Talk:Code of Conduct/Archive 5

Shouldn't that also change to CC BY-SA 4.0 to match the current footnote link?

Thanks, fixed.

Hello, Code of Conduct team,

I'd like to read over the proceedings of where your tech division decided to infinitely block MZMcBride who has contributed so much to the English Wikipedia. I trust these deliberations aren't done in secret so I'd like to read over your reasons and reasoning to come to such a drastic decision. Thank you.

Hi, According to CoC itself, these cases are private to protect the reporters and targets of harassment. We are not allowed to discuss those publicly. Keep it in mind, Mz's ban was not just because of one offense and it's because of a long-term pattern of problematic behavior.

I have read the "Confidentiality" section. I do not see anything in there that prevents the disclosure of diffs or postings that do not contain confidential private information. If any of the behavior leading to this block occurred in public forums and has not been redacted, please link to it. Thanks.

The confidentiality section of the CoC/Committee policy indeed does prevent the Committee from publishing links. While it doesn't say so explicitly, it says that the identities of harassment targets are confidential. As such, it's not possible to publish the links without also disclosing confidential information.

In any case, please do note (as Ladsgroup mentioned above) that Mz's ban did not happen due to a single offense; instead, the decision was made based on the long-term pattern of Mz's behavior in technical spaces.

There are zero existing links showing any violating behavior that can be disclosed? What prevents this committee from being a star chamber?

I have no reason to believe or disbelieve either side of this dispute, having encountered unreasonableness and obstinacy from both MZMcBride and WMF staff, but living in a country with guarantees of due process makes me wary of secret trials, and of judgements rendered without disclosure of any of the evidence or even a summary of the evidence presented.

How about a summary of the proceedings, with quotations from the evidence that do not compromise the confidentiality regulations? How about a list of the specific items in the code of conduct that MZMcBride was determined to have violated? Any measure of transparency would be welcome.

I think what it comes down to is that MZ has been known for over a decade as someone who has the interests of Wikipedia at heart, and who helps keep WMF "honest" by calling things out, but also sometimes picks odd windmills to tilt at and who frequently expresses himself abrasively and without appropriate amounts of tact.

Unfortunately for the past several years the power at WMF has been held by those who're willing to use tone policing, endless discussions, consultations with predetermined outcomes, and similar tactics to promote their agendas, whether those agendas are "advocate for social change" or "climb the management ladder" or "play with new technology". So bars on "acceptable behavior" get lowered and secret courts get created to enforce this without the benefit of external scrutiny.

What prevents it from becoming a star chamber? That it already is, the question is where it is between "just and efficient" (cf. the original Star Chamber around the time of its formation) and "corrupt abuse of power" (cf. the original a few decades later).

As someone who also struggles with "appropriate amounts of tact", I find that this sort of thing creates for me the sort of hostile environment that the advocates claim they're seeking to prevent.

"As someone who also struggles with "appropriate amounts of tact", I find that this sort of thing creates for me the sort of hostile environment that the advocates claim they're seeking to prevent."

I just released a trial balloon about blocking the TechConductCommittee from English Wikipedia. That's probably not sufficiently tactful either. It's on English Wikipedia though, so technically the star chamber shouldn't block me for it. So either I'm safe, or the TechConductCommittee is about to shoot themselves in the foot. We'll see.

With all due respect, the en wikipedia discussion is silly and not helping anything.

I doubt anything will help anything here. It's not that silly: if we did it (which, granted, is unlikely) I think there's a good chance it would work. The TechConductCommittee isn't going to reform itself without some signal from the outside.

And as for whatever MZMcBride said: people are getting offended way too easily. If someone feels offended, that's typically their problem. See w:en:Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. If it's not a case of w:en:WP:NOTHERE (which this isn't) or cyberstalking (which nobody suggested in this case), then just accept it's all opinion and leave it be. I've been called a cunt and I don't care.

@Alexis Jazz It's alright if you are personally fine and don't feel offended by getting insulted, or maybe getting bullied, or maybe being physically attacked, or wherever you would like to draw your own individual boundaries and red lines in your life.

It doesn't mean that everyone else is or should be expected to also be personally fine with having your preferred boundary levels. Except if you only want people in the Wikimedia communities who already have a thick skin (and exclude anyone else, but that is only "their problem", as you wrote).

Yeah, I'm totally fine with being knifed.[/sarcasm] Come on @AKlapper (WMF), this kind of slippery slope argument is ridiculous.

You got it backwards. If someone can't handle the occasional hurtful comment, they could stay away if they so wish, but they're not being excluded. On the other hand, when you block people for saying "andre__: Such a troll." (which is hard to judge out of context), you are excluding them.

All people are different. Some are very pleasant, some can be hotheaded. But as long as they're all here to contribute to the Wikimedia projects, we should welcome them. And if their behavior is so bad that the bad outweighs the good, any block should come with a crystal clear target for an unblock. "we'll unblock when we feel like it" doesn't cut it.

And if Andre (not sure which user that refers to actually) feels excluded and no longer able to contribute to Wikimedia because MZMcBride said "andre__: Such a troll.", I'm afraid they would have gotten irrevocably offended by something sooner or later anyway.

Just let Andre return the favor by telling MZMcBride "Hey, you suck." and call it a day. No point in blocking anyone over some offhanded comment, that just leads to drama. And drama doesn't help Wikimedia.

@Alexis Jazz If I get you right you propose "Insult me, then I insult you, then everybody involved would somehow magically stop and not continue escalating, and magically everyone will feel fine afterwards". I guess I'm not convinced.

Please also take into account bystanders who watch such conversations. If people in a community happily insult each other and that seems to be accepted behavior in that community, then that is not my understanding of a welcoming community I'd want to be part of. (No [/sarcasm].)

Indeed all people are different. However that's not a great argument for ending up only with people with a thicker skin to stick around?

"then everybody involved would somehow magically stop and not continue escalating"

Obviously it depends on the circumstances. Without a star chamber to instill fear into everyone, that can very well happen.

"Please also take into account bystanders who watch such conversations. If people in a community happily insult each other and that seems to be accepted behavior in that community, then that is not my understanding of a welcoming community I'd want to be part of."

An offhanded comment isn't the same as full blown personal attack. A community where members can sling minor insults at each other, followed by them shaking hands and smiling about it? I'd consider that as welcoming as it gets. And I'll take that over a star chamber that instills fear any day of the week. That star chamber terrorizes me. I get accused of bad behavior, but wasn't given links. The only conclusion for me to draw is that I'll get blocked sooner or later because the star chamber doesn't like me. I do not feel welcome.

"However that's not a great argument for ending up only with people with a thicker skin to stick around?"

The current regime has already chased people away. If the goal/ideal is to be a welcoming community, this is a complete and utter failure. Sunshine and puppies aren't the answer to everything.

Please don't confuse the internal dynamics of the Wikimedia Foundation with the work of the CoCC.

There's a great difference between conflict avoidance and being toxic, consistently over a decade.

If anything, it's time that certain behaviour (which isn't "a badly toned code review") is considered unacceptable.

Can you please sign your user page at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Joe_the_internet_plumber with your main account? I have no way to tell if you're actually GLavagetto (WMF).

"(which isn't "a badly toned code review")"

What quote are you referring to?

"If anything, it's time that certain behaviour is considered unacceptable."

This isn't all that much about what is or isn't acceptable but mostly about the secrecy and lack of accountability. Even if MZMcBride would have totally deserved it, which I'm not convinced of, this is very much the wrong way to do it.

An important step forward would be to inform reporters that any diffs/direct links to comments/etc can be shared publicly, and consistently give anyone who gets accused that information, publicly if they so wish.

Brad, I generally appreciate your comments in discussions and so it frustrates me to see this comment. I'm sorry you feel triggered by this decision and feel the need to bring in accusations of tone policing and secret courts into the conversation. If you struggle with tact, that's on you to improve, not for others to have to deal with.

In this particular case, it's not tone policing to demand respect or to uphold agreed upon social expectations. Being held accountable for one's actions is not repression or the will of "secret courts". It's upholding human decency. Criticism is a form of communication and how you communicate is important. Valid criticism doesn't make it permissible to be a jerk.

As for the broader discussion, the committee should not relitigate their decision here. I trust the volunteers on the committee, all of which are in good standing in the technical community. An appeal can be made if one so chooses.

> Being held accountable for one's actions is not repression or the will of "secret courts". It's upholding human decency.

Its this type of means justify the ends reasoning i find most objectionable. If a secret court holds someone accountable for their actions, then its a secret court doing it. It doesn't become any less problematic because the person "deserved it". If anything that has been the justification for most tyranny throughout history.

Good thing it’s not a secret court then.

Which part are you disputing? That it is secret or that it is a court?

I’m unsure of the confusion. The Code of Conduct and its committee are neither secret or a court. But now we’re splitting hairs and getting off topic.

i disagree, the preception of the CoC as a secret court is the core of the issue here and speaks to lack of trust.

i seriously dont understand how you could be unsure of the confusion.

