Talk:Code of Conduct/Archive 4

Disruption of work
Maybe disruption of work should be a little more defined. Taking things very literally, people (legitimately) -1'ing my patches disrupts my work, but that's obviously not the type of disruption meant here. Bawolff (talk) 00:34, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I based that on "sustained disruption of talks or other events" at Friendly space policy; I've rephrased to make it more clear (and a little more narrow for now). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:15, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Added a heading. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:27, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Inappropriate
Again, as the WMF Harassing Policy for physical spaces, this implicitly reverses the burden of proof for non-listed harassment and creates first and second class victims. I don't want to support any such discrimination, much less assume any liability for the results, so if this or a similar policy is enacted, it should point out who is responsible for it and that conforming to it does not condone behaviour complying with this policy. --Tim&#160;Landscheidt 01:17, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Where do you draw the conclusion that this creates two classes of victims? It's quite clear that the list is not exclusive; whether or not it's listed, if it's harassment, it's forbidden.  I think not listing an examples of harassment and simply saying "Do not harass contributors or users." is far too vague.  I'm very open to suggestions of concrete things that are missing from the list, though.  The document already notes the Community Advocacy team's existing role in this area, and the final document will have more clarity as to who to contact.


 * You cite a pre-existing policy (I think you're referring to Friendly space policy, which this is partly based on). That has a similar phrase, "Harassment includes but is not limited to".  Do you recall any harassment that occurred but could not be dealt with due to not explicitly being listed? Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:15, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

This needs some more thought
I very much like this policy but:


 * 1) I feel like it could afford to be a lot more explicit. One source of influence (which also draws a lot from the Ada and CoC elements) is the jQuery Coc (COI: I've provided some comments to it). It's very clear about the things that are not okay, and more importantly it's very clear about the processes around the escalation paths, which this isn't.
 * 2) Community Advocacy is absolutely the wrong entity to be handling requests here; they are awesome but do not trend towards a technical background. Why aren't the Engineering Community team handling this? This is quite literally their job - building a healthy community.
 * 3) Who drafted this and does that group include members of groups traditionally marginalised within technical environments? If not, why not? Asking people to comment publicly is all well and good but it ignores how toxic these venues can get. We could lose a lot of incredibly useful submissions based around lived experiences by not including those groups early in the drafting process. Ironholds (talk) 16:55, 7 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I particularly agree with points 1 and 2. One of the things I like about the Contributor Covenant's version (which I think we should fork and modify for this; writing an effective CoC is hard, and we should take advantage of existing work!) is the specificity: methods of contribution, spaces the policy applies to (particularly "in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community"), unacceptable behavior, means of reporting, and consequences for violations.


 * I think that CA is a great resource to escalate to for really bad violations (think assaults at conferences, doxxing, etc.), but I think that we need people who are familiar with technical workflows and the normal structure of technical discussion to take point on this. Harassment thrives on plausible deniability, and someone who's not familiar with the normal operation of the space in question won't be as effective at identifying it and handling it effectively. Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 7 August 2015 (UTC)


 * This is still a draft, and I encourage people to keep editing it, including using other CoC's as inspiration (or maybe rebasing it; see below), and including being explicit about what is not permitted. I'm in communication with both the Community Advocacy and Engineering Community teams, and the exact roles (if any) for each are still being worked out.  The document does not currently say that CA will be the go-to contact person for this (hence the ?); it just states their pre-existing authority, partly so it won't be misinterpreted as taking that away.


 * I'll let the drafters speak for themselves if they choose (partly because I don't want to imply this is their ideal draft). The drafters included at least one participant from a traditionally marginalized group, but more input to the draft (from everyone) is needed.  I'm not just asking for comments, but actual edits to the draft. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:29, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Two questions

 * 1) Why is this needed? (What generally comes up now as problems, how do existing channels fail, and how will this resolve that?)
 * 2) Whose consensus will it come down to in order to actually approve, enforce, and modify this?

