is social change, and more rules may or may not help very much.
I liked Sumana's discussion awhile back about the need to balance the values of (A) freedom of expression and (B) hospitality. That said, I'm not sure where that balance is, and even if we can describe it in policies (which is uncertain), I'm not sure how we enforce it in an impartial, transparent, and civil way.
I'm starting to lean in Neil's direction of thinking that an imperfect solution is better than the status quo. The tree here is still thinking. I might propose a variation of Matt's proposal when I've had more time to think about this.
Pine
On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 9:13 AM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm not sure why we would be using enwiki as a model for civility, or civility enforcement ;). As said in my email, there are a lot of examples being brought up on the talk page of tech-specific or tech-centric codes of conduct. I'd suggest we avoid fragmenting the discussion and move it there; I'm sure there are elements in those which would provide the clarity you seek.
On 10 August 2015 at 12:09, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Just to clarify a few points: I support the concept of having a global friendly spaces policy. I'm ambivalent and reluctant when it comes to the particular proposal that we're discussing here. And I think that we
should
keep in mind that any policy's usefulness for social change will be much higher if it has community consensus.
Two emails that I'm revisiting in my thought process are from Frances. I agree that personal attacks can be demoralizing and uncivil, and they do happen in our communities on occasion. I'm unclear about how to word a policy that spells out how to AGF and prohibit the kind of incivility in Oliver's example. Would it make sense, I wonder, to copy some of English Wikipedia's highly developed policies into technical spaces like WP:NPA? This gets us back into the rules creep and policy fragmentation problems. Maybe that's an acceptible opportunity cost. I think there might be
greater
support for a specific NPA proposal than for a broader proposal. I could see myself voting in favor of appling English Wikipedia's WP:NPA to technical spaces. I think that this would address a specific issue, and could be a net positive.
If there are other specific kinds of problems that are ongoing in
technical
spaces and which would be improved by legislating policy, I would like to hear about them. In my personal travels in technical spaces, my
experience
is that the vast majority of people are civil most of the time. I think a general statement of principles about civility could be fine. I'm curious to hear if more legislation for technical spaces is needed than that. Personally, I think that a global policy might work better.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
-- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Cool; drop it on the talkpage. The fact that enwiki's policy is consensus-based, of course, does not mean it's a good policy; it can just mean that it's mealy-mouthed enough to not annoy the majority enough to fight for a change. And that's very different. The issues we've seen on that project around enforcing that policy suggest comprehensiveness is not the issue, more community will, and that's not a problem that would hit this proposal given the enforcement structure.
On 10 August 2015 at 15:34, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm. I think enwiki has the benefit of having the widest reach and most extensive development of its policies under a consensus model. On the other hand, I think that the enwiki example shows that more rules don't necessarily lead to friendlier communities. As I said earlier, I think that our goal here is social change, and more rules may or may not help very much.
I liked Sumana's discussion awhile back about the need to balance the values of (A) freedom of expression and (B) hospitality. That said, I'm not sure where that balance is, and even if we can describe it in policies (which is uncertain), I'm not sure how we enforce it in an impartial, transparent, and civil way.
I'm starting to lean in Neil's direction of thinking that an imperfect solution is better than the status quo. The tree here is still thinking. I might propose a variation of Matt's proposal when I've had more time to think about this.
Pine
On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 9:13 AM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm not sure why we would be using enwiki as a model for civility, or civility enforcement ;). As said in my email, there are a lot of examples being brought up on the talk page of tech-specific or tech-centric codes of conduct. I'd suggest we avoid fragmenting the discussion and move it there; I'm sure there are elements in those which would provide the clarity you seek.
On 10 August 2015 at 12:09, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Just to clarify a few points: I support the concept of having a global friendly spaces policy. I'm ambivalent and reluctant when it comes to the particular proposal that we're discussing here. And I think that we
should
keep in mind that any policy's usefulness for social change will be much higher if it has community consensus.
Two emails that I'm revisiting in my thought process are from Frances. I agree that personal attacks can be demoralizing and uncivil, and they do happen in our communities on occasion. I'm unclear about how to word a policy that spells out how to AGF and prohibit the kind of incivility in Oliver's example. Would it make sense, I wonder, to copy some of English Wikipedia's highly developed policies into technical spaces like WP:NPA? This gets us back into the rules creep and policy fragmentation problems. Maybe that's an acceptible opportunity cost. I think there might be
greater
support for a specific NPA proposal than for a broader proposal. I could see myself voting in favor of appling English Wikipedia's WP:NPA to technical spaces. I think that this would address a specific issue, and could be a net positive.