Secret means "not public". I dont think anyone is disputing that the reasonings of the CoC are confidential and as such not public? If it really isn't secret, someone should just link to such reasonings. Of course secrecy tends to be shades of grey, and some level may be appropriate without raising to the level of "secret court", but the CoC seems to be literally as secretive as possible.

wikt:court - "The hall, chamber, or place, where justice is administered." - obviously we are online so its not a "place", but i thought it was self-obvious that the intent of the CoC committee was to administer justice for violations of the code of conduct

For the ones that are public, let me give you one example: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/L4MWRLO7ZGPJX7ULKWY44J4P3V7DC2HI/

This is one of many.

Thanks for that. So that's one comment on a contributor instead of on content. That sort of thing on the English Wikipedia is handled in public very easily, with links to diffs, with input from all parties, and without any need for secret tribunals.

I think I need to drop this stick, since it appears that my requests for basic transparency will go nowhere, but the whole thing strikes me as unnecessarily secretive. That secrecy, like many interactions with WMF staff, is frustrating and not in alignment with my experience of the open, collaborative nature of WMF's public-facing projects. Please consider a better approach.

"Tech division", I'd rather say Tech community (much like the en.wp community).

"trust these deliberations aren't done in secret" Every Code of Conduct that I know of handles cases with confidentiality.

I doubt the committee will comment on it very much. The list of offences that could lead to sanctions is listed here. Reading MZMcBride's talk page on en.wp does make it seem like they were running a vendetta, which doesn't make it unlikely they crossed one of those boundaries one too many times.

It is unfortunate that someone who is productive is blocked/banned, but productivity is never an excuse that should measure into any of this.

I don't know where TheDJ lives, but in a country with pretty good due process rights, it is not difficult to find code of conduct trial procedures that make available at least a partial transcript or summary of the case. I found one with my very first web search. See this US government report on conduct hearings at military academies, for example (specifically the section "COMPARISON OF DUE PROCESS PROTECTIONS ...").

A committee that renders punishments and provides the public with no record of the proceedings at all is pretty much the definition of a secret court, and it is not a good look for a US-based organization that, under US law, has a government-sanctioned public non-profit status.

Comparing judicial systems with ability to use a platform is like comparing apples and oranges. In a democratic society, people have (civil) rights and governments can't take them away easily. In wikis, we don't have such rigorous protection of users. That's why "There is no justice" and "Wikipedia is not a democracy" exist. TheDJ is talking about other platform's CoCs not judicial systems.

Lots of cases are handled without public disclosure, T&S office bans are among them. Our CoC also handles cases of sexual harassment. Do you want us to publicly mention them to the harasser? I do understand we could mention some cases publicly but where can we draw the line? I have been volunteer in Wikipedia for sixteen years and gonna stay for way longer. I take transparency to my heart and have all sorts of criticisms of how WMF is operating but 1- that doesn't mean we can be jerks 2- WP:ANI's cases doesn't look like fair court either. Finding the balance is not easy.

> Comparing judicial systems with ability to use a platform is like comparing apples and oranges. In a democratic society, people have (civil) rights and governments can't take them away easily. In wikis, we don't have such rigorous protection of users. That's why "There is no justice" and "Wikipedia is not a democracy" exist.

foundation:Policy:Human Rights Policy is an official WMF policy. Surely that trumps random essays on english wikipedia?

There is still the question of how it applies here, after all, WMF is not the crown, and while i might argue that CoCC is a "tribunal" it certainly is not a state court. However, we seem to be interpreting the human rights policy quite liberally - there are conversations about how the right to equality, education, and freedom from discrimination implies we need to spend more effort improving the mobile site (don't get me wrong, definitely a worthy goal, but to get there from UNDHR demonstrates how liberally the rights are being interpreted). With that in mind, i struggle to understand how CoC as is could be considered in compliance with article 14, which starts with:

"Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations..."

> Lots of cases are handled without public disclosure, T&S office bans are among them.

And how is that working out for them? I dont think anyone won during fram-gate. Certainly not the victim.

> Our CoC also handles cases of sexual harassment. Do you want us to publicly mention them to the harasser?

well i would first of all say that, maybe we should not use the same procedure for things that are literal crimes as we do for things that boil down to being rude to someone on the internet.

However ultimately yes (to the extent neccesary). It is a super common trolling tactic on the internet to impersonate someone else and do hateful things in their name. I would generally expect that a comittee of this nature check to see if the alleged perpatrator is actually the person who did the thing - which seems like it would require contacting the perpertrator. Now every situation is different, and that might not always apply, sexual harrasment is complicated, there are no easy answers.

the question remains, what percentage of cases actually involve sexual harrasment? Especially outside of in-person events. I took a look the the role account's block log. It seems like in the entirety of the committee's existence, mzmcbride is the only member of the developer community to ever be blocked (most everyone else are random wikipedians,most having enough public context to make it obvious why they were blocked). I might be wrong, but i would assume that sexual harrasment would take place between members of our community, and not from random outsiders. It honestly makes me wonder if there has ever even been a case of sexual harrasment that resulted in on-wiki sanctions. If not, this feels a bit like bringing out the boogey-man. If we are solely talking about things happening in in-person events with sactions extending only to such events, perhaps differing procedures are warranted for in-person events. Regardless, it seems like a small portion of cases, and certainly not the cases that are causing strife.

> WP:ANI's cases doesn't look like fair court either. Finding the balance is not easy.

Agreed.

To look at it from another perspective, one of the founding views for the CoC is that mediawiki should be considered a professional space and we should treat other contributors as if they are co-workers.

Perhaps we should take that metaphor further. A ban is sort of similar to firing someone for cause. Maybe we should treat it similar to how workplaces treat problematic employees. For example requiring that sanctioned people are (paraphrasing from ): told clearly what the reasonable standards are, told that they weren't meeting the standards, Had reasonable time and help to meet the standards, Was warned that they would be banned if they did not improve their behaviour and Still didn’t meet the standards after all of the above.

given that a significant portion of people blocked by the CoC claim they were not informed of the reason for their block, this does not seem to be taking place currently (if it was just one person saying that i would assume they were lying, but it seems a very common refrain).

Perhaps we should take that metaphor further. A ban is sort of similar to firing someone for cause. Maybe we should treat it similar to how workplaces treat problematic employees.

Not that WMF has a particularly clean record on that point either. They've done the lack of feedback, bullying, discrimination, and trumped-up or made-up claims in that context too.

You missed Aron Manning (also known as "Demian"), who I would say was a member of the developer community. But that doesn't change your general point.

my mistake - i guess i was only looking at the blocks by the role account. I dont think i've ever interacted with that person or recognized the name but does seem like he was quite active at one point. Although he did manage to get himself blocked all over the place not just here, so seems like quite the controversial prerson.

With the distance of a couple days, I wanted to add an adendum to all this.

Well i stand behind everything i said, they are beliefs that are not new and ultimately have very little to do with mzmcbride. In the current context i reiterated them because i was sad/frustrated that mzmcbride was blocked - and that frustration took the form of a rant about what i precieve as the faults of the CoC process. While i appreciate this is not a universally held position, i do feel that he has had an important and ultimately quite positive impact in our community, often in hard to see ways. However as TheDJ said, positive contribution is not an excuse.

Regardless of whatever issues i may have with the CoC, i unfortunately did see recent statements made by mcbride which were over the line. While i wish that our processes and procedures were more fair (in terms of my personal views of fairness which are not universal), i suspect any process would have probably at least taken some action in this situation. He probably would have got in trouble for this even in the wild-west pre-CoC days.

I guess what i'm trying to say, i stand by my rant, but it shouldn't be taken to imply that mcbride is innocent either. I hope (perhaps vainly) that some day in the future, some set of events will arise that would allow him to be invited back.

To clarify, I did mean CoCs as used in similar style projects and organisations.

There is always a balance here. A full fledged legal system would be senseless as there is already a higher legal system that can be relied upon, and an organization with 10 people would find it hard to find a defendant, prosecutor, attorneys, judge, executioner, an ombudsman, a jury, an appeals court etc etc.. it gets a bit ridiculous. Somewhere in between is a balance.

BUT, can I also just note that I'M FUCKING PISSED OFF AND ANNOYED THAT PEOPLE WHO BULLY AND HARASS ALWAYS GET DEFENDED and WIKILAWYERED in this community and that the rest always need to deal with it and keep scorecards for 10 years? Every event, every CoC moment, it's the same old shit. "he's such a productive person", "they mean well", "it was a mistake", "they didn't get enough warnings", "they've learned". Every god damn time it's the same. No, they don't mean well and it's wasting everyone's time and make me not want to be here. Ban and move on.

> BUT, can I also just note that I'M FUCKING PISSED OFF AND ANNOYED THAT PEOPLE WHO BULLY AND HARASS ALWAYS GET DEFENDED and WIKILAWYERED in this community and that the rest always need to deal with it and keep scorecards for 10 years?

I am criticizing the process of the committee, and this particular event provides a convenient avenue of doing so. I am not rejecting their decision--I don't even know the duration of the ban due to complete lack of any transparency with anyone, which is one of the issues I'm criticizing. Did MZMcBride deserve to be banned? Probably, but I don't know details. I've certainly seen plenty of abrasive behavior from him. Were there any warnings or less-drastic means of getting MZMcBride to improve before the ban was issued? Is the ban a short-term thing or a long-term thing? These are things I don't know, and I cannot in good faith make a determination of whether the ban was fair without knowing those.

