[Wikimedia-l] Re: An Open Letter to Maryana Iskander

[Maryana Iskander]

Hi Frederick - Nice to hear from you again. I look forward to reading the
letter. Maryana

On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 9:19 PM Frederick Noronha <
fredericknoro...@gmail.com> wrote:

> https://www.opensourceforu.com/2022/01/an-open-letter-to-maryana-iskander/
>
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[Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Maryana Iskander

[Frederick Noronha]

https://www.opensourceforu.com/2022/01/an-open-letter-to-maryana-iskander/

-- 



 April 2022  | Frederick Noronha. 784 Saligao 403511 Goa

Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa | M (after 2pm) +91 9822122436 Twitter @fn

  1  2 | 

 3  4  5  6  7  8  9  | fredericknoron...@gmail.com

10 11 12 13 14 15 16  | Books. Words. Photos. Wikipedia. Networks

17 18 19 20 21 22 23  | PHOTOS: https://flickr.com/photos/fn-goa/

24 25 26 27 28 29 30  | VIDEOS: http://t.ly/58ji




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[Wikimedia-l] Re: UCoC Phase 2 Ratification Results Announcement

[Andreas Kolbe]

Maggie,

As you correctly noted, I lost a verb there. What I meant to say was: "How
can they be prevented from inserting erroneous material without causing
them to doubt their own perceptions etc. in a way that they may well – in
good faith – *feel* is malicious?"

We have this all the time: people with cherished beliefs in alternative
medicine, religious dogma, conspiracy theories etc. *feel* that Wikipedians
are *maliciously* preventing their side from being represented in Wikipedia
etc. – often, unjustifiedly so.

Or think about the current situation in Russia and Ukraine, where people
are subject to different media narratives, depending on where they live,
and picture the world differently as a result. In both cases, this passage
seems apt to encourage people to argue over *who is malicious and who is
gaslighting whom*, rather than talking about content quality and how to
neutrally summarise sources.

There are perfectly good mechanisms now in all major projects for
sanctioning editors that lie or misrepresent sources, without a "law" whose
application requires attributing malice to one party, and which in the
process criminalises and further personalises the commonplace process *of
people trying to change each other's minds.*

As for the other point, whether Wikipedians are still allowed to talk about
Wikipedia outside of Wikipedia or whether Wikipedia has now become "Fight
Club" (as per the movie quote: “The first rule about fight club is you
don't talk about fight club. The second rule about fight club is you don't
talk about fight club.”) I think this point is rather too important to
await clarification in eighteen months' time. I'd rather have it clarified
now.

If even the authors of the UCoC don't know—or aren't prepared to say—what
they meant, then God help us.

Regards,
Andreas

On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 5:54 PM Maggie Dennis  wrote:

> I have been working on the UCoC about as long as anybody, if not as
> intensely as some. Hence, I have some confidence in saying that it is the
> Foundation's role to shepherd the Movement Strategy recommendation to
> reality in creating a baseline of behavioral standards that are
> movement-wide. *I* have opinions about what is and is not good conduct
> and how conduct can and should be reinforced, but the Code of Conduct was
> not written to reflect *my* opinions *or* the Foundation's - the drafting
> committee was a disparate group working to incorporate the feedback of
> volunteers and staff from all across the movement.
>
> The questions you raise strike me as very good discussion good points for
> the planned future policy review. Policies run into gray areas unless they
> are so generic as to be toothless. We will occasionally have hard
> conversations in application when we discover unintended or negative
> consequences.  This is not a new challenge to the movement. I think it's
> one of the things Wikimedia does rather well.
>
> In terms of  "in good faith" and "is malicious" - my understanding of
> malice from both a linguistic and legal sense is that it includes the
> *intent* to do harm. Beyond that, while your question "How can they be
> prevented from inserting erroneous material without causing them to doubt
> their own perceptions etc. in a way that they may well – in good faith – is
> malicious?" - seems to have lost a verb or two perhaps, I think what you
> are asking is how people can be prevented from inserting material without
> maliciously causing them to doubt their own perceptions: [[WP:V]] and
> [[WP:NPOV]] do not require malice in calling for consensus-defined reliable
> sources and avoiding fringe material. That said, again, this strikes me as
> a discussion for the future policy review, and if actual issues arise in
> the meantime I have no doubt discussion will happen.
>
> Best,
> Maggie
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 10:47 AM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
>> Dear Maggie,
>>
>> Could I ask you for help with a couple of things:
>>
>> 1. The UCoC states that "sharing information concerning other
>> contributors' Wikimedia activity outside the projects" is harassment. Is it
>> really the WMF's intention to prohibit public discussions of controversial
>> editing? To give some examples, in the past English Wikipedia arbitrators
>> commented on cases like the Scientology case or the Indian Institute of
>> Planning and Management (Wifione) case in the press. Following the letter
>> of the UCoC, they would no longer be allowed to do so. Even articles like
>> https://www.cnet.com/science/features/wikipedia-is-at-war-over-the-coronavirus-lab-leak-theory/
>> fall foul of the letter of the UCoC as written today, with every Wikipedian
>> involved in it guilty of harassment, per the UCoC. Is it really your
>> intention to prevent volunteers from discussing anyone's Wikipedia activity
>> outside the project? And if it isn't – could you help us prevail upon your
>> colleagues in the WMF board and the drafting committee to just fix the
>> sentence and have 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Open letter on negating race and ethnicity as "meaningful distinctions" in the UCoC