If there are other specific kinds of problems that are ongoing in
technical
spaces and which would be improved by legislating policy, I would like to hear about them. In my personal travels in technical spaces, my
experience
is that the vast majority of people are civil most of the time. I think a general statement of principles about civility could be fine. I'm curious to hear if more legislation for technical spaces is needed than that. Personally, I think that a global policy might work better.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
-- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 7:34 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm. I think enwiki has the benefit of having the widest reach and most extensive development of its policies under a consensus model.
Note that the consensus of current active community members is inherently a poor guideline for policies that are intended to increase the participation in an open community. The ones you're trying to bring in aren't there to be part of the consensus.
On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 2:03 PM, Brandon Black bblack@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 7:34 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm. I think enwiki has the benefit of having the widest reach and most extensive development of its policies under a consensus model.
Note that the consensus of current active community members is inherently a poor guideline for policies that are intended to increase the participation in an open community. The ones you're trying to bring in aren't there to be part of the consensus.
Majority/consensus opinion are generally not the best way to ensure that a minority is protected either. [0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
Bryan
On 08/10/2015 03:34 PM, Pine W wrote:
On the other hand, I think that the enwiki example shows that more rules don't necessarily lead to friendlier communities.
In my opinion, the problem with enwiki is that important policies like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks are often left unenforced.
That's partly why a large part of the current draft discusses consequences and how the policy will be enforced.
Matt Flaschen
On 08/10/2015 12:09 PM, Pine W wrote:
Just to clarify a few points: I support the concept of having a global friendly spaces policy. I'm ambivalent and reluctant when it comes to the particular proposal that we're discussing here. And I think that we should keep in mind that any policy's usefulness for social change will be much higher if it has community consensus.
Two emails that I'm revisiting in my thought process are from Frances. I agree that personal attacks can be demoralizing and uncivil, and they do happen in our communities on occasion. I'm unclear about how to word a policy that spells out how to AGF and prohibit the kind of incivility in Oliver's example. Would it make sense, I wonder, to copy some of English Wikipedia's highly developed policies into technical spaces like WP:NPA?
Forbidding personal attacks is certainly an important part of this (and I can also cite personal attacks that have unfortunately happened in our technical spaces).
However, that is not the whole solution. There are other forms of harassment, etc. besides personal attacks.
Personally, I think that a global policy might work better.
I don't have any objection to people working on a global policy. But I don't think we should drop the current concrete work due to a hypothetical.
Matt Flaschen
On 08/10/2015 03:40 AM, Pine W wrote:
I'm putting on my admin and IRC channel op hats, and trying to figure out how this proposal makes those jobs easier or different. I think there are reasonable ideas in this proposal, but the second level escalation path should follow inside of the appropriate local scopes.
I'm cautious about explicitly assigning a global ban role to WMF as a part of a community policy; having WMF police the community is a cause of concern after WMF's previous actions like Superprotect.
The draft policy does not assign WMF that right. They already have it, and global bans already apply to technical spaces.
I like the point someone made in this discussion about the distiction between legislating policy and making social change.
Social change and policy change go hand and hand. A healthy society is governed by both policy and social custom, which flow into each other. This is the policy part of it.
Matt Flaschen
Great news! This is long overdue, and I welcome continued discussion in this area.
-- brion
On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 5:17 PM, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
Please participate at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft . Suggestions are welcome here or at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra... .
Thanks,
Matt Flaschen
Engineering mailing list Engineering@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/engineering
On 6 August 2015 at 17:17, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
The problem you're trying to solve is a difficult one. Thank you for your efforts.
Dan
Le 07/08/2015 02:17, Matthew Flaschen a écrit :
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
Please participate at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft . Suggestions are welcome here or at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra... .
Hello Matt,
It seems the code of conduct is fairly similar to the friendly space policy. Though the later was meant for conferences, it can probably be amended to be applied to cyberspace interactions.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy
Do we have any examples of unfriendly behaviour that occurred recently?
On 13 August 2015 at 16:10, Antoine Musso hashar+wmf@free.fr wrote:
Le 07/08/2015 02:17, Matthew Flaschen a écrit :
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
Please participate at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft . Suggestions are welcome here or at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra... .
