Hi there,
I'm flagging the major issues that need to be considered.
1) we can not promise anonymity for the people acting as adjudicators. Any
attempt to have anonymous people hearing a case will attract attention from
a group if obsessive people who out anyone who is anonymous. Plus at times
harass them.
2) the reasons that people enforcing the rules on Wikipedia ignore
incivility, harassment, and trolling is because that approach is often the
best way to stop attention seeking behavior. The idea to "not feed trolls"
is well engrained into the culture and advise given by mature and
experienced people on the Internet.
3) blocks on Wikipedia are not suppose to be punitive but intended to
immediately stop disruptive user behavior. Attempts to use them to change
conduct is generally not successful. Instead people who are blocked often
become entrenched in proving that they are being treated poorly.
3) there is no way to stop people from editing Wikipedia. The wiki software
as used by WMF allows easy access to join, and edit. Attempts to stop
blocked or banned users from editing is part of what causes administrators
to burn out and ignore problems or over react to them.
4) banning people very engaged in the community rarely causes them to go
away.
Sydney
n Jul 7, 2014 3:20 AM, "Marie Earley" <eir...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Risker / Anne,
>
> In response to the points you raise:
>
> * A panel suggests a group of people who discuss and decide things, it
wouldn't be that, it would be a pool of adjudicators.
> * The home page shows 130,858 active editors, if 15% of those are female
then it means there must be 19,628 female editors to draw the 50% from.
> * I don't participate in "dispute management", but then I have never been
asked to.
> * More people might agree to take part in dispute management if they know
that their input will be kept anonymous.
> * Administrators would do what they have always done.
>
> Example of a possible way to approach potential adjudicators:
> Those eligible (maybe they've been editing for more than a year and they
have an edit history of 1,000+ edits) are sent a private e-mail, this would
be a circular to all eligible editors. It would say something like:
>
> > "According to our records you have been with us for more than [length
of time] and have contributed over [number of edits]. We would therefore
like to invite you join our pool of adjudicators which we are currently in
the process of establishing. The purpose of adjudication would to consider
editors requests to block other editors ('cases'). We envisage adjudication
to be the first stage in managing cases with the second stage being handled
by administrators.
>
> > Your anonymity as an adjudicator would be protected by us at all times,
in fact one of the conditions of being an adjudicator would be that you
have no direct contact with those involved any of the cases which you are
asked to consider (although you may inform the Wikipedia community that you
are an adjudicator). If you wish to become an adjudicator please click on
the link and fill out the form. (The form would include equal opportunities
monitoring questions
http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/private-and-public-sector-guidance/employing-people/recruitment/monitoring-forms
)."
>
> Example case:
> * Editor 'X' wants a block against editor 'Y'.
> * Editor X submits a case for adjudication.
> * Adjudicator 'A' requests a case, the case is randomly selected from
those pending by computer.
> * Adjudicator A reads the details and decides whether X has a point, or
whether Y appears to have behaved reasonably (even if X didn't like it).
> * Adjudicator A marks a one of two check boxes, "Pass to next stage? Yes
[box] No [box]" (perhaps other boxes like "I lack the technical knowledge
to adjudicate on this.") and a small comments form, maybe 1,000 characters.
> * The same case goes to a few more adjudicators, 50% of whom are female.
> * If enough rule that the case has merit then it goes forward and
administrators deal with it as they currently do (the idea is to weed out
groundless requests and save administrators and above time).
> * Their would be a maximum number of cases that any single adjudicator
could rule on in a 24 or 48 hour period.
> * From time to time there would be a general call, "we currently have a
backlog of cases".
>
> I must confess, I had to logout of Wikipedia and remind myself about what
questions are asked when joining. I'm so used to filling in Equal
Opportunities Monitoring Forms for statistical purposes that I didn't
really think about not being able to just run the query. Having said that,
most user pages of active users that I've seen do appear to volunteer which
gender they are. It is probably possible to go back.
>
> Marie
>
> ________________________________
> Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2014 13:45:34 -0400
> From: risker...@gmail.com
>
> To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Addressing incivility (was: men on lists)
>
> A few points here:
>
> If less than 15% of editors identify as female, and the vast majority of
those do not regularly participate in "dispute management", how are you
going to establish a panel that is 50% women? This isn't a small point -
there are so few individuals generally speaking who regularly participate
in dispute management at all (I'd put the number on enwiki at less than 150
total), and many of them are there because of the perceived power gradient,
not because they have a genuine interest in managing disputes.
> What disputes, exactly, would the panel be analysing? I'm having a hard
time visualizing this. "User:XXXX made a sexist comment here (link)"?
> What would you expect administrators to do, exactly? They're directly
accountable for the use of their tools and have to be able to personally
justify any actions they take - and surprisingly, a huge percentage of
administrators (almost) never use the block button. (There's a subset of
admins who only use their tools to read deleted versions, and another
subset that only shows up once a year, makes a couple of edits so they keep
their tools, and disappears again.)
> How would you develop any statistics based on gender of editor, when the
overwhelming majority of editors do not identify their gender at all in any
consistent fashion? I've personally never added any gender categories to
my userpage, for example, and I have no intention of doing so now.
>
>
> Some thoughts.