[Ziko van Dijk]

Hello,

What does the incriminated sentence actually mean?

"The Wikimedia movement does not endorse "race" and "ethnicity" as
meaningful distinctions among people."

Does this mean that
* the WM is against; or
* that the WM is neutral on the topic?

And, after reading the English Wikipedia article about [[Ethnic
group]] (redirect from "ethnicity"), it seems that "ethnicity" can
mean many things.
Personally, I am very sure, if I asked e.g. the [[Sorbs]] in Eastern
Germany, that most of them are quite convinced that they form an
ethnic group.

Kind regards,
Ziko




Am Mo., 11. Apr. 2022 um 18:42 Uhr schrieb Dan Szymborski
:
>
> It's almost as if ratifying an incomplete document based on vague framework 
> and future changes is a terrible idea.
>
> That this is coming up now is not the least bit surprising. It was brought 
> up, along with many things, during one of the arbitrarily endpointed 
> "discussion" periods that involved people in the Wiki movement asking 
> questions and receiving next to no substantive communication from people who 
> were writing the document. You'd have better luck asking the wishing well 
> what it did with your penny.
>
> Dan
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 1:06 AM Peter Southwood 
>  wrote:
>>
>> Definitions of terminology makes sense in any document that is intended as 
>> an enforceable guide to behavior. Without them, whose definition applies? 
>> Cheers, Peter
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Lane Chance [mailto:zinkl...@gmail.com]
>> Sent: Saturday, April 9, 2022 11:17
>> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
>> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Open letter on negating race and ethnicity as 
>> "meaningful distinctions" in the UCoC
>>
>> It would make the UCoC easier to understand if there was a glossary on
>> the same page. A chosen definition of "race" or "ethnicity" being used
>> in the context of this policy document may not be the same as exists
>> in the reader's head, how they describe their own identity, or as
>> might be used on their local language Wikipedia. This could then be
>> the place to distinguish the relevance to the policy of race versus
>> racism.
>>
>> In this thread we see stated as a fact that Jews are an ethnicity but
>> not a race, which could cause a big argument in its own right. See the
>> "Whoopi Goldberg" incident.
>>
>> Lane
>>
>> On Sat, 9 Apr 2022 at 01:19, Zachary T.  wrote:
>> >
>> > Hi everyone,
>> >
>> > I think there's a misinterpretation here. Saying that race and ethnicity 
>> > aren't meaningful distinctions among people doesn't mean that racism 
>> > doesn't exist. That's a lot of negatives, but the way I see it, it's just 
>> > recognizing that race is in fact a social construct, and thus because of 
>> > that it isn't truly meaningful. I would suggest using inherently 
>> > meaningful to clear up the confusion here, because I think that more 
>> > clearly expresses the sentiment.
>> >
>> > On Fri, Apr 8, 2022 at 4:23 PM Maggie Dennis  wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hello, Anasuya and Whose Knowledge.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> (Context for those who don’t know me: I am the Vice President of 
>> >> Community Resilience & Sustainability, and among others I oversee the 
>> >> team shepherding the UCoC process.)
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Thank you very much for raising this issue. Foundation staff have been 
>> >> discussing this as well with the same points that you have raised, and it 
>> >> is something we’ve been thinking about how to address.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> As probably many of you know, the plan all along had been to get the UCoC 
>> >> policy, to get the enforcement approach, and then to see how they work 
>> >> together in operation. Our plan has been to review the policy and 
>> >> enforcement approach together a year after the ratification of Phase 2. 
>> >> However, we decided to prioritize a slower approach to Phase 2 to make 
>> >> sure it was functional out the gate especially for the functionaries and 
>> >> volunteers who enforce it, as a result of which the timeline we had 
>> >> imagined for Policy review has been considerably pushed back. If we had 
>> >> made our preliminary time plan, we would have started testing these out 
>> >> months ago. The Policy and Enforcement Guidelines would have been ripe 
>> >> for review sometime around November 2022.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> As you all know, the vote has just concluded on the UCoC Phase 2. In the 
>> >> vote, community members were asked if they supported it as written or 
>> >> not, with the ability to provide feedback either way - with the notion 
>> >> that the feedback would help us focus on major blockers to the 
>> >> enforcement approach. I have already spoken to several members of the 
>> >> Board about some of the concerns that have been raised about the 
>> >> enforcement guidelines; we’ve spoken about this passage in the Policy, 
>> >> too. I know from my conversations with the Board that they want to get 
>> >> this done right, not just get it done - and they are very open to 
>> >> 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: UCoC Phase 2 Ratification Results Announcement

