Hi Peter,
My view is that accountability should start at the top of an organization.
I was trying to think of a better word than "supervising" for the concept that I had in mind. After further consideration, I think that "governing" would have been a better choice.
I am disappointed by the WMF Board's tone and its lack of apology. In the Board's words, "The Board views this as part of a much-needed community debate on toxic behavior. In spite of the considerable disruption this has caused for many, we hope this serves as a catalyzing moment for us to move forward together to ensure the health and vitality of our communities." In other words, the Board thinks that the "considerable disruption" is acceptable, perhaps even good in the big picture. Also, the Board apologizes for nothing.
I believe that community members are not servants, and are not okay to ignore, mistreat, or throw away casually. Also, I believe that the near-miracle of English Wikipedia should be tended with great care, and that the scars from this incident will be with us for a long time.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Thu, Jul 4, 2019, 00:32 Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
The board does not manage WMF. It is not their fault when a department does something stupid if they had no warning that it was likely to happen. People who signed off on the ban decision may have reason to apologise, others not. The board is responsible for ensuring that the damage is fixed and taking reasonably practicable precautions for preventing a recurrence. Due diligence is their duty, not exhaustive diligence or micromanagement. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Pine W Sent: Wednesday, July 3, 2019 10:29 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fram en.wp office yearlock block
Hello Wikimedia-l colleagues,
I hope that your day is going well.
There are some updates regarding the topics that we are discussing in this thread. I am writing this email in a personal capacity.
As a reminder, the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee published an open letter on 30 June that was directed to the WMF Board < https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Community_response_to_t...
.
I will share a few quotes from that statement before providing some updates, and finally making some personal comments.
I am retaining the font styles that Arbcom used in its letter.
- "As of 30 June, two bureaucrats, 18 administrators, an ArbCom clerk, and
a number of other editors have resigned their positions and/or retired from Wikipedia editing in relation to this issue."
- "If Fram’s ban—an unappealable sanction issued from above with no
community consultation—represents the WMF’s new strategy for dealing with harassment on the English Wikipedia, it is one that is fundamentally misaligned with the Wikimedia movement’s principles of openness, consensus, and self-governance."
- "*We ask that the WMF commits to leaving behavioural complaints
pertaining solely to the English Wikipedia to established local processes.* Those unsuitable for public discussion should be referred to the Arbitration Committee. We will solicit comment from the community and the WMF to develop clear procedures for dealing with confidential allegations of harassment, based on the existing provision for private hearings in the arbitration policy. Complaints that can be discussed publicly should be referred to an appropriate community dispute resolution process. If the Trust & Safety team seeks to assume responsibility for these cases, they should do so by proposing an amendment to the arbitration policy, or an equivalent process of community consensus-building. Otherwise, we would appreciate the WMF’s continued support in improving our response to harassment and hostility on the English Wikipedia
- "We feel strongly that this commitment is necessary for the Arbitration
Committee to continue to perform the role it is assigned by the English Wikipedia community. If we are unable to find a satisfactory resolution, at least four members of the committee have expressed the intention to resign."
The following are more recent updates.
- The WMF Board has made a statement
< https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Community_response_to_t...
- The WMF Executive Director (Katherine Maher) has also made a statement
< https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Katherine_(WMF)&dif...
.
My personal comments follow.
I appreciate the WMF Executive Director's statement. I think that her statement is a good starting point for further communications between the staff and the community, particularly the English Wikipedia community.
I was hoping for a statement from the WMF Board that was humble and apologetic regarding recent disruption that has stressed many people in the community, led to numerous resignations, and consumed countless hours of volunteers' valuable time. Perhaps I overlooked them, but I do not see the words "apology", "sorry", "regret", or similar words in the statement from the WMF Board.
In addition to an apology, I was hoping to see the WMF Board focus on supervising the WMF organization, which I think is its principal job.
I feel that this statement is condescending: "We believe that the communities should be able to deal with these types of situations and should take this as a wake-up call to improve our enforcement processes to deal with so-called "unblockables"." I think that many of us in the communities are aware of these problems. I do not appreciate WMF creating unnecessary and widely harmful disruption in its quest to do top-down social engineering. I encourage the WMF Board to develop humility, refrain from lecturing the communities, and consider how to support the communities in our efforts to improve ourselves.
I would encourage the WMF Board to ponder the harms that have resulted from WMF's actions. I hope that we see a public apology from the WMF Board.
Katherine, thank you for your willingness to have a dialogue regarding these matters, and your willingness to have a more cautious and respectful approach in the future.
Writing solely in a personal capacity,
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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