Thanks. -— Isarra ༆ 18:09, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm very curious about the answers to these two questions as well. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:53, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Re Question 1: This is a pretty good writeup: https://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/conference-policies/ Greg (WMF) (talk) 00:38, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This is needed because harassment is a common problem in technical communities, and unfortunately, we are not uniformly an exception to that. Saying existing channels "failed" completely is overstating it, but they have not performed as well as they would have with a clear, binding policy.  This will provide a clear and explicit (albeit not 100% complete) list of forbidden behavior, and make clear how it is dealt with (understanding this may be a multi-step process in some cases).  We are still determining how this will become binding policy and who will participate in enforcing it. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:43, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Sure, but it would be great if we could develop policies based on case studies of where things have failed before (Especially case studies of where we have failed) as opposed to more generic bad things can happen. Bawolff (talk) 21:46, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Why? Why wait for something bad to happen to call it out instead of saying "these kinds of things are bad, don't do them here". Greg (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * We already have that. See DICK. -— Isarra ༆ 02:36, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * this is a pretty succinct response to why "don't be a jerk" isn't enough to create a friendly atmosphere - the fact that the guidance you're linking to (which is just that; guidance. It isn't even enforceable) opens with a big picture of Wikipetan is...well, it somewhat undermines the point here. Ironholds (talk) 17:11, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * 'Don't be a dick' pretty thoroughly addresses the examples given. -— Isarra ༆ 18:42, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure we even have the capacity to thoroughly identify where things have failed (discouraging contributors is usually not a very obvious phenomenon, because the persons getting discouraged leave, and no one is left to talk about it), so it's probably easier to build on the work of other communities which did that kind of investigation and came up with guidelines. It seems unlikely that the MediaWiki developer community would be so fundamentally different from the Ubuntu or Gnome or Python community that we somehow need completely different rules.
 * That said, I can share a case study, although I don't think it's the worst or most important type of harassment. During the second half of 2014, I have been triaging feedback on mw:Extension talk:Media Viewer/About, which some people have decided to use as a channel for venting over their dislike of deployment governance. You can get a picture of it just by skimming the page, although some of the meanest comments have been reverted.
 * I have eleven years of experience with the Wikimedia movement, much of it in some community leadership role; I have been advocate for a few fairly controversial initiatives. I generally consider myself to have thick skin. Even so, the experience was quite alienating. It did significantly influence my opinion of the Wikimedia community in the negative direction (even though most of the comments are anonymous, and anyway treating a handful of self-selected commenters as representative of a large community is totally unjustified, but that's just how human brains work), and it took me a while to recover from that. I'm fairly sure that if this would have been someone's first and defining large-scale interaction with editors, they would have quickly come to the conclusion that the community is a problem that needs to be fixed, not a partner to work with. I also wonder how encouraging the tone of that page was for someone who actually went there with the intent to report a bug or have a reasonable discussion. From what I have seen (from a distance), the feedback pages of other large-scale initiatives do not fare much better. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 05:51, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * But that's not development, that's other projects' responses to development. How would this help with that? -— Isarra ༆ 18:42, 10 August 2015 (UTC)y
 * At the very least it means don't come over here to development feedback pages and behave horribly towards others because to do so on your local project would likely get you into trouble there. As mentioned several times, there is no civility policy here which allows for enfettered nastiness and rage, often drowning out the important ideas and criticism related to the product itself rather than the ephemeral debates. This is extraordinarily unhealthy to the development process. I hope you can see how it helps in that context. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Completely agree with Tgr's comments, particularly using the Media Viewer feedback page as an example of how such an uncivil environment is detrimental to software development as well as the humans behind it. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * "Sure, but it would be great if we could develop policies based on case studies of where things have failed before". I'm not going to call out specific people for specific incidents here in public, but if you want proof such incidents have occurred, feel free to email me privately.  However, I'm sure there are incidents I don't know about as well.  Isarra: DICK is not binding; it's not even a guideline, just an essay. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:28, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Normal practice is indeed to discuss such things in public. This is a public project. Why change this now when it's most important? -— Isarra ༆ 01:29, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I guess, the biggest question I have along the why is it needed lines, is why (concretely) is the friendly space policy not enough, and what is the intended relationship between this policy and that one. Bawolff (talk) 21:48, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This. -— Isarra ༆ 02:28, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Not an author, just a random supporter of the ideas behind this policy, but; my feeling would be that the friendly spaces policy is very deliberately highly general, because it's designed to be cross-applicable to a lot of spaces, and is centred on "real-world" spaces. It does its job very well! BUt one of the costs of this is that it is not tremendously detailed; it does not set out (except in broad strokes) what is problematic, and it does not factor in tech-specific forms of microaggression or macroaggression. Another is that it does not provide any enforcement mechanisms for these kinds of online spaces. By having a code of conduct for technical spaces, both are addressed; we can be pretty specific in what we call out that isn't applicable to other spaces, and have an enforcement mechanism that is centred on technical spaces. Ironholds (talk) 17:11, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Bawolff, if by friendly spaces policy you are referring to Friendly space policy, I don't really understand your question. That policy is quite clearly about acceptable behavior at IRL events, focuses on face-to-face interaction, and its enforcement relies on the organizational structure that such events have (but most online spaces don't).
 * Are you saying you don't see the need for having a policy on behavior in online spaces? Or are you saying that the friendly space policy is or could be usable in online spaces? How? --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 04:48, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * For my own part, you're right - I really don't see the need here. My experience with mw and wikimedia development as a whole has been such that these areas have overall come across as far more civil than most 'content' projects I've interacted with, and yet the latter tended to have policies out the wazoo. If anything these policies seemed to be giving some users more leeway for being giant asswads.
 * But maybe there is something here, and if so, it should be clearly documented so it can be properly addressed - because then maybe it would actually work, unlike the ones on other projects. -— Isarra ༆ 18:42, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I think the main problem with the content policies is that (they/some of them) have such policies, but don't actually enforce them (there are probably aspects that those policies are missing too, but enforcement is the biggest issue). This draft policy tries to be specific about enforcement. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:32, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Content projects tend to rely either on enforcement by consensus or enforcement by a large group of people none of whom are really responsible for it. Those methods work well for enforcing rules against unpopular violators; they don't work very well on popular ones. Verbal aggression from friends and vested contributors is regularly overlooked. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 06:32, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * In the case of technical spaces, the 'vested contributors' are often WMF staff. -— Isarra ༆ 01:29, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The main reason Friendly space policy (FSP) is not enough is that it not apply online at all. FSP is purely for in-person events ("Wikimedia Foundation events" to use its terminology).  The relationship is that, for in-person technical events, you would have to comply with both of them. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:32, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe this policy should focus on online issues, and FSP should focus on in-person issues. E.g. Stuff about unwanted photographs (An in-person issue) would be in the FSP, and this policy would be about things that commonly come up online. With the understanding that if you're at a tech event, both policies apply. Bawolff (talk) 09:40, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Rewrite based on Contributor Covenant?
suggested above to use Contributor Covenant's Code of Conduct as a starting point instead. I'm willing to do that. What do people think? Let's make this decision quickly (a week?), so we know what we're basing the draft on. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:30, 8 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I do like it. --Brion Vibber (WMF) (talk) 23:35, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I just read  and I like it as well. It seems like a much better starting point. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:33, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I think this is a good idea. We will nottoeed to modify it to take our specific processes, spaces, community standards, and ways to report a violation into account--specificity in these areas is one of the best practices for codes of conduct that are effective in practice--but it's a solid base to start from. Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 05:44, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that there's also room for a separate set of guidelines on what respectful, productive, collaborative technical work looks like in practice, and would like to see momentum on this policy carry over to those guidelines as well. Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 06:01, 11 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I like it as well. It's more focused and specific. wctaiwan (talk) 04:46, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * +1 here - the original proposal was a good start, but it seems like a better idea to build on something that has already gotten a lot of feedback from a wide variety of sources. —Luis (WMF) (talk) 21:32, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * +1 for the same reason as Luis. Something that's widely used just carries more weight.  I think in general people who misbehave don't stop to carefully read codes of conduct.  The more likely potential violators are to have encountered other communities that effectively defend themselves with the same policy, the better. Milimetric (WMF) (talk) 00:58, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
 * +1 ^ YuviPanda (WMF) (talk) 10:35, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

