Talk:Code of Conduct/Archive 4

Wider participation
A user has mentioned above that they would like to see wider participation in this thread from the technical community, and I think that's definitely something we'll want when it comes to full approval rather than just drafting. So, who has ideas for what we could to do involve people who are part of the technical community, or interested in becoming part of it? Off the top of my head we could do a sitenotice or similar notice on Wikitech (the wiki rather than the mailing list). Ironholds (talk) 19:30, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Since there are whole teams at WMF charged with Communications, Community Engagement, Community Advocacy and Community Tech, I suggest that you may be better placed than I for suggestions. However, I note that there is a list of physical and virtual spaces in the opening paragraph of the code.  For maximal support, th community in each of those spaces should be specifically engaged.  As far as physical spaces are concerned, consider an invitation to past event organisers to share, as far as they are able, their experiences and lessons learned from their events, for example from their feedback and their own internal review discussions.  For events in the near future, consider asking the organisers to schedule a panel, round-table, debate or similar in-person session, and a section in he feedback addressing the question of whether the code in force at the event was adequate and whether this code would have been an improvement.  All this takes time and effort of course, which is why the WMF community engagement teams, broadly considered, should already have been involved from the start. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 19:46, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * We have etherpad (no technical community), mediawiki.org, wikitech, phabricator (the work started there), gerrit, the IRC channels, and the mailing lists (where there has been an extensive thread). So that leaves mediawiki.org, wikitech, gerrit and the IRC channels. We could do something like a sitenotice on wikitech and mediawiki, a /NOTICE on the prominent IRC channels, and for gerrit..I'm not sure short of emailing recent committers, which might lead to flashback (mass-mailing often does).
 * I'm not sure if there are any upcoming events centred around or including a tech component; there's WikiConference USA, of course, but there's no real tech element to it. As I already mentioned, the WMF community engagement teams, broadly considered, have been engaged from the start - we have a community engagement team just for the Engineering community, and Quim leads it. Ironholds (talk) 19:57, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * If there is no technical community associated with Etherpad then perhaps it should not be mentioned at all? As far as events are concerned, I believe there's a Wikimedia Developer Summit 2016 planned, for example.  Whether the members of Community Engagement are engaged here in the discussion is beside the point -- it is whether they are engaged out in other places spreading the message effectively. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:10, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * And as the ticks on the list above indicate, they are - but there's only one Quim ;). Etherpad has users and so should be subject to this but doesn't have a community in the sense of identifiable "etherpad people"; it's a largely anonymous note-taking thing. the Developer Summit is an excellent point. Ironholds (talk) 21:19, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There is not a community in each space. There is one technical community where many (probably most) people participate in more than one space.  No one considers themselves solely an Etherpad user.  They use Etherpad to participate in our community's work.  That said, I think it's fine to use site notices where possible to make more people aware.  The WMFs community engagement teams have been aware of this work (and involved where appropriate) from the start. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 00:34, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Representing the community in public spaces
Re: this edit, I think it changes the meaning drastically. Think of someone opening an a Twitter account with the name "MediaWiki developer" and then using it abusively. That is not a technical space, but it still represents the project in some way. (This was occasionally a problem for some non-tech projects where unofficial Facebook groups and such were used by people who where banned from the official places as a soapbox.) Also consider the case of a MediaWiki developer participating at a non-technical event where they were invited for being a MediaWiki developer.

I have a weak preference for the old version, but in any case, it's not an insignificant change. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 02:56, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * An unauthorized "MediaWiki developer" Twitter account would infringe the trademark policy in the first place, and in your case would be someone anonymous in any case, so this CoC would be of little practical use. A MediaWiki developer participating in an event out of the scope of "Wikimedia technical spaces" and harassing or disrespecting someone there would be subject to the code of conduct or similar of that event in the first place. If that person would a WMF employee then Code of conduct policy could apply regardless. Probably the most likely scenarios are covered by these cases? If not, someone could still submit a report arguing that such developer was representing the MediaWiki project, and the discussion would be interesting regardless of the sentence I removed being present in the CoC or not. The core mission of this CoC is to assure "making participation in Wikimedia technical projects a respectful and harassment-free experience for everyone", and I think it is better to keep a CoC with clear and concise principles. Trying to cover all scenarios possible with a longer and more complex text does not necessarily accomplish better the mission of the CoC.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 03:25, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I also disagree with this change, and the assertion in the edit summary, "Simplifying sentence without changing meaning (?)". This section is also part of the active consensus discussion.  As to the actual point, the Twitter case would indeed be hard to enforce.  However, say a MediaWiki developer participates in a Foolang conference as a speaker (representing MediaWiki, e.g. because "Senior MediaWiki VP of Advanced Technology" or whatever was next to their name on the conference program).  (This example is not referring in any way to actual people).  They then put something offensive on their presentation slides.  In this example, the MW code of conduct committee should have its own jurisdiction, regardless of whether the Foolang conference has a code of conduct.  Put more simply, we don't want people going out, speaking in public spaces, saying they're "from MediaWiki" and putting us in a bad light through conduct the CoC does not allow. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:46, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Alright, back to the original scope. Still my main problem with this sentence is that (being the first sentence and providing the first impression) sounds unclear and repetitive. I have to read it twice to deduce what it means. I have proposed an alternative wording. Please revert if you think it needs further discussion.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 05:59, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Not going to revert for right now, because there's a ton of other stuff bundled up in that edit, but I think "developer event" is too narrow. Presumably we're not down with say, me making an ass of myself representing the community and my technical contributions at a statistical conference, either. How about "Technical, Wikimedia-related presentations at other events"? Ironholds (talk) 19:47, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅--Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:07, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I will note that such a statement is probably in contradiction with contracts the WMF has. WMF cannot legislate over the handling of a MediaWiki presentation by Wikimedia Italia in Italy. --Nemo 07:15, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This Code of Conduct doesn't aim to become WMF legislation, but a code of conduct agreed by the Wikimedia tech community, which wouldn't affect Wikimedia Italia but the technical contributor speaking as a MediaWiki developer.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:05, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hypothetically, assume a MediaWiki developer gave an offensive technical presentation containing personal attacks and very gratuitous and off-topic sexual imagery in a conference in Italy. This document would not allow removing them from the event (the conference could have their own CoC, though).  However, under this CoC, actions could be taken affecting their standing in the Wikimedia technical community.  If there were such a contract contradicting this, I assume you would have cited it. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:23, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Your assumptions are wrong. The contract I didn't name explicitly is the chapter agreement. The "standing in the Wikimedia technical community" of chapter members, i.e. their ability to use the MediaWiki logo etc., can only be decided by the chapter. Nemo 06:38, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Etherpad is IMO uninteresting because the people who use etherpad are heavily involved and there are easier ways to reach them. But there are a lot of people who only use Phabricator or only use Gerrit (or neither because they are the maintainers of a MediaWiki extension hosted on GitHub). The possible channels, roughly in descending order by impact (stats are from korma and Special:Statistics): The wikis and mailing lists are easy to notify, Gerrit does not seem worth the effort, a sitenotice-like thing on Phabricator would be worthwhile if at all possible. Also if we are not overly concerned about WMF overrepresentation, a notice to the engineering or wmfall list might be worth it. Also maybe ping the MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group if they have any other idea? The wikidata and labs lists also come to mind as mailing lists that are mainly technical but have a very different audience than the usual gerrit-phabricator-wikitech crowd.
 * mediawiki.org - 1000 active users (I will take a wild guess and say that for every active editor there are 5 passive readers so total reach is about 5K)
 * Phabricator (and no, having a task there is not outreach) - 2K users a month
 * wikitech-l - 100-150 posters a month (again with a wild guess of 5 lurkers per poster total reach is 0.5-1K users)
 * wikitech.wikimedia.org - 100 active users (so ~500 reach?)
 * mediawiki-l (50 posters a month)
 * IRC (200-300 users at a time on a large channel like #wikimedia-dev; 500-1000 users a month altogether, but it's synchronous so hard to reach everyone without being very spammy)
 * Gerrit (~200 submitters a month)

On another tangent, do we want to invite participation from people who are not members of the MediaWiki or Wikimedia technical community but knowledgeable about codes of conduct? Say, leave a message on Geek Feminism Wiki? --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 05:48, 19 September 2015 (UTC)


 * If places such as Etherpad or Phabricator have no convenient mechanism for publicising this discussion to their user directly, then those users could be approached indirectly, in other words, at places where those users are likely to be. Pages on Meta related to Community Engagement, Community Tech and Community Advocacy might be a start, as would English Wikipedia Village Pump (technical) and the corresponding pages at the oher projects and languages.  There are numerous teams that should be involved in numerous venues, pointing to what one member of one team has done on this page is beside the point.  Oh, and Wikiconference USA 2015 has a track for technology, it's on their website.
 * In the interests of saving time and effort in this belated discussion, could the owner of the stakeholder list and the communications plans for those stakeholders post links to them, preferably with their current analysis of progress against the plans, please? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 08:11, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This task suggests there is a broadcast mechanism for Phabricator but Quim probably knows more about that. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 08:21, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I support posting to spaces that are covered by the CoC. I disagree with posting to Village pump (technical) unless those spaces are changed to be covered by the CoC.  People who are covered when in another space (e.g. Phabricator) will likely hear about it already (especially if we take some of the suggestions above). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 00:44, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There is no need to directly notify WikiConference USA. It is not subject to the CoC, except for the "Wikimedia technical presentations in other events" point.  People making those presentations will hear about it in one of the spaces here; it's not reasonable to ask WCUSA to notify them for us. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 00:49, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * While we need to bring more people to the drafting, we also need to be careful not to make big calls too soon. This is like software testing, some people enjoy trying alphas and betas, some other will be frustrated about so many bumps in the road and stop being interested. I think the current tactics drafting here and pinging wikitech-l is good enough until we have a version of the draft we are happy about. Then we can make the big call, knowing that more ideas will come, more criticism will come, and more edits are likely to come.
 * The big call can be a two-week site notice in mediawiki.org and wikitech-wikimedia.org, a mention in the topic of all IRC tech channels during two weeks, and an email to all the technical mailing lists. As far as I know, Phabricator and Gerrit don't have broadcast mechanism built-in. We can organize an IRC office hour, a Tech Talk... We can go as wide as you think it is useful to go. Socializing the CoC in events is also a good idea. I'm proposing a session at WikiDev16 -- see T90908.
 * An important aspect related to participation is the landing surface here for the new people we want to welcome. We should keep support/neutral/oppose positioning separate from lengthy discussions in order to keep encouraging new participants to leave their positioning in one minute of less, without having to read through lengthy discussions embedded with votes. We (the regular participants here) should make an effort avoiding to capitalize the discussion (yet again), leaving space for other people with other opinions, and we should avoid the confrontational language that sometimes we use. Most contributors won't enjoy entering a room with some veterans arguing. If we want to welcome more people and opinions, we need to be consciously welcoming ourselves.
 * And an FAQ summarizing the main points discussed will be useful as well, since most newcomers to this debate might have very similar questions and thoughts that we have processed already.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 13:15, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me. I think we all need to bear in mind that the initial !vote is just a "are we comfortable moving to discussing the next chunk" not a "okay, the bit we have approved is now in full effect". There will be a wider opportunity to approve the entire thing and that's a good place to expect more people. Ironholds (talk) 18:45, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * A quick look at Tech links to the Tech/News which currently mentions three relevant meetings whose participants might be interested, as well as giving method for disseminating cross-project, and also links to the Tech/Ambassadors. There seems to me no shortage of mechanisms for engaging broadly with those likely to particpate in technical spaces.  But sight of the communications plan would be really helpful at this stage before spending too much time on what might be duplication of effort. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:22, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, good point. Tech-ambassadors would be covered by the communication to all mailing lists, but Tech News needs to be included as well.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:27, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I think tech-ambassadors is relevant, but I don't think Tech News is. The purpose of Tech News is to communicate to non-techy people about things happening in the tech world that are likely to impact them. The audience is people who do not participate in tech things, but are affected by their outcomes. Since this code of conduct specifically applies to people who participate in our technical community, it wouldn't apply to the people who Tech News is meant for, so I don't see much use in posting about it there. It will advertise a discussion to a large audience of unaffected people. --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 22:01, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Since there was consensus to "slice the drafting in modules" I think there should be two final big calls.
 * Final work period (with an announced end date) to make adjustments to address major problems with the draft. We will need to communicate that these sections have already been completed, so "wouldn't it be nice" changes will not be accepted that late, only changes that address a significant problem.
 * After that, a call for consensus. During this consensus discussion, no further changes will be considered.  There would either be consensus, or there wouldn't be, on the exact version from the end of the final work period.
 * Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 01:07, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Broad participation is achieved by picking issues and solutions which are broadly perceived as such; see the Isarra quotation above. --Nemo 07:32, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * So your hypothesis is we don't have more participation because people don't think this is useful? That would run counter to literally every discussion I've seen in my decade on this project. Policies and approaches people feel irrelevant get stamped down based on exactly the arguments you've been making (it's unnecessary bureaucracy!) and that isn't happening here, so it seems weird to conclude that there's this big silent mass of people who are Wikipedians, and therefore largely loathe new things without justification, see a new thing they don't think is justified, and then...leave it alone. Ironholds (talk) 15:29, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

I think we can learn how to get more and more diverse participation by looking at things we can improve as promoters of this process. Let's think of a direct beneficiary of this CoC, i.e. someone with less experience, familiarity with our processes, time, self-confidence and inclination to speak out then the current participants. How can we help them leaving their comment?

Some ideas reflecting on the last days (and some mistakes I made again):


 * Brief and clear instructions, ready to allow an absolute newcomer to the CoC to take action -- the details can be posted somewhere else and linked.
 * More time to express opinions, for instance two weeks.
 * A subpage for positionings only, inviting participants to discuss in the usual Discussion page.
 * Regular participants willing to be welcoming to new participants should reply less, not so often, with more brevity.

Our friend the direct beneficiary of this CoC found instructions geared toward insiders, a pressing deadline, a noisy space for opinions with growing walls of discussions between insiders. Without willing to, we are replicating here the problems of our community for more and more diverse participation.

From now on I will reply less or not at all to others' positionings and I will focus on keeping improving the draft. I have also been thinking that a FAQ will be useful to increase participation, and for the final call for feedback on the entire CoC, so I will start writing one if nobody beats me at it.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 15:41, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * FAQ started. I will try to keep up with new comments here, and I will try to add topics from previous discussions. Contributions welcomed.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 19:52, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Appeals
The wording on appeals seems unduly restrictive. Firstly, the phrase "the reported offender" should probably read "any person sanctioned". Secondly, there is no specific right of appeal against non-action or leniency of sanction, although this is arguably covered by the final sentence. Is that omission deliberate? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 19:32, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * These are excellent points, particularly the second one. I'm definitely open to changing "the reported offender" (I guess there could be situations in which someone is reported and an investigation finds other people were participating in the activity). Ironholds (talk) 19:37, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * (((Your feedback on is welcomed; I'm reluctant to get deep into "Report an issue" before settling at least on the CoC main page.)))--Qgil-WMF (talk) 12:35, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It seems extremely unlikely that other work will lead to a change in the consensus to the effect that there should not be an appeal process, and so there is very little risk that this discussion will prove nugatory. If you do not wish to discuss this point at present, then we look forward to hearing from you at a suitable time. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:53, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * "In addition, any member of the community may raise concerns about the committee or a case." does not allow a different kind of appeals. It is purely for informative purposes. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 00:25, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you mean that you think there should not be a possibility of appeal by an aggrieved party if the Committee takes no action, or is, in the view of the aggrieved party, unduly lenient? In other words that appeals should only be possible against sanctions? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:43, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * No, I was just describing what the draft then said. Multiple people have expressed that victims should be able to appeal, so I've changed the draft to allow that. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 06:08, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Now there is a defined section for Appealing a resolution.

I propose to remove "Only resolutions (such as bans) that last 3 months or longer may be appealed by the reported offender." Instead, it could say "Resolutions can be appealed by the reported offenders while they are being enforced." The concern here is that someone obstructs the enforcement with legalese in bad faith, and this is a way to prevent that temptation.
 * I disagree with removing this. Your proposed change allows enforcement during the appeal period, which is good.  I've added a note to clarify this.  However, that does not solve the issue of time-wasting frivolous appeals.  If I am given a private warning or banned for one day from an IRC channel to cool off, I can still appeal.  The original sanction remains in effect during the appeal process, but eventually DR must spend time reviewing the evidence and making a judgement. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 06:16, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * As member of the DevRel team, I believe that processing "frivolous appeals" will take significantly less resources than dealing with the potential problem of people unhappy with the rule that doesn't allow them to appeal. If there is a process, unhappy people can follow it. If there is no process, unhappy people will manifest their frustration in other ways, and they are likely to get more community sympathy because they were not given other option than complaining elsewhere. So if your concern is saving DevRel resources, please allow anyone to submit a recall to us. :) --Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:35, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The restriction seems unnecessary; the committee can always agree that a complaint is frivolous and should be rejected - that does not seem like something that would take up a significant amount of time. Also, I disagree that appealing a two-month ban is necessarily frivolous. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 07:59, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

About "any member of the community may raise concerns"... what does that mean in practice for the Committee or Developer Relations? Are we saying that others may appeal on behalf of the reported offender? The statement is true regardless, since freedom of expression is granted in our channels, so if "raise concerns" doesn't mean an action that Commitee or DevRel must take, I would remove it.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:24, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It does not grant an appeal right. Under the current draft, observers can not appeal.  It is just noting that people can communicate with them.  I don't object to removing this. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 06:16, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Legal standing of the Committee
What is the intended standing of the Committee? I presume that it is to be an entirely informal group whose only standing and authority derives from the community? As opposed, say, to a committee of the WMF Board? I preferred the latter solution but consensus seems to be the former. Assuming so it should be made clear. Does the WMF back the Committee in any way, for example, by way of indemnity or advice if there are legal repercussions to its decisions? Or is it intended that Committee members stand completely exposed personally in the event of legal action? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 18:11, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * That's an active and open question, and will require consultation with WMF legal. IANAL and neither are most (all?) of us here. I am not sure whether it can be plausibly argued that its "only standing and authority derives from the community" given the connections to Developer Relations and the fact that the committee's decisions can have a significant impact on the ability of WMF employees to do their jobs, but a lawyer would have a better sense of whether that is possible. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * My question is, what do we want it to be? Do we want it to be free-standing, so that its standing and authority derives only from the community?  Do we want it to be indemnified by WMF?  Do we want WMF to be able to give it instructions or not?  I agree that Legal will need to advise on how to achieve what we want, but what is it that we want? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:25, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Honestly, what I primarily want is for us to focus on getting the code up and running, and then work on the committee. If we're working on the committee already, I don't see a problem with it operating by community standards albeit with WMF backing, in the same way the Arbitration Committee works. Ironholds (talk) 15:48, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * In the current wording, per wmf:Resolution:Wikimedia Committees, this would look like a WMF staff committee. This doesn't mean much (certainly it doesn't have legal personality; no Wikimedia committee has) but it does have disadvantages. Nemo 07:32, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * My vision of the Code of Conduct committee fits with the definition of "an entirely informal group whose only standing and authority derives from the community". I see this committee as a community-wide committee which doesn't require any WMF member. When that committee decides that an issue goes over themselves, they can transfer the responsibility to handle that situation to the Wikimedia Foundation, who would have the Developer Relations team as point of contact. Note that in our draft the WMF/DevRel have no authority over the Committee.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:30, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This is not a Staff Committee because the CoC (and thus the Committee which is part of the same package) will be created by community consensus, not by staff acting alone. Furthermore, it will not be led by WMF staff, nor is there any requirement that WMF staff ever be on the committee (though it is allowed). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:31, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It could be temporarily led by a WMF staff member if the committee elects them as chair. But that's not what the document means. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 07:17, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * In addition to what I said below, WMF staff will not be giving it instructions. The authority derives from the Terms of Use and Code of Conduct (CoC), and the CoC itself provides the policy which must instruct the Committee's actions. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:39, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The whole code is being created by fiat by a group of WMF employees and gives ultimate authority to a WMF employees team, hence I maintain the thing is led by WMF employees and definitely looks like a WMF staff committee. --Nemo 06:50, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, the Committee's authority will derive from the Code of Conduct itself (as a policy of the technical community) and also the ToU, which says, "The Wikimedia community and its members may also take action when so allowed by the community or Foundation policies applicable to the specific Project edition, including but not limited to warning, investigating, blocking, or banning users who violate those policies." Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 00:10, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Follow-up consensus discussion on intro, "Principles", "Expected behavior" and "Unacceptable behavior" sections
Since we started the prior discussion, we have made several changes to the document. In the future, we will do the announcements so "last call for work" and "consensus discussion" are clearly separated. However, since that wasn't done here, this is a final discussion on these sections.