As an uninvolved party, my argument is that I don't need to know those details or be a backseat driver in the process. But I feel very strongly that the involved parties have a right to know those details. If they wish to share it with the public, that is on them, not the committee. The involved parties (all of them, including the offender) have rights, and those rights should be respected.

> Ban and move on.

No. This is always the wrong way of going about issues. Bans are a punitive tool, and should not be used as a first resort. And when they are used, they should be relatively short except in egregious circumstances. What happened to Assume Good Faith? Give the person warnings and let them know their behavior isn't acceptable. Work with them on improving. If they improve? Great, you got a motivated contributor to help things grow and evolve. Didn't improve? That's when punishment is warranted.

If the committee feels that everything that goes before them needs to end up in a ban, then the committee should re-read the code of conduct that they're purporting to enforce. The conduct of the committee by blocking people when less harsh methods may have worked seems to fall foul of "Harming the discussion or community with methods such as sustained disruption, interruption, or blocking of community collaboration."

Hi @Skizzerz,

If we didn't say why we issued a warning or ban to the offender, that would be pretty unfair as they would have no way to know how to improve or what they even did wrong. Fortunately that's not the case. All involved parties were made fully aware of what led to the decision. Sometimes we can't get too specific in order to protect the reporter (see Code of Conduct/Committee#Confidentiality), but we certainly don't intentionally hang offenders out to dry. I can say with confidence that generally speaking, we go out of our way to assist offenders in improving their behavior, provided they are open to advice and will cooperate.

FTR, in this case, we did try less harsh solutions before deciding on the ban, including warnings and temporary bans. However, MzMcBride's behavior did not improve, which led to the ban.

"Fortunately that's not the case." That is EXACTLY the case.

Thanks for that confirmation @Martin Urbanec. From what I was told via other sources, that notification didn't seem to have happened. With the confirmation that it did, that clears up the biggest concern I had with the process. I still feel the other bits I mentioned in my other posts merit examination regarding the appeal and amendments process, but this makes me feel a lot better about the committee. I would also encourage documenting the overall process you all follow somewhere public to help engender additional trust in the committee.

> should not be used as a first resort.

The user literally has been a problem for well over 15 years. I can’t remember events up to 2017 (when Tim stepped in (for the 2nd time if I remember correctly)) that didn’t have ppl talk about whatever shit mzmcbride created in the months before. They were a problem user on Wikimedia-l, they got a stern talking to by Tim starling, there were people who tried to reach out and push the user into being useful and that was all BEFORE there even was a COC.

and I do think banning is useful. We ban way too little. Behave or get tf out, fill in an appeal form and maybe we’ll reconsider after three years. It really shouldnt have to be more difficult than the average Twitch chat.

> Every Code of Conduct that I know of handles cases with confidentiality.

I would dispute that. I suppose it depends on what it means to be a "code of conduct", but if anything i think most tribunals involve much more transparency than the CoC does.

Code of Conduct/Amendments <- if you think CoC needs amendment.

That link is meaningless, given that the committee has the ability to block amendments arbitrarily. It serves no useful purpose in any sort of oversight role, which is the role I believe you were suggesting it for here.

I feel the committee needs to adjust their processes with respect to communication with the parties involved. I'm not asking for public proceedings or even public summaries. However, from my understanding, MZMcBride was not provided with any information whatsoever of:

• An anonymized summary of the behavior that led to the ban, and
• The aspects of the code of conduct being violated that led to the ban.

I feel both parts should be given to all parties in any given dispute. An anonymized summary isn't a link to specific diffs, and nor does it need reveal any identities of the reporter or other involved parties besides the person being reported (which was obvious anyway given the ban).

The committee supposedly has an appeals process, but with the complete lack of information given to the involved parties that process also is completely meaningless -- there is simply nothing that can be appealed.

I strongly encourage the committee to examine how other similar committees operate with regards to their oversight and appeals process and institute transparent, public policies to improve the situation of both of those aspects for this committee. Failing to do so will simply continue the ever-growing impression that the committee is nothing more than a means of oppressing people that they do not like.

Some suggestions I have for this are:

• Expand the committee size to 9 regular members, and for each case, have a random minority subset of the committee selected to review, investigate, and deliberate the case (say, 3 people). This provides an easy, meaningful appeals process of kicking the case to the full committee for review while presumably also reducing the time and mental energy burden on any particular member of the committee.
• Remove the clause in the amendments procedure that allows the committee to override a decision made by the community at large, or alternatively make that veto power in turn able to be overridden by the community with perhaps a higher bar to clear. You serve the community, not the other way around.

I would also point out the last amendment about transparency doesn't appear to have been followed.

In accordance with CoC's amendment policy. The committee proposes an amendment on behalf of one of the community members to be added in unacceptable behavior section:

Soliciting help, support or technical assistance for websites whose predominant activity or content is behaviour that explicitly and significantly violates provisions of the code of conduct is forbidden in Wikimedia technical spaces. For example, websites advocating violence or hate speech are not welcome to ask for support on Wikimedia support forums.

This is similar to w:en:Wikipedia:No Nazis

Why is this necessary?

There was a discussion about whether or not it was within the rules for the operators of fascipedia.org to ask for assistance on Project:Support_desk. The general conclusion was there is currently nothing in the rules forbidding that. It then lead to a discussion on whether or not that should be the case.

Relatedly, not quite the same thing, but a little bit similar, phab:T323956 happened a little while ago as well about whether WikiMANNia's extensions should be indexed.

This comment is really not helping your case.

Your comment does not help anyone, but supports new emerging fascist movements.

Hi, member of CoCC here, comparing other editors with Nazis is an explicitly defined type of personal attack and won't be tolerated. As such, we deemed the above comment inappropriate and in violation of CoC and removed them. This also serves as a warning to @WikiForMen to avoid making such remarks in the future.

>Hey, you, are you literated?

I think you mean illiterate, which is not an inappropriate accusation to make to another community member. We don't do that here.

No, I asked: "Are you literated?"

I remember, Ladsgroup wrote this

"This is similar to w:en:Wikipedia:No Nazis"

putting our editors on a par with N*. Later he deleted replies.

This is the fascist way. Fascists can be brown, red, green and purple coloured.--WikiForMen (talk) 11:42, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Notifying that I have blocked WikiForMen from editing this page given the constant violation of COC

Whatever WikiForMen's transgressions, he's right that linking to the "No Nazis" essay at the top was a mistake. That essay is itself a massive code of conduct violation - it explicitly says that any editor with "somewhat-less-than-complimentary views on other races and ethnicities" is a Nazi. (Which I dare say would put the majority of the human race in the Nazi category.) Linking to it - and then blocking anyone who throws the "Nazi" term in the other direction - does seem to strengthen the case that any enforcement of this proposed rule would be arbitrary and political.

For the avoidance of doubt, I certainly did not mean to imply with my comment that WikiForMen or their editors are nazis. Only that the discussions had some similarities in that the impetus for them was that some contributors view the content of that website objectionable. Thus the discussions have some similarities, but of course are not identical.

I do think fascipedia.org are nazis, which i don't think is a controversial take as they themselves identify as such afaict.

I can see that people don't want to have anything to do with such websites, but is there any contractual obligation to deal with such a request? If not, just ignore them, or is it so that the buck can be passed?

This is my personal opinion, but one of the goals of any CoC is making sure people feel safe to participate in our community- that all voices can be heard and are not "lost". Having clear rules about what kind of behaviors are not welcome I believe are a key aspect of it- and saying "just ignore them" (not a criticism of your comment, I mean having that as a policy) I believe can make people feel left aside or ignored/not heard, while having a policy with concrete actionable for something brought up as an issue that actually happened can help getting the right people in and the wrong people out. So I applaud the committee for proposing the change.

I don't have any objection to the principle, but I think you should leave out the example. Examples tend to distract from the general philosophy of the argument and attract straw man arguments by focusing on the specific.

Small nit: Don't personify a website, as in "... for websites whose predominant activity..." People are "who's." Use a word like "that" or "which" for a non-individual, like a corporation or website or other object. In this case, maybe "with" would do: "... for websites with predominant activity or material content ..."

Noloader (talk) 19:30, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Support

Support easy agree

Support

Support

Support

I very much personally agree with w:WP:NOFASH, but the CoC already forbids personal attacks, derogatory comments, and discrimination. Are there particular circumstances where the committee envisions that the current protections against disruption of our community by people exposing fascist ideology would not be sufficient?

Support

@BDavis (WMF): I'm not sure, but it sounds to me like this is about excluding people who run sites that exhibit those attitudes, but who aren't actually saying anything here on mediawiki.org that goes against the CoC (but rather asking for help with wiki configuration etc.).

This is more meant to address if someone posted something along the lines of, "please help, my website kill-all-the-minorities.com is showing an exception error, how do i fix it?"

Why is this limited to tech support? Shouldn't it include any activity within Wikimedia technical spaces? I have no intention of reviewing or merging patches written by people who operate hateful wikis, but that's also not "tech support". As written this would not be applicable to the situation at T323956, which IMO is case in which better CoC guidance would've been useful.

On the text itself, I would avoid the term "hate speech" because it does have legal meaning in some jurisdictions. The newer Wikipedia:Hate is disruptive essay (which IMO is better argued than the No Nazis one) uses "expressing hateful views", which is functionally equivalent.