Hello Matt,
It seems the code of conduct is fairly similar to the friendly space policy. Though the later was meant for conferences, it can probably be amended to be applied to cyberspace interactions.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy
Do we have any examples of unfriendly behaviour that occurred recently?
The thread you are replying to contains both examples of unfriendly behaviour in a technical context and discussion over the direct applicability of the friendly spaces policy; reviewing it may be a good idea.
-- Antoine "hashar" Musso
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Aug 13, 2015 10:16 PM, "Oliver Keyes" okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 13 August 2015 at 16:10, Antoine Musso hashar+wmf@free.fr wrote:
Le 07/08/2015 02:17, Matthew Flaschen a écrit :
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
Please participate at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft .
Suggestions are welcome here or at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra...
.
Hello Matt,
It seems the code of conduct is fairly similar to the friendly space policy. Though the later was meant for conferences, it can probably be amended to be applied to cyberspace interactions.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy
Do we have any examples of unfriendly behaviour that occurred recently?
The thread you are replying to contains both examples of unfriendly behaviour in a technical context and discussion over the direct applicability of the friendly spaces policy; reviewing it may be a good idea.
Oliver, I must be a little blind but I do not see examples of unfriendly behaviour in this thread.
In general, Matt, I do experience that the wikimedia movement is criticized having too many rules and policies. Add another one does not help. At the end of the day your target group is code contributors, not policy readers. If somebody does not behave and not contribute, the person is easily shut up. If somebody contributes a lot, some diplomacy is required. What you do here is, imho, an example of an organization busy with itself. I won't be angry if you stop this thread and delete the wiki page. Let me add, I really appreciate and find very valuable all the other technical contributions and discussions. And Matt, of course I appreciate that you know what you are talking about beeing software and Wikipedia content contributor.
Best, Rupert
Yeah, it seems to me that there's a choice here. Either have a policy with an enforcement strategy and the social support for actually following through with that enforcement strategy in a way that makes situations better rather than more acrimonious, or don't have a written policy and let nature take its course. Developing the former is a lot of work, and it's going to be imperfect. The latter can be more chaotic and will also be imperfect. So there's a choice of costs and benefits.
Pine
On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 2:30 PM, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
On Aug 13, 2015 10:16 PM, "Oliver Keyes" okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 13 August 2015 at 16:10, Antoine Musso hashar+wmf@free.fr wrote:
Le 07/08/2015 02:17, Matthew Flaschen a écrit :
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
Please participate at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft .
Suggestions are welcome here or at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra...
.
Hello Matt,
It seems the code of conduct is fairly similar to the friendly space policy. Though the later was meant for conferences, it can probably be amended to be applied to cyberspace interactions.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy
Do we have any examples of unfriendly behaviour that occurred recently?
The thread you are replying to contains both examples of unfriendly behaviour in a technical context and discussion over the direct applicability of the friendly spaces policy; reviewing it may be a good idea.
Oliver, I must be a little blind but I do not see examples of unfriendly behaviour in this thread.
In general, Matt, I do experience that the wikimedia movement is criticized having too many rules and policies. Add another one does not help. At the end of the day your target group is code contributors, not policy readers. If somebody does not behave and not contribute, the person is easily shut up. If somebody contributes a lot, some diplomacy is required. What you do here is, imho, an example of an organization busy with itself. I won't be angry if you stop this thread and delete the wiki page. Let me add, I really appreciate and find very valuable all the other technical contributions and discussions. And Matt, of course I appreciate that you know what you are talking about beeing software and Wikipedia content contributor.
Best, Rupert _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
But as a collaborative project a decent amount of netiquette is definitely needed.
Vito
2015-08-13 23:30 GMT+02:00 rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com:
On Aug 13, 2015 10:16 PM, "Oliver Keyes" okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 13 August 2015 at 16:10, Antoine Musso hashar+wmf@free.fr wrote:
Le 07/08/2015 02:17, Matthew Flaschen a écrit :
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
Please participate at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft .
Suggestions are welcome here or at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra...
.
Hello Matt,
It seems the code of conduct is fairly similar to the friendly space policy. Though the later was meant for conferences, it can probably be amended to be applied to cyberspace interactions.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy
Do we have any examples of unfriendly behaviour that occurred recently?
The thread you are replying to contains both examples of unfriendly behaviour in a technical context and discussion over the direct applicability of the friendly spaces policy; reviewing it may be a good idea.