Please express your views on whether we should switch to this new text for the intro, "Principles", "Expected behavior", and "Unacceptable behavior" sections. The reason that "Expected behavior" has appeared is that Qgil-WMF added positive guidelines during the prior discussion (based on feedback). A later version of that (with different text) ended up back in the CoC, but it was split into a new section.

Please comment only on these sections in this version. Let's try to finish up these sections at the end of this discussion, either with this new version or with the old version that previously reached consensus. Let's not make further changes to these sections.

Concluding this will allow us to move on to other sections.

Here is a diff for convenience. Please disregard changes to other sections, as those will be discussed later. The biggest changes I know of are:


 * Slight change to the scope paragraph in intro
 * Rephrasing of the principles
 * Addition of neuroatypicality
 * Addition of positive expected behavior
 * Flexibility about how project maintainers can respond
 * Slight change to "Unacceptable behavior"
 * Addition of explanatory section that explains things the Committee will not consider violations, and how they will take the context of incidents into account.

I expect to close this discussion Tuesday October 6th. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:05, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Consensus not reached. Sorry for not closing this on time.  I've been busy with other work.  There haven't been any positions on either side since the 6th.  Although there was partial support, overall consensus was not achieved, mainly due to some objections concentrated on a few parts of the text.  Quim and I have been attempting to address that by narrowing down which parts need more work (follow this link for list of the parts) and moving out the positive guidelines.  wikitech-l has been notified of both those discussions, and they're still in progress.
 * Summarizing some issues I noticed come up more than once:
 * A couple people had a problem with how "we" was used; most people did not even mention this, and I pointed out that many CoCs are similar in this regard.
 * There was a good amount of support for prohibiting publishing non-harassing private communication, but other people strongly opposed it. Among the supporters of this provision, some thought it should add 'without permission'.
 * There was some support for the Expected behavior/positive guidelines, but they also attracted opposition, particularly to "Participate in an authentic and active way". I suggested moving this out of the CoC to a guidelines page.
 * There was an objection to parts of the Unacceptable behavior section, particularly "prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people's comfort" and "Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts." (both also other sub-points here). However, this was also called out by supporters.
 * One person explicitly supported adding 'neuroatypicality' (in addition to the person who actually added it to the document). No one objected to this part in particular, besides a mocking anonymous post from an IP with no history.
 * There were a couple hesitations/objections to approving/disapproving on the whole thing at once, rather than continuing to refine. Since consensus was not reached on the overall change, we do now have the opportunity to refine the specific parts that people had issues with.
 * Finally, several of the supporters were in favor of moving on with this draft, despite some hesitations they may have had about parts. Although we don't have the consensus to simply use that whole text intact, there is a discussion about freezing the parts that were not controversial, and working on the parts that were.
 * -- Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:34, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Although I wouldn't have made some of these changes (e.g. dropping the examples of work), I like other parts (e.g. giving project administrators discretion about how to handle situations while still noting they have a responsibility, and prohibiting the publication of non-harassing private communications) and support the change over all. I also note that several people supported having positive guidelines, so I'm glad these are now in. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:05, 30 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Looking at the provided diff, it seems like the text now goes out of its way to not claim who it's speaking for. For example, you can see this in the removal of the "contributors and maintainers" language, I think. Phrases such as "we consider persistent patterns of interaction" and "we also assert that no marginalized status" now have no clear owner. Who's we exactly? In general, I continue to think that Wikimedians already have about a half-dozen similar pages, all of which are now conveniently included in the "See also" section. I really struggle to see how this page&mdash;as it grows in complexity and bureaucracy, toward the creation of essentially a "Wikimedia technical spaces" ArbCom&mdash;is a good idea. It would also be nice to link unfamiliar terms such as cissexist. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:14, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It's speaking for the members of the community, who are also the people that will be bound by the code of conduct. Using "we" in a code of conduct (usually without prefixes like "As contributors and maintainers") is very common.  Since the committee takes the lead on enforcement, when discussing enforcement it specifically refers to them (but they're doing their job on behalf of the community anyway).  See https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/, https://www.freebsd.org/internal/code-of-conduct.html , http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct , https://www.rust-lang.org/conduct.html  , etc. for examples of how "we" is used.  Someone objected to "we pledge", which that change also got rid of.  I don't think this aspect makes a big difference either way. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 19:53, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The fact that it's common doesn't mean it's right for us. Someone earlier even mentioned the USA constitution, revealing this discussion is polluted by an inappropriate "founding father" hybris. Nemo 06:59, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It sounds like you don't want us to critique specific parts of the text, but rather just say "support" or "oppose" to all of these changes. In that case, on the whole, I'd rather go back to the previous version, although I do like some of the changes, particularly the first three items under "We do not consider the following to be violations of this policy".
 * In case that's not what you mean, I do have some specific thoughts, including:


 * 1) What does "participate in an authentic and active way" mean? I really have no clue, and in a document like this, any part that doesn't communicate a clear, specific expectation of behavior waters down the parts that do.
 * discussion: 
 * 1) "Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts." This seem like it falls neatly under "reasonable communication of boundaries" to me. Is there a good reason to single out social justice concepts?—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 05:15, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * discussion: 

I strongly support this version. On the balance, this is a solid set of changes. Some particularly useful ones:
 * Neuroatypicality has been added to the list of characteristics--a concern of a number of members of our communities, and one worth mentioning explicitly
 * There is now a positive list of behaviors to strive for in our community interactions. As Tgr (WMF) said, "The same way, I would prefer to avoid a CoC in which the most compelling thing said about the way our community behaves is that it is not literally harassment." It is difficult to balance the need for generality and specificity, especially considering different cultural contexts, but having the list is better than not.
 * The list of unacceptable behaviors now includes "publication of nonharassing private communication". It is not fair to break the implicit promise of privacy in a private communication unless there is no other good way for harassment to be addressed. This also brings this policy closer to the existing Grants Friendly Space Expectations. It's not necessary to echo other policies (if it was, this would be a shorter discussion!), but it's useful to keep them somewhat aligned.
 * A strong statement of principles and a clear statement of which classes of reports this policy is intended to allow. These points--complaints against actions taken to welcome people from underrepresented groups, demands to repeatedly explain fundamental principles, complaints of people clearly expressing their boundaries, and complaints about the criticism of actions which appear racist, sexist, etc.-- have arisen in response to most discussions about ways to improve the experience of people from underrepresented groups in open source communities that I've watched or been part of.


 * There are a few changes I'm not a fan of--I wouldn't have removed the list of ways that our various community members contribute to our technical spaces, and I would have kept the list of tools that administrators and maintainers can use to address various forms of violations.


 * Even so, the improvements are substantial enough that I support this version over the previous one. I expect that any weaknesses or lack of clarity can be addressed when this policy is revisited in the future. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 01:57, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

I like the current version and am especially happy with the Expected Behavior and Unexpected Behavior sections. I think it would be good to release a list of which IRC channels and mailing lists are counted as "technical" as soon as possible. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 04:15, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

On the whole, I think those are positive changes, and resolved most of my problems with the text. I still wouldn't mind if the unacceptable behavior section was less vaguely phrased but meh. (Thanks for adding a deadline for the discussion BTW. I still feel it's needlessly rushed but now it's rushed in a transparent and predictable way which is an improvement.) --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 07:30, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

(removed an anonymous comment that was derogatory and had no constructive content. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 07:33, 1 October 2015 (UTC))

"Publication of non-harassing private communication" entry as an example of "harassing" behaviour. I have no intention of abiding by such a rule where not covered by a real NDA. This is supposed to be a code of conduct, not an NDA. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 10:18, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * discussion: 

I think we have made a good progress in this version, and I think it is time to move forward and focus on other parts of the CoC. Details can be always polished based on lessons learned when putting the CoC in practice.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 12:30, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Most of these changes look fine, but a few of them seem very troublesome (or "problematic", as the kids like to say these days). Here are the issues I see, in order:
 * Community members are expected to "Participate in an authentic and active way" - as someone else noted, this doesn't seem to make any sense. A literal reading of it would indicate that people are going to get in trouble for not devoting enough of their time to Wikimedia projects - which may be a good solution, given the large backlog of projects that exists, but is probably not the intended meaning. The word "authentic" in there is similarly inscrutable.
 * discussion: 
 * The community "prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people's comfort" - from the viewpoint of this document, isn't one person's safety always more important than another person's comfort, regardless of their privilege? Including this sentence makes it seem like the answer is no - which is highly provocative. Actually, there may even be some legal drawbacks to this phrasing (if, say, a person "of privilege" gets injured at an event), but I'm not a lawyer.
 * ''discussion:
 * Of the "We do not consider the following to be violations of this policy" list, #1, 2, 4 and 5 (all the "social justice" ones, basically) don't seem to have any purpose here. I have yet to hear of any hypothetical case where the inclusion of these four guidelines would make a difference in the punishment meted out (or not meted out) to individuals. I suppose four hypothetical cases would be ideal, one for each guideline, but even one would go a long way toward proving that they have a place here. Until I hear one, I'll have to assume that no such case exists. Yaron Koren (talk) 13:36, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * ''discussion:

I like this version, and I think it's better than the previous one. There are a few small things I would have liked to tweak, like adding "without permission" to the "publishing private communication" clause, but it's my fault for not bringing that up earlier. --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 21:20, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

This code of conduct makes sense to me overall. I would also add "without permission" to "publishing private communication", since it's clear from this discussion that that's the intended purpose of the rule. But my support does not hinge on that change being implemented. Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 23:19, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

I especially like the additions of positive expected behavior. In practical terms, the code of conduct is as much about setting a tone for the space as it is about defining transgressions and punishments. Having some positive examples at the top makes it sound less like you're walking into a warzone. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

both because I support this version and, more importantly, because people from backgrounds we have traditionally under-served and let down support this version. Ironholds (talk) 02:08, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Based on the "people from backgrounds we have traditionally under-served and let down support this version" comment above. Unambiguously demonstrating a lack of understanding of the underpinning criticism by unpaid volunteers (i.e. the minority taking part that are not under contract to the WMF). These volunteers were mostly from these backgrounds referenced, and have nevertheless remained critical of the predetermined outcome driven process followed. This has guaranteed that this CoC must exist and become a formal requirement on volunteers, backed from the outset with threats of WMF implemented global bans if not complied with; as judged by a committee that is now certain to have a controlling majority of WMF employees. --Fæ (talk) 11:57, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * "a committee that is now certain to have a controlling majority of WMF employees" -- what?? According to the current draft, the committee will be formed by self-nominated candidates selected by Developer Relations. This team wants a scenario opposite to the one you describe. We want to help forming a first committee with as much diversity of affiliation, abilities, gender, origin, etc, as possible -- and if we need to encourage more contributors to nominate themselves, we will. About the rest, I disagree, it has no base, and we have discussed it at length. I would be interested in you providing a plausible example of a violation of this CoC as currently written, that could end up with an undeserved ban to an alleged offender.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 12:46, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This is a reductionist argument that whittles away at any position counter to the majority view on this holistic issue, rather than, say, pragmatically building on what has been seen to work or fail for past harassment cases on Wikimedia projects. However, I will give an example as requested in the form of a statement.
 * The result of the process as described will be a committee where the controlling majority of votes on any decision will be by those under agreements with the WMF, including non-disclosure agreements. Over the last few of days we have seen edits to address this weakness rebuffed and deferred.
 * Should a complaint be raised where any of the parties were current or past WMF employees, trustees, or connected with major donors, WMF legal may choose to step in using their obligation to counter what they may percieve as threats/risks for the WMF, including potential reputation damage. After a legal intervention, no outcome would be credibly transparent or accountable, as their first action would obviously be to ensure there was no further official public discussion or minutes that would later be obliged to be published. There is no assurance that there would be any outcome that would address the concerns of any parties involved, either as a complainant or alleged harasser. Having directly experienced the blunt and unforgiving end of WMF legal's typically American style negotiation tactics, as well as my experience when attempting to ask for assistance with current harassment, I find the rush to create a WMF sanctioned and initially appointed committee that may put itself in this position disturbing, and appears unlikely to ever address or learn from past serious governance failures or actual issues that have arisen from handling cases of harassment against individual Wikimedians badly. --Fæ (talk) 13:39, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't see any mention of global bans in the policy any more, and as Frances says, the proposal as a whole is not what this discussion is about. The first part of your comment comes off as you opposing the changes because I like them, which I hope is not what you mean - and on the marginalised backgrounds yes, some of the volunteers are from marginalised backgrounds, but not all volunteers oppose the policy (I see quite a few supportive comments in the previous discussion section) and I know of quite a few WMF employees who come from similar backgrounds or entirely different ones, also marginalised, and underrepresented by the oppose votes.
 * I really don't understand the extension of WMF Legal to cover 'current or past WMF employees, trustees, or connected with major donors'. One could just as easily argue that volunteers, as people who commonly have prominent roles within Wikimedia projects, should be protected. I also don't see anything in the proposal about WMF legal stepping in at all - WMF legal isn't mentioned that I can see. We (this talk page) haven't even decided the basis under which this policy would be formed (board resolution, WMF decision, or community consensus) but a lot of the discussions have absolutely prioritised community consensus as the best approach there). So this feels like a pretty big stretch from a discussion about whether specific changes are an improvement or not - which is what this section is about. Ironholds (talk) 18:57, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Ironholds, "you opposing the changes because I like them": you are clearly taking this personally. Please don't and stop your personal attacks. Nemo 07:09, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Again, the current discussion is about the intro, "Principles", "Expected behavior" and "Unacceptable behavior". You apparently support the proposal (see bottom of that talk section) to forbid the Committee from having a majority of WMF staff/contractors.  That is not in these sections, so the outcome of this discussion has no bearing on that proposal (which might or might not be adopted later).  But regardless of whether the committee ever has a majority of WMF staff/contractors, you have not given any possible basis in the text that would allow WMF Legal to step in and demand the Committee adopt certain case outcomes.  Nor have you explained how this implausible intervention would go unnoticed by the public, when there are guaranteed (by the text) to be non-WMF people on the Committee.  You say, "There is no assurance that there would be any outcome that would address the concerns of any parties involved", but right now it is almost assured there will not be such an outcome, because there is generally no realistic procedure (the ToU alone is only even maybe suitable for the most serious cases, and doesn't even give specifics or a procedure for those) to address those concerns at all now.  That's exactly why we're working on the CoC.  I don't agree that there has been a "rush", considering I first asked Wikitech for input in early August (though there was public work even before that), it's now early October, and we're still finalizing changes to the first few sections. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:57, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Regarding learning from past harassment cases, there is still time to do so, especially in the sections about reporting, processing, and responding to cases. Specific feedback about that would help (preferably in a new talk section if it's not about one of the sections being finalized). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 21:06, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Fæ: I understand that you object to this document in general. This portion of the discussion is on whether or not we support these specific changes to the document. Do you have an opinion on those? --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 17:41, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Rather than address one of the two drafts being discussed (old or new), you've chosen to reference language that is included in neither of those drafts, nor in the current text. That long-removed language never even granted any new authority for global bans, nor did it expand it.  There is no language making the Committee "certain to have a controlling majority of WMF employees", and Qgil-WMF has said he would avoid that (this section is not even discussing how the Committee will be formed, though).  Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:27, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

please stop to steamroller volunteers. two or so supporting this is not enough. even if it is five, it is not enough. --ThurnerRupert (talk) 19:41, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for introducing "steamroller". It nicely describes what it feels like to see over 700 words in just a few hours, all from those under contract to the WMF, slapping back my viewpoint in a style of legal cross-examination. This non-agreed process, and faux urgency for delivery, is disappointingly a long way from being consensus building or welcoming for unpaid volunteers. --Fæ (talk) 23:27, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Faux-urgency, meaning 'it's urgent but I don't agree with it' or what? Because from my point of view, I believe this would be of tremendous assistance in improving the quality of dialogue within Wikimedia's technical spaces, and that is always urgent - these spaces are toxic. As for the WMF point - I'm here as a volunteer. Matter of fact, I'm in Chicago on holiday right now. If the people responding to you I see an entire one person who works for the WMF, is at work when they reply here, and is tasked with working on this explicitly as part of their job. You find the process disappointing, which I am sorry for; what I find disappointing is the insistence of describing the divide on this issue as community/WMF. I see community members in opposition; I see community members in support. The fact that so many WMF people are in support is probably mostly representative of how they constitute the majority of the technical community, at least in places like Gerrit. This is not community-versus-WMF. Ironholds (talk) 14:58, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * You are dogging me. I am uninterested in engaging with you, and can be seen to have avoided direct dialogue with you. Please stop. Refer to my 2014 comment on Commons. You are perfectly aware I find your behaviour worrying on diversity related topics, or when discussions are about me, and have done for a period of several years. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 15:11, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I think this is a great version to have as a CoC that we can expand on in the future as cases happen. I, too, think that adding "without permission" to the section of "private communication" would have made it slightly clearer, but seeing as private conversations that have a permission to be published are no longer private by definition, I don't really think it changes anything much. MSchottlender-WMF (talk) 20:35, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * No, the text did not get better. In parts it also got worse, see for instance the verbose paragraph on "systemic inequity and oppression", 5 lines of which out of 6 could be replaced by the sentence "This document's premise is that affirmative action is needed". There is no need to summarise constitutional debates on discrimination as part of this document. Nemo 07:15, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Generally, I think this document is in good shape, but I've read through the concerns that were raised and I find some of them to be legitimate -- yet side-stepped or misunderstood. I think that this processes of large changes with blocking consensus discussions encourages people who support the CoC generally (myself included) to disregard legitimate concerns about wording (the point of this discussion).  All the incentives are placed on getting something passed even if it is flawed.  I'm not sure what alternative process I'd propose, but I think that a good alternative would allow for iterations on specific wording based on feedback within the consensus-building discussion.  Even in the case where the person raising negative feedback is seen to be Wrong(TM)/uninformed/whatever, such feedback can at least also be seen as an opportunity to clarify and make explicit the intent of the text for similar Wrong(TM)/uninformed/whatever readers.  I suspect that a substantial portion of the concerns raised in opposition could be dealt with this way.  (BTW, I'm also User:Halfak (WMF)) --EpochFail (talk) 12:23, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Things that are obviously not violations
(Repeating some points made above to break them out from the above discussion before it becomes complete indent hell.) These points do not seem to have any significance in the strict sense; they claim to be exceptions from the unacceptable behavior guidelines, but as such they are completely unnecessary: no one in their right mind would assume that I am behaving unacceptably just because I am discussing imbalances in representation, or refuse to explain what privilege is. So I can only assume that their actual significance is not what they say but that they are there, as a somewhat roundabout way of saying that we like these things. That feels awkward at best and dishonest at worst.
 * Efforts to include or improve the experience of members of underrepresented groups in our technical communities
 * Discussing imbalances in different groups' representation or trends in whose voices are listened to in a given discussion, project, or leadership team
 * Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts

I don't think there is much disagreement that these are good things (or, in the case of the third bullet point, reasonable behavior). I personally don't feel the need to mention them in the CoC but don't object to them if other people feel they are important. Can we find a straight way of saying them, though, instead of hiding behind a weird double negative? "We welcome efforts to include..." etc. etc. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * So, first, "no one in their right mind" - I would suggest picking better language there. And actually, no, I have seen a lot of people in conversations about the marginalisation of different groups of people react defensively, and a lot of that defensiveness take the form of "wait wait wait I don't understand what went wrong, you are obliged to explain it to me if someone calls me on it". So yes, this actually happens - and including it makes it explicit to people who are defensive in response to being called out that merely being defensive is not a response. Ironholds (talk) 18:48, 2 October 2015 (UTC)


 * If someone says "your are obligated to explain it to me", you can always just say, "no I'm not", and stop talking to them, whether the subject is racism, anti-racism, or Gerrit. Like Tgr, I don't see what that has to do with the code of conduct. Surely the repercussions, whatever they are, to both sides of that discussion/argument should not be based on the subject matter? Yaron Koren (talk) 20:04, 2 October 2015 (UTC)


 * A question for both of you--how many discussions around these issues in open source have you been part of or have you watched closely? I've been involved in efforts like this and have watched how many of these discussions go for the last several years, and there are a number of predictable patterns that show up. Yaron, when someone tries your suggestion of saying "no, I'm not" the usual next step from the person who's acting entitled to an explanation is to insinuate that the person can't support their point of view, complain about how rude the other person is being, and argue with whatever answers they are given, usually changing the criteria for what they will consider an "acceptable" answer along the way. It's reasonable to explicitly set the community standard that avoiding getting sucked in to that dynamic is acceptable. Tgr, I assure you--the first two points are frequently controversial in discussions on topics like these, and there are usually at least a handful of people ready to argue that suggesting that imbalanced representation is a problem is racist/sexist/etc. against whatever group is overrepresented. This often comes with sea lawyering and suggesting that, for instance, actions that might be effective at addressing these imbalances violate antidiscrimination laws and policies (and consistently, when checked with an actual lawyer, there is no issue). I'm glad that you haven't seen much disagreement on these points in spaces you've been in, but when these conversations get a wider audience or when the conversation starts to challenge a community's deeply held beliefs about itself (see: "meritocracy") these dynamics do happen and setting an explicit standard can be very useful. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 21:13, 2 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Fhocutt - none of what you're saying contradicts what I said. People can be jerks about anything; even if the thing that they're jerks about is the same thing 95% of the time, doesn't explain why the rules need to be different the other 5% of the time. Yaron Koren (talk) 22:35, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Again, we disagree. I've explained, based on my experience with these dynamics, and I don't think that continuing to discuss this is likely to be useful. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 22:44, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I took a step back and thought about why we seem to be talking at cross-purposes. Then I realized that part of the answer lies in one sentence of your previous response: "It's reasonable to explicitly set the community standard that avoiding getting sucked in to that dynamic is acceptable." It looks like you (and apparently a lot of other people, maybe especially within the WMF) view this page as more than just a list of "don'ts" - that it's really an expression of the general sentiments of the community. Taken literally, it's not, of course - that list of guidelines doesn't say, "it's acceptable to do A, B, C"; it just says, "you will not be officially punished for doing A, B, C". I think there's a certain amount of "reading between the lines" that many people are assuming. Perhaps what's needed is to split up this document into two: one that just covers the things not allowed, and the other a more general expression of encouraged behavior. That would hopefully also take care of that "active and authentic" phrase that seems very strange in a legal-type document. Yaron Koren (talk) 23:32, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I totally agree with what Fhocutt is saying about the dynamics of such conversations as I've seen plenty of such interactions myself. However, I don't think the current wording actually does anything to address that problem. The current wording says that refusing to debate social justice issues isn't harassment (which no one would ever claim anyway). If we want to say that demanding that other people explain social justice issues isn't acceptable, we need to actually say that. As it is worded right now, someone could endlessly demand that another person explain sexism and there would be no recourse. The list that "refusing to explain" is in isn't "list of behaviors that are protected", it's "list of behaviors that aren't harassment". Maybe that just needs to be moved to a different section or we need to add an item under harassing behaviors about badgering people for explanations. Kaldari (talk) 23:34, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * "Inappropriate or unwanted public or private communication" is already listed as "Harassment and other types of inappropriate behavior" ("public or private" is not in the prior version, but it doesn't really change the meaning). I think that covers badgering someone persistently after they decide to end a conversation. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 23:45, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * In that case, it sounds like we don't need the "Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts" item as it doesn't really change the equation any. What do you think? Kaldari (talk) 23:52, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The "Inappropriate or unwanted public or private communication" means you can complain if someone badgers you. The "Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts" means you can't complain if someone refuses to explain or debate this.  As you said, they're different.  It's mainly a question of emphasis, though. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 00:46, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it'll work without it, although I do think that the specificity can be useful. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 00:51, 3 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your thoughtful response. When we started drafting this, I was actually more interested in having separate "we'd like to see these behaviors" and "these behaviors are unacceptable within our community" pages, but the balance of the discussion was towards all one page, so there it is. Fwiw I agree that some of it's clunky and the style doesn't match, and there seems to be enough confusion on the "authentic and active" bit that I'd definitely be open to seeing that rephrased (ideally after we have a good enough--not perfect--policy in place, as I'd prefer this conversation not last till next year).
 * Regarding reading between the lines--I see this as about the larger context our community works in, and this is why I was asking how much experience you have in discussions that touch on issues of social justice in open source. There are open source communities where asking that action be taken to avoid, say, an all-male panel is interpreted as an implication that the men on the panel don't deserve to be there because they are men, and that interpretation leads to accusations that the one raising the issue of representation is being a "reverse sexist". Given this larger context, someone considering joining our community has no real reason to expect that there aren't members in our community who would do the same. I hope, of course, for a knowledgeable committee that would refuse to consider complaints like this, but someone who's new or not well connected won't know to expect that, and might be worried that by speaking up they expose themselves to someone who can use the code of conduct to shut them up. (This is also an unfortunately realistic fear.) This is what I'm hoping to convey--that at least the committee is aware of dynamics like these, and so people can worry less about the effects of speaking up or refusing to engage on themselves. I suppose that's another point of disconnect--you are asking for a situation where the committee would take action on some of these points, and I want to avoid the perception that they might. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 01:17, 3 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Fhocutt - okay, now it all makes a lot more sense. The real issue is making sure that people don't fear - rightly or wrongly - that discussing diversity will get them in trouble for discriminating against the group they think is over-represented. Which is an admirable goal - discussions like this should not be policed unless they veer into something actually derogatory. But I think the current wording is a very awkward way of getting at that. A big part of the problem is, again, the fact that the code of conduct now holds a bunch of guidelines that really should be in a separate "recommendations" page; I'm glad you agree about that. Saying "you will not get in trouble for not responding to someone" - a fairly obvious statement - is really no substitute for what is actually meant to be conveyed, which is more like "please avoid flame wars".
 * The guidelines that cover the "sea lawyering" thing - I suppose that's #1 and 2 - could be phrased more clearly and more succintly, I think. I read through them before a bunch of times without understanding why they were there, and I don't think I'm the only one. And the fact that they talk about inequity and oppression and so forth means that they seem to be taking sides on the whole diversity debate, when they don't need to. (If someone argues that an all-female panel at Wikimania should have had some male representation, should they not enjoy the same protection from "lawyering"?) I would argue for replacing all five of those guidelines with something like "Any discussion or action involving adding representation from different groups for the sake of diversity will not be considered a violation of this policy." Maybe there's a better way to say it than that, but that would be the idea. Yaron Koren (talk) 02:20, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Of the "We do not consider the following to be violations of this policy" list, #1, 2, 4 and 5 (all the "social justice" ones, basically) don't seem to have any purpose here. I have yet to hear of any hypothetical case where the inclusion of these four guidelines would make a difference in the punishment meted out (or not meted out) to individuals. I suppose four hypothetical cases would be ideal, one for each guideline, but even one would go a long way toward proving that they have a place here. Until I hear one, I'll have to assume that no such case exists. Yaron Koren (talk) 13:36, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The implied meaning there IMO is that the same thing can often be an issue of comfort for privileged people but an issue of safety for marginalized people and in that case we care more about safety. E.g. for a male game developer asking for consent before publishing an email is a nuisance; for a female one it might be the difference between a heated private discussion and a coordinated harassment campaign on GamerGate. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 18:21, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The global Non discrimination policy seems relevant here. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 18:33, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This is a good example, and shows how it's not balancing the safety of two people, but the safety of one vs. an inconvenience for another. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:41, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Tgr - sorry, I don't follow. Could you phrase your example in the context of someone being found not to violate policy as a result of these guidelines? Yaron Koren (talk) 21:10, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * He seems to be referring to the line itself, "Our open source community acknowledges the presence of systemic inequity and oppression and prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people's comfort.", along with "Publication of non-harassing private communication", not necessarily one of the five items below the "comfort" line. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 21:29, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh - wrong section, then, I guess. Yaron Koren (talk) 23:18, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yep, sorry, I was referring to your second bullet point. I wrote that before your comment was broken up. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 08:38, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I gave several examples, and elaborated on one of them (see Talk:Code of conduct for technical spaces/Draft. You may not to be satisfied, but I still think it's a good example.  There is no way anyone can guarantee what would happen in the future in the absence of a particular clause.  But I've already made my case that this clause helps clarity. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:41, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * You think someone implementing a program for the WMF might, in the absence of these guidelines, be found guilty of harassment for implementing that program? That was the gist of your example, if I understood it correctly. Yaron Koren (talk) 21:10, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

''This is not a very neutral section title, but I'm putting things here to avoid even more redundancy. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 00:31, 3 October 2015 (UTC)''

"Criticism of racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions"
Challenging behavior that's oppressive to marginalized groups is important. Calling people racist or sexist is the worst possible way of doing that, and should not be implicitly encouraged, and should not be automatically excluded from being a code of conduct violation. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * People who further oppress marginalised people should not be uniformly protected from being called on their behaviour. Whether you or I consider it an effective way of handling that behaviour effectiveness is not a valid governor on the behaviour of marginalised people - particularly when what is and is not effective is defined by members of non-marginalised groups. Ironholds (talk) 18:46, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The wording here is very specific: criticizing "behavior or assumptions". None of these say anything about whether someone is "racist or sexist". When someone is very invested in an idea of themselves as a person who treats other people fairly, it can be very hard for them to hear that their behavior isn't having the effect of upholding their values, or that some of the assumptions they're making as they plan or discuss are neither useful nor accurate and have the effect of perpetuating these oppressive assumptions. They may hear criticism of their behavior as a statement of which kind of person they are. It's a common and understandable response, and these conversations are difficult all around. I do think the wording here is specific enough. Is there something that you think would make the distinction more clear? --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that this is needed. Also, I don't think the current wording protects calling someone a racist. Criticizing behavior is different than calling someone names. Kaldari (talk) 23:44, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

"Participate in an authentic and active way"
What does "participate in an authentic and active way" mean? I really have no clue, and in a document like this, any part that doesn't communicate a clear, specific expectation of behavior waters down the parts that do. —Neil P. Quinn (talk) 05:15, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it basically means approximately "Do your best to use your strengths to move the technical work forward", as opposed to things like bikeshedding. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 19:58, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, pretty much. Don't drop out because people don't want to do it precisely your way. Don't use the project to play out power struggles. Don't play games about what you really think is the best way because someone you don't like suggested it before you did. None of these are what I would consider "authentic and active", but all of them happen in open source. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * That could use some rephrasing; those words mean nothing to me. Be honest? Be open? (FWIW I still think the TODO CoC does a much better job of positives and we could just use that.) --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 07:30, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Seems more like a desired behavior than an "expected behavior". I'm neutral on including it. Kaldari (talk) 23:50, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Community members are expected to "Participate in an authentic and active way" - as someone else noted, this doesn't seem to make any sense. A literal reading of it would indicate that people are going to get in trouble for not devoting enough of their time to Wikimedia projects - which may be a good solution, given the large backlog of projects that exists, but is probably not the intended meaning. The word "authentic" in there is similarly inscrutable. Yaron Koren (talk) 13:36, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This was explained above in response to Neil's comment. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:41, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I saw the explanation, but (a) it didn't seem to have any connection to the "authentic and active" wording, and (b) the thing that would become official policy is the code of conduct, not code of conduct + talk page explanations. Yaron Koren (talk) 21:10, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the explanation, but it still doesn't mean much to me other than "be good to each other"—which (1) goes without saying and (2) is unfortunately not sufficient to build, or even very helpful in building, an inclusive community. I think the fact that it's open to about a hundred different interpretations (for an example of the subjectivity of "authenticity", I suggest "Hillary Clinton's authenticity problem, and ours") and that it has to be explained at all suggests that it's just going to confuse people and make the document sound fluffy and aspirational when in fact it's meant to be specific and binding.—Neil P. Quinn-WMF (talk) 18:58, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with Neil and Yaron that this point is not helpful. It's also contrary to our global assume good faith principle, as it encourages processo alle intenzioni. --Nemo 07:26, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

"Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts"
"Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts." This seem like it falls neatly under "reasonable communication of boundaries" to me. Is there a good reason to single out social justice concepts?—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 05:15, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I read the "reasonable communication" as about someone coming up to you and saying "but X, let's talk about it" and you not wanting to. Refusal-to-explain, on the other hand, covers scenarios where someone is sanctioned or cautioned or warns and chooses to turn the discussion into a debate over the validity of the underlying premise ("Prove to me privilege is even a thing!"). This is common and very derailing, and as you note, explicitly calling things out > implicitly calling things out. Ironholds (talk) 11:50, 30 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Neil, I think the "refusal to debate" is a way to avoid "sealioning" -- hitting someone with an unceasing barrage of very politely-phrased questions, in order to wear the other person down and get them to stop participating. (If you're not familiar with the term, it comes from this Wondermark comic.)
 * I've experienced that before -- not in a Wikimedia space, but in other forums, mostly when I was in college. There's two different ways it's come up for me. In one case, somebody says something derogatory about gay people. I say, dude, I'm gay and you're being a jerk. Or it just comes up in conversation, not connected to a derogatory statement.
 * What happens is there's a long conversation about sexual orientation and privilege and why do people have to come out and tell people, etc., which goes on way longer than I have any patience for. I didn't want to lead a seminar on the topic; I just wanted to say something about it and then move on with my life. At the end of the day, what everybody learns is that if you're gay, you shouldn't bring it up.
 * Like I said, this hasn't happened to me personally in a Wikimedia space, but it's an annoying way to harass somebody and I think it's worth calling out in the code of conduct. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 22:06, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * We are not really calling it out though; we are saying that people won't be sanctioned for not participating in it, and even if that wouldn't declared it would be completely unreasonable to assume otherwise. So that statement feels a bit dishonest to me, a kind of coatrack statement for implying that "if you come here, you are expected to be familiar with social justice concepts" or "challanging the validity of SJ concepts won't be tolerated". Which is probably not a message we want to give and I wouldn't mind omitting that bullet point. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 07:30, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It doesn't mean either of those things. It means, "No one here has an obligation to educate you about these concepts, so don't badger them into doing so, or complain (formally or informally) if they don't.  If you want to learn about these things, you're welcome to do so in other places.". Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 19:53, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I disagree with your assessment of this as a "coatrack statement", and agree with Mattflaschen-WMF above. As a separate matter, I also am perfectly fine with giving the messages you object to. If I'd expected this community to be familiar with social justice concepts, I wouldn't have needed nearly as much reassurance before applying for the internship that really brought me into the tech community here. As it was, I only applied because I had met and trusted my mentor. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 23:02, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I think this is a dangerous road opening here, as this clause can be easily subverted to brand a dissenting voice as abuser and then refuse to even explain what the alleged violation consists of. I, for instance, genuinely have no idea what "social justice concepts" even are, maybe because my cultural background is not US-based. So for me it looks like a clause that allows to shut down any discussion by just pronouncing "it's social justice concept and we don't discuss those so I'm not telling you why, but I won". I would prefer something more clear here. --Smalyshev (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't say this statement is dangerous but I do agree with Tgr that it seems to imply "if you come here, you are expected to be familiar with social justice concepts", which I think is opaque and unrealistic. I can totally understand and support people saying, "no, I'm not writing a ten-page dissertation about why word X is offensive", but I don't think that's how the sentence will be read.
 * If what we are trying to say is: "people don't have the obligation to explain at length why they find certain things offensive. If you're asked to stop, stop" (which I think is what you were getting at, Ironholds and DannyH), I'd support saying so.—Neil P. Quinn-WMF (talk) 19:20, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Neil: Yeah, I think that's a good point. I don't think it would hurt to make some of these phrases more accessible to people who aren't familiar with the "social justice" vocabulary. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:30, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

