Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Covid-19] An update on in-person gatherings

[Lydia Hamilton]

Hi Lodewijk,

Thank you for your feedback. We look forward to the forthcoming September
release of detailed guidance that will allow Community members to assess
their ability to safely host events and activities during the current
pandemic circumstances.

I’d like to respond to some of your comments:

"It looks like your email was written to include a place where you want to
gather this feedback."

-- Feedback will be gathered on the guidance Meta talk page, which will
reside in the Grants portal.

"I'm assuming we're talking only about local events of limited size
(probably a different risk profile applies for larger and/or
travel-involved activities)."

-- The guidance will address events of all sizes.

"As an organizer, it is nice to have clarity where possible. Crisp
definitions that translate well, are very helpful."

-- Agreed. The guidance will be reviewed for clarity, ease of use and ease
of translation.

"I can't imagine an identical set of constraints to apply across countries."

-- The guidance will include a host of assessment criteria that will allow
Community members to evaluate the specific characteristics of their
proposed event/activity, including location.

"I'm confident that you already reached out to many affiliates to get their
input ealy on."

-- Yes. We will be evaluating and testing the guidance with selected
affiliates prior to release on Meta.

Kind Regards,
Lydia

Lydia Hamilton (she/her)
Director of Operations
Wikimedia Foundation

On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 2:41 PM Anusha Alikhan 
wrote:

>
>
>
>
> *From: *effe iets anders 
> *Subject: **Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Covid-19] An update on in-person
> gatherings*
> *Date: *August 10, 2020 at 8:43:04 PM EDT
> *To: *Wikimedia Mailing List 
> *Reply-To: *effeietsand...@gmail.com, Wikimedia Mailing List <
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> Thank you Katherine for this update,
>
> I'm much looking forward to a more nuanced policy. I think it is clear that
> the standing policy (no in-person activities of any size, around the world)
> is past its expiration date and can't realistically be maintained any
> longer in its broad interpretation. With the current policy, we're risking
> people just ignoring it when they feel no legal obligation to follow it.
>
> I hope that we can have an updated policy to provide a little more
> flexibility sooner than later, even if that means that it is a first phase
> of making things more nuanced. For example, we could carve out exceptions
> for countries where there is a clear 'safe' situation (even if we all know
> this is a very relative thing). Wiki Loves Monuments is about to start, and
> it would be nice if we could make sure that updates can be considered in
> the planning as much as possible - especially as this is happening in many
> different countries, and traditionally mostly outdoors anyway.
>
> It looks like your email was written to include a place where you want to
> gather this feedback. Did a link go missing?
>
> For what it's worth, I do have some thoughts about such an updated policy,
> from the viewpoint as someone who would have to comply. I'm assuming we're
> talking only about local events of limited size (probably a different risk
> profile applies for larger and/or travel-involved activities). I'm
> obviously no epidemiologist or public health policy expert, and I suspect
> many of these are already front and center in your thinking:
> - As an organizer, it is nice to have clarity where possible. Crisp
> definitions that translate well, are very helpful.
> - Given how different the public health situations are around the world, I
> can't imagine an identical set of constraints to apply across countries.
> - Acceptance is important. For example, I know there are a large number of
> countries where the wearing of masks is considered an accepted good
> practice, while there are other countries where this is seen as counter
> productive (with a heavier reliance on distance, for example). I know this
> is a touchy subject in the US
> - I wouldn't expect the WMF to interpret each country's public health
> policy, at the risk of being always behind. Carving out exceptions for
> countries that are notorious for not developing responsible policy, seems
> fair though (although that seems an interesting problem for the
> communications department...).
> - Reduce bureaucracy to a minimum. Some may be needed to help people
> through the thinking process, but it's also a deterrent to actually follow
> the policy.
>
> The balance between simplicity and nuance seems a hard one to strike. A
> bright line would be great, but that most likely conflicts with the
> realism.
> As so many governments are experiencing, it must be terribly complex to
> strike a right balance between requiring all recommendations to be followed
> and actually get people to endorse and support such requirements. The WMF
> only has limited leverage, and I would hate it to see people actively
> looking for loopholes. Because we 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] UCoC update, emergency@, and T behavioral investigations

[Maggie Dennis]

Hi, Nathan.

I appreciate your recommendations; they are both very good. :)

In a situation that comes through the usual processes, the investigative
team would usually direct the person contacting them to a policy page on
the local project or to a specific functionary group. So, Oversight, for
instance, in case of leaked personal data. In this case, I suspect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Harassment#Dealing_with_harassment
would have suited the situation better.