@Legoktm Any better wording would be appreciated. It's hard to word it properly. It can be also two parts, one being that "we as a community won't provide any help including but not limited to tech support, code review, etc. to running hate groups" and keep this part verbatim as part of unacceptable behavior. It is important not to ban "helping" because the person might not know they are helping a hate group but to ban "asking for help".

To split hairs, i guess there's a bunch of different things here all related to the same idea - to wit, conduct that is primarily off-wiki but at least is a little bit on-wiki and having a chilling affect on wiki. i.e.

• Doing on wiki activity that furthers hateful content (e.g. "Help fix my KKK wiki or whatever")
• Documenting technical things that themselves are ideologically neutral, and potentially usable generically, but are primarily used by hateful content (e.g. documenting extensions primarily used by/made for such types of sites, even if the documentation does not reference anything problematic).
• To paraphrase w:Wikipedia:Hate_is_disruptive#Hateful_conduct - "Referring to oneself on-wiki as being a member of a hate movement, or outing oneself as supporting such a cause off-wiki."

I generally think there is a real chilling affect if such conduct is allowed. Its difficult to work productively in an environment that includes people who essentially are like, I won't go into it on wiki, but by the way I think you should be murdered.

But i can also understand fears that such prohibitions, if taken too far can turn into morality police or witch hunts. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes and all that. To some extent, that risk is just the price of having rules.

My personal view is that the further off-wiki the content is, the more extreme it should have to be to get them blocked. For example, I don't think anyone should be sanctioned for making a joke in poor taste on twitter, if it is not referenced on wiki or connected to the wiki in any way, even if the same joke made on wiki might get you sanctioned. But someone actively advocating for genocide, should be unwelcome in our community because fundamentally if they're not unwelcome someone else is being made unwelcome.

Support

"Soliciting" could maybe be replaced with something more accessible like "Requesting", "Asking for", etc? The later part could probably address persons, not "websites"?

Support

Support

The Code of Conduct is a list of behaviors that are not wanted in Wikimedia- and MediaWiki-related technical spaces. It is fairly extensive in disallowing things, which makes sense; these spaces are for technical collaboration, so most of the things that one could do online are off-topic and irrelevant in these spaces. One can limit which cultural conventions are appropriate, which worldviews are appropriate to represent, what kind of interactions are considered productive etc, without much restraint - it's not hard to follow those rules during one's technical interactions, and they aren't particularly limiting. It's like workplace etiquette or rules for being able to use a nice restaurant.

Once you start applying the CoC to behavior that's not in any way meant to target or affect our spaces, to determine who are the good people who should be allowed to report MediaWiki bugs and who are the bad people who shouldn't, that extensiveness of the CoC becomes very problematic. Are you allowed to ask help for Boobopedia ("Gratuitous or off-topic use of sexual language or imagery")? For a citizen journalism wiki ("Unwanted photography or recording" of public figures)? Would you ban Wikileaks (yes, yes, it's not actually a wiki these days) for "Inappropriate or unwanted publication of private communication"? Who will decide what counts as "Offensive, derogatory, or discriminatory comments" when it's not about one Wikimedia technical space participant commenting on another, but some random wiki hosting political commentary or literature or forums or whatever?

Oppose

@Tgr above said it best about how arbitrary and capricious things can get when you can start policing things outside of Wikimedia technical spaces. I'll just add that even a restriction as simple as "no hate speech on your wiki" is ultimately impossible to enforce fairly, I would think. What is hate speech? Nowadays we are told that seemingly innocuous questions like "where are you from?", or terms like "grandfathered" and "master bedroom", are at least problematic, if not hateful - not to mention now-verboten statements of opinion like "men should not use women's bathrooms". It's an endless - and unnecessary - rabbit hole to go down.

So you’re saying it’s contextual?

I think they are saying people will game the system, and/or some people are unreasonable.

Would it help to make the language more strict to "advocating violence"? If i understand correctly, the concern is the slippery slope.

Fwiw, i disagree that this is about activity happening elsewhere. Once something is brought here it is happening here.

It would definitely be an improvement. It doesn't entirely solve the problem. Consider a wiki organizing donations for Ukraine - it will very likely advocate for violence against some people, is that a good reason to ban it from technical support? Or a wiki about organizing not entirely peaceful protests in an authoritarian country?

Saying people should not advocate for violence while they are using Wikimedia spaces is a no-brainer; there is no legitimate reason anyone would need to do that as a part of discussing MediaWiki support and development. Saying people should not advocate for violence, ever, is enforcing a value choice. The world is a complex place, coming up with values which are sufficiently sophisticated that they can handle that complexity is hard. It's not something this CoC can reasonably undertake.

To put it in another way, this amendment would expand the CoC from a judgement on what values work for building collections of free software and free knowledge together in a specific project that we have decades of experience in, to a judgement on what values work anywhere for anything. That won't work; at the very least, you'd need a different set of values.

If you really feel the need to regulate, I think the amendment should say something like "admins can ban you from soliciting help if they judge your usage of Wikimedia software to be so unethical that having discussions with you in Wikimedia technical spaces would be disruptive to the normal functioning of the community" instead of pretending that that judgement somehow objectively follows from the text of the CoC, which will never be the case.

I like Tgr's suggestion much better than the original proposal here. First, it's honest about what it's doing rather than hiding behind a facade of CoC respectability. Second, by giving the power to admins rather than the CoC committee it's more open to community oversight and, if necessary, challenge. The one thing I might change is to not make it a CoC amendment at all, just make it part of a regular "no disruption" policy.

It's still highly subjective, but at least its honest and open about its subjectivity.

Oppose

Soliciting support is a technical matter, I don't think we should ban some people saying they are not allowed to ask for assistance, for the same reason freedom 0 allows using free software for any purpose. Even if we would prefer that our code is used for "Good, not Evil". Policing the Good websites vs the Bad websites brings similar issues.

Plus, it could be trivially workarounded by not stating which website they are having trouble with (which would be a good idea if mentioning the site might cause controversy, anyway).

Of course, it is perfectly acceptable for anyone not to provide any support to others based on whatever reasons e.g. Sorry, I prefer not to continue helping you with this, since I profoundly disagree with the view stated on your website that dogs are better than cats

But this is quite different than forbidding people from even asking. Anyone reading the CoC in good faith would need to (somehow) determine if they are welcome or they would be caught in that definition (which may not be so straightforward, a common issue with these kind of rules). Consider for instance a broken Wiki Farm where one in a hundred website might fall into such definition.

The CoC caters for actual behavior in the Wikimedia technical spaces. Shunning people for outside contents deemed^{[by whom?]} to be "evil" would be problematic by itself, and might also cause other unexpected chilling effects. Would I be in violation of the CoC if I helped someone asking about what turns out to be (after it works again) a website advocating violence? What if, when trying to help the OP, I had asked another developer about the error they were facing?

I don't think we should be adding indirect prohibitions like this.

Support

More like should make it wider, thinking in line of what @Legoktm said.

Oppose

Someone who runs one of these problematic wikis offered a patch for an extension I wrote. I would like to accept their solicitation of help even though I do not want to endorse their beliefs. I could redact anything that ties the contribution to their odious wiki. But this policy seems like it would prevent me from accepting their patch.

For this and the reasons that @Tgr and @Platonides mention, I support this from @tgr:

I think the amendment should say something like "admins can ban you from soliciting help if they judge your usage of Wikimedia software to be so unethical that having discussions with you in Wikimedia technical spaces would be disruptive to the normal functioning of the community" instead of pretending that that judgement somehow objectively follows from the text of the CoC, which will never be the case.

Oppose

Is a pro- or an anti-Putin website a hate site? What about a pro- or anti-Zelensky one? What about sites that are pro- or anti- either of the two warring factions in Sudan? One that actively opposes the reign of King Charles and permits posting of proposals for civil disobedience? Depending on the definition of "hate speech", it could easily be all of the above.

Generally speaking, software is agnostic to the political positions of the people who operate it. And it has always been a conscious decision of the MediaWiki community to be a completely open source software that anyone can use or reuse; thus, it's even more agnostic than closed source or commercial software. At the same time, there has never been any obligation on the part of any member of the MediaWiki community to provide support to any and all non-Wikimedia usages of MediaWiki. This should not change - but neither should there be even the slightest suggestion that a MediaWiki community member will suffer consequences because they do provide assistance to another MediaWiki site without thoroughly researching their contents. As currently written, the proposal doesn't say that, but it certainly implies that it could happen.

I think Tgr's suggestion makes more sense, and does not require an alteration of the CoC. It's really important to provide hard definitions of any term that is used such as "admins" and "unethical" - I recommend avoiding the use of the phrase "hate speech" because it has specific legal meaning in several jurisdictions, and those legal definitions do not align with each other, let alone what is being proposed here.

I'll also point out that the various English Wikipedia policies and essays do not advocate blocking or removing editors who, external to the project, may make hateful statements. As long as they keep it off the project, there's no reason for anyone to even investigate whether an editor is a hate-monger outside of the project. There are a few exceptions to that rule of thumb but they aren't formalized or made into policy for good reasons. Those people are just removed from the project, normally with the intervention or assistance of T&S so they can be globally banned. I think some sort of parallel system should be considered here. I can certainly think of one MediaWiki usage outside of Wikipedia that totally freaked me out, and the operator of that site was an active member of the MediaWiki community until someone from the editing side red-flagged the account.

i disagree with the framing of "unethical" here. That implies we are primarily concerned with the behaviour of the wiki, which is an external matter. The matter at hand should be the affect of the behaviour on our community.