"Publication of non-harassing private communication"
"Publication of non-harassing private communication" entry as an example of "harassing" behaviour. I have no intention of abiding by such a rule where not covered by a real NDA. This is supposed to be a code of conduct, not an NDA. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 10:18, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I think you are mixing private communication with confidential information. Private communication is when we are having a conversation, an email exchange, etc, and then one day I publish somewhere something private you had shared with me. This CoC allows you to report my inappropriate behavior. Confidential information is what NDAs handle. If I as a WMF employee have access to some confidential information about WMF plans or data and I leak it to the public, you can report me to HR for breaching my NDA, but the CoC will have nothing to do with it.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 12:23, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think the distinction matters, but private communications can theoretically include confidential information which you wouldn't be able to publish. It remains that this CoC would prevent you from publishing your own private communications with someone, which is entirely unacceptable. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 12:54, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * What this CoC does is to enable people to report an incident when they feel they have been offended or disrespected by someone else publishing non-harassing private communication. Then a committee would evaluate whether that action was offending / disrespectful indeed, and would take action only if that was the case. The point is still whether the intention is to harass, offend or disrespect someone.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 13:09, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * No, it does much more than that: "Project administrators and maintainers have the right and responsibility to take action on any communication or contribution that violates this code of conduct." -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 16:09, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, note how this is effectively a list of things that are always considered harassment. I think you're expecting more of the committee than is actually in the document we're discussing here. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 16:11, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It is not true that these things are "always considered harassment". It specifically says, "Harassment and other types of inappropriate behavior" [emphasis added].  It's quite clear from the text in the second version that project maintainers have broad discretion in how to respond.  In a borderline case, this might just be privately saying "In the future, it would be best not to re-publish private emails without someone's approval".  Similarly, the text is also explicit that an individual member can "Decide not to take action", and this will stand unless the full committee decides to override.  All of this is in the actual document (although the "Handling reports" sections is not being finalized yet). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:10, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This rule can be interpreted to consider any publishing of private communication as harassment/inappropriate. It is not inherently either of those things. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 14:59, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think this one line turns the CoC into an NDA. However, "NDA" is just a label.  Let's look at the actual provision.  You've said, "I have no intention of abiding by such a rule" and "It remains that this CoC would prevent you from publishing your own private communications with someone, which is entirely unacceptable".  Obviously, if you got someone's approval, you could then publish private messages they sent you.  But let's assume you didn't.  Why would it be an appropriate thing to go ahead and publish it anyway when it was private and they wanted it to remain such? Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:10, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It may or may not be appropriate to publish it, but this rule considers any sort of publishing of private communications to be inappropriate. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 14:59, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * To paraphrase a point User:Tgr (WMF) made below: if there's something that you don't want to be publicly known because you fear you may be harassed over it, you might talk about it in private (e.g. IRC PMs) with a few people. If one of those people then turns around and publishes such a conversation, that opens you up to harassment (not just from within the community, but outside of it as well: our wikis and mailing lists are public). This is one reason why publishing/sharing private conversations without permission is not appropriate. In this particular example I'd probably consider it harassment, but even if it's not something obviously harassing like "OMG LOOK SO-AND-SO IS A [slur about their personal life]", publishing private conversations without asking for permission first is still inappropriate. --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 21:04, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The publishing itself should not be considered harassment/inappropriate. I should not have to - and will not, regardless of the outcome of this discussion - seek permission to quote trivial things people say to me. I am seriously disappointed in, and have lost an awful lot of respect for, a lot of people who have been supporting this, especially you. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 14:59, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * What you define as trivial things, other people may not - that's why it's good and frankly basic politeness to ask first before republishing. That's what that seeking of permission is attempting to guarantee. Ironholds (talk) 15:02, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Krenair, do you think publishing a private email against the sender's wish is fine (at least in some cases)? Or do you think that's a bad thing to do but not something that should be regulated in a code of conduct? Or do you not oppose discouraging it via the code of conduct in general but think that the way we phrased it is wrong? --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 07:25, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The sender might not like it, but in the absence of my agreement to the contrary I have every right to post such things. We need to be able to publicly call out things other people tell us via private messaging, or we could risk seriously damaging our ability to be transparent. It's definitely necessary in some cases, and this code could cause issues there. If we added a 'without permission' qualifier to it, it'd still cause issues even when you only want to make trivial, uncontroversial things public. I am not prepared to compromise on this - this line has got to go or I will not agree to the code. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 09:50, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Generally, I agree with Krenair that this line is problematic. It's not that publishing private communication is always OK or that we shouldn't be careful about using good judgement and asking permission.  It's that the category of "publish a private communication" is too broad.  It's too common of human behavior to re-tell stories told by others or to recall some good advice and provide attribution.  While I agree with Qgil that this would likely work itself out through the good judgement of "project maintainers" and committee members, but when we're relying on judgement, we should be vague rather than specific.  The "Publication of non-harassing private communication" is listed without qualification under the heading "Unacceptable behavior".  I don't think that does a good job of conveying the concern (opening someone to harassment inadvertently or purposefully) and it seems clear from this discussion that some people interpreted the wording differently than others.  --EpochFail (talk) 04:13, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Mattflaschen, Tgr - In some 30 years on the Net, I've faced some complicated moral issues regarding the norm of privacy of email. I generally believe such privacy should be respected, as matter of ethics. HOWEVER, there are rare but notable instances where I think such a rule must be subservient to competing ethical concerns. Unfortunately, such instances tend to occur in situations likely to be the subject of a code-of-conduct argument. One point you mention is "harassing" communication, which has always been an exception to that norm. A personal exception I have myself, regards people being dishonest. That is, if someone sends me an email, and then is publicly misleading or deceptive about it, I will not necessary refrain from calling them to account because "it was private email". This situation has happened in my life. It's not too hard to see the problem playing out in a code-of-conduct argument. Say X and Y are having a dispute. X sends a private email to Y, "If you don't immediately completely apologize to me, I'll bring you up on charges, your reputation will be ruined, you'll never get a job again, etc. etc.". Y declines. X then publicly posts "I have tried very hard to amicably resolve this incident with Y, but Y has refused". Y publicly posts "Amicably? X tried to intimidate me! Here is what X really said (posts email)". Question - is Y wrong to do this? Without the actual words of X, it's just he-said/she-said. Should X now be able to add another formal charge against Y for some committee's consideration? This seems quite problematic to me, especially given the bias of other parts of the draft code currently. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 23:16, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * can you provide examples of situations where someone would publish private information without asking consent in good faith, be reported for violating the CoC, and be sanctioned by the Committee? Even if I understand the theoretical scenarios you propose, I honestly cannot imagine practical situations likely to happen in our community. See also this proposal, which covers the case of reporting inappropriate behavior with bad intentions, which seems to be the kind of situations you want to avoid.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 23:54, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * the problem is the last part of your request, "... and be sanctioned by the Committee". One may postulate the Committee will have the Patience of Job, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Stamina of Atlas, etc. Me, I have grown into a very jaded and cynical disposition. Though I'm also still "semi-formalist" to some extent (.i.e. rules matter), which is in tension. That is, any example I give, you can just reply the Committee will do the right thing. In which case, why have any rules at all, besides "Don't be a jerk" - and say the Committee will always be right about who is the jerk. In my hypothetical, I can very well see a Committee stating that publishing the email is violating privacy, and it's part of a campaign to harass the sender. Most especially with the current clause of "marginalized people's safety over privileged people's comfort" (i.e. publishing that email made the sender unsafe ). That is, continuing my example above, suppose X replies "All the things Y claims as so-called intimidation were just my attempts to impress on Y the seriousness of Y's misbehavior and the reasons Y needs to change immediately and make amends to me - I see it made Y uncomfortable, but Y's posting that now makes me fear for my safety". Yes, I see you have proposed removing/replacing it, but it does indicate a perspective which is evidently not hypothetical. What if the situation is a bit less clear, but the receiver thinks the email shows the sender is generally not a credible accuser, and it's still worthwhile to post? It's problematic to make this type of assumed defending oneself into a "double-or-nothing" dilemma via some sort of liability rule. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 01:48, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it's important that you first recognise that this covers not just explicitly private information, but also anything sent over private communications. I'm not going to address "and be sanctioned by the Committee" because Seth Finkelstein has done a far better job of it - the committee being unlikely to do such a thing is simply not going to cut it. There have been cases (historically - nothing current) where I have seriously considered publishing private communications that have been sent to me purely because the sender refused to put their reasoning for requesting features on the public bug tracker - nothing about the sender personally, but about processes and rationales for features in public software. Let's pretend for a moment that this line is modified to allow for senders to consent to private communications being published: Even in group chat cases where the major (or majority of) contributors to a conversation consent to publication but one or two are missed, there could be a violation of this rule. This could cause issues not just in IRC channels but on private mailing lists and who knows where else? And if someone emails a community member privately about something that violates our values, they should be expected to 'blow the whistle' and report it publicly, rather than be prevented from starting a discussion because of this code (which is supposedly to prevent harassment). Maybe there's some way out of the transparency issues with some "with intent to cause harassment" language, but I am sceptical. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 21:13, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks Seth, those are good points. IMO the committee can be expected to do the right thing in uncontroversial cases; if someone publishes an email with a clear intent of harassment, they can deal with it whether or not there is a rule about it. There are two failure modes where a rule is useful: someone publishing a private email for some innocent reason but involuntarily exposing the writer to harassment from third parties, and someone publishing an email from someone they are in a conflict with, and then claiming that they published it for valid reasons and never considered that it would result in harassment (and then the committee would have to decide if they are speaking the truth, which is generally a hard problem). A rule can help by educating people (and thus taking away the plausible deniability). Narrower phrasing is fine as long as we make it clear that not exposing the sender to harassment is the publisher's responsibility; publishing an email and then throwing our hands up and saying we haven't considered what problems it would cause to the other person is not OK. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 07:24, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Useful link: Secrecy of correspondence. In general, it's always unhelpful when the documents try to affirm (or protect itself from) constitutional concepts. We're not writing a constitution, thanks. Nemo 07:30, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * First, I completely disagree with the idea that we can not mention anything that is mentioned in some constitution, somewhere. For example, some constitutions say that you may not discriminate against someone on the basis of their religion.  Does that mean we should not have a "regardless of [...] religion" line?  No, it is still quite appropriate policy for our community.  In addition, you are distorting the meaning of "secrecy of correspondence" as implemented in constitutions.  It actually means that no one can (in theory, in certain jurisdictions) intercept communications before they reach the recipient.
 * The draft line disallowing, "Publication of non-harassing private communication" addresses something entirely different. It is saying that in our community (we are setting policy for our community, not implementing a constitution), you must respect the confidentiality (with one given exception) of private communications received by you.  This has nothing to do with "a fundamental legal principle enshrined in the constitutions of several European countries" Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:41, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, as an atheist I feel discriminated by the mention of religion, which is giving a privilege to non-atheists. Hence I'd very much like it removed. Constitutions do a better job at... providing constitutional principles. Nemo 21:11, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

An attempt to clarify the sentence and avoid several concerns expressed above:


 * Publication of private communication when the result exposes the sender to harassment.

Disclosure of personal details is already covered in the previous point of the CoC. This item is about disclosing other types of information that makes someone a target for harassment. These two items should cover most cases of harassment and disrespect. In my opinion, the sentence proposed does a better job at making clear why this behavior is inappropriate.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 22:30, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * your feedback on this alternative is welcomed. We agreed to give us an extra week to resolve some open discussions, and this is one of them.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:38, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I like that wording. I didn't mind the previous version, but I like this better. It's narrower and still accomplishes what it needs to. --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 17:53, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Not perfect (I think ideally we'd put something about intention in, but I don't think it'd work in practice), but much better. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 17:55, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I think the new wording makes the intention of the item more clear without decreasing its effectiveness, so I would support it. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 20:24, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it is problematic. It makes something unacceptable or not based on possible future consequences, which is not a great guideline for people trying to decide how to act. Also, the harassment doesn't actually need to happen to discourage participation. If you have an experience (personal or conveyed by people belonging in the same marginalized group) of published private communication resulting in harassment, you will probably be hesitant to join a community where publishing private emails without permission is the norm, even if in that specific community it has never so far resulted in harassment. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 20:54, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * An alternative phrasing that would remove the annoyance of asking for permission every time you want to publish something trivial is Publication of private communication unless you are confident the other party wouldn't mind.
 * That does not deal with whistleblowing / claims of private harassment, but I don't think that's a problem - there should be private channels to report those things, and public claims of impropriety should be a last resort. Dealing with these things by inciting public outrage is exactly the kind of verbal Weimarization that a good code of conduct policy is supposed to prevent. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:05, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I am a little confused here; we seem to be against a principle that I though would've been a given, related to violation of perceived privacy. If two people are discussing something in private, there's the assumption of privacy, and hence, publishing such conversation is out of etiquette even if it doesn't result in "exposing the sender to harassment". If there's a need or desire to publish some private communication, then the participants should agree to it. Once they agree to publish this communication, it is no longer private, and hence, the rule doesn't apply to it. Many laws and regulations use the same principle, as well, this "assumption of privacy" when dealing with violation of privacy or problems with it. I really don't quite understand what the problem is with that sentence? Moreover, changing it to include the caveat that it is only wrong when it exposes the sender to harassment puts the responsibility on the victim to prove that they suffered damage, which is something the CoC is supposed to prevent to begin with, isn't it? I am really confused here, maybe someone can explain what the issue is with the original sentence? I really don't understand. I didn't expect it to be controversial at all, honestly. MSchottlender-WMF (talk) 01:11, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * You are very wrong about it being a given - many people will open a private conversation (face-to-face instead of talking to a group, private mailing lists, IRC channels, etc.) for things which do not need to be private at all. An assumption of privacy is that no one else will be reading your conversation - not that the other person won't later pass on what they learnt. Why should a CoC prevent you from having to provide proof when complaining about something? As for why it's an issue, refer to the above conversation. If this line as written goes into an actual policy, it will lead to very anti-transparent behaviour, because no one will be able to repeat what others have told them individually, you will not be able to call people out publicly for wrongdoing that they inform you of, etc. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 14:33, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Private communication is not just face to face. It can be an email, or a private message, or a hangout chat. By the fact that one person speaks to another in a non-public manner, we assume the conversation remains in that non-public context. I am not the only one who makes this assumption -- which is why, once again, there are laws and regulations defining what constitutes an assumption of privacy in various situations, whether it was explicitly laid out or not.
 * If you think a certain private conversation shouldn't be private, you can simply state so, and the other party can agree -- but by taking a one-sided decision, you strip the decision from the person speaking to you, without knowing why he or she made that decision in the first place. You assume, you don't know, and you assume that you're right, and they're wrong, and with that assumption, you risk breaking their trust. Worse, though, with that assumption, you may bring unintended consequences to the person whose decision you are flipping, without even realizing it. All you need to do is ask "can we talk about this in public?" or, alternatively, "can I send this to list X for others to participate?" You will either get a yes, which wasted negligible amount of your time to ask, or you'll get a "no" which will show you that the person in front of you had a reason not to ask said question in public. At that point, you can either choose to not continue the conversation or to continue it privately.
 * You don't necessarily know what the "price" would be for publishing a private conversation. Perhaps that person has an issue with their social or professional group, and publishing "I don't feel comfortable doing X" hurts them in their standing in that group. Perhaps it's a cultural thing that neither of us are aware of, and will hurt that person personally if it is plastered online in our very very public mailing lists. We don't know what the consequences are, so while it's not illegal for you to publish the conversation, it surely should be unadvised. It is not the right thing to do in the majority of cases, and it should be said so in our Code of Conduct. And if there are exceptional cases where that decision was, actually, the right thing to do, then like all exceptional cases in this and other documents, we will deal with them exceptionally.
 * As for proof, that is a different matter. You can provide proof without plastering said proof online. In fact, that is probably recommended in many cases and, if followed, would reduce the amount of personal shaming we see online. But even so, this is an exceptional case. The vast majority of cases that this example refers to are cases where someone publishes someone else's personal communication without consent. Private communications that are provided as proof should have a way to be provided privately (or at least semi privately), and if there is no way, then we are dealing with the exception to the rule, and not the rule itself, in which case we will deal with this with exceptions. It might, in fact, be a very good idea to lay out rules on how someone can and should conduct themselves in case they are accused of something this CoC covers. I am all for starting a section about it. MSchottlender-WMF (talk) 17:29, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Clearly you have very different expectations about where to draw the line between an individual chat and confidential. I find it difficult to believe that you have only ever used such a private chat to talk about truely private things. Even I sometimes go to PM someone just because it's only relevant to them (and it doesn't actually need to be private, but I feel no need to clarify that). As for "Private communication is not just face to face" - you're right of course, but you've completely missed the point. It will be interpreted as included in private communication, and therefore disclosing anything learnt in it to be a violation of the code of conduct. You appear to have fallen down the same hole arguing over specific information that could cause personal harassment, where you actually need to justify this outright ban on disclosing information from private conversations. The current language makes an exception for harassing private communication, but fails to recognise that there are other reasons you might need to disclose things other people have said to bring attention to their actions. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 18:29, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think I do, and I also don't think we are talking about the same thing. I never said "confidential". Confidential is different than private. It is really very simple; if I contact you in private, I assume it's private. If you're not sure, you can ask. It takes less than 3 seconds to ask, and hurts no one. While I may have many conversations that were done in private but were possibly not necessary to be private, my assumption when I started those conversations is that we are in a private setting. That allows me to communicate differently than if I was in public. If the partner(s) of said communication wanted to move the conversation to a public venue, all they did was ask. Sometimes the answer was "oh, sure" and sometimes it was "I'd rather not". That's why we ask. We give that courtesy to people who talk to us privately, so they can feel comfortable talking to us. I don't quite see what the problem about the definition is.
 * Also, I think I am missing the bigger issue here. Is there a reason you are so adamantly insisting on being able to publish private communication, or deciding on your own what "wasn't supposed to be private" and what was? Can you give me an example where doing that as a one-sided decision (Without asking permission to do so from the other participant(s)) is the right thing to do? I don't mean to diminish the experience here, I am really just curious to see if our different experiences explain the fact we seem to be defining "expectation of privacy" so much differently? MSchottlender-WMF (talk) 18:59, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I am getting tired of this, I feel like I am repeating myself and am being ignored here by people who are refusing to get the point. Yes, you assume it's private - between you and the person in the conversation. That means either of you may decide to send it on to someone else, or mention it publicly, later, and you would expect the other person to use their judgement before doing so to determine whether it should be shared or not depending on the subject/content. If I tell you how to write some code in private message, you expect to be able to then go and upload that code for code review, and also then later tell someone else why you decided to do it that way, right? I should not have to give permission for this just because you might wrongly trust someone with something that could potentially lead to you being harassed.
 * Yes, you must be able to decide on your own what is supposed to be private or not, without having someone else later able to turn around and ban you from everything because of it.
 * No more examples are going to be provided. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 16:26, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Consider, alternately, that people absolutely understand your point but simply do not in any way agree with it. Ironholds (talk) 17:55, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Most of the people who seem to disagree aren't offering solutions. So far I'm not convinced that most do understand it, and perhaps don't even want to understand it. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 21:55, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

"Inappropriate or unwanted publication of private communication" has been proposed as a compromise, and like Kaldari I am not sure why you oppose this compromise so strongly. Here is my understanding of your position: Am I misunderstanding any of these? --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 00:56, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * When it comes down to it, you consider transparency in the movement to be more important than any individual's expectations of privacy, to the point that you have stated that you will not ask for permission before publishing someone's communications with you (on "trivial" matters, at least) even if the rest of the community comes to the consensus that it is against its standards.
 * You expect that others will agree with your judgement of what is "trivial", and therefore ok to share without permission, or that it doesn't really matter if they do not.
 * You interpret "Publication of communication" very broadly. Based on what you have written here, you categorize summarizing the contents of a discussion or writing publicly available code based on private feedback in the same bucket as posting private emails or chat transcripts for public discussion and storage in a permanent, publicly accessible and searchable archive.