Unfortunately, we didn’t anticipate redirecting somebody with a dispute of
this sort via the emergency@ channel. As I mentioned above, staff are
directed not to handle other matters through that channel. When off-topic
requests (for the channel) come in, people are usually asked to mail ca@
and to expect a response within two business days. In this case, given the
level of distress, the emergency responder wanted to offer something more
rapid without being herself deeply familiar with the English Wikipedia
approaches. I’m very supportive of her desire to help, and we are going to
make sure that emergency@ responders have better support in where to direct
these issues while still maintaining our strict protocol of not using that
channel to handle any issues other than threats of physical harm. Nobody
wants to try to help somebody only to increase their distress. :(

I also agree that she should have mentioned ca@ in the email. She actually
included that channel in her response as a cc, but because of the
personally tailored answer seems to have inadvertently omitted mentioning
the fact of the cc. I do want to note that the individual in this case had
already been asked to correspond with ca@ if there were issues that didn’t
merit consideration for escalation to law enforcement. I certainly
understand that he may have overlooked that in his distress, and it should
have been repeated. I myself am very capable of overlooking things even
when NOT distressed, and we should make the processes we DO have as smooth
and painless as possible for people.

We are learning from this. We’ll make the process better.

Best regards,

Maggie


On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 2:54 PM Nathan  wrote:

> Hi Maggie,
>
> First, thank you for the update and for the additional background
> information. How does T determine *which* local processes to refer users
> to? In the particular case here, it might have been better if the user had
> been offered a mix of private or public methods to address the problem. It
> seems as though the only advice given was to a noticeboard, but as others
> have noted communicating privately with an administrator or with the
> functionaries list or other private means may have been more effective.
> That could be true for future inquiries as well, so perhaps reviewing what
> advice regarding local processes is offered would be a good idea.
>
> The emergency@ response also did not offer or suggest sending the inquiry
> to ca@, which might have been helpful.
>
> ~Nathan
>
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 2:38 PM Maggie Dennis 
> wrote:
>
> > Hello, all.
> >
> > Yesterday some questions were raised in this channel about Trust &
> Safety’s
> > response to an issue of harassment reported via our emergency email
> > address. The director of that team reports to me, as I am the Vice
> > President of Community Resilience & Sustainability, so I wanted to speak
> to
> > that, to clarify our approaches in the hopes of avoiding unnecessary
> > confusion and distress to individuals in the future. I also wanted to
> give
> > you an update on the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) drafting committee.
> > :)
> >
> > Apologies in advance for the length of this!
> >
> > Let’s start with the UCoC.[1] As a brief recap, there is a drafting
> > committee working on a global policy that will set basic minimum
> standards
> > for conduct in the Wikimedia movement. The committee is making good
> > progress, but time challenges in part around the current global health
> > crisis has led them to ask for two more weeks to prepare this draft for
> the
> > month-long community review period on Meta. This means we will be asking
> > for community comment from September 7 to October 6, which will push the
> > delivery of the policy to the Board from September 30 to October 13. The
> > full timeline is on the main Meta page.
> >
> > In terms of the Foundation’s Trust & Safety team and how and when to
> reach
> > out to them, Trust & Safety’s team handles several key workflows with
> > different addresses according to urgency.[2]
> >
> > Our emergency@ channel is set up to deal with threats of physical harm -
> > ranging from terrorism to suicide - which the team triages and escalates
> as
> > appropriate to law enforcement and other emergency services for them to
> > handle. (“As appropriate” is under an escalation protocol defined for the
> > Foundation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who helped build this
> > multinational crisis line.) The team’s sole role here is to 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sexual harassment

[William Chan]

Why the harassed normally email T but not seeking local help:


Sometimes some kinds of harassment against a person or a group is an
orchestrated attempt driven by off-wiki matters. Considering the
"importance" of Wikipedia and it's sister projects, and the fundamentally
huge size of the movement, it seemed mostly unnoticeable in some cases.

These kinds of planned harassment (not only sexual harassment but all forms
of harassment) would not normally be observed in large languages used by
different nations because the sheer size of the user base diluted their
attempts.

However, if language becomes national and got very limited outside use
apart from the country they are from (i.e. Japanese in Japan, or Korean in
Korea,etc. Not saying they have a serious sexual harassment problem, just
an example), harassment against the minority may appear in all forms,
including but not limited to blocking them from any administrative posts,
to sexual harassments to an outright ban of some individuals. In this case,
local bodies which deal with harassing would be normally held by those who
are, or show sympathy to the harasser, and that is the problem.

Local governance (last stand) bodies are usually opaque in nature - the
elections to those bodies are normally fair, but it is not transparent
enough of what they do just because they are volunteer.

Those very large communities normally have a (relatively) inefficient speed
to deal with issues because of the number of problems they receive.
The irony is that, for the smaller communities is, the abuser would have
some connection with the last-stand bodies, that would mean conflict of
interest - though with much irony, COI is not observed when they are
playing Wikipolitics.

This means, you either get a local "slow safe soace" because they receive
too many case to review per day, or an "unsafe safe space" because
harassers know those who deal with these reports.


You either get a language that is too big and inefficient to treat reports,
or languages that, because of the size, they harasser may just outright
know the ones who deal with these problems. That's why T needs way more
people.

And not all languages have self-governing bodies.



P.S. Written by someone who had emailed T about harassments against
himself. One harasser got a conduct warning while the other one got
foundation-blocked.

On Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 22:54 Gnangarra  wrote:

>  For a person to report harassment they must first feel safe to do so.  Not
> everyone is capable of dealing with or participating in a public debate
> about whether they have been harassed, there is a significant difference
> between arguing facts on a topic and dealing with harassment and offensive
> comments directed at you.  Its a very effective method of ensuring that you
> can keep control of subject areas, or part of Wikipedia.  What is going
> unnoticed, unrecorded and never dealt with is the same people make personal
> attacks and harass contributors repeatedly, many of these people are
> protected by other at AN/I or large followings that ensure they are almost
> untouchable.
>
> Just like this thread dismissing problems when they are raised is
> unhelpful, and has a chilling effect on productive outcomes.   The lack of
> alternative safe ways to address issues has been a problem for many years
> driving away 1,000s of good contributors.
>
> On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 at 21:47, Chris Gates via Wikimedia-l <
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > I fail to understand how requiring public report of publicly-occurring
> > harassment is a problem.
> >
> > If people are being harassed constantly via off-wiki communication,
> > emailing a local admin team or T is definitely the best thing to do if
> > they don’t want to make it public in an on-wiki report.
> >
> > However, if it’s on-wiki, I don’t see any viable reason as to why it
> should
> > not be reported on-wiki as well. By no means is it “doubling down” on
> > harassment; that doesn’t even make much sense considering that it isn’t
> the
> > collective community making the harassment, it’s an individual. It also
> > doesn’t matter at all what the harasser feels like either; if they’re
> > blocked after a civilly-written and clear-cut report on ANI it doesn’t
> > matter what they think. It’s not acceptable to have a secret police team
> to
> > handle every content issue; community input exists for a reason,
> especially
> > on collaborative projects like this.
> >
> > Further, when did anyone say the community is not willing to handle
> > harassment issues? It truly bothers me to see people write nonsense like
> > this.
> >
> > I will restate:
> >
> > Local communities appoint administrators to enforce consensus. There is
> > consensus that harassment should be responded to with warnings and, if
> > repeated or severe, blocks.
> >
> > These administrators usually have a mailing list and an on-wiki
> > noticeboard. These noticeboards are open for anyone to create sections
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] UCoC update, emergency@, and T behavioral investigations

[Nathan]

Hi Maggie,

First, thank you for the update and for the additional background
information. How does T determine *which* local processes to refer users
to? In the particular case here, it might have been better if the user had
been offered a mix of private or public methods to address the problem. It
seems as though the only advice given was to a noticeboard, but as others
have noted communicating privately with an administrator or with the
functionaries list or other private means may have been more effective.
That could be true for future inquiries as well, so perhaps reviewing what
advice regarding local processes is offered would be a good idea.

The emergency@ response also did not offer or suggest sending the inquiry
to ca@, which might have been helpful.

~Nathan

On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 2:38 PM Maggie Dennis  wrote:

> Hello, all.
>
> Yesterday some questions were raised in this channel about Trust & Safety’s
> response to an issue of harassment reported via our emergency email
> address. The director of that team reports to me, as I am the Vice
> President of Community Resilience & Sustainability, so I wanted to speak to
> that, to clarify our approaches in the hopes of avoiding unnecessary
> confusion and distress to individuals in the future. I also wanted to give
> you an update on the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) drafting committee.
> :)
>
> Apologies in advance for the length of this!
>
> Let’s start with the UCoC.[1] As a brief recap, there is a drafting
> committee working on a global policy that will set basic minimum standards
> for conduct in the Wikimedia movement. The committee is making good
> progress, but time challenges in part around the current global health
> crisis has led them to ask for two more weeks to prepare this draft for the
> month-long community review period on Meta. This means we will be asking
> for community comment from September 7 to October 6, which will push the
> delivery of the policy to the Board from September 30 to October 13. The
> full timeline is on the main Meta page.
>
> In terms of the Foundation’s Trust & Safety team and how and when to reach
> out to them, Trust & Safety’s team handles several key workflows with
> different addresses according to urgency.[2]
>
> Our emergency@ channel is set up to deal with threats of physical harm -
> ranging from terrorism to suicide - which the team triages and escalates as
> appropriate to law enforcement and other emergency services for them to
> handle. (“As appropriate” is under an escalation protocol defined for the
> Foundation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who helped build this
> multinational crisis line.) The team’s sole role here is to act as a
> switchboard putting these threats into the hands of professionals trained
> to handle them, around the world. This channel is staffed 24 hours a day, 7
> days a week, and the team has strong direction not to handle other matters
> through this channel. In order for it to function effectively, it deals
> with nothing else. (See the Meta page on this process - [3].) Other
> matters, including behavioral investigation requests, should be sent to
> Trust & Safety via the email address c...@wikimedia.org.
>
> I’d like to acknowledge that it is not unusual for the Trust & Safety team
> to encounter problems caused by lack of clarity as to what constitutes
> harassment and what to do about it when it is encountered. There are
> differences in how different projects define and handle issues, including
> how many resources they have to dedicate to investigating and responding to
> these and where and when concerns should be raised. This is one of the
> reasons that the Movement Strategy working groups recommended the Universal
> Code of Conduct to begin with, with clear escalation mechanisms. We are
> working with communities on this, with an expectation that over the next
> few months international conversations will help everyone better understand
> what behavior is acceptable in the movement and better navigate and choose
> where to report their concerns to find effective help.
>
> How the Foundation will support communities in these governance issues is
> important, with an essential balance of giving targets of harassment the
> care they need while also respecting that communities are better positioned
> to self-govern. Our role is and should remain to assist with issues that
> are beyond the capacity of communities to handle. Our goal should be to
> empower communities to handle as much as they can.
>
> The Trust & Safety team has a small division of people who review
> behavioral investigation requests they receive. Their first task is to
> assess whether the issue is for some reason not solvable through community
> self-governance mechanisms. This is most often because the situation
> crosses a threshold of legal responsibility, but sometimes because it falls
> into an area where community self-governance processes are lacking:
> sometimes this 

