I'm forking this discussion from the (no subject) thread. I think it might be a good idea to have some sort of guidance, such as a TCC, for how incivility is handled in technical spaces beyond reporting problems with WMF employees to their WMF managers and/or HR, because not everyone works for WMF, so it might be good to have a way to handle situations when someone who is not a WMF employee causes problems in technical spaces.
However, I'm not sure that I agree that the TCC is "a (draft) community policy, being approved by the community. The community has already approved a large fraction of it. It's not a (draft) WMF policy." A substantial proportion of the comments on the talk page (and the archives) are from WMF employees, not community members. I realize, Matt, that you have been attempting to recruit broader participation, but it looks like the results have been less than one would have hoped. Given WMF's history of clashing with the community about subjects such as Superprotect, VisualEditor, and ACTRIAL, it seems to me that while WMF participation in discussions such as this is good, the high proportion of WMF representation on the talk page makes the resulting document more likely to reflect the view of WMF and its employees rather than the larger community. So, no, I would not consider this draft to be a community document at this time. The proportion of participation from WMF staff is too high. However, there are some paths forward: (1) Proceed with this as a policy that applies to WMF staff only, (2) get the WMF Board to approve the document as a policy, or (3) get the document to pass a community RFC, closed by a community steward. My advice, if WMF wants this TCC to hold weight with the community, is to put a lot of distance between WMF and this document. WMF can support the document's creation, but should not be in a leadership role, and WMF staff should be far less prominent on the talk page. That the lower the proportion of WMF involvement in the creation of this document, the more likely the document is to be viewed in a positive light by the community. I don't mean to sound like I intend to halt the entire TCC process, but I would advise proceeding with it differently than the talk page suggests has been happening so far. Regarding the applicability of the proposed policy to IRC, I view the proposed TCC as requiring explicit opt-in from IRC channels through their own internal governance processes. The TCC's assertion that it applies to IRC channels does not, by itself, actually make that happen without explicit opt-in from those channels; similarly, my drafting a policy on English Wikipedia that claims to apply to #wikipedia-en would have no validity without opt-in from #wikipedia-en. I need to attend to other matters so I won't participate in further discussions on this topic for the near future, but I welcome comments (and differing opinions) from others. To reiterate: I think that there could be benefits from a TCC, but I would suggest (1) softening the WMF's role in the creation of this document and (2) stating that the TCC applies to IRC channels on an opt-in basis. Pine On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 7:04 PM, Matthew Flaschen <mflasc...@wikimedia.org> wrote: On 11/17/2016 10:30 PM, Pine W wrote: > As a reminder: IRC is governed by Freenode. Channels can have their own > rules, and there are widely varying systems of internal governance for > Wikimedia IRC channels. I think it's important to note that WMF and the > Wikimedia community are guests on Freenode, and I'm uncomfortable with the > proposition to extend a WMF policy into IRC channels without explicit > consent from the ops of those channels; it seems to me that the TCC would > be a per-channel opt-in on IRC, not a WMF blanket standard. > I just wanted to note that this is a (draft) community policy, being approved by the community. The community has already approved a large fraction of it. It's not a (draft) WMF policy. (It is subject to Legal requirements like some other community policies, but it seems this will only affect a small section.) Thanks, Matt Flaschen _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