E.g. if someone asks for help on their wiki named www.LetsKillBawolff.com - it is probably an unethical site, but the real concern is that they are creating a hostile environment on mw.org through asking for help with their attack site. That's the connection to mw.org, and that is the thing i think would be in scope of our code of conduct.

After a month of silence and being told the committee has no interest in an actual discussion I would like to repost my Wikitech-l response here. While I'm not opposing the idea that drives the proposed amendment, I have questions. TL;DR: I think my concerns can all be resolved with careful rewording.

Please bear with me and analyze this idea: Does the proposed amendment imply that I'm violating the CoC the moment I help someone who runs or supports such a website?

Or to ask the question differently: What are we banning here? The act of helping? The act of asking for help? The fact that a person belongs to a specific group? What a person believes? Am I supposed to check every time I help someone to make sure they don't work for such a website? How can I tell if a website matches the criteria?

The proposal is rather different from how the CoC and especially the enforcement process currently works. Usually the idea is to ban people because of their behavior. But the proposed amendment isn't about behavior: As hinted above it doesn't make sense to ban someone just because they ask for help. Still the proposed wording suggests that "soliciting help" would be the same as "advocating violence or hate speech". This doesn't seem right, especially when the person's intention clearly isn't to advertise their website.

I think the issue here is a conflict with how a CoC works: A violation is always a violation and must be handled as such, no matter if people know better or not. It must be like that. Otherwise anyone could simply claim "I didn't know" and get away. But this idea is not compatible with the proposed wording alone. It becomes actionable only with additional information: Either the person asking for help openly mentions their website, or they spam our support channels. Both actions should absolutely be covered by the CoC, sure. The question is: Aren't they already? Is there really a gap we need to cover with an amendment?

Unfortunately the publicly available information about the processes of the CoC committee and how it evaluates cases is extremely sparse. How does it decide, for example, what the "predominant activity" of a website is? What publicly available sources does the committee use to be sure they have a common, transparent definition of hard to define things like what qualifies as "hate speech"? Do they consult experts? Do they have a catalogue of words and phrases? Nobody knows.

The last significant edit to the committee's FAQ was in 2017.

Personally I would love to have a different enforcement process that – after an initial intervention, if one is needed – then focuses on giving people empathy, time and material to learn, to grow, to become better, and to say sorry. Unfortunately this is – from all I know and was able to observe – not at all how the committee operates. It's about "protecting the space". That's all. It's the reason why – for example – the first time a person might learn they violated the CoC can actually be a public announcement. It's not about the person, it's about the space.

Can we please rephrase the proposal and make it very clear that it's not about the act of helping but about the act of consuming our support resources? "Soliciting" is a word I find extremely hard to understand. According to my dictionary it could seriously mean both "asking for" as well as "offering help". Furthermore, I suggest avoiding the word "help". "Help" shouldn't be used as if it's something negative. For example, no doctor would deny saving someone's life, no matter how many hate tattoos the person has.

I have no objection to using a simpler word than solicit. However my understanding is that solicit (wikt:solicit) always means to ask for something. It would not mean to help someone in this context. It does not mean to respond but to ask or offer. I think the confusion maybe comes from that it can also be used to mean to offer something, particularly for pay (e.g. it could mean to try and convince someone to buy a service you are selling. So if someone went around to people who posted their mediawiki problems, offering to solve their mediawiki problems for $10, that would also fit the definition, albeit not in the way that is meant here). The person soliciting is the person making the request, not the person responding.

Re coc being overly punative and secreative with little room for regabilitation. I agree and have said similar things in the past. However i think that is a separate topic.

I guess the thing trying to be banned is the act of indirectly bringing such material here. Nobody can read what is in people's hearts and minds, and i don't think anyone is concerned with the consumption of support resources (they are there to be consumed after all)

Thanks. Considering this I find the proposed wording even more alarming. If this is about promoting "websites that advocate violence or hate speech", why do we discuss "support and technical assistance" then? Why do we put pressure and risk on the people who give that support? Why don't we just ban "promoting or openly supporting websites whose predominant activity or content is behavior that explicitly and significantly violates provisions of the code of conduct"?

If this is about promoting "websites that advocate violence or hate speech", why do we discuss "support and technical assistance" then? Why do we put pressure and risk on the people who give that support?

That's not remotely what it says. The wording is:

Soliciting help, support or technical assistance for …

To re-word it to be perhaps clearer by making all the implicit words explicit, you could say:

Soliciting of help, of support, or of technical assistance for …

The prohibition is extremely clearly on the soliciting, and not on community members who might unknowingly provide such help, support, or assistance without being aware.

The ban is clearly about "help, support or technical assistance". That's literally how the sentence starts. I'm afraid adding some "of" doesn't change anything. What even is "soliciting"? Does "actively offering help" count as "soliciting"? What when I am aware and still help?

I think it means "Asking for help or asking for support or asking for technical assistance for websites...". So not as bad as you thought. Still, talking about the issue with other people while helping someone (that happens to be related to such a website) might be construed as Asking for help for that website.

And we would have a funny situation if a bug was found by such a banned website, since submitting a patch would require asking for a review (i.e. technical assistance) to get it merged...

Reading the opening section, this does not seem to apply to off wiki locations, such as reddit, Wikipediocracy, etc.? I am confused because it is linked from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Harassment#Off-wiki_harassment as "see also".

It applies to some off-wiki locations, like in-person hackathons or technical services that are not wikis, like Phabricator, Gerrit, etc.

So no, it wouldn't cover reddit nor Wikipediocracy. Of course, the CoC is just one enforcement pathway. If someone is being harassed in non-CoC covered spaces, a local admin here may be willing to intervene, or it could be escalated to WMF Trust and Safety.

Are you looking for Universal Code of Conduct? This is a code of conduct specifically for the technical community (where, fortunately, harrassment via external channels hasn't been a concern).

Ah, I think I was. It may be good idea to mention the UCC in the lead of CoC (here) more prominently, to avoid confusion.

Please, for what community does have this Code of Conduct effect? Is it binding, enforceable and when yes, how and by whom? What were the biggest (most challenging) problems, issues you had to deal with? How will you adapt the new Universal Code of Conduct? Thanks!

@JustB EU The first two questions are already answered on the wiki pages, I'd say. Who is "you" in your last question?

You = the community that did develop and now controls and executes this CoC. Can you be so kind to give more specific links to "the wiki pages". When not, no prob!

Code of Conduct and its subpages...

@Malyacko:

This amendment is implemented.

task T199086

Hi, the Technical Collaboration’s Community Health group wants to share some thoughts about the appeal process that we are currently handling. The text describing the appeal process itself is fine. The problematic part is to have an appeals team other than the CoC Committee itself without defining the relationship and governance between both teams.

The core of the problem is that it is not defined who has the ultimate decision on the resolution of an appeal. This is fine when both teams agree on a resolution, but what if they don’t? The options are

• They have to keep discussing until there is consensus. This would put both teams on equal foot, which is fine but needs to be documented.
• The Committee has the last word. This means that the Appeals team has an advisory function, which is fine but needs to be documented.
• The Appeals team has the last word. This might even be the default expectation (?), but it is actually the most problematic one because it means that the Appeals team has more power than the Committee itself.

If we want to go for the third option anyway, then that Appeals body cannot be a team like we have now, formed by Wikimedia Foundation members by design. There were good reasons to make this choice (leaving tough situations to paid professionals, saving some trouble to volunteers), but having a team of WMF employees having more power than the Committee is a setup that we don’t want to have.

The current text states: "These [appeals] will be considered by the Committee, which may alter the outcome." This suggests to me that the Committee has the last word. I believe this makes perfect sense, since the foundation should only override community-elected structures for legal reasons (in which case the Community Health group doesn't sound like the right group to make a decision anyway).

Can you link to the pages for each of these two committees or teams? I want to see a page for each, listing who the members are, and stating how anyone comes to be on these teams.

Based on what you say here and my browsing around I cannot quickly come to understand the differences in the nature of these two teams.

For the Appeals process, see Code of Conduct/Cases#Appealing a resolution.

For the Code of Conduct Committee, see Code of Conduct/Committee & Code of Conduct/Committee/Members.

For the appeals team, see m:Technical Collaboration/Community health.

Can the auxiliary members of the CoC be the Appeals team? In which case I think option 1 above makes the most sense.

I'm not excited by having the auxiliary members be the Appeals team. Said as a former auxiliary member, I'd prefer to keep the function strictly as fallback in case of conflict of interest of active CoC committee members.

An additional factor to be considered. The Technical Collaboration team doesn't exist as such anymore. The people who form the Community Health group are all active, so if we receive a new appeal we can still handle it. However, we would welcome a decision on our proposal.

Tracked: task T199086

I think the Appeals team should have the final word on cases submitted to their consideration. Thank you.

Giving a non-elected (wmf appointed) team power to veto and repeal decisions my a community committee seems contrary to being a community driven organization. WMF staff should not have "benevolent dictator" powers in social processes.