What about this: --Qgil-WMF (talk) 07:54, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * 1)  publishes a first version based on Contributor Covenant's Code of Conduct at Code of conduct for technical spaces with a  template at the top and a disclaimer saying that this is a proposal under discussion.
 * 2) All the better if Talk:Code of conduct for technical spaces has Flow enabled. It allows for better subscription to specific topics and for marking topics as Done (cc ).
 * 3) We keep this page & talk page here for background with disclaimers on top pointing to the current draft and discussions. Once we are confident that anything valuable has been moved to the new pages, we archive these pages here.


 * It could also be someone else--I care much more about getting something effective and workable together than who does it. Otherwise, fine by me. Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * If there is consensus to rebase on Contributor Covenant (as looks likely) I plan to do so after at least a week from my post above. I will start with a clean copy of Contributor Covenant.  Various people have ideas on how to update the draft from there, so I expect quick changes after we have the new baseline.  I do not see any reason to start a new page at Code of conducwhot for technical spaces.  We can just update the draft here, which is a more appropriate title since it's still a draft.  If someone wants to request Flow, I suggest starting a new section about that.  Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:58, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

recomendations
Change :Be catalytic – Tell what they should do instead. Occasionally this may be encouraging and motivating, better than a dense list of "rules". to: Be catalytic – Recommend what they could do instead. Occasionally this may be encouraging and motivating, better than a dense list of "rules" Jadeslair (talk) 07:15, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ Thanks for the suggestion. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:57, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Creeping bureaucracy
Stop it, just stop it. Everyone has been complaining for years of the ever-expanding bureaucracy and mass of rules in Wikipedia(s), which frighten new contributors. Yet new policies and side-processes keep being proposed everywhere, as in this example. I don't see any benefit in this document and I hope the proposal will be withdrawn as soon as possible to save us the burden of discussing it. --Nemo 16:17, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I have no intention of withdrawing the policy. The Wikimedia technical community is not part of Wikipedia.  It's true that English Wikipedia has Wikipedia:Civility and No personal attacks, but we don't.  There is no binding policy in this area for any online Wikimedia technical space.  So far from having a "mass of rules" in this area, we have essentially none. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:09, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Agree. This policy guarantees WMF control of volunteer discussion spaces (including spaces that are not operated by the WMF). This gives arbitrary control and is a potential censorship tool for employees or contractors to the WMF. There is no protection for a volunteer who might have fair cause to be raising critical or "non-positive" issues in a "technical space", there is no protection for whistle-blowers, there is no appropriate system of appeal, natural justice or governance for arbitrary actions taken under this code of conduct which may well be taken for debatable reasons of tone, misjudged jokes or confusion about who happens to be an employee using a non-employee account and is being mistaken for an unpaid volunteer (which happens all the time).

My reading of this policy is that it makes it possible for a WMF employee to choose to ban me forever from all the projects I am committed to as an unpaid volunteer, overruling community created project policies, for unknown reasons that may not even be provided to me so that I can correct any error, challenge them as a Joe Job attack, or ask for fair independent review. That makes it completely set against our values of putting the volunteer at the center of our projects. The idea that all Wikimedians should start officially reporting anyone "not being productive" I honestly find scary.

There is a need to do more about real harassment, this CoC confuses arbitrary allegations of "disruption" or being "non-positive" with harassment, and seems to make no attempt to ensure volunteers can appeal to elected volunteer peers for fair assessment of complex allegations of being thought by some to be disruptive, but not a criminal case that should be taken to the police if there is evidence to present, rather than unprovable allegations. --Fæ (talk) 19:33, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * My reading of this policy is that it makes it possible for a WMF employee to choose to ban me forever from all the projects I am committed to as an unpaid volunteer - If we're talking about you personally, I'm not sure I see what you mean. Most of your activity is on commons, which unless I misunderstand severely, is quite out of scope of this policy. Maybe this policy applies to tool labs (Does it? Its not entirely clear on that point), which would probably affect you more significantly. It would apply to in-person events, but people could already be banned without much appeal from such events anyways, so this is not much new on that front. (On the more general point though, I agree, fairness in enforcement is an important issue that is being hand-waved). Bawolff (talk) 21:31, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * And I just re-read the policy. Since my last reading the line "The Community Advocacy team also has the authority to investigate behavioral issues and recommend WMF global bans for individuals." has been added. So I guess I see where your coming from more. Bawolff (talk) 21:33, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * You may need to read the policy again. The CA team has always had that power - this policy does nothing about that. What it does is set out behavioural guidelines for technical spaces. Your objection to the policy around it chilling volunteers ignores an important line from the actual policy; "a healthy amount of constructive criticism and vibrant debate helps to improve our software and is encouraged". This is nothing to do with critiquing software changes in the sense of the community giving feedback on new extensions or features; this is to do with how people behave on phabricator, on gerrit, on wikitech-l, and making sure we have a welcoming community. I agree, for what it's worth, that "not being productive" is a bit vague, and probably needs fixing up. Ironholds (talk) 17:15, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The CA team does not have the power to ban users from #mediawiki, #pywikibot, etc. Legoktm (talk) 23:40, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Wctaiwan} has removed "not being productive". I think they're right we don't need it.  It is from Bug management/Phabricator etiquette and I think the intention was/is to refer to cases where interpersonal problems or edit-warring were negatively affecting productivity, but it's true there are a lot of other causes of non-productivity, so it doesn't fit the policy as well as I would like. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:40, 11 August 2015 (UTC)