 * I find this a complicated subject. As often, the extremes are clear ('I discussed this with X and they said this was a good method' during code review is OK, 'X is struggling with ' is clearly not OK) are clear, but the gray zone inbetween is not so clear. Is it OK to copy-paste a private support request into a Phab task? Is it OK to report someone if they privately tell you they are abusing their privileges ('X told me they are running a Counter-Strike server on Labs')? And what if it's something that you find is morally wrong but not against actual rules?
 * The second question then is: do these constitute harassment, and if they do, are they covered by the other rules already? The examples I can come up with are either already covered by the policy (medical condition = doxxing), not OK but also not harassment (copy-pasting a private support request) or something that should be allowed (reporting the CS server).
 * I'd therefore like to suggest something different. Instead of considering this as harassing behavior, we could make a note in the expected behavior: 'Exercise restraint when discussing contents of one-on-one conversations with third parties'. This a) makes it clear that one-on-one conversations should not be copy-pasted without consideration, but b) also makes it clear that one-on-one conversations are not necessarily also private. Valhallasw (talk) 20:32, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe, under expected behaviour, something like 'Excercise judgement when discussing the contents of one-on-one conversations publicly'? -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 22:22, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That's vague to the point of meaninglessness, except where it's specific to the point of meaninglessness. Presumably if I publish private conversations between you, me and a third party, that's totally okay here. Also, if I publish private conversations but thought really hard about whether it was a good idea, I exercised my judgment and it's totally okay here - even if my judgment was fundamentally flawed. We are spelling these things out explicitly for a reason: because ambiguities invite misunderstandings on the part of possible perpetrators that reduces the ability of the code of conduct to serve as an effective guide to community newcomers, and because ambiguities invite loopholes that reduces the ability of the code of conduct to actually be enforced. Ironholds (talk) 03:40, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I would appreciate it if you would also respond to the rest of my message. Yes, this wording is (on purpose, because it's an expectation, not a rule) somewhat vague, but not more vague than 'Inappropriate or unwanted publication of private communication.'. In addition, that text still prohibits the 'X told me they are running a Counter-Strike server on Labs but told me to keep it secret' case. The original text 'Publication of non-harassing private communication' even prohibits the 'I discussed this with X and they said this was a good method' case and is therefore unworkably broad. Or do you feel those examples should be considered harassment? Valhallasw (talk) 07:29, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I would not consider either of those "publication of communication", so I wasn't thinking of those scenarios. To take the Counter-Strike example:
 * Discreetly forwarding the email to other Labs admins to figure out what to do about that: not publication (not publicly accessible), so, acceptable.
 * Mentioning, in a public email, that someone (or even that particular person) had admitted running the server: not publishing their words, so, acceptable.
 * Quoting a few words or a line or so, as in "This person said the Labs servers were like '[their] own personal playground'": depending on how much is quoted, a grey area.
 * Forwarding their email to Labs-l for public posting and archiving: making their words, which were probably not written with an eye towards public consumption, publicly available: not acceptable without consent except in extraordinary circumstances.
 * One of the cases this tries to avoid is providing fodder for harassment (mob or otherwise) or other poor treatment when words that were written for one audience are suddenly put out there for anyone random to analyze at length without the context expected by the author. This has happened repeatedly in other communities with bad effects, and it's an important protection to offer in ours. At the same time, working with others will call for sharing communications sometimes. Our community standards should balance this and try to minimize overall risks of harm. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 00:38, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok, thank you for clarifying that. I think we are on the same line when it comes to what behavior is OK and what is not, but differ in our opinion whether the current draft statement addresses this well. There's probably also a language barrier issue here, where maybe I'm interpreting the line more strictly than a native English speaker would. In any case, the discussion is essentially already closed (so much for my "No time to respond now, let's make some time for it in the weekend"), so I suppose we should just see how this works out in practice. Valhallasw (talk) 14:43, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Odd, I'd think bullet 2 would be a grey area too. How does changing a few words avoid opening someone up to harassment? Anomie (talk) 13:10, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Sure, depending on the level of paraphrasing, that could be a grey area. (An analogy: changing a few words doesn't prevent a passage you're sharing from being plagiarism, even when credit is given, and there is a grey area there as well. We still prohibit plagiarism.) MSchottlender-WMF already described the particular issues when a message written for a specific audience is suddenly shared publicly. When information is summarized for sharing, the wording and tone are not preserved; while nothing can entirely prevent harassment, this rule of thumb will at least help avoid words being taken out of context. For example, someone might write a joking or a frustrated email for one particular audience, which is then shared publicly and used as "proof" of unprofessionalism, bias, incompetence, etc. by people looking to make the author look bad. Summarizing the contents, if they need to be shared, does not offer the same risk. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Another problem I want to bring up with the current language is that it acknowledges that it may be appropriate to call some communications out publicly, but only attempts to cover that single example (harassing communications), which is highly problematic. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 21:55, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

New proposal, welcomes feedback
I think MSchottlender-WMF has a point which is representative of others' concerns (including mine in my first comments in this discussion). I also agree with Tgr (WMF) that my last proposal is problematic because not even in good faith someone can be certain that some disclosure will not make someone a target of harassment. So what about this:
 * Inappropriate or unwanted publication of private communication.

/ /  ? It would be great if we could reach a decision by the end of Wednesday 21.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:31, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * We are using the "Inappropriate or unwanted" formula already, which was discussed at length but ended up being accepted over other alternatives.
 * The "inappropriate" part leaves room for appropriate cases i.e. reporting something in good faith believing that is wrong and needs to be known.
 * The "unwanted" part leaves room for wanted/neutral cases where the person is confident that the publication is unproblematic.
 * Just like with touching, stalking, etc, different people might have different opinions about what is inappropriate or unwanted, but social conventions exist, and they work most of times (i.e. this hasn't been a relevant problem in our tech community so far?).
 * We're going to leave this for more discussion, probably until the 28th. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 22:10, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Consensus reached. Most participants were okay with this as a compromise. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 22:28, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

for the same reasons as above. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 16:15, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm confused. It seems that this new wording is mostly to address the concerns you raised above, i.e. that the rule would effectively consider "any publishing of private communication as harassment/inappropriate." Why is this new wording still not acceptable to you? Personally, I think it goes too far to assuage your concerns, i.e. it puts too much of a burden on the victim. Kaldari (talk) 23:10, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
 * 'unwanted' means pretty much any publishing of private communications can be against the code. 'inappropriate' is too open to interpretation. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 13:59, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, the first is rather the point. There are a lot of things that are good to do when both parties agree, but which become hurtful when one person goes ahead and does them without regard for the other's wishes, and publishing private communication is one of them. If you guess right on what is trivial and ok with the other person to share (or just ask first), you shouldn't run into "unwanted", except in whistle-blowing situations that most would consider "appropriate" (and even there, sharing specific communications publicly is a pretty extreme measure--although sometimes justified). Do you have a suggestion to make "inappropriate" clearer? --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * You want to make it clearer, while addressing my concerns? No, it seems the idea is fully incompatible, and needs to go otherwise I cannot agree to this. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 18:24, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "fully incompatible"? Is your opinion that any sharing of private communication is acceptable, whether there was an expectation of privacy or not? Earlier you just said that it was too open to interpretation. Kaldari (talk) 03:06, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I think this is a good compromise that addresses the original concerns while still allowing for common sense (e.g. if someone sends you suggested code for a WMF-deployed extension you're working on, the clear unwritten implication is that you'll eventually be uploading it publicly to Gerrit). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:57, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

This wording addresses my previously stated concerns. Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 22:24, 21 October 2015 (UTC) Reluctant support - Honestly, I think this wording puts too much of a burden on the victim. They will now be expected to prove that they expressed a preference that their private communication was not meant to be shared publicly. I prefer the existing wording. That said, it doesn't look like there's much chance of getting consensus on the existing wording, so I guess this compromise is the best I can hope for :( Kaldari (talk) 23:16, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
 * comment disclaimer: I strongly support the creation of a CoC. Just FYI: publishing private communications is already forbidden by law in some Countries, such as Italy. As a general suggestion I'll start creating a *core* CoC, dealing with harassment (both online and offline) and outing. Minor issues should be addressed later. --Vituzzu (talk) 22:36, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That it is handled by law is not relevant. Legal systems vary wildly by country, time and time again police forces have been shown to care not a jot about what happens on the internet, and suggesting that it is the job of individual victims to handle their entire legal system puts a massive and unfair burden on them. I agree, we should start by handling harassment and outing. And the unwanted publishing of private communications in an inappropriate context can be used for harassment and can be outing. So... Ironholds (talk) 03:37, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I would be interested in the wording used there, as (presumably) the 'I discussed this with X and they said Y was a good way to do Z' situation is not illegal. Or maybe it is, and this is left to the prosecutors discretion? Valhallasw (talk) 07:29, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

While I, too, prefer the existing wording to this one, I think the proposed one an acceptable compromise. MSchottlender-WMF (talk) 23:23, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

. What Kaldari/Moriel said, basically. Ironholds (talk) 03:35, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

What Kaldari/Moriel said, likewise. Having "inappropriate" there ameliorates the burden on the person whose words were shared, at least. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

This is definitely better than the existing wording. "Unwanted" is somewhat vague, but it's no worse than "unwanted attention" ("I don't want you to notice me misbehaving!") or "unwanted communication" ("I don't want you to tell me to stop!"). Anomie (talk) 15:01, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

"Our open source community acknowledges the presence of systemic inequity and oppression and prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people's comfort."
The community "prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people's comfort" - from the viewpoint of this document, isn't one person's safety always more important than another person's comfort, regardless of their privilege? Including this sentence makes it seem like the answer is no - which is highly provocative. Actually, there may even be some legal drawbacks to this phrasing (if, say, a person "of privilege" gets injured at an event), but I'm not a lawyer. Yaron Koren (talk) 13:36, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree everyone's safety is important (more important than "comfort" as reasonably interpreted), and I don't think this would affect any liability judgement. This line is used in many CoC's, including the TODO CoC template. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:41, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I know the TODO people came up with it - that does nothing to strengthen my confidence in it. :) If you agree that safety is more important than comfort, why only enforce a subset of that? Yaron Koren (talk) 21:10, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I never said TODO came up with it. It's not only enforcing a subset.  There are additional clear provisions to protect everyone's safety in the CoC.  This is just one explanatory line. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 21:29, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think it really explains anything - it's obviously trying to make a point about dealing with disparities, but (in my opinion) in a ham-handed way that actually says nothing. Yaron Koren (talk) 23:18, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

I am quite uneasy with this clause and its implication that there are two classes of people - "privileged" and "marginalized", both never defined but seemingly having different rights with regard to this policy. I think that removing those ill-defined classifiers and just saying that comfort does not override safety, would be more in alignment with what we are trying to achieve here (which is presumably a welcoming environment for all good faith participants and not trying to split them into two groups and foster a divide between the two). --Smalyshev (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

3 months
"Only resolutions (such as bans) that last 3 months or longer may be appealed by the reported offender. Reported victims can always appeal." -- Ricordi  samoa  04:56, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * you've opened quite several sections here with individual phrases and 'oppose'. We're not currently voting on individual chunks like that (although we are voting on some alterations). If you've got problems with elements I'd suggest opening up a section for discussion, rather than going right to voting, assuming that there aren't pre-existing discussion sections (which there may be in some cases). Ironholds (talk) 14:52, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * this is being discussed at . Please comment there, and remove this duplicated section in order to keep the discussion in one place.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 19:06, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It may look like obstructionism, but that was the only way I could let my voice be heard — it hasn't been so far. -- Ricordi  samoa  05:24, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * In I'm agreeing with you on removing the less-than-3-months exception. Maybe your voice is heard indeed.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 07:59, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

"Project administrators and maintainers"
No clear definition and excessive responsibility placed on volunteers. -- Ricordi  samoa  04:59, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * you already opened a section about this topic. I replied, and you didn't follow up. I have added this definition in the new FAQ.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 19:11, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry for not catching your reply. You wrote "you can report the problem to the committee, and they will find out who is responsible in that context": that could have meant some people would have had a responsibility without knowing. Now the meaning is clearer, and I'm even more deeply opposed to placing such a burden upon volunteers who have accepted greater responsibility as 'maintainers' on a purely technical basis. -- Ricordi  samoa  05:20, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Commitment to a respectful and harassment-free experience for everyone implies responsibilities, yes. What is the alternative? A community where it is fine if maintainers witnessing acts of harassment or disrespect in their projects don't do anything about them, not even reporting them privately?--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:16, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It would be good if the document explicitly said whether admins and maintainers would actually get in trouble for not reporting violations. As I've said elsewhere, this document, especially with its most recent changes, specifies a lot of "recommended" behavior that isn't going to get enforced - the "Participate in an authentic and active way" sentence is probably the most egregious example. So it would be good to know which of the two this is. (And it would also be good if all the non-enforced stuff were moved into a separate document, but that's another story.) Yaron Koren (talk) 14:31, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with Yaron and Ricordisamoa that this passage is problematic. I don't know what a "project administrator" is, but volunteer maintainers don't have any special access to information etc. about possible violations of the code, hence shouldn't have any special burden. Such a clause will certainly be abused: when A hates B for thing X, it's common that A stirs C into doing something about totally unrelated thing Y which B would be in obligation to do something about, so that A gains a chance to objurgate B for failing said obligation, and achieve a "free field" in original camp X. Nemo 07:43, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This might be different for WMF employees, who have access to dozens private wikis, mailing lists and documents and hence may find themselves in a position where if they don't report a violation nobody else will be able to. Nemo 07:43, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * note that the text says "responsibility" to take action, not "obligation". Violations can be complex, and their reporting can be complex as well. The reasons for someone not to report a violation may be so diverse that I would not attempt to define a rule for them all. The person might be an indirect victim, not reporting fearing retaliation. The person might be an accomplice, allowing an act of harassment on purpose. These might be the type of complex cases requiring investigation from the Committee, mentioned in the draft.
 * WMF private spaces are out of scope of the CoC, and the Wikimedia technical spaces within scope are basically public. The point of this sentence is that violations of the CoC should be addressed when witnessed, which is better behavior than letting a victim to help themselves. Administrators and maintainers are in a very good position to help someone being harassed or offended. They are supposed to have experience, permissions, and community contacts including the Committee. This line entitles them to take action (as the CoC recommends even before reporting a violation to the Committee), and also states their responsibility to react to a violation instead of looking away.
 * Even if I see why you might be reticent to "charge these volunteers with more responsibilities", from an ethical point of view I believe that administrators and maintainers have such responsibility already, before any written CoC, as persons who have received an extra dose of trust from their communities. If you join the logic of a Code of Conduct in an open source project, this line is quite obvious.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 23:43, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * If "the logic of a Code of Conduct" has this implication, maybe said logic is incorrect. Nemo 21:07, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * "So it would be good to know which of the two this is." The "Project administrators and maintainers" sentence is definitely meant to be binding. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 00:25, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Qgil disagrees with you... Yaron Koren (talk) 13:11, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I respectfully but firmly disagree with him. A responsibility is something you have to do, and I think that's the only correct interpretation.  Dictionary.com: "1. the state or fact of being responsible, answerable, or accountable for something within one's power, control, or management.", "2. an instance of being responsible", "3. a particular burden of obligation upon one who is responsible".  Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:15, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * You seem to assume that above-average knowledge of some code implies actual ownership of a project and the duty of keeping an eye on every activity within its scope. +2 doesn't. -- Ricordi  samoa  13:26, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Looking the trend at the proposal to remove the section where this sentence sits, I wonder how much we need to get into details. In practice it will depend on circumstances, especially whether the non-reporting caused more damage to the victim or someone else reported immediately, whether the admins/maintainers were at risk as well or not... No matter what we write or not, in complex cases the Committee will have to investigate and decide.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 18:12, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Given not even you and Matt agree on the meaning of this part, it's clearly a time bomb that must be removed. Nemo 21:08, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

New proposal, welcomes feedback

 * "Project administrators and maintainers have the right and responsibility to take action on any communication or contribution that violates this code of conduct."

Others have said that this sentence needs to stay in the CoC, and I agree with them. I think its appropriate location is at the "Report a problem" section, in its own paragraph before "Committee members, administrators, project maintainers, and designated contacts are obligated..." First it was under "Unacceptable behavior", but since the topic is about taking action, the section about reporting is a better fit.