[Maggie Dennis]

I have been working on the UCoC about as long as anybody, if not as
intensely as some. Hence, I have some confidence in saying that it is the
Foundation's role to shepherd the Movement Strategy recommendation to
reality in creating a baseline of behavioral standards that are
movement-wide. *I* have opinions about what is and is not good conduct and
how conduct can and should be reinforced, but the Code of Conduct was not
written to reflect *my* opinions *or* the Foundation's - the drafting
committee was a disparate group working to incorporate the feedback of
volunteers and staff from all across the movement.

The questions you raise strike me as very good discussion good points for
the planned future policy review. Policies run into gray areas unless they
are so generic as to be toothless. We will occasionally have hard
conversations in application when we discover unintended or negative
consequences.  This is not a new challenge to the movement. I think it's
one of the things Wikimedia does rather well.

In terms of  "in good faith" and "is malicious" - my understanding of
malice from both a linguistic and legal sense is that it includes the
*intent* to do harm. Beyond that, while your question "How can they be
prevented from inserting erroneous material without causing them to doubt
their own perceptions etc. in a way that they may well – in good faith – is
malicious?" - seems to have lost a verb or two perhaps, I think what you
are asking is how people can be prevented from inserting material without
maliciously causing them to doubt their own perceptions: [[WP:V]] and
[[WP:NPOV]] do not require malice in calling for consensus-defined reliable
sources and avoiding fringe material. That said, again, this strikes me as
a discussion for the future policy review, and if actual issues arise in
the meantime I have no doubt discussion will happen.

Best,
Maggie


On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 10:47 AM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Dear Maggie,
>
> Could I ask you for help with a couple of things:
>
> 1. The UCoC states that "sharing information concerning other
> contributors' Wikimedia activity outside the projects" is harassment. Is it
> really the WMF's intention to prohibit public discussions of controversial
> editing? To give some examples, in the past English Wikipedia arbitrators
> commented on cases like the Scientology case or the Indian Institute of
> Planning and Management (Wifione) case in the press. Following the letter
> of the UCoC, they would no longer be allowed to do so. Even articles like
> https://www.cnet.com/science/features/wikipedia-is-at-war-over-the-coronavirus-lab-leak-theory/
> fall foul of the letter of the UCoC as written today, with every Wikipedian
> involved in it guilty of harassment, per the UCoC. Is it really your
> intention to prevent volunteers from discussing anyone's Wikipedia activity
> outside the project? And if it isn't – could you help us prevail upon your
> colleagues in the WMF board and the drafting committee to just fix the
> sentence and have it unambiguously say what they really mean?
>
> 2. The UCoC states that the following is harassment: "Psychological
> manipulation: Maliciously causing someone to doubt their own perceptions,
> senses, or understanding with the objective to win an argument or force
> someone to behave the way you want." We have, and always have had, and
> always will have, users with sincerely and passionately held fringe beliefs
> about matters of science, politics, religion, etc., as well as users
> lacking basic compentency in the subject area or language they choose to
> work in. How can they be prevented from inserting erroneous material
> without causing them to doubt their own perceptions etc. in a way that they
> may well – in good faith – is malicious?
>
> Andreas
>
> On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 2:02 PM Maggie Dennis 
> wrote:
>
>> Let me clarify a few points.
>>
>>- The vote was intended to surface what concerns might exist more
>>broadly in the international communities, not all of whom engage in Meta
>>discussions. Staff were neither asked to convince people to vote for the
>>enforcement guidelines as written nor even encouraged to. They are not 
>> held
>>to account for the speed with which the Guidelines are approved nor for 
>> the
>>language within it. It is their job to facilitate.
>>- The vote threshold is the point at which it is ready to engage
>>the Board for their further directions. We expect to see issues coalescing
>>in a way to help funnel attention to them to provide input 
>> internationally,
>>in multilingual facilitated review.
>>- The intention is indeed that if major issues have been identified
>>in the enforcement guidelines, they will go back to a vote, again and
>>again, until there is a version that is workable, with a period before 
>> each
>>vote for evaluating issues and addressing them.
>>- The UCoC drafters have been international volunteers with
>>  

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Open letter on negating race and ethnicity as "meaningful distinctions" in the UCoC

[Dan Szymborski]

It's almost as if ratifying an incomplete document based on vague framework
and future changes is a terrible idea.