Oliver, I must be a little blind but I do not see examples of unfriendly behaviour in this thread.
In general, Matt, I do experience that the wikimedia movement is criticized having too many rules and policies. Add another one does not help. At the end of the day your target group is code contributors, not policy readers. If somebody does not behave and not contribute, the person is easily shut up. If somebody contributes a lot, some diplomacy is required. What you do here is, imho, an example of an organization busy with itself. I won't be angry if you stop this thread and delete the wiki page. Let me add, I really appreciate and find very valuable all the other technical contributions and discussions. And Matt, of course I appreciate that you know what you are talking about beeing software and Wikipedia content contributor.
Best, Rupert _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Yes, and it may be possible to have enough social support for netiquette without resorting to written policies and enforcement procedures. I'd like to think that this is true, but given examples about problematic activities like personal attacks, I'm not sure. Is informal social pressure combined with occasional admin or IRC op action enough to deal with those situations, or do we need something more formal?
Pine
On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 2:34 PM, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
But as a collaborative project a decent amount of netiquette is definitely needed.
Vito
2015-08-13 23:30 GMT+02:00 rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com:
On Aug 13, 2015 10:16 PM, "Oliver Keyes" okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 13 August 2015 at 16:10, Antoine Musso hashar+wmf@free.fr wrote:
Le 07/08/2015 02:17, Matthew Flaschen a écrit :
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
Please participate at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft
.
Suggestions are welcome here or at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra...
.
Hello Matt,
It seems the code of conduct is fairly similar to the friendly space policy. Though the later was meant for conferences, it can probably
be
amended to be applied to cyberspace interactions.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy
Do we have any examples of unfriendly behaviour that occurred
recently?
The thread you are replying to contains both examples of unfriendly behaviour in a technical context and discussion over the direct applicability of the friendly spaces policy; reviewing it may be a good idea.
Oliver, I must be a little blind but I do not see examples of unfriendly behaviour in this thread.
In general, Matt, I do experience that the wikimedia movement is criticized having too many rules and policies. Add another one does not help. At the end of the day your target group is code contributors, not policy readers. If somebody does not behave and not contribute, the
person
is easily shut up. If somebody contributes a lot, some diplomacy is required. What you do here is, imho, an example of an organization busy with itself. I won't be angry if you stop this thread and delete the wiki page. Let me add, I really appreciate and find very valuable all the
other
technical contributions and discussions. And Matt, of course I appreciate that you know what you are talking about beeing software and Wikipedia content contributor.
Best, Rupert _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 13 August 2015 at 17:37, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, and it may be possible to have enough social support for netiquette without resorting to written policies and enforcement procedures. I'd like to think that this is true, but given examples about problematic activities like personal attacks, I'm not sure. Is informal social pressure combined with occasional admin or IRC op action enough to deal with those situations, or do we need something more formal?
Well, let's see. "informal social pressure" is the most we have, and we're here having a discussion about something stronger that has involved, so far, multiple anecdotes about the technical community treating people poorly.
So to answer your question: no, it is not enough
Let me reiterate that demanding people who have been hurt by our existing system justify a need to change it, not once, not twice, but over and over with duplicated questions of exactly this form ("I mean, maybe things will work if we don't bother writing it down"), sometimes not just multiple times in a thread but multiple times /from the same person/, is itself a toxic behavioural pattern.
Pine
On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 2:34 PM, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
But as a collaborative project a decent amount of netiquette is definitely needed.
Vito
2015-08-13 23:30 GMT+02:00 rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com:
On Aug 13, 2015 10:16 PM, "Oliver Keyes" okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 13 August 2015 at 16:10, Antoine Musso hashar+wmf@free.fr wrote:
Le 07/08/2015 02:17, Matthew Flaschen a écrit :
We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad).
Please participate at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft
.
Suggestions are welcome here or at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra...
.
Hello Matt,
It seems the code of conduct is fairly similar to the friendly space policy. Though the later was meant for conferences, it can probably
be
amended to be applied to cyberspace interactions.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy
Do we have any examples of unfriendly behaviour that occurred
recently?
The thread you are replying to contains both examples of unfriendly behaviour in a technical context and discussion over the direct applicability of the friendly spaces policy; reviewing it may be a good idea.
Oliver, I must be a little blind but I do not see examples of unfriendly behaviour in this thread.