 * There is no protection for a volunteer who might have fair cause to be raising critical or "non-positive" issues in a "technical space", there is no protection for whistle-blowers. The policy doesn't do anything to threaten these forms of contribution.  If you have ideas about an explicit appeal process, please make suggestions.  Ultimately, though, any WMF employee is responsible to their manager and eventually the board.  I doubt managers and the board would allow the kind of abuse by employees you're hypothesizing.  The part about "seek to make our technical spaces a respectful and positive" is a preamble.  As Bawolff noted, this policy does not apply to Commons (except maybe software development there, e.g. Common.js and gadget development). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:09, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Hang on, so this Code does apply to Commons then as you have listed examples? Specifically as I have published some of my bot code on Commons, and I use commons to discuss technical issues of batch uploads, then those discussions are now retrospectively controlled by this Code. If this is the case then there needs to be a Commons policy proposal. --Fæ (talk) 06:15, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I said 'maybe'. This is still just a draft, and the draft does not mention Commons.  I'll let other people weigh in on whether they would like to explicitly cover on-wiki code workspaces (like gadgets, etc.) (outside of MediaWiki.org)  Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 06:20, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I hope the scope of the Code can be made completely unambiguous. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 07:23, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I am strongly opposed to this applying to individual wiki Common.js. I don't think we legitimately have the authority to make policy for non-tech wikis or any of their pages. If someone from a content wiki comes to mw.org asking for help, or a channel like #wikimedia-dev, then this policy should apply, but pages on individual wikis should be the province of that wiki (Or something agreed upon at meta). Bawolff (talk) 08:12, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Consensus seems to be against it, and the current document already reflects that the virtual list is complete (there is no 'including but not limited' in the list of virtual spaces), so Common.js on other wikis (and similar things) is not included. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 21:31, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Other examples from industry
There's a nice code of conduct from the Electron project here that has a prominent link in the project's readme. Niedzielski (talk) 04:24, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * FYI, The TODO code of conduct actively puts marginalized people in harm’s way. (...) This Code of Conduct is essentially legalese to protect the corporations and their cis straight white men contributors from accusations of sexual discrimination, racial discrimination, and with the recent EEOC ruling, homophobic and transphobic discrimination. - https://modelviewculture.com/news/todo-group-and-open-source-codes-of-conduct Valhallasw (talk) 07:35, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * That blog post falls very far from the standards of constructive and respectful communication it supposedly promotes, and is full of falsehoods (for example, check the pull request it links to and compare the actual discussion with the way it's characterized in the post). I don't think it should be taken seriously. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 07:47, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Safe spaces, incivility, and passive aggression
It seems that there's general agreement that a lot of outright "in your face" harassment on gender/sexuality/racial/religious/etc grounds is to be avoided -- which makes me happy to hear -- but it doesn't surprise me that there are more negative reactions over the idea of disruption being a problem than .... any other reaction at all.

This doesn't surprise me because passive-agressive dismissive incivility is absolutely rampant in our community [our community == everyone involved in Wiki*edia, yes if you are reading this it includes you], as well as many other FOSS and FOSS-like projects. I know I'm a part of that civility problem too, and try to avoid it but don't always succeed.

I really like the idea of a positive code of conduct that prescribes respect, civility, and a mindfulness that we're working on tools for people to use... Being actually productive is important, and with our communications channels it's easy to get sidetracked into bikeshedding, "well-actually"ing, "RTFM"ing, and accusations of who's the most disruptive.

The most radical act isn't pointing out others' failings, it's admitting that you're part of the problem, and that changing is required. I know I need to change for the better, and I hope you all will join on that journey. --Brion Vibber (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree. I was a fan of the safe space policy going into effect for developer events, and that has since been extended first to Wikimania, then other Wikimedia events, and now recipients of WMF grants. With the board, Lila, CA, and others stating that looking into ways to address community collegiality is a priority for this year - this seems like a logical effort for the developer community. I agree it is not perfect, but I have yet to see an online community policy that was. ;) I endorse the idea of proceeding with refinements based on this page's discussion - but not delaying things for months and months in an attempt to achieve a perfection that will likely never come. However, Brion is correct that we must all also own up to our own role in this problem - and yes - there is a problem. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 02:46, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree. I can admit that sometimes I have gotten more heated than I should have.  None of us are perfect.  Hopefully, this serves as a reminder for us to stay respectful. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:46, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