The points raised have been:
 * It is not clear what is an administrator or a maintainer. The answer is clear.
 * This puts an excessive responsibility on volunteers. First of all, most of our tech spaces (and definitely the ones most likely to be the scenario of problems, due to their high activity) have plenty of administrators/maintainers that are not volunteers, but mostly WMF employees. One notable exception is the PyWikiBot project, their maintainers were starting a CoC discussion before joining this one, and so far they have been supportive of this draft. If maintainers of smaller projects with little to no WMF participation don't take the responsibility to take action, then potential victims might be at their mercy, a situation that contrasts with the commitment expressed in the Principles. Secondly, I still don't see why taking action after observing a violation of the CoC is "excessive" responsibility. In plain ethical terms it is the right thing to do, not an excess of ethical behavior, for any witness, even more if you are trusted as an administrator/maintainer by the same community that is committing to this CoC. So no, I don't think this CoC puts excessive responsibility on volunteers.
 * Will admins and maintainers get in trouble for not reporting violations? Mattflaschen-WMF says yes, I say depends, and I believe in practice we agree. Clearly yes when an admin/maintainer is not taking action because is in fact an accomplice. Probably yes when that person is the only witness and not taking action implies continued harassment due to nobody else knowing or taking action. Things get more complicated if the person is not reporting because they are also a victim of that violation and fear retaliation just as much as the primary victim, who is not reporting for fear in the first place. Probably nothing will happen when an admin/maintainer hesitates to take action on a very public violation, but then others step in quickly, with no actual consequences for such omission. What I'm saying is that I'm happy with the sentence as it is now, and in complex cases the Committee will need to investigate, as the draft already says. I think Matt and others agreeing with the sentence can agree on this as well.

Conclusion: the proposal is to keep the sentence as it is, and move it to the "Reporting a problem" page right before "Committee members, administrators, project maintainers..." Please cast your   positionings below. It would be great if we could reach a decision by the end of Wednesday 21.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:35, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of requiring people to enforce something they don't necessarily agree with, but at the minimum they should ensure that people who are willing to enforce it get the necessary permissions. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

At the risk of hyperbole, requiring people to inform on others for non-criminal acts is the hallmark of a police state, not a healthy society or organization. More specifically, why should I, as an extension maintainer, have any special responsibilities in this regard? I administer code, not people. Yaron Koren (talk) 14:07, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * See, the risk of hyperbole is where it might be hyperbole. That's just hyperbole. Nobody said you as an extension maintainer had any responsibilities; the project is Gerrit, or Phabricator, and the administrators there should handle it. Ironholds (talk) 15:18, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I didn't understand any of this. Does this sentence not apply to me, as an extension maintainer? The FAQ says that "Maintainers are identified by their commit rights in a code repository", which would presumably include me. Yaron Koren (talk) 16:33, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Let's look at the case of an extension project with a single active volunteer maintainer. The spaces related would be i.e. one Gerrit project, one Phabricator project, and one page in mediawiki.org. If the sole maintainer sees in these spaces e.g. personal attacks, offensive comments, or sustained disruption of community collaboration, they are going to have a problem in their small community regardless of CoCs and preferences to focus on code and not people. With this CoC, the Wikimedia tech community commits to address this problem even if the sole maintainer takes the path of minimum effort and shares privately at techconduct@ the URLs where the problems can be found. Then the maintainer will see someone from the Committee or the admins of the affected spaces trying to deal with the situation. Looks like a good deal for volunteers aiming to maintain an open and welcoming project, without having having to deal with each social problem themselves.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 17:05, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, once again I'm failing to grasp something. You're talking about how the WMF can help maintainers, which is nice, but it doesn't seem to be connected to the sentence under discussion, which is concerned with only one thing, and that is the punishment of admins and maintainers like myself who fail to report problems. Where is the "good deal" there? Yaron Koren (talk) 17:37, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * If someone is being harassed in a solitary corner of the Wikimedia tech spaces, nobody reports the problem because the victim doesn't know / doesn't dare, because there are not enough witnesses, but one of them is the project maintainer, who is not pointing the problem to anyone even knowing that a CoC, administrators, and a Committee exist, that a possibility to report anonymously and privately exists... then you are right, this CoC is not offering a good deal to such maintainer. And by the way, I don't see how this situation would describe a healthy society or organization.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 22:48, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Even a healthy society or organization has problems, but they usually don't punish the bystanders. Anyway, I believe you've acknowledged my main objection, which is that this sentence would make life more difficult for extension maintainers like me, who freely give our time to develop software and would potentially face extra penalties as a result. Yaron Koren (talk) 23:38, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Your minimum possible requirement is to email someone a URL if you see people behaving inappropriately in the pages related to your extension. Is that too much? Ironholds (talk) 00:07, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, absolutely. The issue isn't the amount of work involved; it's being required to inform on others, and knowing that I potentially face penalties for non-compliance. Yaron Koren (talk) 01:57, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I have sent an email to wikitech-l requesting more opinions about this proposal, especially from admins and maintainers, and very especially from volunteer admins and maintainers. Ideas to reach out to other volunteer maintainers not following wikitech-l are welcomed.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 06:33, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Isn't there an extreme practical problem with requiring some sort of mandatory reporting of "personal attacks" or "offensive comments"? Are people familiar with the dilemma of having "selective enforcement" on one hand (i.e. only the political out-group suffers) versus "zero tolerance" on the other hand? (the most trivial incidents lead to penalties). A long time ago, I was a system administrator. I always took a very hard line against having any sort of quasi-judicial role. My position was that my job was to keep the machines running, because that is what I had skill to do. It was not in my area of expertise to try to distinguish between, e.g. erotica versus pornography (if anyone could - i.e. presuming the latter is a violation and the former is not). Nor was I going to try to rule who was correct if a feminist and a conservative started insulting each other. That way lies, if not madness, or a literal police state, at the very least a highly politicized position for people who are not by nature or training well-suited to that politics. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 03:07, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Looking at our community I don't see any "extreme practical problem" in sending a couple of URLs to the Committee, and let them judge and take action. I think the root of the disagreement is just the disagreement on committing to "making participation in Wikimedia technical projects a respectful and harassment-free experience for everyone". If a community member (admin/maintainer or not) commits to that principle, then taking action is a logical consequence. If that community member doesn't commit to that principle, then not committing to take action is also a logical consequence. The ultimate purpose of the CoC is to provide that "respectful and harassment-free experience for everyone", and that goal is objectively better achieved with the co-responsibility of admins and maintainers explicitly defined, as this sentence does.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 06:56, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Try this sentence instead "If a community member (admin/maintainer or not) commits to (reporting every possible offensive comment for possible action against the speaker) ...". See the problem? The phrasing above masks the issue, by pre-supposing the outcome, as "respectful and harassment-free". But that is like "safe and crime-free", it assumes the conclusion. By analogy, a requirement to report ever possible suspicious person to the authorities for evaluation if they are a criminal could be argued like that - are you for or against security? Again, isn't the problem clear? -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 08:30, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

per explanation above, completely unworkable on a practical basis given the vague and broad potential violations. Too much of a "Three Felonies A Day" potential problem, leading to either enforcement abuse or an overwhelming number of incidents to process. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 03:07, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * With all respect, I think this statement is detached from the sentence being evaluated and the reality of our community. The sentence is not asking admins/maintainers to enforce anything; it is asking them to take action if they witness inappropriate behavior (i.e. send an email to the committee). "Overwhelming number of incidents", where have you ever seen this risk in our technical spaces? Even if that happens in a specific project, that would bring the attention/help from other admins naturally.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 07:09, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Seth, you are proving too much. That argument is not related to maintainers or reporting in any way, and in the end leads to the claim that there should be no rules against anything that happens often. Do you really mean that? (Also, do the things described in the CoC really happen that often?) --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 08:13, 20 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I still have no idea who "administrators and maintainers" are (the FAQ doesn't help understand; besides, I oppose the inclusion of any text which forces us to have further kilobytes of text in explanations in other pages), but I agree with Yaron's very good point as well as Seth. I also reiterate my point above: given not even the proposers agree on what this sentence actually means, its inclusion can only do harm. Nemo 07:15, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Also interesting on mandatory reporting/informing/whistleblowing (obbligo di denuncia/delazione):, , , maybe (only read abstract). Tough topic... --Nemo 08:14, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Qgil, what is "inappropriate behavior", in the sense of, does one have any ability to be selective in reporting (meaning it can then become a tool to use against unpopular group members), or must one report anything that might possibly conceivably potentially offend someone somewhere (and hence the "overwhelming number of incidents")? Both are undesirable outcomes. Note it is not asking, but requiring . Are you familiar with the expression "Is that a request or an order?" (i.e. asking - in which case one can refuse presumably without penalty - or requiring, where one cannot refuse on pain of a penalty).
 * Tgr, mandatory reporting (which to be clear, I am presuming is at issue) is known as problematic for the issues I've been outlining. The outcome is not against having any rules at all, but rather, for carefully considered structures which try to take into account well-known failure-modes. One very bad reasoning process I have seen often, is to simply assume these failure modes away, with an argument that anything can fail, and we'll sort it out among enforcers who are all fair and just (and besides, the argument goes, there's a crime problem). Arguing against this in various forms is a curse of being a cynical person with a civil-libertarian perspective. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 08:30, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * But the lack of mandatory reporting leads to reporting being selectively applied against the outgroup, according to your argument. As I said, your argument is proving more than you are giving it credit for.
 * In practice people seem to simply acknowledge that the system is not perfect but still better than no system. Criminal prosecution, for example, is certainly applied with some level of bias against various unpopular groups. No one (apart from the anarchist and ultralibertarian fringes) thinks this is reason to disband it. The same would apply to a policy about not harassing each other, as well. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 09:26, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * FWIW I don't think a special reporting responsibility for maintainers makes sense, since they don't have any special reporting powers, so there is no good reason why they should have more responsibility. But then I don't see how the assumption of mandatory reporting follows from the phrasing suggested by Quim, either, --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 09:30, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I meant Unacceptable behavior.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:30, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I came here from Qgil's email to wikitech-l. I'm a volunteer developer with +2 in a couple of repositories. I partially agree with Yaron Koren's view - I feel that maintainers of an extension volunteered to maintain the code in the repository and not so much "police" (for lack of a better word) the space in which the development happens. IMHO in terms of RfC keywords, this should be a "should" and not a "must". I completely agree that for a healthy environment, this is necessary, and personally will try hard to report any violations I see. But that's the thing - I will "try". Looking at this another way, are volunteer developers "required to" (must) maintain their extensions by reviewing all patches on a timely basis? I'd say they're "expected to" (should), or that it is "recommended" (should). If I got that right, then I think the CoC should follow the same principles. --Polybuildr (talk) 07:56, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Again as Yaron Koren, Nemo bis, and Polybuildr. -- Ricordi  samoa  11:35, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

If there's a requirement to report any potentially violating behavior on pain of some sort of punishment for not reporting, and some of the violating behavior is vague enough that I cannot be sure that something isn't a violation (e.g. how do I know if some attention or public communication is unwanted?), how would I not be required to report to the committee every day "There was public communication today and I don't know if it was unwanted by someone. Please investigate. Thanks."? Anomie (talk) 14:26, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

per Anomie. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 16:09, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

- Rights come with responsibilities. If the people in charge of our projects can't be bothered to keep things civil, who will? Kaldari (talk) 17:32, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * If by "keep things civil" you mean report cases of harassment - how about the victims of said harassment? They would be the obvious candidates to do it. Yaron Koren (talk) 19:51, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This comment probably speaks about your (lack of?) experience being harassed in a community you are not necessarily familiar with, trying to defend yourself when nobody around seems to express any sympathy or signs of helping you. Your position is a clear example of putting the comfort of admins and maintainers well established in their community roles over the security of a contributor being harassed and not receiving help. The focus of this CoC is to stop harassment, and consequently it prioritizes actions in that direction. Moving from binding obligation to non-binding expectation is as far as I think it is acceptable to go.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:26, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
 * to use this to clarify a point we started discussing elsewhere on this page, by " Security vs Liberty debate", I meant - imagine if a proposed law began full of phrasing such as "prioritizes victim's safety over criminal's comfort", "Refusal to explain or debate law enforcement concepts", etc. That's not a hyperbolic analogy. There are politicians and parties which truly would do something along those lines. It's not an American exclusive practice. And there are sincere and well-meaning people who honestly believe that's best for society. When you say "stop harassment, and consequently it prioritizes actions in that direction.", that comes across to me as akin to the greater political debate stance of "stop crime, and consequently it prioritizes actions in that direction." (i.e. favoring law enforcement type power and regarding any potential for abuse as inconsequential collateral damage to the goal of a War On Crime). The US cliche phrase for this is Law-And-Order, but I'm sure other countries have the equivalent. I still don't believe you've addressed the conceptual point that such vague and broad potential violations as "Offensive, derogatory, or discriminatory comments", combined with the mandatory reporting you favor, would seem to lead to an extreme outcome. Seth Finkelstein (talk) 05:54, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I should note that this seems to be an irrelevant discussion, since the specific issue covered in this section - whether there should be penalties for admins who don't report harassment - has presumably already been settled. (I only responded to Kaldari on the off chance that his question wasn't rhetorical, but maybe that was a mistake.) Yaron Koren (talk) 14:15, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Rewording proposal
Alright, I think we have got enough feedback contrary to the idea that it is the "responsibility" of admins and maintainers to report potential violations in their spaces. I found Polybuildr's comment very useful, noting the difference between "must"/"required to" and "should"/"expected to", and comparing these against the responsibility of reviewing patches, which is a direct responsibility of maintainers. By moving to "expected to" we remove the obligation and therefore the binding responsibility. Still, we can keep the non-binding expectation in the CoC. We can expect that most admins and maintainers "will try" to keep their spaces open and welcoming.

I will move the edited sentence to the location proposed under "Report a problem". Since that section will be the next one to be reviewed, we can keep this discussion open for improvements if you wish.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 21:37, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
 * as compromise. I do think technical leadership implies some level of community leadership.  At minimum, this should include making a strong good-faith effort to promote a respectful space.  Rather than become bogged down in what it means to have a binding responsibility and whether perfection is required, a non-binding but recommended expectation allows us to express the goal.  Reporters still have the option to report to the committee either as a first resort, or if reporting it elsewhere fails.  I've added some text to clarify this. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 22:24, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
 * No offense to Polybuildr, but I don't believe the term "expected" indicates that something is non-binding - if anything, it usually indicates the opposite. This seems like adding more unnecessary confusion. (Qgil - as you probably recall, you originally argued that the previous wording, "responsibility", was already non-binding, because "responsibility" is not "obligation".) It should be clearer - although really, this is yet another argument for moving all the non-binding stuff into a separate document. Wasn't there already consensus around that in the discussion below? (Ironically, that idea was proposed by Mattflaschen, who's now arguing for this; I don't know what it all means.) Yaron Koren (talk) 01:17, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It is not binding. Are you interested in proposing an alternative wording to make this clearer?--Qgil-WMF (talk) 23:12, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, I would rather it didn't show up at all (for the reasons laid out below by, er, Mattflaschen), but I would think the only way to make it clear is to explicitly include a phrase like "not binding" or "not required". Yaron Koren (talk) 23:16, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That would completely defeat the purpose of the wording. Saying "Project administrators and maintainers do not have to take action on any communication or contribution that violates this code of conduct." would basically be saying "Just ignore the CoC." Kaldari (talk) 17:20, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * as compromise, per . Administrators and maintainers hold positions of community trust, and as such should be held to higher standards. When it is seen that someone who is formally trusted (whether they think they signed up to do anything but review code) lets bad behavior slide, that sends a signal that behavior is acceptable in the community. This has been seen in many open source communities, and we are not exempt from this trend. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * , essentially per Fhocutt and MattFlaschen: it's not the principle I'd choose but it's clear the only other alternative is 'no principle'. There's a lot of talk about how much of our technical community is WMF-sourced, and I'd point out that at the WMF the requirements to be a senior or lead engineer includes helping create a healthy environment. That's no less optional than the "knowing your way around software really well" element, and it shouldn't be optional here, either. Technical leadership roles are technical roles. They're also leadership roles, though. Ironholds (talk) 18:44, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't see a rewording proposal here, but playing the synonym game on "expected" and shuffling paragraphs won't help address any concern. I also don't see how Matt's diff above relates to this discussion. To avoid repeating myself about future reiteration of the same proposals under different appearances, I preemptively oppose any sentence which has "Project administrators and maintainers" as subject or agent, see above for rationale. Nemo 19:57, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I fully agree with this. Yaron Koren (talk) 23:09, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Pictogram voting question.svg|15px|Undecided]] Undecided The word "expected" can mean both "considered reasonably due" and "considered obligatory or required" (cribbed from expect definitions 3 and 2), so I have some sympathy for the confusion here. Anomie (talk) 14:50, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose - The responsibility should be binding. Let's change the wording to say that instead of watering it down further. Kaldari (talk) 17:20, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * could you or others of that stance please clearly address the issue of mandatory reporting, combining with "Offensive, derogatory, or discriminatory comments" as a potential violation, leads to a result of having to report anything which someone somewhere might find potentially offensive? While such an outcome sounds extreme, it seems to follow clearly from those two aspects. In general, it's unclear to me if there's a cross-purposes dispute where some proponents disagree that is the result (and if so, I can't see how), versus others agree that it's the result but deem it a good thing. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 05:23, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The language you seem to be objecting to here is quite similar to language that is common in widely adopted codes of conduct, and I'm not aware of such chilling effects as you are predicting occurring in practice as they have been more and more widely adopted over the last several years. Take a look at jQuery: "If you believe someone is violating the code of conduct we ask that you report it to the jQuery Foundation by emailing conduct@jquery.org", "Discriminatory jokes and language". There's the widely adopted Contributor Covenant: "Project maintainers have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct," with "Trolling or insulting/derogatory comments" and "Other unethical or unprofessional conduct". There's the [TODO Code of Conduct http://todogroup.org/opencodeofconduct/#Open+Code+of+Conduct/abuse@todogroup.org], for the TODO Group: "Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be banned from the community," "Offensive comments related to [list similar to ours]," "If you experience or witness unacceptable behavior—or have any other concerns—please report it by contacting us via [CONTACT]."
 * Do you have evidence that supports your concerns? The Contributor Covenant is used widely enough that I would have expected to hear about unintended effects like the ones you are concerned about. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 00:09, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * first note note some of that language above is recommendation, not requirement. And I would indeed argue, that as such codes of conduct proliferate, there is growing evidence of their "weaponization" exactly due to the broad and vague prohibitions combined with procedural problems. It's a highly charged topic, and I'm extremely wary of being the person who leads the civil-liberties-type viewpoint (much pain, no gain). But for a specific example right this moment, may I direct you to consider a current Wikipedia conduct battle, at 150kbytes of statements as I write this, and looking to produce a whole theater chain's worth of popcorn in the upcoming weeks. A key part of the originating statement (my emphasis, names shortened for courtesy) "... that editor (EC) was misogynist and/or anti-female. Much of the "evidence" of the article revolved round a single diff by EC which in fact did not show any such thing . Previous attempts by various parties to have EC blocked had been unsuccesful, yet this time, when EC protested his innocence, he was blocked by (KL) for violation of a previous sanction.". I don't have a link handy, but I recall one aspect of this overall battle has been an attempt to do precisely the strategy of mandatory action (in this situation that's been phrased as "enforcing the terms of service"). I must note there's horrible examples of nigh-criminal abuse done by others. But this is exactly the civil-liberties problem - the existence of bonafide terrorists who literally cut off heads should not justify unlimited power under the rubric of fighting the threat. As one participant stated "Two things are being conflated by some: harassment and dissent. The former is obviously bad; seeking to stamp out the latter is corrosive to the community and at odds with our mission to write an encyclopedia.". And this controversy is going on right in your area, where you can read the sources directly. If we get into incidents elsewhere, that'll lead to the problem that much of the collection of data can be discounted as having been done by partisan organizations (which is a sad paradox in that nobody else is going to do it). This is not unargued territory (said in a very dry tone). -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 06:56, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Seth, you are again proving too much. If you consider the right of maintainers/administrators to act against CoC violations "unlimited power", then the logical consequence is that they should not have such a right - whether taking action is obligatory or not has little to do with whether it is an unreasonably large power that is likely to be abused. (In fact, people who are unwilling to prevent or defuse CoC violations and would have to be explicitly instructed to do so are the least likely to abuse their powers under the guise of the CoC. The people in your example weren't obligated to block/desysop either.) So your argument, taken to its logical conclusion, is that people should not be allowed to use administrator privileges to act against harassment - which would be a very extreme point of view. It's one thing to argue that the powers which the government gained in response to terrorist incidents are too broad, but suggesting that the army and the secret service should be disbanded because of their potential for abuse might be a tad unrealistic. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 08:59, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That is an interesting viewpoint. I am more interested in what has happened in the thousands of open source communities that have adopted the Contributor Covenant, which is where the stronger statement (with "responsibility") came from, than a tangentially-related case on enwiki (with years of backstory). In most similar communities where the "civil-liberties-type viewpoint" has been raised, those fears have not played out in practice. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 23:51, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
 * In any of the communities that have used that wording from the Contributor Covenant, has the phrase "project administrators" in that sentence been used to refer to lots of smaller projects (and their maintainers) within the community, as opposed to just the core software admins? I'm not necessarily endorsing Seth Finkelstein's argument, just wondering. Yaron Koren (talk) 14:55, 30 October 2015 (UTC)


 * , the current wording seems reasonable. (I don't consider this a terribly important detail; I would support less or more strict wording as well.) --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 09:03, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Fine tuning the next steps
After the last week of feedback, we don't seem to be fully happy about the current version, but we probably wouldn't be happy reinstating the previous version either. There were new elements to the discussion and new participants. There was progress... but not consensus.