In general, Matt, I do experience that the wikimedia movement is criticized having too many rules and policies. Add another one does not help. At the end of the day your target group is code contributors, not policy readers. If somebody does not behave and not contribute, the
person
is easily shut up. If somebody contributes a lot, some diplomacy is required. What you do here is, imho, an example of an organization busy with itself. I won't be angry if you stop this thread and delete the wiki page. Let me add, I really appreciate and find very valuable all the
other
technical contributions and discussions. And Matt, of course I appreciate that you know what you are talking about beeing software and Wikipedia content contributor.
Best, Rupert _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 13 August 2015 at 22:30, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
Oliver, I must be a little blind but I do not see examples of unfriendly behaviour in this thread.
I linked to http://kovalc.in/2015/08/12/harassers.html - perhaps that doesn't count as unfriendly behaviour, or perhaps isn't in this thread. It was four messages before your post in GMail, which i see you are using; it's not clear to me how you missed it, but evidently you did.
- d.
On 08/13/2015 06:09 PM, David Gerard wrote:
On 13 August 2015 at 22:30, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
Oliver, I must be a little blind but I do not see examples of unfriendly behaviour in this thread.
I linked to http://kovalc.in/2015/08/12/harassers.html - perhaps that doesn't count as unfriendly behaviour, or perhaps isn't in this thread. It was four messages before your post in GMail, which i see you are using; it's not clear to me how you missed it, but evidently you did.
I think he meant unfriendly comments in the thread itself, not the thread linking to unfriendly behavior elsewhere.
Matt Flaschen
On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 2:28 AM, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 08/13/2015 06:09 PM, David Gerard wrote:
On 13 August 2015 at 22:30, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
Oliver, I must be a little blind but I do not see examples of unfriendly behaviour in this thread.
I linked to http://kovalc.in/2015/08/12/harassers.html - perhaps that doesn't count as unfriendly behaviour, or perhaps isn't in this thread. It was four messages before your post in GMail, which i see you are using; it's not clear to me how you missed it, but evidently you did.
I think he meant unfriendly comments in the thread itself, not the thread linking to unfriendly behavior elsewhere.
hehe, matt, i see my english is not precise enough. i precisely ment examples you want to address with an additional code of conduct. i could find davids mail now - i must admit i deleted it earlier because it was only a link without describing the behaviour in the mail. now i opened the link, read it, used google trying to find out what happend, and am still not able to make out a relationship to code contributions in the wikimedia space, nor to the wikimedia movement in general. would you please add examples and let us analyze if the existing terms of use do not suffice to address this: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use .
best, rupert
On 08/13/2015 05:30 PM, rupert THURNER wrote:
In general, Matt, I do experience that the wikimedia movement is criticized having too many rules and policies. Add another one does not help.
Without commenting too much on Wikipedia's policies (some of them are necessary, some not so much), I disagree that the technical space has too many policies. We also don't have any existing policy about this.
If somebody does not behave and not contribute, the person is easily shut up.
In my experience, this is not true in our community.
If somebody contributes a lot, some diplomacy is required.
Being a contributor does not give someone a get-out-of-jail-free card for bad behavior.
Matt Flaschen
On 15-08-13 08:31 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
Being a contributor does not give someone a get-out-of-jail-free card for bad behavior.
Sorry, I see you missed a typo: s/does not/should not/
In practice, it very much does. Our communities have a long history of letting outright sociopathic behaviour slide provided you contribute enough[1], victims be damned.
-- Marc
[1] Where "enough" is the product of actual valuable work done and number of influential friends that you have.
Hi,
On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 11:30 PM, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
In general, Matt, I do experience that the wikimedia movement is criticized having too many rules and policies. Add another one does not help.
Years ago I was among the ones that would strongly oppose to a Code of Conduct for some of the reasons mentioned in this thread (there is proof somewhere in the GNOME project archives). Basically, that a written policy cannot help as much as common sense and community pressure. Since then, I have learned several things:
* Turns out that statistically speaking my thoughts at the time fit very well with my profile in terms of gender, age, geographical location, ethnic/social/economic/academic background, fluency in written English, individualism, extrovertism... This was/is the mainstream profile in free software projects but is just one of the many profiles possible in a free software project on a more diverse and global scale. The more we care about growth and diversity, the more we need to care about feeling welcomed and safe in terms different than what makes some of us feel welcomed and safe. When discussing a CoC, we are also discussing for those that are not here but might one day.