A tangent on wording; almost anything written online can be interpreted as passive aggressive. This is especially true in an international and multilingual context. For example written British English (at least for anyone educated before the 1980s) leans to self-effacing to be polite, this careful politeness in an online modern or Americanocentric context is easily interpreted as slyness, sarcasm, or passive aggressive. A general rule of thumb should be to double-check, as sometimes simple good faith and echoing back your reading in plain English, will quickly diffuse what might appear to someone from a different cultural background to be passive aggressive or annoyingly sarcastic. --Fæ (talk) 02:14, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Unnecessary section
The part about the Community Advocacy team and global bans should just be removed (or alternatively replaced with language like "the Global Ban Policy also applies to technical spaces"), to avoid any potential confusion that the code of conduct makes a different set of standards for global bans than what is in the policy. The language of the particular section is also pretty unfortunate and reads like "the CA team will be policing technical spaces and getting anyone who violates the above globally banned", IMO. wctaiwan (talk) 03:34, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The meta:WMF Global Ban Policy only includes extreme situations, and the WMF refuse to talk about those situations.
 * That will be appropriate for some 'Code of conduct' issues, however it seems like the 'reasons people will be banned' aspect of this CoC policy is intentionally more inclusive of incivility and bad behaviour than the Global Ban Policy, however the CoC is limited to parts of 'Wikimedia' that are 'paid work' spaces for people, esp. WMF staff.
 * I do worry that this CoC will mean 'the editing community' feels 'mediawiki.org' and other technical spaces has a more pro-WMF banning policy than meta or content wikis, and therefore withdraw from participating in these spaces. John Vandenberg (talk) 06:36, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I hope that it's the opposite, and people see that codes of conduct are not something to be afraid of, but just reinforcement of good practices. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:59, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I have no issue with that wording. I'll put it up and we'll see how it goes. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:59, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Role of the document
I feel like this code of conduct is trying to be a set of guidelines for best social practices (no off-topic comments, discuss things in the open) and a set of binding rules (no harassment) simultaneously, with no clear delineation. This should be addressed either by structuring things differently and making it clear which things would lead to consequences, or just splitting it into a binding policy and a non-binding set of guidelines. The binding parts would also need to be concrete (in defining unacceptable behaviour) to be enforceable.

In what's been defined so far, I think the part about rejecting patches should just be removed—given the precedent of some developers being very determined to push through features against consensus, people really shouldn't be punished for rejecting patches, provided they do so without personal attacks and such. (Also, please don't use words like "catalytic".) wctaiwan (talk) 04:03, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:16, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * All of it is meant to be binding with the possible exception of the first sentence, which is kind of a preamble laying the groundwork. I feel like "Communicate about technology in public where possible" is relevant to the document, even though it's kind of non-actionable due to "where possible", because this is an important part of the MediaWiki ethos.  "Comments should be made with the intention of constructively contributing to our technologies." is actionable; it means e.g. comments that are purely unconstructive attacks are not appropriate.  I would expect this would not be enforced for one-off insignificant off-topic comments, but only to deal with major disruption.  It doesn't say patches can't be rejected; a lot of patches need to be rejected, for valid reasons (product, technical, or both).  It just says "consistent and unwarranted rejection of patches" (emphasis added) is not appropriate. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 06:28, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I certainly don't think it should be a policy that communication happens in the open (the foundation may wish to mandate that for WMF developers, but this shouldn't be binding on volunteer developers). Unconstructive attacks may be actionable, but as written it's too vague and too broad (e.g. foundation PMs may argue that debating whether a feature is wanted at all is "unconstructive"). "Unwarranted" also leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
 * I'm not fundamentally opposed to covering both best practices and actionable misconduct on the same page (e.g. first list the goals of a CoC and document best practices, and then list what is considered actionable), but I think the latter needs to be concrete and separate for it to be enforceable at all. wctaiwan (talk) 07:28, 11 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Not to mention the fact that banning someone from one or more MediaWiki forums (the only real enforcement available for these rules) would presumably make them more likely to communicate with others privately. Yaron Koren (talk) 17:47, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This is not the only enforcement mechanism given. It explicitly makes clear that in some cases, just talking to them is the best way to go, and in other cases, issuing a formal warning may help.  Even in the case of bans, there are different types given. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 02:03, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't consider a warning to be enforcement, but that might just be a semantic issue. Yaron Koren (talk) 02:33, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It doesn't mandate solely public communication for anyone, WMF or otherwise. It just expresses that you should default to make it public (then consider the alternative, where appropriate), rather than go the other way. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 02:03, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Anyway, as I said above, while I think the "Communicate about technology in public where possible" line is relevant, it's not really actionable due to 'where possible'. I don't have my heart set on keeping it. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:19, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

(outdent) My concern is less about the specifics and more about the enforceability of a code of conduct that is deliberately designed not to be specific. You mention the role of discretion below. I'm fine with, say, discretion as to whether to give someone another chance, or whether something constitutes a pattern of disruptive behaviour, but as it is there isn't enough clarity when it comes to the line between best practices and actual rules. wctaiwan (talk) 04:37, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