>
>
> Risker/Anne
>
>
>
> On 6 July 2014 04:51, Marie Earley <eir...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I previously described my experience of being a member of Kevin Spacey's
Trigger Street Labs website
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2014-June/004388.html
>>
>> I think part of my shock was based on being British, and how the
sink-or-swim attitude prevailed by those running and moderating. At least
at Wikipedia there is some notion of "We have a problem here, let's discuss
how best to fix it." The name of one forum at TS was "Free for all - enter
at your own risk" followed by a note that more members had been suspended
from that message board than from any of the others, and this is all they
have in the way of rules
http://labs.triggerstreet.com/labs/Help?faqCat=Message%20Board
>>
>> Having said that, the one thing that I thought worked well was their
Hall of Justice. Members earn credits for their reviews (which are randomly
assigned by the 'assignment generator') they then spend them on the
website. An obvious way of earning a lot of credits is to make up a load of
generic comments like, "the characters in this screenplay are very
interesting", request another assignment, copy and paste, earn credit, and
repeat.
>>
>> The HOJ exists for members who think the review that they received was
unfair. There is a criteria for the reviews including: not cutting and
pasting from other reviews, (if you think it has happened then you include
the ref. no. from the other review as evidence), reviews should be
constructive and non-abusive, a decent word length (I think the minimum was
100 words), there should also be evidence in the review which shows that
the reviewer definitely read / watched the submission.
>>
>> If a member thinks they have been unfairly treated then they send a
review to the HOJ. Other members - let's call them arbitrators - with a
high enough participation level (like having 'enough' edits in your edit
history) can request a - randomly generated - docket, read the review, read
the details of the complaint e.g. ("I think this review is a cut & past of
ref. # 'x' ...."). The arbitrator who received the docket for review then
has a choice of Y/N check-boxes relating to the review critieria and a
comment form, for anything else that they might like to add.
>>
>> The same docket goes to a number of different arbitrators in the same
way. (Note: there is a limit to how many dockets a member can request in 24
hrs.) If the majority think it should go further, it is passed on to the
jury.
>>
>> Details about the jury from the website:
>> > "The jury is a group of your peers made up of seasoned members picked
by site staff. Although we cannot say what the criteria is used to pick the
jury, logic dictates that they are active, positive, and objective members
of the community. They are asked not to reveal themselves or discuss their
status with anyone so they can vote without retribution."
>>
>> (FAQs about the HOJ:
http://labs.triggerstreet.com/labs/Help?faqCat=Hall%20of%20Justice )
>>
>> A Wikipedia variation on it might include:
>> * editors would need a certain number of edits before they are eligible
to become an arbitrator
>> * there would be a time-limit from the end of being blocked before being
eligible for 'arbitration duty'
>> * administrators / senior figures would be ineligible to be arbitrators
>> * 'cases' for arbitrators to consider would be assigned randomly by
computer
>> * it would be prohibited for an arbitrator to tell those involved in the
case that they have been allocated it
>> * 50% of those asked to consider a case would have to be female (other
quotas might be relevant for other demographics)
>> * there would be a limit to how many cases an arbitrator could ask for
in a certain time period (I actually envisage it being more like a cross
between jury service and those user talk page notices that there is a
discussion taking place somewhere
>>
>> These might be more technically difficult:
>> * cases would only go to arbitrators whose edit history is generally in
a different subject area - so someone complaining about a dispute about a
particular scientific point would have their complaint go to an arbitrator
whose edit history is in, say, historical BLPs
>> * a limit to the number of times you could go through the arbitration
process with the same case
>>
>> Cases would only go forward for administrators to get involved with if
enough arbitrators agreed that it merited being put forward.
>>
>>
>> > On a slightly different note:
>> Everyone seems to be mentioning the different ways in which the rules
are applied to male vs. female editors. Is it possible to run a query or
get hold of statistics for the average length of time female editors get
blocked for, versus how long male editors are blocked for? Perhaps a table
that takes account of the editors' participation levels prior to the block?
>>
>> Marie
>>
>>
>> > Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2014 21:23:18 -0400
>> > From: carolmoor...@verizon.net
>> > To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Addressing incivility (was: men on lists)
>>
>> >
>> > When I was a little girl in the 1950s and 60s we were told to be
passive
>> > and pray for what we wanted. Thank heavens self-actualization and
womens
>> > liberation came along and we discovered "well-behaved women seldom
make
>> > history." (Nicely covered at
>> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Thatcher_Ulrich )
>> >
>> > If we want the guys to change we gotta keep busting their chops about
>> > being civil, within the limits of civility of course. On a one on one
>> > basis, day after day after day. And even though no matter how civil we
>> > are, SOME of them still will think it is we who are being uncivil.
>> >
>> > It's a dirty job, but it's gotta be done.
>> >
>> > And the more guys who help promote civility and are willing to counter
>> > the good-old-boy mentality, the better... :-)
>> >
>> > On 7/3/2014 3:18 PM, Sydney Poore wrote:
>> > > There was an attempt to address the civility problem on Wikipedia
>> > > English with a top down approach at the very start of Sue Gardner's
>> > > time at WMF. Sue, Jimmy Wales, myself, and a group of half dozen
other
>> > > people talked about it in a closed group. It failed because a top
down
>> > > approach is not effective on Wikipedia because policies can not be
>> > > enforced from the top. Policies need to be made that a large part of
>> > > the community agrees at proper and enforceable.
>> > >
>> > > I would be willing to assist a group that wants to take another run
at
>> > > it. But there are significant challenges with enforcing a civility
>> > > policy on a global community where cultural norms differ at great
>> > > deal. So, we need to be careful that an attempt to assist one group
of
>> > > users does not make it harder for other groups of people who are
also
>> > > under represented on Wikipedia English.
>> > >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Gendergap mailing list
>> > Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
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