[Wikimedia-l] UCoC update, emergency@, and T behavioral investigations

[Maggie Dennis]

Hello, all.

Yesterday some questions were raised in this channel about Trust & Safety’s
response to an issue of harassment reported via our emergency email
address. The director of that team reports to me, as I am the Vice
President of Community Resilience & Sustainability, so I wanted to speak to
that, to clarify our approaches in the hopes of avoiding unnecessary
confusion and distress to individuals in the future. I also wanted to give
you an update on the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) drafting committee. :)

Apologies in advance for the length of this!

Let’s start with the UCoC.[1] As a brief recap, there is a drafting
committee working on a global policy that will set basic minimum standards
for conduct in the Wikimedia movement. The committee is making good
progress, but time challenges in part around the current global health
crisis has led them to ask for two more weeks to prepare this draft for the
month-long community review period on Meta. This means we will be asking
for community comment from September 7 to October 6, which will push the
delivery of the policy to the Board from September 30 to October 13. The
full timeline is on the main Meta page.

In terms of the Foundation’s Trust & Safety team and how and when to reach
out to them, Trust & Safety’s team handles several key workflows with
different addresses according to urgency.[2]

Our emergency@ channel is set up to deal with threats of physical harm -
ranging from terrorism to suicide - which the team triages and escalates as
appropriate to law enforcement and other emergency services for them to
handle. (“As appropriate” is under an escalation protocol defined for the
Foundation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who helped build this
multinational crisis line.) The team’s sole role here is to act as a
switchboard putting these threats into the hands of professionals trained
to handle them, around the world. This channel is staffed 24 hours a day, 7
days a week, and the team has strong direction not to handle other matters
through this channel. In order for it to function effectively, it deals
with nothing else. (See the Meta page on this process - [3].) Other
matters, including behavioral investigation requests, should be sent to
Trust & Safety via the email address c...@wikimedia.org.

I’d like to acknowledge that it is not unusual for the Trust & Safety team
to encounter problems caused by lack of clarity as to what constitutes
harassment and what to do about it when it is encountered. There are
differences in how different projects define and handle issues, including
how many resources they have to dedicate to investigating and responding to
these and where and when concerns should be raised. This is one of the
reasons that the Movement Strategy working groups recommended the Universal
Code of Conduct to begin with, with clear escalation mechanisms. We are
working with communities on this, with an expectation that over the next
few months international conversations will help everyone better understand
what behavior is acceptable in the movement and better navigate and choose
where to report their concerns to find effective help.

How the Foundation will support communities in these governance issues is
important, with an essential balance of giving targets of harassment the
care they need while also respecting that communities are better positioned
to self-govern. Our role is and should remain to assist with issues that
are beyond the capacity of communities to handle. Our goal should be to
empower communities to handle as much as they can.

The Trust & Safety team has a small division of people who review
behavioral investigation requests they receive. Their first task is to
assess whether the issue is for some reason not solvable through community
self-governance mechanisms. This is most often because the situation
crosses a threshold of legal responsibility, but sometimes because it falls
into an area where community self-governance processes are lacking:
sometimes this is cross-wiki abuse; other times this is because the
projects where the issues are happening lack robust self-governance;
sometimes this is because the situations reported may involve the
individuals usually tasked with self-governance. If they determine a case
does not require Foundation involvement but is instead better suited for
self-governance, they will direct the individual to local processes. We
have committed not to intervene in cases that community self-governance can
reasonably handle. Sometimes even when a case does rise to the level of
Foundation involvement, they will advise the person who reached out of
appropriate community self-governance processes as a more rapid solution
while they complete their investigation, including the essential legal
review, before they are able to take sanctions. This is important because
those investigations and legal reviews are generally not quick. It’s not
uncommon for the Foundation to issue sanctions 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sexual harassment

[Fæ]

On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 at 14:47, Chris Gates via Wikimedia-l
 wrote:
>
> I fail to understand how requiring public report of publicly-occurring
> harassment is a problem.