"including but not limited to"
As "technical spaces" could be almost anything, for example bug requests are discussed on email lists, main noticeboards on Wikipedia and Commons, etc. this is a potential bear trap. The list needs to be specific, and the communities it encompasses need to unambiguously agree with it and have the opportunity to discuss it and amend it. --Fæ (talk) 05:02, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * We could consider removing "including but not limited to" from the 'virtual' section. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 06:31, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * On the presumption that unpaid volunteers are allowed to amend this draft in advance of whatever official WMF authorization you have in mind, I have been bold and made the change (diff). --Fæ (talk) 14:50, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I've asked people to help edit and work on the draft repeatedly, so it's not really a presumption. While I'm okay with removing it from 'virtual' (we could add any missing spaces we notice), removing it from the 'examples of harassment' is much more problematic.  It's easy for someone to claim their abusive behavior is technically not listed.  Common sense as to what constitutes harassment is still sometimes necessary.  This is a necessary list, but not a complete one.  I also think it should be next to 'physical'; however, there are possible alternatives there.  I also think "Wikimedia-controlled" is overly narrow (#wikimedia-dev is definitely a Wikimedia technical space, but is it Wikimedia-controlled despite being hosted by Freenode servers?). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 02:56, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * By definition, #wikimedia-dev will become Wikimedia controlled if this policy is made part of its channel notice, as will any other channel that opts in per the IRC discussion below. In this way there is no need to include an open-ended wording in this policy that may be read as all channels where wikip/media is in the channel name (as any of them might discuss technical matters and have technical staff participating), as we can state it in a more specific way which avoids that reading. --Fæ (talk) 07:40, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

IRC
IRC is not operated by Wikimedia and has independent and long established harassment policies. If the IRC harassment policy is to be effectively superseded by this Code, then it needs to be presented to the IRC community and the channels that it applies to need to be spelled out. As it stands it is not clear if this applies to all IRC private messaging, if it only applies to an agreed set of "technical" IRC channels (which should then have this Code linked in the channel notices), or whether it applies to all self-identified Wikimedians whenever they are using an IRC channel. The text currently reads in a way that denies the possibility of anonymity on IRC, which appears to run counter to Freenode's IRC policies. --Fæ (talk) 05:02, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The fact Freenode has a policy on harassment doesn't preclude use from having more specific guidelines. Harassment of women on IRC is well documented, so it's clear existing guidelines don't achieve the intended effect. I agree it would be good for the policy to be announced in the topic -- not for would-be harassers, but for people who are at risk for being harassed. They need to know we will not accept harassment. Valhallasw (talk) 07:48, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Threatening WMF global bans for those accused of being in some vaguely defined way "non-positive" or disruptive is not an improvement on Freenode's harassment policy nor on existing community agreed policies for conduct enforced by trusted unpaid volunteers. This Code unnecessarily relies on a process with no possibility of appeal, nor any requirement for evidence to be examined by the accused or their elected peers. It puts an unaccountable faceless harassment police force of WMF employees at the centre of our community, rather than the WMF published strategy of putting the volunteer at the centre.
 * Just to be absolutely clear, the concept of a code of conduct I have no objection to whatsoever. Nor do I object to more being done about harassment (and not just harassment of women). However this code attempts to define "technical spaces" as almost everything where I might write about technical issues, then jumps into a solution of global bans which are completely unnecessary when there are plenty of volunteer driven systems available. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 08:15, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The point about the global ban policy has been rephrased. It's hard to see how it could apply to non-Wikimedia IRC channels ("self-identified Wikimedians whenever they are using an IRC channel") when it explicitly limits itself to "Wikimedia's technical spaces"; I don't know how e.g. the emacs channel could be considered "Wikimedia's technical spaces". Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 06:42, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * No IRC channel is actually "Wikimedia's" as they are not run by Wikimedia, yet this policy asserts its authority on those spaces; if by "Wikimedia's" we means any channel with "wikimedia" in it, then that applies to #wikipedia-en and #wikimedia-commons whenever anyone wishes to assert that there was a technical discussion in those places.
 * Apart from presuming that "technical spaces" means any technical discussion anywhere, there is no definition so it is not limited. Unless the is accurate qualification of the scope of the Code, it seems fair to presume that users will apply it to all of the technical spaces mentioned where they may want to escalate a dispute, and it will therefore have the authority to bypass all local policies (as the ultimate sanction of a global ban is how it will be enforced). --Fæ (talk) 06:48, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * For the IRC channel issue, what about the idea of having each channel's topic say whether this code of conduct applied there? Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 01:48, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I am an op on a couple of IRC channels and have set notices for a few. I agree that channels should be encouraged to opt-in to conduct policies beyond Freenode's standard. It is tricky to assess whether the specific community that are IRC users have a consensus for policies like this, rather than a few individuals who happen to be participating that week. Some channels benefit from highly specific behavioural guidelines, for example #wikimedia-lgbt has had a friendly "PG-13" language warning in its notice, which was added not long after it started, to encourage participants to stay friendly for potential minors. I guess discussion with channel participants a couple of times would probably be the way to go, or if there was an appetite to discuss it for a particular Wikimedia channel, a vote could run on a related wiki. However I suggest that in many cases we can encourage the more widely applied safe space guidelines as sufficient, and these have proved pretty uncontentious since their original creation (I think the version we put together at the UK chapter after some issues with real life events was the starting point back in 2012). --Fæ (talk) 02:07, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Which safe space guidelines are you referring to? Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:01, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Primarily https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy though specific ones exist for some projects, such as Friendly_space_policies and https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Participation_policy which already apply to related spaces. --Fæ (talk) 07:47, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The Friendly space policy only applies to in-person events, not online. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:04, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, though some do specifically apply to virtual spaces, the distinction being slightly arbitrary as wiki-events invariably have significant virtual components and virtual participants for all related activities before, during and after physical events. Strangely enough, the harassment cases that spring to mind in relation to complaints in relation to friendly space policies, have involved virtual world actions such as deriding photographs online from events and outing participants online post-event. --Fæ (talk) 05:19, 13 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi, This closes a major loophole in which Wikimedia IRC channels, notably #wikimedia-commons were used in most inappropriate way. Fae is very well aware of that, if not part if the issue, so it is not surprising that he opposes this policy. Regards, Yann (talk) 21:37, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Please don't smear me with false allegations to make a point. I flatly and absolutely deny your snide claims about what I know, and heavy hints to make others believe I have some sort of evil motivation to scare me off asking basic questions about this proposed governance related policy. Please focus on the issues, rather than taking discussions off on a tangent through maligning participants. If you have evidence of harassment to present, please, please do present it in the correct forum where I would be happy to be held to account and answer any question based on evidence, rather than poisoning this discussion in an unhelpful and unpleasantly disruptive way. --Fæ (talk) 01:30, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * What I find very interesting in this discussion is the notion that what pertains to the wiki, doesn't apply to IRC. This would further infer that on wiki status would not carry over to IRC, yet, virtually all of the IRC Ops are admins on Wiki, they frequently threaten people with bans from various IRC channels for either on Wiki justifications or for not doing what they, as admins/ops, say. Its also not uncommon for links to on Wiki essays and guidelines to be used as justifications for blocks or bans on IRC. So what this appears to me to be is a classic case of picking and choosing when to apply a policy or rule and when not too. For example, if an editor does something an admin doesn't like, the admin on the IRC channel can block the other person without cause or justification and the WMF won't get involved. This being the case, the WMF really just doesn't appear to care about blatant IRC disruptions caused by Ops/Admins like Yann who frequently block or ban editors from the channel for what they want. This is unfortunate and disappointing to me but not entirely surprising given the WMF's history of lack of control over admins and the abusive environment they enable to turning their backs on editors. Reguyla (talk) 01:50, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know the history of all the IRC issues being discussed here, so don't misunderstand me as taking sides. But I do completely agree that the Wikimedia IRC technical community is intertwined with the rest of the Wikimedia technical community (including MediaWiki.org). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:58, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I believe that #wikimedia-commons as an irc channel is definitely out of scope of this. This is not the place to discuss etiquette guidelines for the entirety of the Wikimedia movement. If people want to do that, they should try their luck at meta. Bawolff (talk)