Here is an idea to keep moving forward, with more flexibility to allow more progress, but without running in circles or reopening parts of the CoC that are not contested. Let's select the parts of these first sections that are still open for discussion, and let's give us another week to reach a consensus on them. We would send an email to wikitech-l with the details, and we would encourage more people to manifest their opinion on these open ends.

Proposed texts open for discussion:
 * "Participate in an authentic and active way"...
 * "Project administrators and maintainers have the right and responsibility..."
 * "Publication of non-harassing private communication"
 * The entire paragraph from "Our open source community acknowledges the presence of systemic inequity and oppression..." until the end of the section. We have several related open discussions.

The rest of the text of these sections would be considered frozen in this drafting stage.

We could use this mechanism of the extra week if in future calls for feedback we also end up with portions of text clearly disputed. What do you think?--Qgil-WMF (talk) 23:14, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Consensus reached. There have been no objections in over two weeks.  We'll keep working on the parts listed.  The rest from these sections (remaining sections are intro, "Principles", and "Unacceptable behavior") will be considered frozen (there will be a separate approval process for the overall CoC). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 02:59, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * There wasn't any consensus on anything and I don't see a proposal on freezing which anyone approved of, other than yourself. It continues to be ridiculous that you self-proclaim the consensus on your own proposals. Nemo 20:03, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * We are drafting a proposal, and we want to progress with the draft so we can present the actual proposal to the community one day. We are putting a lot of time and effort trying to find common agreement even with people that are explicitly against the approval of this CoC. You find ridiculous this effort by us promoters of this proposal? I find our work to be a good exercise of openness, transparency, respect, and patience. And I really think we don't deserve this attitude that you are demonstrating with messages like the one just above.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 22:43, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * , Let me begin by praising your personal "openness, transparency, respect, and patience" and extending all assumptions of good faith. Nonetheless, the best of intentions must still contend with some very deep political divisions inherent in this topic. Whether expressed rudely or politely, there are fundamentally different social theories at issue. The divide is as deep as the general governmental Security vs Liberty debate (and might be said to be a variant of it). When the draft text (granted, removed now) talks about "prioritizes marginalized people's safety over privileged people's comfort", "Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts", etc, then simply factually that evident perspective tends to generate obvious wariness about the entire enterprise. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 04:54, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Disagreement is not a justification for rudeness. "the general governmental Security vs Liberty debate" is a US-centric dichotomy. Come to my Euro-Mediterranean context and even the most pro-government and "libertarians" will have a hard time even understanding the positions. "Libertarian" has a total different meaning in my native languages. So you see, it is difficult to reduce discussions to binary terms without establishing false assumptions. Rudeness and polarization are not helpful.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:01, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The "proposal on freezing" you say you don't see is right here: "The rest of the text of these sections would be considered frozen in this drafting stage." (with context adjacent) and anyone can see below there were other supporters and no objections before the close. This was not my proposal, but I have and will close my proposals here where appropriate.  I've never claimed to be an uninvolved closer.  This is just a way to keep the discussion moving by closing intermediate discussions.  We will not be using the same procedure to approval the final CoC.  You may think MediaWiki.org has the same policies as (some) Wikipedia or Meta, but it does not. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 21:58, 28 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. I'd also like the "unappropriate"/"unwanted" items to become more precise, but if everyone else thinks they are fine, I'll drop the stick... --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 04:35, 7 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I was originally hoping to either get consensus on this one, or move back to the old one. But instead, it looks like several of the opposers/neutrals support most of the draft, but have problems with these specific lines or sections.  Even some of the people who supported the followup round have a problem with one or two lines (though, largely just wanting to add "without permission" to the publication line).  I think this is a good plan.  We should discuss these parts and freeze the rest.  I also think we should move out the "Expected behavior" section to a separate guidelines page.  That resolves one of the issues you mentioned above. I've started a discussion about this. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:09, 7 October 2015 (UTC)


 * All the other sections not called out here seem to have pretty broad support. Thanks for pushing it forward, Quim.—Neil P. Quinn-WMF (talk) 17:43, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Seems like a good idea. Thanks for keeping things moving. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 23:40, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

The email was sent last Thursday, so I suggest we consider the current round of discussion closed by the end of Wednesday 21. Then we would evaluate the current discussions and propose next steps. Mattflaschen-WMF, do you agree?--Qgil-WMF (talk) 19:46, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Move "Expected behavior" out to a separate guidelines page?
I think we should move "Expected behavior" out to a separate guidelines page (Positive behavior guidelines?). This page would not be part of the CoC, and would make clear these guidelines are recommended, but not binding at a policy level, and not enforced by the Committee. It already says "expected and requested" (thus, not required) and I think this section has become a diversion from the parts of the CoC that absolutely can and need to be enforced. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:06, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Consensus reached. It seems most people agree this would be better off on a separate page.  I've gone ahead and moved it to Expected behavior. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:27, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

There's a lot of common-sense advice, like avoiding flame wars and avoiding "bikeshedding", that becomes difficult to understand and needlessly inflammatory when phrased in the context of enforced rules. Though hopefully there's a friendlier title than "Positive behavior guidelines"... Yaron Koren (talk) 13:23, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

. I'd like to keep a clear separation between specific, binding code of conduct and the more general advice for constructive behavior, because the most important thing here is the binding protections against harassment. This will accomplish that nicely.—Neil P. Quinn-WMF (talk) 17:47, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

I liked the idea of giving a more positive tone to the Code of Conduct, but what seemed like a simple side exercise is dragging too much energy that, ultimately, is not strictly needed to have a useful Code of Conduct. Perhaps in its own regular wiki page, without the pressure of being part of the CoC, it is easier to write useful guidelines collaboratively.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 17:58, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Just as long as we don't advertise the rules page heavily. I don't want the first experience of a new Wikimedia contributor to be reading the list of horrible crimes we have considered they might be committing. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Bug management/Phabricator etiquette might serve as an indication. It is linked from a couple of on-topic pages and then it is shown to users that need to be reminded about this etiquette.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 21:49, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * On the contrary, people driven off by the idea there might be behavioural standards are people I am perfectly happy to lose. Because the situation I'm worried about is people claiming the rules page was so obfuscated and hidden off they could not have possibly known they were meant to follow it, or people not being able to report incidents because they had no idea there was even a resource to reach for. Ironholds (talk) 21:47, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Other new contributors will be happy to see unacceptable behavior addressed explicitly. They or their friends and colleagues may have already been subjected to listed behaviors in this or other free/open source/culture spaces. Frankly, I care more about attracting and welcoming those people. Being clear about what is not acceptable also helps some people who are worried about whether they are treating others well, although it's never comfortable to think that you may accidentally be hurting others.
 * I don't think of this as a list of "horrible crimes", for what it's worth. They are behaviors that we don't want in our community. If someone who's not familiar with English slang or common slurs accidentally says something hurtful to someone of a minority background, for instance, they should be made aware that they've hurt others and asked not to do that again, but it certainly wouldn't be appropriate to treat them like they're horrible. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 23:40, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Fhocutt, well yes, only some of those are horrible crimes. (If someone makes threats of violence, or unwanted sexual contact, or engages in stalking, you probably would treat them as horrible.) And while we clearly don't want those in the community, as far as we can tell, they are not present either. Showing these warnings in the face of every newly joined member would imply otherwise. If you enter a building and see a sign saying "please leave guns outside", that will probably not make you feel more safe as you will assume the warning is there because people do carry guns in (and to things with them that made someone post the sign). At the very least, you are now thinking about guns, which probably wouldn't have occurred to you otherwise.
 * Or it indicates that firearms are commonly, casually carried into very similar buildings and we don't want them here. The idea of "it hasn't happened yet that we're aware of" ignores that (a) it could be happening and we're simply totally ignorant of this because there is no pathway to actually reporting it and (b) we have seen it happen time and time again in communities very similar to ours. Wikimedia is not a unique snowflake of a community. Tech communities have these issues; pseudonymous communities have these issues; open knowledge communities have these issues. The idea that a pseudonymous open knowledge technology community is somehow immune is simply false, and since we are not immune, we should probably make sure that when something does happen potential victims and potential perpetrators know that they have a resource for dealing with it. Ironholds (talk) 21:34, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * How the CoC will be promoted is a topic unrelated to this section. The answer will not be simple even from a technical point of view, considering that we are covering several spaces with different means of welcoming newcomers and communicating with users, and no central channel of communication. I suggest to park this discussion and focus our efforts in getting this CoC approved in the first place. :) --Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:51, 19 October 2015 (UTC)


 * As target for the move, I suggest Project:Sandbox. Nemo 05:38, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Nemo, that comment (and your comment below around 'affirmative action') do not seem to be intended to be productive - instead they simply seem to be...I guess, being glib and twee and trying to prove a point. I understand from your commentary that you do not want there to be a Code of Conduct, but it is clear at this point that there will be in some form. Throwing null characters into the process is not a good use of anyone's time, particularly since I know you're a lot better than that (and some of your individual points have been very good). Ironholds (talk) 21:37, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * You are strongly advised to assume good faith on this wiki. Your prolonged and reiterated abuse of volunteers on this page is not acceptable. Nemo 06:56, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I was interested in having it on its own page from the start. I think that positive guidelines are a good idea, and I also support making it clear that they are admired, not required. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 23:43, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * However, I consider "Project administrators and maintainers have the right and responsibility to take action on any communication or contribution that violates this code of conduct," a portion that should be binding and should be kept in the body. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 01:10, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * +1. This shouldn't just be a polite recommendation; it should be a firm rule.—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 06:14, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Alright, so far it looks like we have consensus on the removal of the Expected behavior section with the bullet points. Let's discuss the "Project administrators and maintainers... sentence in its own section.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:57, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Process suggestion
There's a ton of information in the draft, this discussion, and the archives, which makes it hard to join and participate in the process. Most of that difficulty is inevitable, but I have some suggestions which I think will reduce it.


 * 1) Move Code of conduct for technical spaces/Draft to Code of conduct. This will simplify navigation; for example, Talk:Code of conduct for technical spaces/Draft/Archive 1 will become Talk:Code of conduct/Archive 1. Much better. We would, of course, add a big, honkin' notice to the top of the page saying: This is currently a draft undergoing active discussion. It is not currently a binding policy, and it will not become one until it passes a community-wide consensus discussion.
 * 2) Split out the sections that are meant to become separate pages into actually separate pages. For example, Code of conduct for technical spaces/Draft would become Code of conduct/Committee. It would also, of course, get the big, honkin' draft notice. This would make it clear that these are largely being developed on separate tracks, and make sure that each one has its own separate talk page.

Any objections?—Neil P. Quinn-WMF (talk) 18:03, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm not objecting per se but I don't see how breaking up the discussion into separate pages makes it easier to follow. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 18:59, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

as I see it, discussions about (1) what should be prohibited by the code of conduct and (2) how reports of violations should be handled, and who should do the handling, are fairly decoupled. We might all agree about what should be prohibited, but disagree about the details of the process for implementing that prohibition (or the opposite). In addition, there are probably people who care a lot about the contents of the code, but care less about what role the Developer Relations team should have in determining the membership of the Conduct Committee. If the two pages are separated, they can follow the content discussion without having to wade through the process discussion.—Neil P. Quinn-WMF (talk) 21:15, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Some weeks ago, when I started defining the division of pages in the draft, I thought it was better to have everything in one place. That was true back then, but I agree that now it is better to split in three actual pages. The scope of this page is quite stable by now, and I believe new people will be more likely to contribute in each page.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 21:42, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

No, there is no benefit in the proposed move. Nemo 21:06, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Oppose removing /Draft from the name (it should be removed when it's done), but neutral on removing "for technical spaces" (it's in the text already which wouldn't be affected). Neutral on whether to split into separate pages (/Committee, etc.) during the discussion phase. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:48, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I've now done the first, keeping /Draft in the name for the time being, since it seems to have pretty wide support. I've also created a couple of redirects at Code of conduct and Code of Conduct. Ironholds (talk) 23:27, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

This page, even with archiving, is sprawling and unwieldy. I agree that the different portions of the discussion will attract participants interested in different things and that they should be separate. The redirects are a good idea for clarity's sake. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 15 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The new title doesn't comply with sentence case standards of our wikis. Nemo 06:57, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Can you point me to the MediaWiki.org manual of style? Ironholds (talk) 16:56, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * How is your question relevant? Nemo 07:22, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * You're arguing that the new title, which everyone else seems okay with, is a problem because it doesn't fit the case standards. Where are the case standards? Ironholds (talk) 18:33, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Move "Our open source community acknowledges..." out of the CoC?
Similarly to the "Expected behavior" section, the paragraph under "Unacceptable behavior" going from "Our open source community acknowledges..." until the end of the section started as a good idea to complement the CoC, but ended up being a lot more complicated and controversial exercise. We have several discussions open related to this paragraph and here is a proposal to solve them all at once.

Even agreeing with what that paragraph says, I think it would confuse most readers of the CoC, and it would take significant space with a level of detail and a slightly opinionated tone that contrasts with the rest of the quite straightforward and neutral document. What do you think about removing this text from the CoC, and adding this sentence instead:


 * Reports of unacceptable behavior must be done in good faith to defend potential victims and to restore a friendly environment. Accusations of unacceptable behavior against potential victims or reporters done as a tactic to introduce more tension or confusion are unacceptable themselves.