"Don't be a cunt"
"Fuck off"
"Stop being hysterical"
+ Far worse actually gets tolerated, and I'm not quoting any here, you
work out why

Anyone feeling they are targeted or harassed with unpleasant personal
comments, especially newer editors, would be INCREDIBLY STUPID to
attempt to complain about it on Wikipedia's ANI. It will boomerang,
and the history of that noticeboard shows that the complainant is
likely to be treated as a troublemaker by the admin corps, with a high
probability of reasons being found to sanction the troublemaker if
they try to answer questions in public.

There's plenty of "unfriendly space" to create a hostile environment
without crossing the boundaries of "free speech" tolerated for long
term contributors, but not newcomers.

My good advice to newer editors is always to discuss bad faith and
nasty aggressive behaviour off-wiki, as it's just not safe to do so
on-wiki, unless you are anonymous and happy to throw away your
account. These behaviours are normal, expected, and even championed
from the top as refreshing expressions of libertarianism.[1]

1. "utter fucking bullshit"
https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/27/trust_me_pleads_wikipedia_former_google_man

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sunday Wikispore Day mini-conference

[Pharos]

The Wikispore Day recording is now available in full on Commons (as well as
on Youtube):

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikispore_Day.webm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q75Fv7Snc_w

Here is the proposal for Wikispore as a future sister project on Meta:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikispore

And you can share your input and possible support here, as well as on the
talk page:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikispore#Discussion

And follow some updates here: https://twitter.com/wikispore

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)


On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 9:30 PM Pharos  wrote:

> The event is Sunday July 19, hosted on Wikipedia Weekly Network.
>
> Time in select zones:
> 1:00–3:00 pm (New York City time)
> 17:00–19:00 UTC/GMT
> 19:00–21:00 Berlin time
>
> https://wikispore.wmflabs.org/wiki/Wikispore_Day
>
> You can participate on the Youtube livestream here, and text chat with the
> presenters and ask questions, etc:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q75Fv7Snc_w
>
> I also invite you to sign up for a lightning talk, and I will be glad to
> send interested individuals with related topics to present the on-air link:
>
> https://wikispore.wmflabs.org/wiki/Wikispore_Day#Interested_participants
>
> Thanks,
> Richard
> (User:Pharos)
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sexual harassment

[Gnangarra]

 For a person to report harassment they must first feel safe to do so.  Not
everyone is capable of dealing with or participating in a public debate
about whether they have been harassed, there is a significant difference
between arguing facts on a topic and dealing with harassment and offensive
comments directed at you.  Its a very effective method of ensuring that you
can keep control of subject areas, or part of Wikipedia.  What is going
unnoticed, unrecorded and never dealt with is the same people make personal
attacks and harass contributors repeatedly, many of these people are
protected by other at AN/I or large followings that ensure they are almost
untouchable.

Just like this thread dismissing problems when they are raised is
unhelpful, and has a chilling effect on productive outcomes.   The lack of
alternative safe ways to address issues has been a problem for many years
driving away 1,000s of good contributors.

On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 at 21:47, Chris Gates via Wikimedia-l <
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

> I fail to understand how requiring public report of publicly-occurring
> harassment is a problem.
>
> If people are being harassed constantly via off-wiki communication,
> emailing a local admin team or T is definitely the best thing to do if
> they don’t want to make it public in an on-wiki report.
>
> However, if it’s on-wiki, I don’t see any viable reason as to why it should
> not be reported on-wiki as well. By no means is it “doubling down” on
> harassment; that doesn’t even make much sense considering that it isn’t the
> collective community making the harassment, it’s an individual. It also
> doesn’t matter at all what the harasser feels like either; if they’re
> blocked after a civilly-written and clear-cut report on ANI it doesn’t
> matter what they think. It’s not acceptable to have a secret police team to
> handle every content issue; community input exists for a reason, especially
> on collaborative projects like this.
>
> Further, when did anyone say the community is not willing to handle
> harassment issues? It truly bothers me to see people write nonsense like
> this.
>
> I will restate:
>
> Local communities appoint administrators to enforce consensus. There is
> consensus that harassment should be responded to with warnings and, if
> repeated or severe, blocks.
>
> These administrators usually have a mailing list and an on-wiki
> noticeboard. These noticeboards are open for anyone to create sections on,
> and unless a request was clearly made in bad faith or intentionally misled
> readers, there is practically no chance of successful retaliatory action on
> the part of the individual who created the harassment.
>
> In this case, a section was made on ANI, multiple editors commented, and
> for some reason the section was removed mid-discussion. It is to be
> expected that someone with an independent viewpoint would seek less radical
> action than someone directly a party of the dispute. In this case, there
> was incivility and arguable harassment coming from both parties, though
> clearly “cutie” is not conducive to the desired contributory environment.
>
> Simple conduct cases are not the sort of issue for T Let them (and often
> stewards) handle the threats to life, the vandals trying to find where
> editors live, the IPs making terrorist threats, the new accounts uploading
> child pornography, the vandals spreading the private details of editors,
> etc. Basic conduct issues can be handled by local administrators.
>
> And for the “chilling effect” of reporting issues like this publicly, if
> someone is incapable of seeing other people interpret events another way,
> disagreeing with them, or not wanting as drastic and immediate action, they
> may not be suited for a collaborative project.
>
> There are easy ways to handle people who are clearly harassing you on-wiki:
> 1) Ask them to stop. If they refuse,
> 2) Create a section on ANI giving a short, simple, and unbiased explanation
> of the issue with diffs.
> 3) Wait for editors and admins to comment. If the community believes it’s
> problematic enough to warrant action, action will be taken. If no and the
> harassment continues continues,
> 4) Most projects have other methods of handling issues like this. Enwiki
> has ArbCom for this, simplewiki has community sanction discussions, other
> projects have other methods.
>
> At no point would removing the ANI report mid-discussion be helpful. And
> doing so then claiming that it’s the community’s fault is clearly
> incorrect.
>
> Regards,
> Vermont
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 01:46 Gnangarra  wrote:
>
> > >
> > > The code of conduct is not a law. People who are harassers are
> criminals
> > > and not above the law. Sexual harassment is a serious offense. Any kind
> > > of harrasment is an offense. Wikipedia s administrators are not the law
> > > and not above the law.
> >
> > Wikipedia is not above the law.
> >
> >
> > The international aspects and the fact that WMF 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Sexual harassment

