[Wikimedia Announcements] Q&A regarding board resolution

[Michael Snow]

What is the purpose of the resolution?

The Board is asking its Executive Director to conduct a study, with the 
goal of figuring out what to do about potentially-objectionable material 
in the projects. We know there is, and will always be, some material in 
the projects that some readers will find offensive: that's inevitable, 
given the size and scope of our readership, and our commitment to 
providing access to all of the world's knowledge. We don't want to cause 
unnecessary offence to people, and we particularly don't want to offend 
people if it means they won't therefore use our projects, or that they 
will aim to keep other people from using them. We want our projects to 
be available to as many people as possible, and we would like, as much 
as possible, to minimize the number of people who are prevented from 
accessing the projects by third-parties. Having said that, we see the 
projects' role as making available all knowledge, not making available 
solely such knowledge as is universally deemed acceptable. It's a 
challenge, and we need to strike an appropriate balance. Therefore, 
we're asking our ED to do some investigation and thinking, and make some 
recommendations to us at our meeting this fall.

How was the resolution developed and agreed upon?

The board and the community have been talking about this topic for the 
past two months -- and indeed, the Commons and Wikipedia communities 
have been discussing it for many years. Once the board reached general 
agreement that a study was a good idea, we asked our ED to draft a 
resolution to that effect. After she did that, we spent several weeks 
talking with each other, refining the language of the draft, and voting 
to adopt the resolution.

Does the board have consensus on what to do about 
potentially-objectionable materials in the projects?

No. So far, board members have exchanged several hundred e-mails on this 
topic, and we will continue to discuss it in the coming months. 
Currently, board members have expressed quite different views, and there 
is no consensus on how to resolve the issue. We think that's completely 
fine though: it's complicated, and it's worth a lot of thought and 
discussion. That's why we've commissioned a study: to see what we can 
learn from other similar discussions that have taken place within other 
organizations.

What are the individual board members' views on this issue? How divided 
is the board?

We don't really want to characterize individual board members' views. 
Having said that, individual board members have expressed their opinions 
publicly in the past, and they will probably continue to do so. The 
board is comfortable with disagreement on this issue, and it's 
comfortable with people expressing their opinions. For example, Michael 
Snow has been having a conversation with contributors on Commons, and 
both Jimmy and SJ have been expressing their views there too. That's 
fine, and the board encourages it.

How is this study related to the purge of some sexual imagery that 
happened on Commons a month ago?

The Commons purge happened because Jimmy felt there was material on 
Commons which didn't belong there -- that was potentially objectionable, 
and had no educational value. The board released a statement on May 7, 
encouraging Wikimedia editors to scrutinize potentially offensive 
materials with the goal of assessing their educational or informational 
value, and to remove them from the projects if there was no such value. 
Jimmy himself then deleted a bunch of imagery he thought was 
problematic. In so doing, he made a lot of admins on Commons really 
angry -- essentially because they felt Jimmy was acting unilaterally, 
without sufficient discussion. So yes, this study is an attempt to 
better handle the general issue of potentially-objectionable material on 
the projects, including Commons, by giving it some sustained attention.

In its statement May 7, the board said that it was not intending to 
create new policy, but rather to reaffirm and support policy that 
already exists. Has that changed?

We don't know yet what recommendations will come out of the study. It's 
quite possible they will include recommendations to change policy on the 
projects. In giving direction to the consultant, we have asked that 
everything be considered: nothing has been ruled out.

In the aftermath of the Commons purge, a lot of editors felt that the 
Wikimedia Foundation, the board, and/or Jimmy had overstepped their 
authority. What do you say to those editors who believe that editorial 
policy is their purview, not the responsibility of the board or the staff?

We agree with editors who say that, and we believe that Wikimedia's 
current methods of developing and enforcing policy, for the most part, 
work really beautifully. The Wikimedia projects are a shining example of 
the power of mass collaboration, and nobody wants to fundamentally 
change anything about how the projects work.

Is this the first time the Board has ever asked the ED or WMF to address 
an issue like this?

This is the first time the Board has asked the ED to investigate the 
issue of potentially-objectionable material on the projects, yes.

Will the Board make a decision about next steps on this issue following 
the ED's presentation of findings?

The Board will review the recommendations and findings, and will 
continue to discuss the matter and reach out to the community of 
volunteers to discuss the issue. We won't speculate on what decisions 
will be made, or when, until findings have been reviewed and discussed.

Who will the ED be seeking out to undertake this research?

She has hired a consultant: Robert Harris, a former executive with the 
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Robert is an experienced Canadian 
journalist and writer who, over the course of his career, has held 
responsibility for developing and ensuring compliance with editorial 
standards and practices at the CBC. We think he's right for this work 
because he's smart and thoughtful, has decades of experience handling 
sensitive editorial issues, and is experienced at balancing the 
interests of multiple stakeholders inside a mission-driven organization 
designed to serve the general public. Sue worked with Robert for 17 
years at the CBC, and is confident he can help us with this issue.