In order to help the discussion, I think two aspects should be considered:

• Should the Appeals team be nominated by the Wikimedia Foundation or not? (and if not, how is this team nominated)
• Who should have the last word, the Committee or the Appeals team?

The combination of these points offer four scenarios. A fifth would be that there is no Appeals team.

So far there are two things that can be seen here:

• Slight majority believe a WMF-based team should not have power to overrule CoCC remedies. If there is no strong objections towards this by the next 7 days, I will make it clear in the CoC.
• We don't have a "Community Health group" at WMF anymore. The functionality needs to be given to another body. I don't know WMF internal structure to suggest an alternative body in these cases. I reach out to people for suggestions.

I still think that an appeals body should exist and be able to overturn a decision submitted to their consideration. Otherwise, what'd be the point on having one? It'd be bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy and a false appearance on the existance of an appeal process. If the problem is that we don't want to grant such power to a WMF Team for whatever reason, then I suggest that the appeals body be formed by community members instead in the same way the COCC is elected. Thank you.

I don't have any better proposal but making a committee just to check appeals seems too much overhead to me. There are several committees/group/teams we can delegate this responsibility.

The WMF operates most technical spaces, sponsors most development etc. so ultimately it is the WMF's responsibility to ensure technical spaces have a healthy culture. Having it as the decisionmaker of last resort makes sense.

OTOH if most decisions get appealed and some WMF team has to secondguess the CoC committee all the time, that seems like a bad situation. Rather than setting up another committee, I think it might be better to restrict appeals to situations where the committee made some objectively identifiable mistake (and then the WMF team's involvement would be limited to verifying that the mistake indeed happened).

We have cases review committee in WMF now which is reviewing T&S cases, would that work? I need to ask legal if that's okay with them. The team is also temporary and will be replaced by another team but something will replace it so we won't lose it. The problem that should it have the authority to override or not still stands. @Tgr: I disagree, I think delegating low-level cases to them would cause issues. There are cases that WMF needs to handle like T&S cases but they are on another league compared to cases we have with CoCC.

I quite like the compromise of these two bodies being peers (the first bullet point). What do you think?

what is the point of having an appeals body that is not allowed to hear appeals?

It is allowed to hear them, it's however not allowed to overrule them. It's like senate's role in some countries - it is allowed to veto a law, but the lower chamber can overrule it - and force a law it wishes.

Or a similar case is FDC, they don't have the authority, they can recommand the board on fund distribution but they don't have the authority.

I think the term appeal implies the existence of a superior entity with powers to review and confirm or overturn or vacate a previous decision, or remand the case back from where it came from asking them to re-examine. Reading Code_of_Conduct/Cases#Appealing_a_resolution I concurr with Quim that it looks like this might've been the original expectation although limited to the most serious of cases. If this is not what actually happens, I personally find the word "appeal" confusing and problematic because it won't be a real appeal but an advisory council to the CoCC. If the technical community feels the appeals body or process should be only advisory in nature, and not a real appeals body as IRL, I'd suggest to move away from the term "appeal" to remove the impresion that whichever groups fullfils that role can actually change the outcome of a decision by the CoCC, and clearly document that the CoCC has the last word. Thanks.

Well, if those two bodies would be peers, then no one would have last word - both would be able to veto each other's decision.

And veto each other's vetos!

In paper yes, in reality I expect both bodies be reasonable enough to handle a disagreement.

I feel terminology is important, that's all. If the two bodies are peers or expected to be peers (I am not saying this is good or bad), then no appeals process exist and the process should not be called as such IMHO. We could change it to 'review', 'advisor', 'dialogue' or any other word that more accurately describes the actual process.

> both would be able to veto each other's decision

That reminds me of the old it:Intercessio, but doesn't look like it's happening? I mean, if the CoCC has the last word, as the participants above seems to agree to (not arguing this is good or bad either), where exactly the so-called appeals body have veto powers? They could recommend but the ultimate decision would be yours so that's hardly an appeal, and hardly a veto either.

Regards.

The Universal Code of Conduct (expected to be out this year) will have its own enforcement and appeals mechanism. It's not clear to me what the status of the technical CoC is supposed to be at that point. Will it be replaced by the UCoC wholesale? Will they exist in parallel, with occasionally overlapping authority? Will they share appeal infrastructure?

I imagine these cannot really be answered before the UCoC gets finalized, so this might not be the best time for this amendment.

Hi, nobody knows today how these pieces will play together, but a basic principle is that the UCoC exists to provide a baseline. Then specific projects can use / build their own structures on top of this baseline. This means that if the TCoC is compatible with the UCoC and it defines its own appeal process, then whatever UCoC structures won't interfere.

We have a very tangible problem with the TCoC appeal process, as I reported two years ago. On top of this, the Technical Collaboration doesn't exist as such since July 2019, and it is just a coincidence that the five original members of the former Community Health group are still working at the Foundation. The UCoC is in a very early stage, and there haven't been any discussions or decisions about enforcement and appeals yet. For these reasons, I would really welcome an amendment of this Appeals section in the TCoC, at least to reflect the current reality.

I would really welcome an amendment of this Appeals section in the TCoC, at least to reflect the current reality.

That's a fair point. So maybe go with that and state there is no appeals process? In your experience as part of the appeals team, was there ever a need for it? (As in, was there any appeal where the appeals team disagreed or found problems with the original committee's decisionmaking process?)

In all this time we have received only two appeal requests. In the first one we disagreed with the appeal request and we agreed with the Committee. The second one is being processed right now.

The lack of appeals (a good sign) has been a reason for me to almost forget about this proposal during this time.

I guess we (TCoC) would have the same position & authority as local arbitration committees - it is something T&S definitely needs to count with :).

But what is the point of this "appeals ls" process? Its hard to evaluate what to do here if we don't even agree on what role this process is supposed to play.

I strongly agree with Marco that the terminology is very problematic here. In my view it undermines the legitamacy of the CoC as an appeal is a well understood concept and outside of show-trials this is very much not what is meant by the word appeal.

The intention is to allow for a review, since the decision is ultimate & binding for everybody (bypassing a CoCC decision is even violation of CoC per se). On the other hand, Arbitration Committees (which is the comparable body on [some] content projects) have no appeal body, and their decision can be only appealed to themselves (which is not really an appeal, right). So, we can also remove the appeals thing for good too?

If you think this is on par with local ArbComs, You can use their policy here too, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy#Appeal_of_decisions

> Any editor may ask the Committee to reconsider or amend a ruling, which the Committee may accept or decline at its discretion. The Committee may require a minimum time to have elapsed since the enactment of the ruling, or since any prior request for reconsideration, before reviewing it. Remedies may be appealed to, and amended by, Jimbo Wales, unless the case involves Jimbo Wales' own actions.

Okay, I'd say let's rewrite the appeal section to make it like English Wikipedia's ArbCom:

Replacing:

After being notified of the outcome, the reporter or any people sanctioned may raise objections to the resolution. These will be considered by the Committee, which may alter the outcome. If the outcome is altered, the new outcome will be logged. When the Committee begins enforcing a decision, that is also logged.

Only resolutions (such as bans) that last more than one week may be appealed by people who were sanctioned. Reported victims can always appeal. To appeal a decision of the Committee, the reported offender or reported victim may contact the Technical Collaboration team's Community Health group at techconductappealswikimedia.org and they will review the case. Until an appeal is resolved, the prior resolution remains fully in effect.

To:

After being notified of the outcome, the reporter or any people sanctioned may raise objections to the resolution. These will be considered by the Committee, which may alter the outcome. If the outcome is altered, the new outcome will be logged. When the Committee begins enforcing a decision, that is also logged.

(Simply, removing the second paragraph). Does this sound good?

(Edited for readability.)

Sounds good. The references to "appeals body" in Code_of_Conduct#Unacceptable_behavior and Code_of_Conduct/Committee#Conflict_of_interest should also be removed.

Sounds good to me too.

Okay, it seems there is an agreement here, I will change it if there's no objection by the next seven days.

Removing that paragraph sounds fine.

Done. Hereby this amendment is implemented.

Stack Overflow (or to be more precise the Stack Exchange network) just created their Code of Conduct. It's quite well done, IMO (of course very specific to what they are doing). The expectations part (ie. starting with something positive) is something I miss from ours.

I like that Expectations section very much too. I also like the general presentation of their CoC. Looks more easy to consume, and less like a legal document.

I agree, it is friendly, positive and easy to understand.

👍, we should take inspiration and make our page better.

I see a profound problem when the aspirational (to cite a common example - "A Scout is: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, ...") is conflated with quasi-judicial concepts along the lines of "misconduct". This can lead to broad and vague speech codes, which may be selectively enforced in capricious ways. Serious question to those who find the prohibitions clear: Would you say any of the controversial tweets of a recently hired New York Times editorial board member, are in violation of this CoC's provision of "No bigotry. We don't tolerate any language likely to offend or alienate people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, ..."? Would she be expelled for "display[ing] a pattern of harmful destructive behavior toward our community"?

Seth, respectfully, I don't think your comment has to do with this topic and should be discussed in a separate topic.

@Huji, what it has to do with this topic is my assessment is different from the views above, which say, "quite well done" "easy to understand", and so on. I don't think it's well-done or easy to understand all all, from the crucial perspective of what is a violation as opposed to an aspiration. Hence, I ask, if it is well done, or easy to understand, please tell me if the case I give above is overall a violation.