That this is coming up now is not the least bit surprising. It was brought
up, along with many things, during one of the arbitrarily endpointed
"discussion" periods that involved people in the Wiki movement asking
questions and receiving next to no substantive communication from people
who were writing the document. You'd have better luck asking the wishing
well what it did with your penny.

Dan



On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 1:06 AM Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> Definitions of terminology makes sense in any document that is intended as
> an enforceable guide to behavior. Without them, whose definition applies?
> Cheers, Peter
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Lane Chance [mailto:zinkl...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, April 9, 2022 11:17
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Open letter on negating race and ethnicity as
> "meaningful distinctions" in the UCoC
>
> It would make the UCoC easier to understand if there was a glossary on
> the same page. A chosen definition of "race" or "ethnicity" being used
> in the context of this policy document may not be the same as exists
> in the reader's head, how they describe their own identity, or as
> might be used on their local language Wikipedia. This could then be
> the place to distinguish the relevance to the policy of race versus
> racism.
>
> In this thread we see stated as a fact that Jews are an ethnicity but
> not a race, which could cause a big argument in its own right. See the
> "Whoopi Goldberg" incident.
>
> Lane
>
> On Sat, 9 Apr 2022 at 01:19, Zachary T.  wrote:
> >
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I think there's a misinterpretation here. Saying that race and ethnicity
> aren't meaningful distinctions among people doesn't mean that racism
> doesn't exist. That's a lot of negatives, but the way I see it, it's just
> recognizing that race is in fact a social construct, and thus because of
> that it isn't truly meaningful. I would suggest using inherently meaningful
> to clear up the confusion here, because I think that more clearly expresses
> the sentiment.
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 8, 2022 at 4:23 PM Maggie Dennis 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello, Anasuya and Whose Knowledge.
> >>
> >>
> >> (Context for those who don’t know me: I am the Vice President of
> Community Resilience & Sustainability, and among others I oversee the team
> shepherding the UCoC process.)
> >>
> >>
> >> Thank you very much for raising this issue. Foundation staff have been
> discussing this as well with the same points that you have raised, and it
> is something we’ve been thinking about how to address.
> >>
> >>
> >> As probably many of you know, the plan all along had been to get the
> UCoC policy, to get the enforcement approach, and then to see how they work
> together in operation. Our plan has been to review the policy and
> enforcement approach together a year after the ratification of Phase 2.
> However, we decided to prioritize a slower approach to Phase 2 to make sure
> it was functional out the gate especially for the functionaries and
> volunteers who enforce it, as a result of which the timeline we had
> imagined for Policy review has been considerably pushed back. If we had
> made our preliminary time plan, we would have started testing these out
> months ago. The Policy and Enforcement Guidelines would have been ripe for
> review sometime around November 2022.
> >>
> >>
> >> As you all know, the vote has just concluded on the UCoC Phase 2. In
> the vote, community members were asked if they supported it as written or
> not, with the ability to provide feedback either way - with the notion that
> the feedback would help us focus on major blockers to the enforcement
> approach. I have already spoken to several members of the Board about some
> of the concerns that have been raised about the enforcement guidelines;
> we’ve spoken about this passage in the Policy, too. I know from my
> conversations with the Board that they want to get this done right, not
> just get it done - and they are very open to understanding these major
> blockers.
> >>
> >>
> >> The project team is compiling a report for the Board on the challenging
> points surfaced during the vote. We think the enforcement guidelines are a
> very good first draft for the enforcement pathways, but–based on the
> comments we’ve seen–we are very aware there may be more work ahead before
> we reach a Board ratified version of those guidelines. As this passage in
> policy is not necessary to achieve the goal of the UCoC - which is to
> forbid harassment and attacks based on personal factors including race and
> ethnicity - our intention has been to recommend to the Board that the
> passage in question be reviewed simultaneously with any further Phase 2
> enforcement workshopping, instead of waiting for the “year in operation”
> review intended.
> >>
> >>
> >> I 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Open letter on negating race and ethnicity as "meaningful distinctions" in the UCoC

[Shlomi Fish]

On Fri, 8 Apr 2022 18:36:12 +0100
Anasuya Sengupta  wrote:

> Tl;dr Urgent need to address the note denying race and ethnicity as
> “meaningful distinctions among people” in the Universal Code of Conduct
> (UCoC). The current wording is highly problematic and can result in
> endorsing systemic and individual discrimination and violence on the basis
> of race and ethnicity, rather than preventing it.
> 
> Dear Wikimedians,
> 
> We are writing this letter as the Whose Knowledge? user group, both to
> Wikimedia-l, as well as adding it to the talk page for the UCoC.[0] We
> endorsed the UCoC in the community voting process because we are committed
> to its principles and intentions (indeed, some of us have been expressly
> working towards it within the movement for a very long time, in multiple
> ways).

my take on it -
https://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/philosophy/putting-cards-on-the-table-2019-2020/indiv-nodes/make-your-own-kind-of-music.xhtml

[[[

Make your own kind of music / Take your qualities to your advantage [
#make-your-own-kind-of-music ] Node Link

Similar to the Mama Cass Elliot song "make your own kind of music" or its Lady
Gaga modernisation "Born This Way", I have given an interpretation of Captain
Nemo (= "nobody" in Latin, and not to be confused with Nemo from the animated
film Finding Nemo) in Jules Verne's novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, whom
people keep finding interesting for what he believes are superficial reasons.
But these qualities are part of what makes us who we are.

The YouTuber band Cimorelli has used the fact that they are six sisters (who
also have five male brothers) in a large Roman Catholic family, a trend which
has received a lot of antagonism, from environmentalists, psychologists and the
media, to their advantage, and as a gimmick. As a result, they published many
videos of them covering hit songs, some original songs, and have been live
performing and collaborating with other singers and entertainers.

Naturally, they are not the only YouTube success story. But if you get an
opportunity, seize it. Were you invited to give a talk? Go for it. Even if you
were invited from the "wrong" reason, you will pave the road for future
lecturers. A sociology student invited you to talk to them about your work as
an open source / open content creator? Go for it. You thought of a new Chuck
Norris/etc. factoid? Write it down and share it on social media and chat.
Someone asked you out and you like them and are single? Go for it. You have an
idea for a nice video, story, screenplay, song, etc. Execute it.

I used to be jealous of Ayn Rand for writing so lucidly and coherently in The
Fountainhead and in Atlas Shrugged, whereas my style of screenplays and stories
was what I described as "staccato" where I do not mention any unnecessary
details. However, Rand likely felt the same way about Dostoevsky and Tolstoy,
whose overly verbose style is now the terror and hatred of many Literature
students.

Similarly, current and future generations will likely appreciate my staccato
style more than Ayn Rand’s. Make your own kind of music!

]]]


-- 

Shlomi Fish   https://www.shlomifish.org/
What does “Zionism” mean? - https://shlom.in/def-zionism

The Zeroth Rule of Fight Club is that Chuck Norris can talk about Fight Club.
No one tells Chuck Norris what not to do.
— https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/facts/Chuck-Norris/

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - https://shlom.in/reply .
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: UCoC Phase 2 Ratification Results Announcement

[Andreas Kolbe]

Dear Maggie,

Could I ask you for help with a couple of things:

1. The UCoC states that "sharing information concerning other contributors'
Wikimedia activity outside the projects" is harassment. Is it really the
WMF's intention to prohibit public discussions of controversial editing? To
give some examples, in the past English Wikipedia arbitrators commented on
cases like the Scientology case or the Indian Institute of Planning and
Management (Wifione) case in the press. Following the letter of the UCoC,
they would no longer be allowed to do so. Even articles like
https://www.cnet.com/science/features/wikipedia-is-at-war-over-the-coronavirus-lab-leak-theory/
fall foul of the letter of the UCoC as written today, with every Wikipedian
involved in it guilty of harassment, per the UCoC. Is it really your
intention to prevent volunteers from discussing anyone's Wikipedia activity
outside the project? And if it isn't – could you help us prevail upon your
colleagues in the WMF board and the drafting committee to just fix the
sentence and have it unambiguously say what they really mean?

2. The UCoC states that the following is harassment: "Psychological
manipulation: Maliciously causing someone to doubt their own perceptions,
senses, or understanding with the objective to win an argument or force
someone to behave the way you want." We have, and always have had, and
always will have, users with sincerely and passionately held fringe beliefs
about matters of science, politics, religion, etc., as well as users
lacking basic compentency in the subject area or language they choose to
work in. How can they be prevented from inserting erroneous material
without causing them to doubt their own perceptions etc. in a way that they
may well – in good faith – is malicious?