What will the process look like?

This won't be like the strategy project, which took an entire year and a 
team of full-time people. This process will be smaller and simpler. 
Robert intends to gather input from four major sources: i) by reading 
existing policy and discussion pages on the wikis, ii) by interviewing 
key project participants such as board members and community members, 
iii) by gathering together external statements of policy, papers and 
reports on this topic, and iv) by interviewing key experts such as 
advisory board members, anti-censorship advocates, child-protection 
organizations, and so forth. He will probably not do much original 
research (such as surveys or focus groups): instead, he will tend to 
rely on existing research done by others. Once Robert has gathered all 
the input, he will do some analysis and thinking, and then make 
recommendations to the board. It is intended to be a fairly quick and 
simple process of information-gathering and thinking.

What will the end result look like?

Robert will explore and summarize our particular context: our mission, 
our production processes, and current relevant policies. He will tell us 
how other organizations and entities, such as libraries and big 
user-generated content sites, have handled this challenge. He will lay 
out possible courses of action, and the pros and cons of each in our 
context. And finally, he will make recommendations to the board.

What might those recommendations include?

Nothing is off the table. Robert has not been asked to explicitly 
exclude anything from the scope of recommendations. He could recommend 
anything from doing nothing to creative ideas that haven't been 
considered before.

What will happen after the board receives the recommendations?

The board will discuss the recommendations at its fall meeting. Then it 
will talk with the community. Nothing will happen without lots of 
discussion.

Why not hire a community member to do this work?

Any community member who'd be interested in this work has probably 
already formed an opinion on the topic, which means it might be hard for 
them to maintain neutrality, and/or other people might perceive them as 
non-neutral. Robert brings a fresh eye, which is probably useful. Also, 
he will bring to us his experience of designing policy elsewhere.

What other projects or properties face similar situations as those of 
Wikimedia's? Who or what can provide context for this kind of research 
or decision making? Who else knows how to address this issue?

We are interested in practices of other large projects containing 
community-created material, such as Flickr, YouTube, Google, eBay, and 
the Internet Archive. We are also interested in educational institutions 
and archives, whose work is similar to ours. So we will be talking with 
groups such as libraries, museums, and universities. Many smart people 
have grappled with these issues, and we are looking forward to hearing 
how they have handled them. We also know that our context is unique, and 
the outcome will need to be suited to us: our mission, goals, values and 
editorial practices.

Are you doing this because you're worried about the media, or donors?

No. The board is doing this because we've agreed that getting more 
information about other approaches to the issue is the right thing to 
do. We want to be thoughtful and responsible, and we think it's worth 
putting some focused effort against this issue. We may be wrong about 
that (and it's true that some board members feel more strongly about it 
than others). We want to do what is best in terms of advancing the 
mission and meeting the needs of all the world's readers and contributors.

Has the Board or Foundation actively done anything on the projects to 
remove explicit content? Has any illegal material been found or deleted?

Although the Foundation would remove any illegal content if it were 
necessary, it has not needed to do so--the task of removing this kind of 
material generally falls to our volunteers first, who watch the latest 
changes and additions to our projects. However, project policies often 
include editorial considerations in addition to legal considerations; 
just because an image is within the bounds of the law does not 
necessarily mean it falls within the project scope, and individual 
members have removed content they believed was outside of project policies.

The Wikimedia community has engaged in thoughtful policy development 
around these issues for many years. Why is there a need for a top-down 
process now?

It's true that the community has had many good policy discussions about 
these issues, dating to the earliest days of Wikipedia. Ultimately, we 
think those discussions may have been constrained in ways that aren't 
ideal. First, discussions about policy tend to be project-centric, 
rather than addressing the interests of the Wikimedia movement as a 
whole. That means they typically aren't very informed by a 
bigger-picture view (for example, the experiences of other projects, 
other communities, other websites, other educational initiatives), in 
part because there typically aren't resources dedicated to getting that 
information. And, some types of policy change (for example, those with 
technology implications) may be abandoned early, because community 
members know technical support is hard to come by. We're hoping that 
this process will help us to have a broader conversation about the topic 
than might otherwise be possible.

Who wrote this Q and A, and who is its intended audience?

The first draft of this Q and A was written by Jay and Sue for the 
board, based on the text of the resolution, and Sue's understanding of 
the consensus that had been achieved by the board over the past several 
months. Individual board members requested various revisions, and new 
versions of the draft were recirculated over several days. The main 
audience is the Wikimedia community, and the goal is to articulate the 
board's position as completely as possible.

--Michael Snow