[Chris Gates via Wikimedia-l]

I fail to understand how requiring public report of publicly-occurring
harassment is a problem.

If people are being harassed constantly via off-wiki communication,
emailing a local admin team or T is definitely the best thing to do if
they don’t want to make it public in an on-wiki report.

However, if it’s on-wiki, I don’t see any viable reason as to why it should
not be reported on-wiki as well. By no means is it “doubling down” on
harassment; that doesn’t even make much sense considering that it isn’t the
collective community making the harassment, it’s an individual. It also
doesn’t matter at all what the harasser feels like either; if they’re
blocked after a civilly-written and clear-cut report on ANI it doesn’t
matter what they think. It’s not acceptable to have a secret police team to
handle every content issue; community input exists for a reason, especially
on collaborative projects like this.

Further, when did anyone say the community is not willing to handle
harassment issues? It truly bothers me to see people write nonsense like
this.

I will restate:

Local communities appoint administrators to enforce consensus. There is
consensus that harassment should be responded to with warnings and, if
repeated or severe, blocks.

These administrators usually have a mailing list and an on-wiki
noticeboard. These noticeboards are open for anyone to create sections on,
and unless a request was clearly made in bad faith or intentionally misled
readers, there is practically no chance of successful retaliatory action on
the part of the individual who created the harassment.

In this case, a section was made on ANI, multiple editors commented, and
for some reason the section was removed mid-discussion. It is to be
expected that someone with an independent viewpoint would seek less radical
action than someone directly a party of the dispute. In this case, there
was incivility and arguable harassment coming from both parties, though
clearly “cutie” is not conducive to the desired contributory environment.

Simple conduct cases are not the sort of issue for T Let them (and often
stewards) handle the threats to life, the vandals trying to find where
editors live, the IPs making terrorist threats, the new accounts uploading
child pornography, the vandals spreading the private details of editors,
etc. Basic conduct issues can be handled by local administrators.

And for the “chilling effect” of reporting issues like this publicly, if
someone is incapable of seeing other people interpret events another way,
disagreeing with them, or not wanting as drastic and immediate action, they
may not be suited for a collaborative project.

There are easy ways to handle people who are clearly harassing you on-wiki:
1) Ask them to stop. If they refuse,
2) Create a section on ANI giving a short, simple, and unbiased explanation
of the issue with diffs.
3) Wait for editors and admins to comment. If the community believes it’s
problematic enough to warrant action, action will be taken. If no and the
harassment continues continues,
4) Most projects have other methods of handling issues like this. Enwiki
has ArbCom for this, simplewiki has community sanction discussions, other
projects have other methods.

At no point would removing the ANI report mid-discussion be helpful. And
doing so then claiming that it’s the community’s fault is clearly
incorrect.