Andreas

On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 2:02 PM Maggie Dennis  wrote:

> Let me clarify a few points.
>
>- The vote was intended to surface what concerns might exist more
>broadly in the international communities, not all of whom engage in Meta
>discussions. Staff were neither asked to convince people to vote for the
>enforcement guidelines as written nor even encouraged to. They are not held
>to account for the speed with which the Guidelines are approved nor for the
>language within it. It is their job to facilitate.
>- The vote threshold is the point at which it is ready to engage
>the Board for their further directions. We expect to see issues coalescing
>in a way to help funnel attention to them to provide input internationally,
>in multilingual facilitated review.
>- The intention is indeed that if major issues have been identified in
>the enforcement guidelines, they will go back to a vote, again and again,
>until there is a version that is workable, with a period before each vote
>for evaluating issues and addressing them.
>- The UCoC drafters have been international volunteers with experience
>working on Wikimedia projects from multiple angles and multiple languages.
>They do not all agree on every line as written and have worked very hard to
>come up with a document that can be tested and refined until it is ready to
>be put into use.
>
> It is true that the policy and guideline are not open to editing in the
> same way that some local community policies are. Like the Terms of Use
> itself and the Privacy Policy, neither of which are open to edits, it is a
> document that will have formal methods for modification. In the case of the
> UCoC, the plan is to review it (policy and enforcement guideline) on an
> annual basis to see what is working and what is not, with an understanding
> that behavioral policies can work in unexpected ways and have unexpected
> outcomes and even that what people understand to be acceptable behavior and
> unacceptable behavior evolves over time.
>
> Best,
> Maggie
>
> On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 5:10 AM Yair Rand  wrote:
>
>> Our conduct policies were carefully crafted by hundreds of brilliant
>> people over the course of twenty years, building upon endless experience
>> and detailed discussions that could fill books upon books.
>>
>> The UCoC Project ... seems to be built to supersede all that we've built
>> in this area, with an extremely inadequate replacement. It apparently
>> abandoned the idea of being a "minimal baseline" in favor of including
>> every preferred (and even aspirational) point available. The Enforcement
>> Guidelines thoroughly place the UCoC itself front-and-center, requiring
>> extensive linking and pushing it to be read by everyone (we have a hard
>> enough time getting people to read the existing conduct policies; making
>> everything link to UCoC will definitely drastically reduce the reach of
>> existing policies if not eliminate their presence outright), mandatory
>> pledges/affirmations of the UCoC and compulsory UCoC training (both as
>> prerequisites to sysop participation, conditions which will likely strip
>> the 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: UCoC Phase 2 Ratification Results Announcement

[Maggie Dennis]

Let me clarify a few points.

   - The vote was intended to surface what concerns might exist more
   broadly in the international communities, not all of whom engage in Meta
   discussions. Staff were neither asked to convince people to vote for the
   enforcement guidelines as written nor even encouraged to. They are not held
   to account for the speed with which the Guidelines are approved nor for the
   language within it. It is their job to facilitate.
   - The vote threshold is the point at which it is ready to engage
   the Board for their further directions. We expect to see issues coalescing
   in a way to help funnel attention to them to provide input internationally,
   in multilingual facilitated review.
   - The intention is indeed that if major issues have been identified in
   the enforcement guidelines, they will go back to a vote, again and again,
   until there is a version that is workable, with a period before each vote
   for evaluating issues and addressing them.
   - The UCoC drafters have been international volunteers with experience
   working on Wikimedia projects from multiple angles and multiple languages.
   They do not all agree on every line as written and have worked very hard to
   come up with a document that can be tested and refined until it is ready to
   be put into use.

It is true that the policy and guideline are not open to editing in the
same way that some local community policies are. Like the Terms of Use
itself and the Privacy Policy, neither of which are open to edits, it is a
document that will have formal methods for modification. In the case of the
UCoC, the plan is to review it (policy and enforcement guideline) on an
annual basis to see what is working and what is not, with an understanding
that behavioral policies can work in unexpected ways and have unexpected
outcomes and even that what people understand to be acceptable behavior and
unacceptable behavior evolves over time.