* I have seen very competent, productive and admirable volunteers, professionals, and contributors combining both roles, taking a break or leaving completely after saying to whoever wanted to listen something along the lines of "I don't need to go through this; there are many other interesting venues out there." If you don't know anyone perhaps it's because you haven't been long or deep enough. When discussing a CoC, we don't get the opinions of those that left already, but we can still exercise our memory and reflect.
* I have learned about first time contributors and also about experienced contributors talking about their first experiences lurking in our channels or remembering their first impressions during their first steps in our community. Some events that for me passed unnoticed or were normal/ok had impressed these newcomers and had been found not normal and not ok by them. Sometimes I would not even be sure whether a specific exchange had been fair, understandable or not, again because communication styles and offended feelings are very subjective, and there was no clear guideline to check.
I still think that no piece of paper or wiki page will solve anything as good as a solid social convention, but now I do think that in a context like ours a wiki page can help solidifying a social convention. I also believe that a percentage of harassment and abuse happens because of personal bias or lack of awareness, sensitivity, or after-thought by those creating such situations, and having such wiki page can help preventing that percentage just by having a text written and approved by the community. Finally, I'm also convinced that a number of offenses go unreported and are swallowed by those suffering them just because we have no clear guideline of how to recognize inappropriate behavior, what to do when you see it or suffer it, and which guarantees does anyone have that a complaint will be addressed by someone without causing more pain to the people suffering.
So yes, even before starting to talk about the "bureaucracy" of how to define, enforce, appeal, etc, I think a wiki page titled Code of Conduct and approved by the Wikimedia tech community will be very useful to acknowledge a real problem and to deal with it. It is also good to discuss it now that it is quite peaceful, rather than in one of those stormy phases that we allow to ourselves from time to time.
On 08/13/2015 04:10 PM, Antoine Musso wrote:
Do we have any examples of unfriendly behaviour that occurred recently?
I am not going to call people out publically here for past incidents, since that's not the point of this exercise.
If you want, you can contact me privately for examples.
Matt Flaschen
On 08/06/2015 08:17 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
Please participate at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft .
The draft has now been rebased onto Contributor Covenant (a widely used Code of Conduct), per a discussion on our talk page.
Now is a good time to help refine the draft to make sure previously discussed issues are still addressed, and Wikimedia-specific questions are answered.
Thanks,
Matt Flaschen
It looks like "Communicate about technology in public where possible. Private means of communication do exist, but prefer to use public places unless an exception is appropriate." has been removed and "Publication of non-harassing private communication." has been added as a form of harassment...
On 18 August 2015 at 01:10, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 08/06/2015 08:17 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
Please participate at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft .
The draft has now been rebased onto Contributor Covenant (a widely used Code of Conduct), per a discussion on our talk page.
Now is a good time to help refine the draft to make sure previously discussed issues are still addressed, and Wikimedia-specific questions are answered.
Thanks,
Matt Flaschen
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 5:22 PM, Alex Monk krenair@gmail.com wrote:
It looks like "Communicate about technology in public where possible. Private means of communication do exist, but prefer to use public places unless an exception is appropriate." has been removed and "Publication of non-harassing private communication." has been added as a form of harassment...
Correct. I removed the first per the discussion here[1] and brought in some of the Grants Friendly Space Expectations[2], since those seem to have been working well.
-Frances
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dra... [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Friendly_space_expectations
On 18 August 2015 at 01:10, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 08/06/2015 08:17 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
Please participate at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft
.
The draft has now been rebased onto Contributor Covenant (a widely used Code of Conduct), per a discussion on our talk page.
Now is a good time to help refine the draft to make sure previously discussed issues are still addressed, and Wikimedia-specific questions
are
answered.
Thanks,
Matt Flaschen
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 08/17/2015 08:28 PM, Frances Hocutt wrote:
On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 5:22 PM, Alex Monk krenair@gmail.com wrote:
It looks like "Communicate about technology in public where possible. Private means of communication do exist, but prefer to use public places unless an exception is appropriate." has been removed and "Publication of non-harassing private communication." has been added as a form of harassment...
Correct. I removed the first per the discussion here[1] and brought in some of the Grants Friendly Space Expectations[2], since those seem to have been working well.
Yaron actually removed it on Wednesday (https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Code_of_conduct_for_technical_sp...) on the grounds that it's more of a guideline kind of thing.
Matt Flaschen
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org