Regards,
Vermont



On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 01:46 Gnangarra  wrote:

> >
> > The code of conduct is not a law. People who are harassers are criminals
> > and not above the law. Sexual harassment is a serious offense. Any kind
> > of harrasment is an offense. Wikipedia s administrators are not the law
> > and not above the law.
>
> Wikipedia is not above the law.
>
>
> The international aspects and the fact that WMF protects editors privacy
> makes options outside the movement very limited to only the extreme end of
> the scale. Beside the legal aspect its a cop out for the Community & WMF to
> dismiss any harassment as something they cant do anything about, this
> response is why AN/I is also a waste of time and why so much harassment
> never gets dealt with, ultimately why the movement has difficulty in
> attracting under represented groups
>
> On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 at 13:14, Ανώνυμος Βικιπαιδιστής <
> anonymuswikiped...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The code of conduct is not a law.
> > People who are harassers are criminals and not above the law.
> > Sexual harassment is a serious offense. Any kind of harrasment is an
> > offense. Wikipedia s administrators are not the law and not above the
> law.
> > Wikipedia is not above the law.
> > People who seek help should be appointed to the right specialized
> > authorities as the police and not discouraged to do so.
> >
> > Safety team from my experience, will not help any wikipedian/victim who
> > with report a harrasment case. They are just another department of
> > wikimedia foundation.
> >
> > Any people is important and count.
> > Please 

[Wikimedia-l] Language showcase, August 2020

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Hello,

This is an announcement about a new installment of the Language Showcase, a
series of presentations about various aspects of language diversity and its
connection to Wikimedia Projects.

This next installment will deal with the Translatable modules project—a
proposal to make a framework that will make the localization of Scribunto
Lua modules as convenient as the localization of MediaWiki and extensions.

Everyone is welcome, especially developers of modules and templates in all
wikis!

This session is going to be broadcast over Zoom, and a recording will be
published for later viewing.

Please read below for the event details, including local time, joining
links and do let us know if you have any questions.

Past Language showcases:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Language_engineering/Showcase

Thank you!

Amir

== Details ==

# Event: Language Showcase #7

# When: August 26, 2020 (Wednesday) at 12:00 UTC
check local time:
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20200826T1200

# Where:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/96185098382

Meeting ID: 961 8509 8382

# Agenda:

Translatable modules project—a proposal to make a framework that will make
the localization of Scribunto Lua modules as convenient as the localization
of MediaWiki and extensions.
___
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, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's discuss first features of Desktop Improvements coming to Vector

[Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga]

Indeed! The FINAL stage of the changes is deeply conservative and not a change 
at all. It's a small lifting, but not a real change. We are now 10 years old, 
and with the new changes we will be 8 years old in a year, instead of being 11 
years old.

From: Olga Vasileva 
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2020 1:53 PM
To: Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga 
Cc: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's discuss first features of Desktop Improvements 
coming to Vector

Hi Vira, Ala'a, and Galder,

Thanks for your feedback - we’re really glad you’re enjoying the changes we’ve 
made so far.  I wanted to point out that this is not all! The deployed changes 
are a part of a larger series of improvements that we will be rolling out 
progressively over the next 1+ years. To see a list of the other features we 
are planning on working on, please check out our project page[1]. In addition, 
we believe that even after the project is complete, there will still be work to 
do. We’d like to view this project as a new baseline on which we can build new 
functionality that can improve both reading and editing in the future.

Thanks again!

- Olga

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 8:06 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga 
mailto:galder...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this topic!
At euwiki it has been some weeks we have experienced the new vector style, and 
it has some great things: you can be sure about how width images will take for 
any reader, you can create better galleries or even decide where to insert an 
image to avoid sandwiching.

BUT...

I think that the changes (even when finishing) will be too short on what we 
need (a real face change!) but it will annoy in the same amount to those who 
don't want any change at all. So, we are losing an opportunity to go on with 
big changes.

Best

Galder

From: Wikimedia-l 
mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>>
 on behalf of Ala'a Najjar mailto:ala201...@hotmail.com>>
Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2020 10:06 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Cc: ovasil...@wikimedia.org 
mailto:ovasil...@wikimedia.org>>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's discuss first features of Desktop Improvements 
coming to Vector

Thanks for bring our attention to this Desktop Improvements.
I opened section about this on Arabic Wikipedia village pump 
https://w.wiki/a9S, so users can try it, and maybe there feedback can help 
Readers Web team.

Best,
Alaa
https://w.wiki/JNQ

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l 
mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>>
 On Behalf Of Vira Motorko
Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2020 1:01 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List‏ 
mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Let's discuss first features of Desktop Improvements 
coming to Vector

Hi all,

I don't see any messages about the Desktop Improvements to wikimedia-l, so I've 
decided to forward one from wikitech-l.

If I understand correctly, Desktop Improvements are changes to the desktop 
version of the Vector skin, which are to be built throughout the next year, 
features being added one by one. Several wikis already enjoy them by default, 
and users of other wikis can find a respective tick in their preferences to 
make new Vector visible.

Current features are said to not be permanent anyway but wouldn't it be good 
for more people to see them while they are still work in progress?

See email text and links below.
*--*
*Vira Motorko // Віра Моторко*
mobile: +380667740499 | facebook: vira.motorko 
 | wikipedia: Ата 


-- Forwarded message -
Від: Olga Vasileva mailto:ovasil...@wikimedia.org>>
Date: ср, 5 серп. 2020 о 15:33
Subject: [Wikitech-l] First desktop improvements features now available on 
early adopter wikis


Hi all,

We’re happy to announce that the first two of many changes focused on improving 
the desktop experience of the Vector skin [1] have been released as a user 
preference to all projects and as default on a set of early adopter wikis: 
Basque, Farsi, French, and Hebrew Wikipedias, French Wiktionary, and Portuguese 
Wikiversity.