Without going into the specifics over whether WMF has reach over IRC channels, let me say that many channel operators, especially in the channels concerned, are not willing to ban someone unless they see clear evidence of actual wrongdoing in the channel. So even if WMF can do this, on a day-to-day basis, the existing operators may not be willing to enforce it.--Jasper Deng (talk) 18:44, 13 August 2015 (UTC)


 * We can agree that inappropriate behavior is equally inappropriate on-wiki, on-Phab, on-IRC, etc. Freenode's policies define the basic rules of Freenode. Our CoC cannot enter in conflict with such policies, but can build on top of them. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Channels#MediaWiki_and_technical should define which IRC channels are used as collaboration channels by the Wikimedia tech community (if the list is out of date, it can be updated). I don't think that an IRC channel related to the Wikimedia tech community can opt-out of a CoC or any other policy if it has been approved for all the tech community, just like I don't think a specific Phabricator project or a specific mailing list can opt-out either. In the "Enforcement" section I'm proposing that the first level of handling of complaints should be the own admins/maintainers of the spaces) affected by the complaint. If you agree with this idea, this would mean that a complaint about a situation in #wikimedia-foobartech would be handled first by the own channel operators. If the ops don't feel like solving the complaint alone or if the person claiming doesn't think that these ops will solve their problem, then a second level would take the issue (and that second level may or may not be formed by WMF employees, that is to be decided).--Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:13, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Enforcement
I understand that this page is currently a draft. I'm curious when the enforcement-related question marks will be filled in. Specifically:


 * Alternatively, contact ? directly about the issue.
 * In the case of persistent disregard of these guidelines or if you are uncomfortable contacting the person directly, contact ? on Wikimedia IRC or send an email to ? and ask them to look into it.

If this proposed code of conduct is implemented, who will be responsible for handling complaints and how will this person or group do so across IRC, Phabricator, Gerrit, mailing lists, the wikis, etc.?