Oh, I see.

So let me clarify my opinion then: I don't know if their CoC is something I would approve or not. But for what it is, the mothod of delivery is appealing to me. I think we could/should try to take our own CoC and make it more appealing like that as well. My opinion has not to do with the content of their CoC. Yours, apparently, does. And that's okay, but I wanted to clarify that we might be talking about different things.

Anyone to take the lead on turning good parts of StackOverflow 's CoC to amendments of or CoC?

Following on from Talk:Code of Conduct/Archive 4#Flowify?, and because there's been no active conversation here for several months, I've converted the page to use Structured Discussions.

Great!

Are women-only meetings allowed under this Code of Conduct? There was recently a meeting at a Wikimedia Foundation-sanctioned event that was billed as women-only - or more specifically, open only to anyone who is not "cis male". (I'm not naming it here because I have no interest in repercussions for the people who organized it.)

I don't know if this is the first overtly exclusionary event in Wikimedia history. There have been certainly been "WikiWomen's Lunch" meetings at Wikimania and that sort of thing, but the phrasing this time seemed a little more explicit that certain groups are not welcome.

The Code of Conduct lists the following under "Unacceptable behavior":

Discrimination, particularly against marginalized and otherwise underrepresented groups. Targeted outreach to such groups is allowed and encouraged.

The exception for "targeted outreach" is clearly meant to allow for programs like Outreachy. But this recent meeting was not an outreach event, just a way for a subset of participants to get together and talk. And since I think everyone would agree that women are an underrepresented group, it seems to follow that such a meeting, while not particularly unacceptable, is still unacceptable. At least, that's my interpretation.

Again, I have no desire to see anyone involved be penalized; I just want it to be clear what the rules are going forward.

@Ɱ: Do you have opinions about this? Ɱ has been developing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AEnglish_Wikipedia_non-discrimination_policy.

Hi - yes - as far as I found by looking into their event pages and documentation, there’s no evidence of true exclusion of any gender, and it’s not in any requirements for their individual events, it’s likely just encouraged to be mostly all women. Some particularly have stated "People of all gender identities and expressions are welcome, particularly trans and cisgender women." As far as I've found, neither this Code of Conduct nor the 2006-2017 non-discrimination policy were ever cited to counter a productive project like it.

Thanks for your replies. Leaving aside the specifics of any one event, if a meeting truly did exclude men or "cis men", would that be forbidden?

I think the current language is a little unclear, but I think this group of events shows the success of a woman-oriented event, without a necessity to truly push any people away. I also don't know of any Wikimedians who would want to join while violating the spirit of a woman-only event, especially as their editing subject relates to feminism. I might also note that women can be included in the definition of "marginalized and otherwise underrepresented groups", but I don't think 'cis men' qualifies as one of those groups.

I don't think that really answered the question, but anyway, I'm also looking forward to hearing what other people have to say.

Everyone can define a minority or marginalised group that includes any specific person, and plead special circumstances. There is no black and white, just shades of grey. There will be wikilawyering.

Well to answer your question more directly, this Code of Conduct doesn't expressly forbid it, nor does any other I've found. If there were a specific complaint raised, which I still doubt, we would have to further analyze this.

@Yaron Koren there's a long history of discussion around this question, you might start by looking at parallels such as [black-only https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/30/white-people-black-women-feminist-festival] spaces to see another perspective: for some types of organizing, this is actually more inclusive than inviting "everybody".

To make a less analogous comparison in case it might help clarify, consider programming events for young people. If these weren't explicitly targeted towards young people, then you would get the usual crowd of moderately- to highly-experienced adults attending, who feel comfortable taking up a lot of air time, and relatively few young people. It's not "overtly exclusionary" to specifically invite young people, it's part of building a diverse movement. Let me know if that helps?

@Adamw - my question isn't whether women-only meetings are a good idea, it's whether they're allowed. It seems pretty clear to me that the answer is "no", but I look forward to hearing other people's thoughts.

My response was addressing the judgments like "overtly exclusionary event", and the assumption that a targeted event is a type of discrimination. My point is, this is a well-trodden discussion and the consensus as I understand it is that targeted approaches can help build a diverse community. This very thread is an excellent example of why this is the case--how many discussions about discrimination have been hijacked by allegations of so-called reverse racism, which is not one of the problems needing to be solved right now.

I don't understand - are you saying that an event that excludes men is not discriminatory?

"Discrimination, particularly against marginalized and otherwise underrepresented groups. Targeted outreach to such groups is allowed and encouraged."

Men are not a marginalized group, and "targeted outreach" seems to encompass having a targeted event that is aimed (and targeting) marginalized groups, like women and non-binary in tech.

Most events such as these do allow "all genders" but have the caveat that requires all people that are of groups that are not underrepresented (such as cis men in tech, or such as cis white women in a meetup that aims to represent latinx/etc women and non binary groups) to be respectful of the space and the opportunity that is given to the underrepresented groups to be represented.

So yes. It is allowed, and seems to be encouraged, as an outreach device.

I've honestly never heard of any strictly "women-only" events related to Wikimedia. I've been to several events for women and non-binary folks and have never witnessed anyone turned away from such an event regardless of their gender presentation. If someone was actually turned away, I imagine it would be handled on a case-by-case basis.

@Mooeypoo - well, I think we can all agree that the "Discrimination" entry could have been worded better - as it, it requires some guesswork as to meaning.

Yes, men are not marginalized or underrepresented. And any event that discriminates against one group is, by definition, targeted at whoever's left. So I'll grant you that this event was "targeted" as well. Is it "outreach", though? I think the word "outreach" implies that the people being invited are not members of the Wikimedia technical community already - and for this event, they were. So it doesn't seem like "targeted outreach" to me.

If you're right, though, and any technical event run by the WMF that excludes men is by definition "targeted outreach", then we could simplify and clarify that line of the CoC considerably. It could be instead be written as "Discrimination against marginalized and otherwise underrepresented groups [is not allowed]. Discrimination against any other group is allowed and encouraged." Would you agree that that's an accurate restatement of what you think the CoC says?

This isn't the first time this subject has been raised; in fact, I'm fairly sure that a stroll through the CoC archives will show this discussion in several flavors several times, answered by multiple people, including actual lawyers and other community members.

It seems most readers don't consider it as "guesswork" as you make it seem; there are equivalent uses of these type of concepts in multiple legal codes in multiple countries, as well, defining what is, and isn't "marginalized" and "underrepresented" minority. Some examples of this also happened fairly recently in American politics, and around the world, trying to define whether discrimination against an ideological group is considered legal discrimination. It does not.

I'm not sure what else you're asking here, though. It's fairly clear that these type of events are supported by the Code of Conduct, and pretty clearly labeled as outreach events, for the purpose of increasing both diversity in the movement as well as opportunities to make sure these underrepresented groups have an opportunity to safely be included.

@Mooeypoo - I don't see what lawyers have to do with this. The CoC is not a legal document; it's a set of guidelines that doesn't refer in any way to any actual laws. There's no precedent to be consulted, etc.

Again, I'm not arguing that men are marginalized or underrepresented. They're not, which means, as I noted in the beginning, that the CoC considers discriminating against them unacceptable, although not particularly unacceptable - just regularly unacceptable.

The meeting I originally talked about was not labeled as an outreach event.

The reason I mentioned "lawyers" and "laws" is to (once again) show that the concepts brought up in this principle are not new, or invented here, or unfamiliar in the general social world-wide perspective, including the definitions of 'marginalized' and 'underrepresented'. But anyways, that was an aside.

What is it that you're actually asking here, though? Are you disappointed you felt you couldn't participate in these meetings? Are you saying they shouldn't happen at all? Are you saying that we should rephrase them? I'm trying to understand what the objection actually is?

I'm not sure I understand what you're raising as an actual issue, considering several people (now and previously, multiple times already) have answered the original question at the title of this topic, and explained it.

Thanks for asking. I'm generally against discrimination in the context of software development, and I find the idea of a Wikimedia event which certain people are not allowed to attend, simply because of their demographic attributes, repulsive. Thankfully, it seems like the Code of Conduct agrees with me - other than specific outreach programs like Outreachy, such a thing is considered "unacceptable".

I'm a little confused here. The Code of Conduct clearly allows for events that are targeting minorities and underrepresented groups, recognizing that such events are meant for outreach. The idea that this means "only outreachy" is an outreach program is your interpretation, and judging from the responses to this thread (and multiple other previous conversations) this interpretation is not shared by others.

You've received answers here that the Code of Conduct allows for these meetings, that they have a specific goal for inclusion that is missing specifically by these underrepresented groups, and that the definition of "underrepresented minorities" exists in the technical universe outside of Wikimedia's Code of Conduct.

I am not quite sure why you suggest that it seems like the Code of Conduct agrees with you, given the above.

I'm surprised that you think any part of this phrasing in the Code of Conduct is "clear". :) I didn't say that only Outreachy is an outreach program, although I would bet that if Outreachy didn't exist, that sentence wouldn't have been added. I'm still not sure what you think counts as "outreach". Is it your view that any women-only event can be considered outreach? If so, you're the only one making that claim.

You keep moving the goalpost, here, though.

