[Foundation-l] Changes to the identification policies and procedures

[MZMcBride]

phoebe ayers wrote:
> It seems to me that a good-faith interpretation is that not announcing
> changes right this second was the right thing to do -- since there was
> so much controversy among OTRS agents the staff may choose to change
> or modify the original plan, in which case it's not clear to me what
> would be announced.

In my discussions with people about these recent decisions, some people have
tried to pivot the conversation with statements such as "but Wikimedia is
allowed to do this" and "the non-public data access policy is determined by
staff." I don't disagree.

My issue is that this was presumably discussed for weeks prior to the
announcement to the OTRS list, without any community notification. Even a
courtesy heads-up ("we're currently re-evaluating whether certain volunteers
need to identify") would have been good, especially as it brings forth a lot
of questions from the community that Wikimedia apparently had not
considered. (This is pretty clearly evident from the discussion on the OTRS
mailing list.) When these decisions are issued by fiat and out of the blue,
it raises suspicion about why the discussions weren't public or at least why
there weren't any notifications that discussions were taking place. Was it
intentional? Was it simply an oversight?

Nobody is saying anyone was outside their remit to implement these changes
(and to an extent, these changes are sensible, in as much as they make the
pointless procedure a little less pointless), but the Community Department
doesn't seem particularly keen on involving (or even notifying) the
community. That's the larger issue, as I see it.

Some of the comments in this thread have read like "oh, but we were going to
announce this as soon as we had decided everything privately." That doesn't
seem to fit in with Wikimedia's governance model and more often than not, it
leads to situations where the announced implementation of decisions like
these have to be re-worked and re-released because adequate discussion and
thought weren't given the first time. Again, the discussion on the OTRS
mailing list is pretty clear evidence of this.

> The original announcement did affect only a limited number of volunteers, and
> there was no implication that it would be extended to admins, etc. Of course,
> broader discussion of the issue of identification and access to non-private
> data (and who should have it) in general is great, and if people have thoughts
> they should weigh in.

People do have thoughts and have tried to weigh in, but they're being
chastised for doing so on this list (not by you, to be clear). I don't see
how it's fair to contributors to encourage discussion and debate in some
posts while condemning open discussion and debate in other posts (referring
here primarily to Steven's posts).

MZMcBride