Since its introduction in 2009, the Vector skin has changed little, while the 
needs of our readers and editors have shifted significantly, as have their 
expectations for a quality reading experience that focuses on the content 
itself. Over the next year, the readers web team [2] will be researching and 
building out improvements to the desktop experience based on research and 
existing tools built by our communities.

Our goal is to create a more welcoming reading and editing experience - 
something that feels familiar yet makes it easier and quicker to read, edit, 
and perform common functionality.

Our first change, a collapsible 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's discuss first features of Desktop Improvements coming to Vector

[Olga Vasileva]

Hi Vira, Ala'a, and Galder,

Thanks for your feedback - we’re really glad you’re enjoying the changes
we’ve made so far.  I wanted to point out that this is not all! The
deployed changes are a part of a larger series of improvements that we will
be rolling out progressively over the next 1+ years. To see a list of the
other features we are planning on working on, please check out our project
page[1]. In addition, we believe that even after the project is complete,
there will still be work to do. We’d like to view this project as a new
baseline on which we can build new functionality that can improve both
reading and editing in the future.

Thanks again!

- Olga

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 8:06 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
galder...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for bringing this topic!
> At euwiki it has been some weeks we have experienced the new vector style,
> and it has some great things: you can be sure about how width images will
> take for any reader, you can create better galleries or even decide where
> to insert an image to avoid sandwiching.
>
> BUT...
>
> I think that the changes (even when finishing) will be too short on what
> we need (a real face change!) but it will annoy in the same amount to those
> who don't want any change at all. So, we are losing an opportunity to go on
> with big changes.
>
> Best
>
> Galder
> --
> *From:* Wikimedia-l  on behalf
> of Ala'a Najjar 
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 22, 2020 10:06 PM
> *To:* Wikimedia Mailing List 
> *Cc:* ovasil...@wikimedia.org 
> *Subject:* Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's discuss first features of Desktop
> Improvements coming to Vector
>
> Thanks for bring our attention to this Desktop Improvements.
> I opened section about this on Arabic Wikipedia village pump
> https://w.wiki/a9S, so users can try it, and maybe there feedback can
> help Readers Web team.
>
> Best,
> Alaa
> https://w.wiki/JNQ
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wikimedia-l  On Behalf Of
> Vira Motorko
> Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2020 1:01 PM
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List‏ 
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Let's discuss first features of Desktop
> Improvements coming to Vector
>
> Hi all,
>
> I don't see any messages about the Desktop Improvements to wikimedia-l, so
> I've decided to forward one from wikitech-l.
>
> If I understand correctly, Desktop Improvements are changes to the desktop
> version of the Vector skin, which are to be built throughout the next year,
> features being added one by one. Several wikis already enjoy them by
> default, and users of other wikis can find a respective tick in their
> preferences to make new Vector visible.
>
> Current features are said to not be permanent anyway but wouldn't it be
> good for more people to see them while they are still work in progress?
>
> See email text and links below.
> *--*
> *Vira Motorko // Віра Моторко*
> mobile: +380667740499 | facebook: vira.motorko <
> https://www.facebook.com/vira.motorko> | wikipedia: Ата <
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ата>
>
> -- Forwarded message -
> Від: Olga Vasileva 
> Date: ср, 5 серп. 2020 о 15:33
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] First desktop improvements features now available on
> early adopter wikis
> 
>
> Hi all,
>
> We’re happy to announce that the first two of many changes focused on
> improving the desktop experience of the Vector skin [1] have been released
> as a user preference to all projects and as default on a set of early
> adopter wikis: Basque, Farsi, French, and Hebrew Wikipedias, French
> Wiktionary, and Portuguese Wikiversity.
>
> Since its introduction in 2009, the Vector skin has changed little, while
> the needs of our readers and editors have shifted significantly, as have
> their expectations for a quality reading experience that focuses on the
> content itself. Over the next year, the readers web team [2] will be
> researching and building out improvements to the desktop experience based
> on research and existing tools built by our communities.
>
> Our goal is to create a more welcoming reading and editing experience -
> something that feels familiar yet makes it easier and quicker to read,
> edit, and perform common functionality.
>
> Our first change, a collapsible sidebar, allows users to collapse the
> lengthy menu on the left side of the page. We believe this change improves
> usability by allowing people to focus on the content itself - on reading,
> editing, or moderating.
>
> Our second change introduces a maximum line width to our content on pages
> such as article pages and discussion pages. Studies have shown that
> limiting the width can lead to better retention of content, as well as a
> decrease in eye strain
>
> You can opt into these features by unchecking “legacy vector” from the
> appearance tab of your user preferences.
>
> We’d also like to note that these are the first of a series of changes
> and, as such, their