You asked a question: Are these groups allowed. Fairly quickly you've received several answers showing that it seems to be allowed, and perhaps even encouraged.

You seem to have taken this into an angle where it agrees with you.

I am asking again, then: What, exactly, is your goal here? If your goal was to ask the question in the thread, it seemed to have been answered previous to my participation -- and in multiple threads we both participated in, in the past, in previous Code of Conduct discussions in the archive.

So, again, what is the goal? Is your intent to offer that you should participate in such events yourself? Is it that we need to never have these type of events except outreachy? Is that what the discussion is about?

I'm not moving any goalposts. Yes, I did get several answers. Fortunately for me, this is not the kind of question that's decided by a majority vote. It's a fairly simple yes-or-no question, and hopefully by discussing it here we can reach clarity on what the answer is. Your repeated questions about my intent are starting to feel like harassment. If you don't think this is a conversation worth having, you don't need to be involved.

I am here to discuss a topic that I care about, just like you.

The reason why I repeatedly asked for your intent here, is because I want to make sure we are on the same page when we discuss a delicate issue of supporting the efforts of diversity and representation to underrepresented minorities.

I wanted to make sure that there are no misunderstandings as we discuss definitions and whether things are "yes-or-no" questions.

Well, maybe that's part of the problem: you see this as a delicate issue, and I don't. I'd say that maybe 80% of the responses so far have been on the order of "women-only gatherings are important". Maybe they are, but that's not what I'm asking about: I'm just asking about whether they're allowed under this Code of Conduct. It's a bloodless question that should only involve reading comprehension; there's no moral aspect to it. Obviously I have my own views on the underlying issue, as does seemingly everyone else here, but they're irrelevant here, and hopefully all future discussion will focus on just the text.

It looks like nothing more can be done to move this thread forward. I would probably summarize the outcome with exactly the quote used by the OP,

Discrimination [is unacceptable], particularly against marginalized and otherwise underrepresented groups. Targeted outreach to such groups is allowed and encouraged.

The other confusions proliferating here circle around the question of whether a vaguely-specified meeting was a legitimate outreach event or not, but without naming the event, or giving the exact wording that is supposedly problematic, nobody will be able to diagnose your issue.

Yes, agreed, speculation without specifics isn't very helpful, and the language of this CoC is somewhat dependent on the scenario.

@Adamw - I can name the event, but I'm not sure it would help that much, because I'm asking in general terms here - not just for this event but for any future events. Let's say that there's a Wikimedia-affiliated event in the future that's billed as women-only, that it's not intended to bring in new developers, and that a man tries to enter and is turned away (which is pretty easy to do for online-only events, by the way). Would that be acceptable under the CoC, or not? Or would you still need more information than that to know for sure?

This same argument that supporting minorities is unfair to the majority has come up within this movement dozens of times before in discussions around movement affiliates, grant funding, and non-technical events (which are usually covered by a similar Friendly Space policy). I have served on volunteer committees that were asked this same question in regards to affiliates and Wikimania events, and it was dismissed each time. It has also unsuccessfully been used to try and argue that Boards and committees should note be allowed to have private meetings either. Women are hardly the only ones having private gatherings at events, and this is hardly a new question.

This has come up so many times, I am surprised that it has once again come up. Each time, we have reasonably come to the same conclusion as governments and other movements (including ones who we framed our CoC in part after) that of course these events should be allowed. I see nothing in the CoC that suggests the approach we take with affiliates and non-tech events should not apply here as well. Similar to arguments that we should fund "Straight Pride" and "White Pride" events because of the "Wiki Loves Pride" efforts - this falls flat for me. There are recognized differences between events which cultivate healthy relationships among minority groups and events which are just trying to make a counterpoint or argument around identity politics.

Disrupting private spaces is arguably more discriminatory (as it does not recognize their unique needs or our privilege as outsiders) than their attempts to make the events safe and private. I continue to applaud efforts by minority groups in our movement to find ways to come together and support each other - which is hard enough to do without never-ending philosophical debates on if these groups should even be allowed to meet or be recognized. The arguments against them appear as weak to me as the arguments against many other well established things in our movement such as Gender Gap work and outreach to developing nations.

Would an event for female developers that does not allow male identified developers into the space be discriminatory under the CoC? No more than some regional meetings, private Board meetings, private CoC meetings, or any other private gathering that has been taking place in our movement for over a decade. The only outcome of these debates that I have seen is making things more stressful and difficult for minorities than they already have it. Surely there are more important, legit, and less already drudged out issues to address than if men can crash a women's tea party or luncheon. Do we really need to have this argument for the umpteenth time yet again and stress out a bunch of folks trying to create a safe space? Let the female identified participants have their beverages and discussions in safe privacy and decide for themselves what guests, if any, to allow to attend. Frankly wanting to barge into their events feels rather creepy and voyeuristic to me personally (not speaking to motives of others - just speaking to how it makes me feel). I have heard this argument dozens of times, but still do not understand what secrets people believe are held within these meetings that they have an obligation to intervene into. Our movement respects reasonable privacy, let's respect each other's here.

@Varnent - I would classify most of what you wrote as interesting but irrelevant to the original question. That's fine - anyone is free to share their opinions. But if I can summarize your relevant points, you seem to be basically saying that the Code of Conduct does not outlaw any discrimination. All private meetings are a form of discrimination, the CoC does not outlaw private meetings, ergo the CoC can't be interpreted to outlaw discrimination. That's a valid reading, actually, and I think it points again to the poor wording of that part of the Code of Conduct. But it seems to me that "discrimination" there has to mean specifically "discrimination based on demographic attributes like race, gender, etc." Otherwise, as you note, it's an absurd statement.

@Yaron Koren: Unsurprisingly, you offered an inaccurate summary of what I said. Your assessment of my input as irrelevant I feel suggests nothing more you say warrants any reply from me. I wish you well, but your reply makes me increasingly confident your arguments will once again fail.

Well, I said mostly irrelevant.

@Adamw - you may have lost interest in this conversation, which is fine. I'm still curious, though, if you're willing to answer: is there any kind of women-only event that you would agree falls under (banned) discrimination, rather than (encouraged) outreach?

I'm finding this thread hard to follow. The original question is whether the language of the document would prohibit events that specifically excluded men. Certain responses seemed to deal with whether such events would be harmful or not, which confused the OP. I suspect that the point of confusion came over different definitions of discrimination, of whether or not things must be harmful to count as discrimination. If one uses a definition such that there's no such thing as harmless/beneficial discrimination, then points about the benefits of women-only events is not a non sequitur, but a relevant point to determining the answer to the original question.

Am I close? (I'm guessing here, I've never heard the word used like that, but certain groups shift definitions around quickly enough that it wouldn't surprise me if many here understood the word that way.)

@Yair rand - I think you're on to something here. I figured that a lot of this discussion would come down to the meaning of words like "discrimination" and "outreach", which can have multiple definitions. Somehow, though, I didn't think of the possibility that it could be defined as, essentially, something that can only be done by the "privileged". That would actually explain a lot of the previous discussion - like Varnent's seemingly bizarre claim that men trying to enter a women-only meeting (i.e, "disrupting private spaces") are themselves engaging in discrimination. If you define discrimination as something like "giving different people different opportunities, based on their demographics", this makes no sense. If, on the other hand, you define it as something like "being rude to women and minorities", then it makes perfect sense.

The Code of Conduct was changed yesterday (you can no longer threaten someone with legal action). Leaving aside the wisdom of this particular change, what are the rules for changing the Code of Conduct? Who is allowed to change it, and when? I don't see this explained anywhere.

It's written on Code of Conduct/Amendments and linked from the page.

Although saying that the community has achieved consensus seems like a bit of a stretch this time.

@Jdforrester - ah, I missed the link before; thanks.

@Tgr - yes, it doesn't seem like the process was followed for this change.

Hello and thank you for raising this issue. Opinions in the discussion seemed to go back and forth, mostly revolving around how such an amendment could be misconstrued to include any legal commentary such as informing others about licensing. At least to some, our change was more of a clarification than a true amendment. The CoC already included the phrasing "deliberate intimidation" which a legal threat could fall under. For instance, a comment such as "I'm going to sue you if you don't merge my patch" is clearly inappropriate. However, a comment like "there could be legal problems if you don't license this properly" is not really a personal threat and wouldn't violate the CoC. In the same vein a comment could be seen as "offensive, derogatory, or discriminatory" but only when taken out of context, or say if there was an innocent language barrier. I think much of the CoC can't be taken literally and reports are always handled on a case-by-case basis. As for this amendment, we felt the wording "threats of legal action" was a balance between being comprehensive and not too explicit.

The proposed amendment was advertised on wikitech and the discussion was open for over a month. We recognize the consensus here is debatable. If you feel this amendment needs to be revisited, say so and we are happy to engage a new discussion. We did not mean to bypass community input or ignore consensus, and in reality we do not believe the scope of the CoC has notably changed as a result of the amendment.

Thanks for clarifying. I just went through the talk page discussion and counted - I see three people supporting this change (Doc James, Huji and Pbsouthwood - sorry for singling anyone out), and seven people either disagreeing with the change or at least wanting it amended in some way. So maybe consensus went the other way?

I'm also now very curious about which parts of the CoC you think shouldn't be taken literally, but maybe that's a topic for another discussion...