--Qgil-WMF (talk) 18:52, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Consensus reached. There's pretty strong consensus for this.  Some of this might fit in Expected behavior. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:41, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The new message is clear and to the point. --Smalyshev (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That sounds very good. You might even take out "against potential victims or reporters" - it would make the text even clearer. Yaron Koren (talk) 13:49, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I generally don't see much value in rules about intent. It is in practice almost always impossible to tell if someone is being intentionally disrupting or just very dense. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 18:57, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * If someone is "very dense" when reporting a violation of the CoC, the Committee may ask questions and decide whether the report is valid or not. Still, having this sentence in the CoC helps preventing intentional disruption and helps guiding the Committee if situations of this style occur.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 21:46, 12 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Definitely remove the text. It is extremely problematic. I have my doubts regarding the replacement text, since it seems likely to be a battleground. You're unfortunately trying to resolve the "sociological" problem with an "intent" rule, which doesn't work. That is, most everyone on both sides of the divide is quite sincere about their beliefs and that the reports are not a tactic (in the sense of a bad faith accusation). It's the vast difference in conception about what constitutes "unacceptable behavior" which is the problem - e.g. social media hate-storms, of intense personal attacks on the designated hate-target, are seen as laudable righteous crusades by their participants. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 02:03, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I proposed a replacement 8 days ago. The entire paragraph can be replaced with "This document's premise is that affirmative action is needed". Nemo 05:35, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
 * , thank you for your support. I sustain that the sentence proposed is as correct as "Murder is a crime". The fact that investigating alleged murders is often complicated (non-deliberate killing, self-defense, euthanasia, long etc) doesn't invalidate the principle.
 * Nemo, the alternative text proposed is not "favoring members of a disadvantaged group who suffer from discrimination within a culture". It aims to protect potential victims of harassment and reporters from further attacks in the form of violation reports, regardless of their gender, race, etc.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:24, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
 * , I think the problem is less at "Murder is a crime" and more at "Killing is a crime unless done in self-defense". But what is "self-defense"? Are you familiar with the US controversy over "stand your ground" laws? You may have a clear idea of what you mean - and I may not be disagreeing with you. But the phrasing is ambiguous given the way "self-defense" (of a sort) is often construed. I'm not sure it's a good idea for this talk page to launch into a long discussion of some not-so-hypothetical cases. But I think it would be good to strongly, clearly, unambiguously clarify in the text, let's put it as, that accusations shouldn't be politics by other means (I'm refering here to the saying "War is politics by other means" - and hence for culture-war). -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 11:03, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Quim, I'm not sure what you're trying to say but I confirm my point. As for the text you quoted, nobody proposed its insertion here as far as I know. Nemo 06:59, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I like some of the things you're proposing to remove, particularly the support for 'Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you”'. But on the whole I think that section ends up being confusing to people unfamiliar with social justice vocabulary, without providing a huge benefit in return. In addition, I agree with Nemo that the section seems to say: "affirmative action and outreach is a welcome part of the Wikimedia technical community". Unlike Nemo (I think), I agree with that sentiment. But I'm not certain it's helpful to include it here when the first priority is getting an enforceable code of conduct approved.—Neil P. Quinn-WMF (talk) 18:29, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing an "opinionated tone" except in the sense of "we have an opinion of what a good community looks like" - and in that sense, to almost-quote Skunk Anansie, everything is an opinion. "It's opinionated" is not a criticism that has much value. Ironholds (talk) 21:00, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it's useful to have a "the following things are not considered violations" section, or something like it. If nothing else I don't understand what's bad about the "reasonable communication of boundaries" bullet point, for example. However, I would be open to this taking different shapes: perhaps the communication of boundaries thing could be in a section about what to do when someone's harassing you, or in some other place where it reasonably fits. One concern I have about the current version of this list is that it appears to be a mix of on the one hand things we want to say are OK and encouraged (like saying "I'm not discussing XYZ with you"), and on the other hand things that we want the policy to explicitly not forbid even though there's not necessarily broad support for those things (like the things that people are calling "affirmative action" above). It might be difficult to find a way to distinguish between those two, or to agree on where the line is (I'm not sure of that myself), or to avoid the implication that "the CoC does not forbid X, therefore it endorses X". But I'm hoping we can split up or trim this list without removing it entirely. The proposed sentence is fine as far as I'm concerned, but I would like to keep "Reasonable communication of boundaries" and "Discussing imbalances", at least. --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 01:24, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * , I'm very hesitant to be a person who tries to neutrally explain all of US culture-war politics, since it's an extremely thankless task, likely involving getting much grief, sometimes from "both sides". Basically, some of what may sound eminently reasonable in terms of mere wording, has been "weaponized" to an incredible extent via interpretation and associated practice. You will likely not believe what can happen if you have not observed it take place. I know I have been in exactly that situation, of thinking some characterization was simply atrocity propaganda by an opposing ideologue, and then witnessing it was absolutely true (or at least reasonably so). However, delving into specifics and examples is going to open up a very contentious and heated debate. To try to step very carefully, let me put it as, one can't divorce phrasing from the overall surrounding conflict. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 02:29, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what we could do with a vague warning like that. You're saying that you've experienced terrible things, but you can't say what they were, where it happened, who was involved, or what anyone was doing. If talking about those experiences is going to open up a debate that you don't think is necessary, then I agree that you should resist the temptation. But we can't take the lessons of that experience into account, if the experience itself is redacted. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 18:18, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes. For analogy, imagine if someone was very unaware of the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. In a discussion, you want to tell them, in order to be informative, "The phrasing being considered there ("self-determination", "respect for United Nations resolutions", etc) is all related to the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, and it's an enormously polarized controversy.". However, when they then likely respond, "How so? What's that all about?", you really don't want to try to explain the whole thing - start getting into details, and whatever you say, someone will object, and someone else will object to the objection, and on and on. What do you do? -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 00:09, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Are you saying you refuse to explain or debate meta social justice concepts? --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 03:19, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it's just due to being tired, but your comment is honestly too vague for me to understand how it relates to Roan's. On what you actually said; if you don't want to be that person, don't be that person. Nobody is obliged to explain these concepts on their own (and that goes double for the people impacted by the behaviour that needs to be explained and broken-down). It is a group task, and one where 90% of the problem can be solved by giving someone the keywords and pointing them to Google. I am perfectly happy to explain those bits I understand, for what it's worth, and while it might be thankless, it is entirely necessary. I would much rather have me tired and an informed community than a community where we have a Code of Conduct that does not address the reality of how human interactions work because people might not know reality and we cannot be bothered to explain things to them. Ironholds (talk) 19:36, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I still don't see why the "Discussing imbalances..." sentence needs to be spelled out as some kind of exception. There is clearly nothing wrong in discussing imbalances. "Reasonable communication of boundaries" is another clear case, connected (as others have said) to "Inappropriate or unwanted public or private communication, following, or any form of stalking." I don't think anybody will lose any protection by removing this paragraph from the CoC.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:51, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * All of these are points where not everyone agrees on "clearly". I have seen objections to all of the above in other communities similar to ours. Here, I thought that private communication should clearly be kept private except in extraordinary situations, but that seems to be controversial here as well. A policy like this is needed precisely because not everyone agrees on what is obvious. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 00:04, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
 * alright, maybe not so clear, but this is why we are working on an "Unacceptable behavior" section. Messing with private communication is in the list so far, and it is being discussed above. Discussing imbalances is not in the list, neither anything getting close to it. Therefore, we are making a clear difference between the two in this CoC. At the end the move proposed is simple: list only unacceptable behavior under "Unacceptable behavior"; move the acceptable behavior out of the "Unacceptable behavior" section and out of the CoC together with the "Expected behavior" section. The result is simpler, more consistent, protection on unacceptable behavior remains the same, and the level of consensus increases.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 06:17, 21 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I think some of the concepts would be useful if not for the current "exceptions" phrasing. E.g. the way Neil rephrased the one about refusal to discuss ("People don't have the obligation to explain at length why they find certain things offensive. If you're asked to stop, stop.") could go into the expected or unacceptable behavior part IMO. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * After coming to this page from Quim's wikitech-l email and then looking through the current draft, I was looking for someplace to bring up the apparent one-sidedness of this subsection. Yes, there is bias in our culture. But I doubt that trying to balance it with bias in the opposite direction is really a workable solution. Why, for example, is it explicitly not a violation to criticize "oppressive" behavior but it might be a violation to criticize "counter-oppressive" behavior? As for the suggested replacement wording, why are accusations of unacceptable behavior done as a tactic to introduce more tension or confusion only unacceptable when directed against potential victims or reporters? Is it really less bad for someone to try to introduce tension or confusion by making accusations against a straight cisgender white male from the "global north"? Anomie (talk) 14:56, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Just a clarification. The replacement wording doesn't mention systemic bias. "potential victims and reporters" refers to potential victims and reporters of CoC violations, regardless of their gender, origin, etc.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 15:22, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This isn't as explicit, but is a workable compromise. Some other stuff could be moved to the guidelines page. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 21:01, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Finishing the "Report a problem" section
We're now finishing up the report a problem section. This is the ideal time to discuss or make edits to the draft for this section. You can also create subsections for discussion here. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:51, 22 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Looks pretty good to me. I've made a couple of wording tweaks to make the words less loaded. While the committee will eventually be handling cases of abuse, some number of the reports will be of good-faith interactions that ended up harming someone, and the less fraught we can make the reporting process, the better.


 * There may be legal/practical issues with how much confidentiality can be promised, but I would like to keep it as close to this as possible. Particularly, I would like to avoid automatically getting HR involved, although there are some complex liability issues under California/US law regarding the WMF's duty to protect its employees and volunteers from harassment. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 22:11, 22 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I polished some details. This section looks good to me as well.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 23:11, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Ambiguous title
Please move the title back. There was no clear consensus on the proposal to move the page and the new title is in conflict with Code of conduct policy. Nemo 07:19, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I recall quite a bit of agreement around the move, actually. The new title has a redirect from Code of conduct, so the 'conflict' isn't actually a problem. Ironholds (talk) 14:21, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Nemo, there was clear consensus, although it was not formally closed (there are no particular conventions or policies for handling this on mediawikiwiki). I do understand that you don't want this policy to be here at all. If a substantial number of people find that the title is confused with the policy on foundationwiki, we could title this something like "Technical code of conduct". --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 20:52, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think this detail is very relevant at this point, but in the draft itself the page is called Code of conduct for technical spaces. I don't see any problem with this name that stresses the important fact that the CoC applies across multiple sites, not only mediawiki.org (althought the first sentence is clear enough in any case). This full name might feel redundant in the context of its own page in mediawiki.org, but we need to think in the name we want this CoC to be known across the Wikimedia movement. In this sense, when Luis Villa mentioned "Code of Conduct for technical spaces" in the monthly Metrics Meeting, the scope was clear.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 23:19, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Personally, I think "Code of conduct for technical spaces" is more clear and less confusing (since we have other codes of conduct), but a redirect from Code of Conduct would probably be appropriate on mediawiki.org. Kaldari (talk) 22:18, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
 * +1 to "Code of conduct for technical spaces". +1 to this not being a very relevant issue as well. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 05:46, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Finalize "Report a problem" section?
Should the "Report a problem" section be considered done? Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 01:37, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I forgot to link the version in question. Please evaluate this version, which is the version as of when I created this talk page section.  Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 19:11, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Consensus reached. There was consensus here on the main section.  We started a separate section about the confidentiality sentence (there was feedback both here and by anonymous email about that).  Quim proposed text, with no objections, so that's incorporated.  Tgr also made a small clarification and linked it below.  So (reflecting just the above) the difference between what I linked above and the current text is here.  Ignore the parts of the diff below "Attribution and re-use".  Those sections are not part of "Report a problem". Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 00:49, 25 November 2015 (UTC)


 * as proposer. I think this is pretty straightforward.  It says who you can report to, asks but doesn't mandate that maintainers take action (this was a compromise; I would have preferred otherwise, but that's how compromises go), and is clear that you can report to the committee if previous reports fail.  It also says that minimal reports will be accepted, but that more information will help.  All and all, I think it's a pretty practical approach. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 01:37, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I fixed some incorrect wording.
 * "All reports will be processed confidentially" feels too vague. What it means for the Committee is well specified in its own section, but how exactly should maintainers handle a report? (Can they share with the Committee? With other maintainers? WMF HR? What can they share with the perpetrator if the case is not clear-cut and they want to hear both sides?)
 * It would be useful to have something along the lines of "If you send a report to maintainers, include a reference to this document." In practice, most people - even most maintainers - are not going to be familiar with the policies. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 05:43, 30 October 2015 (UTC)


 * (for clarification: I give this "+1" as a contributor, who hasn't worked on this Code of Conduct so far, and is meant, as one part, that I (as a "normal" contributor) understand this section (so you could assume, that it's well-written), and, as the other part, I can identify my self with this proposal, or better said: I would accept it so, if someone would ask me now :)) --Florianschmidtwelzow (talk) 14:36, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * There are a couple of things that I think we compromised a bit too much on, but as was mentioned in the first comment, that's how compromises go. I think this is a good version to continue onward with. MSchottlender-WMF (talk) 18:52, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Although I have no objections in improving the sentence about confidentiality, to set the right expectations.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 22:12, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Would not object to improving the clarity of confidentiality as others have mentioned. AGomez (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

"All reports will be processed confidentially"
"All reports will be processed confidentially" feels too vague. What it means for the Committee is well specified in its own section, but how exactly should maintainers handle a report? (Can they share with the Committee? With other maintainers? WMF HR? What can they share with the perpetrator if the case is not clear-cut and they want to hear both sides?) --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 05:43, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

An email received at conduct-discussion@ also suggests a need to be more specific. The sender mentions the example of complaints involving private events. If person A sends person B an inappropriate private message and person B complains about it, if person A is warned or sanctioned they will be aware that person B complained when they are told the reason for the sanction.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:53, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * In this scenario (assuming a sanction is necessary/appropriate) there's no way I see to avoid the offender knowing who the reporter is. However, in such a case, it's probably best they report to the committee or to an event contact they trust.  The Committee members must commit to certain procedures (see "The Committee must get consent from the reporter before revealing any confidential information (including the reporter's identity)." of the draft section) to even be a nominee (as part of committing to comply with the full CoC).  It's not clear if we can expect all maintainers to commit to such detailed procedures (or even remember them 100%).  Also, the Committee may have better judgment whether a sanction is necessary in such a case (if it's not, there's no need for the alleged offender to know there was a report). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 19:21, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The feedback is about improving the sentence, not about trying to apply it strictly in reality. It might be enough to say: "Reports are processed confidentially. For more information, see Confidentiality." and explain the details there.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 21:59, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Mattflaschen-WMF, I hope my proposal is clear after my last comment. It is a minor edit on the current text, other people has expressed their support to be more clear about the confidentiality, and there have been no objection to the wording proposed after more than two weeks. Are you ok resolving this topic and moving forward?--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:50, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes. There have been no objections in over three weeks. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 22:58, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

If you send a report to maintainers, include a reference to this document
It would be useful to have something along the lines of "If you send a report to maintainers, include a reference to this document." In practice, most people - even most maintainers - are not going to be familiar with the policies. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 05:43, 30 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't think this sends a message of confidence to someone sending a report. There is a finite number of existing admins and maintainers and it shouldn't be that difficult to contact them when this CoC is approved (and before, in our general call for feedback and approval). New admins / maintainers are granted permissions following a process, and it should be easy to mark an acknowledgement of the CoC as part of that process.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 22:04, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Seems unrealistic to assume that everyone who ever contributed an extension to gerrit will read and remember the code. People have been trained pretty thoroughly to ignore terms of use. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 07:29, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * It is realistic to assume that every maintainer receiving an email about "IMPORTANT: Code of Conduct for Wikimedia Technical Spaces" will be aware that a Code of Conduct exists, even if they haven't read it. It is also realistic to think that even if they are confused about receiving a report, they will ask someone or somewhere what to do with it. If the maintainer doesn't do any of this, it is realistic to think that the reporter will go for "You can also send a report to the Committee if you reported an incident elsewhere but were not satisfied with the response." I think your proposal sends a subliminal message to the reporters: "the person you are sending this report to may have no idea what you are talking about". How serious is this community about this CoC, then? -- the reporters may think. This defeats the purpose and effectiveness of this CoC, and this is why I think we should not integrate it. A good promotion of the CoC is the correct response to your valid concern.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:04, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with Quim. After spreading the word, we can assume all maintainers at least know the document exists.  They may not remember all the details, or always respond properly, but there are ways to deal with that.  We don't need to instruct people to explicitly inform the maintainer of the CoC. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 21:43, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that people should at least have awareness from the emails, etc. that this exists. Additionally, it's uncomfortable and difficult to report an incident - requiring a link to the document is another potential (small) hurdle that could be avoided. AGomez (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Logging actions of the Committee
The draft mentions that the Committee must log their actions. The Committee members can define the details themselves when they are formed, but maybe it would be good to set some framework in the draft itself. What actions are absolutely required to be logged (each report and its resolution, anything else?). Also, is this log public, private, both (in which case, what needs to be private/public)? This is probably closely related to the tool the Committee should use to handle reports and discuss them. See T112859 Code of Conduct reports to be handled via OTRS?. Same for Developer Relations and the cases transferred to them.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:01, 25 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Following up on Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft, probably the following should be logged:
 * Each report and its initial outcome (initial outcome is before notifying affected people)
 * Altered outcome (if it gets altered after notifications)
 * Decides to finalize (this could be combined with another log entry if it happens at the same time; see Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft.
 * The log should be private. The report itself and internal case deliberations will always be private.  Certain outcomes, e.g. "Taking no further action" and "private reprimand" are also private. Given that, and because the log must be somehow (directly or indirectly) be linked to the reports and case deliberations, that means the log must also be private. There will need to be a separate place for certain public actions (e.g. public reprimands), but the Committee can handle that part. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 06:49, 28 September 2015 (UTC)


 * As far as I can see, these privacy requirements can be handled via OTRS. Or probably via a Google Group, but I'd rather use a tool hosted in Wikimedia servers.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 18:26, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I think we can leave the real nitty-gritty procedural details (private wiki vs. OTRS vs. private mailing list vs. etc.) to the committee. That keeps the CoC shorter, means we don't have to decide it now, and gives them flexibility on a non-substantive matter.  Other than that, do you see anything missing from the draft?  Initial outcome, altered outcome, and "begins enforcing" are also explicitly called out in the draft for logging now. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 21:53, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of the Committee sorting out this implementation detail. There is no reporting before committee, so no need to process incoming reports before a committee exists and is ready to receive them.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:43, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * There is no reporting to the committee before the committee exists. However, reporting to other people, such as maintainers, will still be possible and encouraged. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 22:54, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Done, down or defunct?
Nothing happens here? I am Mister Thrapostibongles (talk) 21:48, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Some weeks are more busy than others. Wednesdays have become our usual checkpoint for review and today is Wednesday, so perhaps... In any case, thank you for the ping. :) I will comment on the relevant sections about the next steps.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:41, 18 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I see this document as having lost its way after having a couple of WMF employees over manage the process for creating it. Non-WMF employee edits on the draft have dropped to zero, and unpaid volunteers that did take part in discussion have been eroded away. The outcome is naturally a WMF document, rather than a policy created with the positive support of the community. Above mentioned post-release consultation, inviting what will probably be the same old rejected comments to be rejected again, is not the way to build a credible consensus. --Fæ (talk) 07:19, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I think the current silence is more related to the fact that discussing processes is less controversial than discussing principles. Overmanaging? We have organized the discussion to slow down the initial speed, volume and complexity of posts, which was definitely driving away people without the time to catch up, including most volunteers. The CoC keeps being open to edits and discussion by anybody, and we are reporting progress and requests for feedback to wikitech-l on a weekly basis. The goal is to promote hospitality and respect in our technical community, and to prevent the opposite. I think we are progressing toward that goal.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:46, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * One need only compare the declining numbers of unpaid volunteers making non-trivial contributions per week since this opened, against those with WMF contracts, to assess which types of participant this WMF employee directed process encourages and judge which others are effectively rebuffed. Perhaps only a handful of volunteers will care either way, however I see this as an unfortunate missed opportunity for meaningful consensus, and a flaw that is likely to be challenged when it needs to be applied in any difficult cases. --Fæ (talk) 19:36, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * We promoters of the CoC also want increasing numbers of people participating in its definition. Any ideas? For what is worth, 45 people are watching this page regularly, which is a respectful level of observation of the process. Your division between WMF paid staff and volunteers might be a bit misleading though, because it might suggest that WMF employees are pushing in a same direction, when the reality of our discussions here shows otherwise. It also might suggest that WMF employees look more after their own interests than after the interests of volunteers when, again, the discussion shows that this is not the case.
 * All in all I think we are drafting a good Code of Conduct, providing enough time to everybody to propose improvements.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 22:18, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Finishing the Cases page
The Cases page is all about process: handling reports, responses and resolutions, and appeals. I propose to start a call for feedback at wikitech-l, allowing for edits in that page and discussing here any open topics. If by next Wednesday edits and new topics seem to be settled, we could open a review period for support / neutral / oppose statements, as we have done with previous sections.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:57, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * , I hope you don't mind if I mention this section in the new Developer Relations/Weekly summary. There was no fresh beef about the CoC last week, and I don't want to miss the chance of mentioning it today.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:30, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
 * No, an announcement sounds good. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 23:32, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for starting this section. I've renamed it consistent with the past terminology.  I will send out an email regarding this.  I think we should give more time to finish this section, though, so I think we shouldn't set a date for the beginning of the review period yet.  Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 23:32, 24 November 2015 (UTC)