Best,
Maggie

On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 5:10 AM Yair Rand  wrote:

> Our conduct policies were carefully crafted by hundreds of brilliant
> people over the course of twenty years, building upon endless experience
> and detailed discussions that could fill books upon books.
>
> The UCoC Project ... seems to be built to supersede all that we've built
> in this area, with an extremely inadequate replacement. It apparently
> abandoned the idea of being a "minimal baseline" in favor of including
> every preferred (and even aspirational) point available. The Enforcement
> Guidelines thoroughly place the UCoC itself front-and-center, requiring
> extensive linking and pushing it to be read by everyone (we have a hard
> enough time getting people to read the existing conduct policies; making
> everything link to UCoC will definitely drastically reduce the reach of
> existing policies if not eliminate their presence outright), mandatory
> pledges/affirmations of the UCoC and compulsory UCoC training (both as
> prerequisites to sysop participation, conditions which will likely strip
> the ranks).
>
> The UCoC is a text that the community did not write. It remains filled
> with dozens of very serious issues, but volunteers were never invited to
> edit it. Basic attempts at even cleaning up the document's language were
> reverted, as the staff are quite clear that it is not a Wikimedia document
> that community efforts may be directly part of. Larger issues were ignored.
> Even if we were to grant the idea that we would centralize conduct policies
> and remove local variation in acceptable practices, it looks to me that
> this attempt at producing a viable policy did not work. The WMF appointees
> who wrote the UCoC, while they surely worked hard on the document over the
> few months given to write the text, were quite reasonably not capable of
> doing the kind of work we typically expect from the large numbers of
> experienced volunteers who build core policies over the course of a much
> longer time period.
>
> Even taking into account the WMF's extensive campaign to convince people
> that the UCoC was good (and to vote accordingly), and their admission that
> they intended to keep pushing the UCoC indefinitely until a vote passed in
> the direction they wanted, I am surprised and dismayed at the result of the
> vote. The 57% support outcome (or 58.6% if one discounts neutral votes, as
> is often the practice), while well below the amount typically needed to
> establish consensus for a policy, is above the threshold the WMF determined
> to use for their own purposes.
>
> I don't know where we can go from here, or what the Board will do with
> this situation. Numerous contributors have already pointed out that these
> numbers fall clearly under "no consensus". The staff seem to have realized
> that removing sysop tools from a large portion of the admin corps as
> required would be disastrous. One of the more egregious problems present in
> the UCoC text is already likely to be the subject of 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: UCoC Phase 2 Ratification Results Announcement

[Yair Rand]

Our conduct policies were carefully crafted by hundreds of brilliant people
over the course of twenty years, building upon endless experience and
detailed discussions that could fill books upon books.

The UCoC Project ... seems to be built to supersede all that we've built in
this area, with an extremely inadequate replacement. It apparently
abandoned the idea of being a "minimal baseline" in favor of including
every preferred (and even aspirational) point available. The Enforcement
Guidelines thoroughly place the UCoC itself front-and-center, requiring
extensive linking and pushing it to be read by everyone (we have a hard
enough time getting people to read the existing conduct policies; making
everything link to UCoC will definitely drastically reduce the reach of
existing policies if not eliminate their presence outright), mandatory
pledges/affirmations of the UCoC and compulsory UCoC training (both as
prerequisites to sysop participation, conditions which will likely strip
the ranks).

The UCoC is a text that the community did not write. It remains filled with
dozens of very serious issues, but volunteers were never invited to edit
it. Basic attempts at even cleaning up the document's language were
reverted, as the staff are quite clear that it is not a Wikimedia document
that community efforts may be directly part of. Larger issues were ignored.
Even if we were to grant the idea that we would centralize conduct policies
and remove local variation in acceptable practices, it looks to me that
this attempt at producing a viable policy did not work. The WMF appointees
who wrote the UCoC, while they surely worked hard on the document over the
few months given to write the text, were quite reasonably not capable of
doing the kind of work we typically expect from the large numbers of
experienced volunteers who build core policies over the course of a much
longer time period.

Even taking into account the WMF's extensive campaign to convince people
that the UCoC was good (and to vote accordingly), and their admission that
they intended to keep pushing the UCoC indefinitely until a vote passed in
the direction they wanted, I am surprised and dismayed at the result of the
vote. The 57% support outcome (or 58.6% if one discounts neutral votes, as
is often the practice), while well below the amount typically needed to
establish consensus for a policy, is above the threshold the WMF determined
to use for their own purposes.

I don't know where we can go from here, or what the Board will do with this
situation. Numerous contributors have already pointed out that these
numbers fall clearly under "no consensus". The staff seem to have realized
that removing sysop tools from a large portion of the admin corps as
required would be disastrous. One of the more egregious problems present in
the UCoC text is already likely to be the subject of review following an
open letter by a user group, though many, many others remain largely
unconsidered. Local community preparatory work for dealing with possible
WMF action is ... roughly what I would expect (including the commitments to
not cooperate with UCoC efforts, or to implement them).

This is a pretty bad situation.

-- Yair Rand



‫בתאריך יום ג׳, 5 באפר׳ 2022 ב-17:32 מאת ‪Stella Ng‬‏ <‪s...@wikimedia.org
‬‏>:‬

> Hello All,
>
> We would like to thank the over 2300 Wikimedians who participated in the
> recently concluded community vote on the Enforcement Guidelines for the
> Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC)
> .
> At this time, the volunteer scrutinizing group has completed the review
> of the accuracy of the vote and the final results are available on
> Meta-wiki. A quick summary can be found below:
>
>
>-
>
>58.6% Yes, 41.4% No
>
>
>-
>
>Contributors from 128 home wikis participated in the vote
>-
>
>Over thirty languages were supported in the ballot
>
>
> What this outcome means is that there is enough support for the Board to
> review the document. It does not mean that the Enforcement Guidelines are
> automatically complete.
>
> From here, the project team will collate and summarize the comments
> provided in the voting process, and publish them on Meta-wiki. The
> Enforcement Guidelines will be submitted to the Board of Trustees for their
> consideration. The Board will review input given during the vote, and
> examine whether there are aspects of the Guidelines that need further
> refinement. If so, these comments, and the input provided through Meta-wiki
> and other community conversations, will provide a good starting point for
> revising the Guidelines to meet the needs expressed by communities in the
> voter’s responses.
>
> In the event the Board moves forward with ratification, the UCoC project
> team will begin supporting specific proposals in the Guidelines. Some of
> these proposals include working with community members to form the 

[Wikimedia-l] Announcing a new podcast, Inspiring Open

[Florence Devouard]

Hello everyone

_Short version : _
we launched a new podcast in March. *From tech gurus to authors, 
educators to activists, the Inspiring Open podcast draws wisdom and 
insights from women who intersect the 'open movement' and inspire with 
their thoughts and actions. On all your favorite podcast plateform, go 
listen to amazing women (including recently our own Maryana)*


https://podcast.wikiloveswomen.org


_Longer version : _


*

The Wiki Loves Women team decided a few months ago to launch a new 
podcast. With projects across Africa and the Middle East empowering 
women with the tools and platforms to be heard, we have accumulated a 
vault of interesting tales from dynamic women who push the boundaries of 
what it means to build community and succeed as a collective.


*

**

**

*

The stories and ideas behind successful African women will be shared for 
the next few months in the Inspiring Open 
Podcast. 
From tech gurus to authors, educators to activists, the Inspiring Open 
podcast draws wisdom and insights from women who intersect the 'open 
movement' and inspire with their thoughts and actions.



**

*Episodes will be released every two weeks throughout 2022, for a total 
of 16 portraits of amazing women. The first two guests were released 
during March. They are:*


** ** Anie Akpe, founder of African Women In Tech (AWIT), an 
Africa-based organisation helping girls and women with education and 
mentorship within technology, as well as UX Diaspora, a unique community 
of people of colour in UX who are digitally migrating to educate, 
connect and inspire one another all over the world. ***


* Maryana Iskander, the Chief Executive Officer of the Wikimedia 
Foundation. With a proven track record for scaling complex organisations 
she has dedicated much of her work to breaking down systemic barriers of 
access to opportunity and education.


*Our newest episode is about *Maha Bali*, an open education 
innovator. Maha Bali comes from a family of medical doctors but she 
fancied studying computer science. This was not to last however, as it 
didn't gel with personality as an extrovert. She then made the happy 
option of becoming an educator **You may access the podcast on all 
the usual podcast plateforms. *


*As wikipedians, we have paid extra attention to details and worked hard 
to provide the most enjoyable experience. I invite you to have a look to 
the dedicated website : **https://podcast.wikiloveswomen.org*** Records 
are obviously freely licenced (including music), and a text-based 
version of the full interview is published * A fine artist have drawn 
portraits of our guests. Obviously all freely licenced * We have 
isolated interesting quotes for the immediate benefit of podcast 
addicts and long term benefit of Wikiquote :) * On the website, you 
may also access specific parts of each episode, reading suggestions and 
more *


Thanks !


Florence / Anthere


**

**

Inspiring Open is hosted by Betty Kankam-Boadu, co-founder of the Ghana 
Women Experts project that promotes women's voices for commentary in the 
media.Inspiring Open was created and produced by Wiki In Africa's Isla 
Haddow-Flood and Florence Devouard, produced by Rachel Zadok, and sound 
engineered by Jey at Melody Hub Studio, Accra, Ghana with portraits of 
each guest created by Candace di Talamo. The podcast was funded through 
the International Relief Fund for Organisations in Culture and Education 
2021, an initiative of the German Federal Foreign Office, the 
Goethe-Institut and other partners. Wiki In Africa is supported by the 
Wikimedia Foundation.



*


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