Assuming action is taken by this person or group, such as instituting a temporary or permanent ban of an individual, what will the appeal process be? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:26, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I very much support moving forward and making progress towards putting this Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces into place. Thank you very much for spending the time and energy to create it and the time and energy to discuss, change and defend it - however I have the same questions as MZ has written out above (specifically about enforcement). It would also be good to know the difference between actions that would result in a temporary ban vrs ones that would result in a permanent ban and why. It is very clear at in-person events when people have willingly opted into the Friendly Space Policy (they must agree to the policy to register), decisions about enforcement are up to the event organizers and (more or less) fully left to their discretion. We have removed people breaking these policies from events in the past without issue. In this case if we don't have clear and **agreed upon** steps to take in order to enforce this we will run into issues. In case people have not seen what has been going on here, you should check it out: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Friendly_space_expectations It seems to be working well and very reasonable, but I think they had a slightly less complex problem to solve. Rfarrand (WMF) (talk) 22:58, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This is an open issue. As far as "It would also be good to know the difference between actions that would result in a temporary ban vrs ones that would result in a permanent ban and why.", I think there is a role for discretion in this policy as well.  It's hard to set a precise per-determined penalty for every grade of violation of every type of forbidden conduct listed. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:42, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This seems to be the central and hardest question. Who exactly [has to/gets to] decide (A) what is "over the line", (B) what the outcome is in each instance?
 * The Ada CoC just says "Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported by opening an issue or contacting one or more of the project maintainers." - Who is that, in our case? Who gets that burden/power/responsibility/role/unpleasant-chore? Who do we turn to, trust, and expect effort and investigation from?
 * Speculation: They can't be staff-only, because that would raise concerns about COI issues when the reporter/reported is a staff-member (and by god do some of the staff get verbally abused a lot, by anonymous and non-). They should be privacy-minded/discretion-trained/perhaps-even-NDA'd people, because they might be sent private evidence. They should be empathic and understanding of cultural and linguistic diversity. They should include experienced mediators/communicators, because they'll need to deliver warnings and decide on consequences, in a way that doesn't make the instance worse, nor fragment the communities. Constituting a proper group to review and respond is the critical factor in adopting any such plan that will work. –Quiddity (talk) 17:58, 12 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I think the points of contact and enforcement can be organized at two levels. The first level is formed by the administrators or maintainers of the space where the problem happens. All our technical spaces have individuals with permissions to ban a user, and that responsibility is acquired through experience and merit. This might not be as simple in practice, but as a principle I think it works. The second level should be used as escalation point if the first level is no good fit for addressing the problem for whatever reason. The simplest option would be to pick a related WMF team (Community Advocacy or Engineering Community being logical candidates). If this simplest option is seen as problematic for being in practice restricted to WMF employees (I personally don't think this is a problem, but such concern has been raised by some people) then a small committee could be formed with 3-5 people chosen among the admins and maintainers active in the first level.
 * The point here is not who exactly can be point of contact and enforcement, because we have enough qualified people with enough community trust to be in this role. The point here is to assure that there is people officially appointed to this role with community backing. This way a person willing to report knows where to go with confidence and trust, and a person being eventually warned or banned knows that the person warning / banning is doing that in a community role, not on a personal motivation.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 12:38, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * At the beginning of this thread it was asked "what will the appeal process be?" I cannot see this being addressed yet. Until there is a credible agreed appeal process to assure the community that our shared values of transparency and accountability are being addressed, this will remain controversial, regardless of whatever procedure is devised (presumably this process remains the choice of WMF executives, unless there is a shift to putting this in the hands of elected volunteers?) for appointing community prefects/collegiality monitors or whatever they are going to be called who are granted special banning powers. --Fæ (talk) 14:59, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * , I have created a section to discuss the appeal process specifically. There is nothing in this CoC and its application that "remains the choice of WMF executives". In my proposal just above I'm not considering anyone "who are granted special banning powers". The Wikimedia tech community already has users that have these permissions ("administrators and maintainers" for simplicity). Even if we decide that we have a second level of enforcement (say a WMF team, an elected committee, etc) this should not grant to its members any "special banning powers". When such group would reach to a conclusion, they would ask the admins/maintainers of the affected space(s) to execute the ban. Note that this distribution of power would be an intrinsic appeal process in itself, because it will be effective only when there is enough consensus between the acting parts. All we agree that the last thing this CoC and Wikimedia tech community needs is a single person or a single entity with superpowers able to take executive shortcuts. In the way this proposal started and develops, I'm not seeing any risk of falling in this situation. If you have concerns, let's address them in the writing and implementation of this CoC.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 07:41, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for setting up the section. With regard to your statement "nothing in this CoC and its application that "remains the choice of WMF executives"", I did not make this up, in fact the statement "Following approval from executive or legal staff, individuals who meet the criteria may be banned from all Wikimedia spaces, including technical ones" was added by Mdennis (WMF) on 7 Aug and eventually edited out by Mattflaschen-WMF on 11 Aug. Presumably this statement about global bans is entirely accurate, and while global bans remain an option then "executive or legal staff" will be part of how this policy will be implemented and interpreted. --Fæ (talk) 10:01, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, understood. I take the mention to the Global Ban Policy only as a reminder that it exists. This CoC and its handling should be compatible with that policy but independent from it. If someone in the Wikimedia tech scope is getting more points to receive a global ban, it would not be based on infractions against this CoC but on the criteria of the Global Ban Policy itself, and that would be handled according to the process of that policy.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:55, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The interrelationship needs to be spelt out in the escalation process. As you infer, it would be best to avoid giving the impression that this policy is part of policies or legal documents controlling office locks and global bans, so the changes to this draft in the last week to move away from that hard line stance are a distinct improvement. This is the first time I have read "points" being part of the system. It would be a good step towards transparency if any system like this were made public and volunteers could ask about their own status if they are in doubt, and ask for review or start an appeal, rather than this being like expecting repercussions for asking about black ops. --Fæ (talk) 13:41, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * "Getting more points" was just a casual expression written by this non-native English speaker. I think the process we need should be as transparent as possible taking into account privacy considerations (I can see how many times a three party private conversation can be more effective solving a problem than a fully public and transparent claim/appeal process). In any case, I don't think we need anything like Point system (driving) here. :) I'll pay more attention to my casual phrasing in this discussion. And let me insist, we are designing a Code of Conduct to improve community health that must go through community approval, not a toolkit to recreate a police state.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 13:52, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

"Unwanted photography"
Clearly this needs clarification. In the U.S., for example, it is entirely legal to photograph any person in a public place at any time. My main work here is for the Commons. I don't normally ask in advance before taking photos in public, nor do most U.S. contributors to Commons. Are we, or are we not, saying that if that person is a participant in a WMF project that they may now have a veto on having their photo taken and posted here? If, for example, that person is giving a speech, do they now (unlike anyone else) have a right to say that someone cannot photograph them during that speech? What if they were one of the many people bicycling naked in the Fremont Solstice Parade and decided they didn't like a photo someone took of them? Would they then have special recourse unlike anyone else in the parade? I don't think that's what we mean to say, but perhaps it is. If so I strenuously object; if not, there needs to be some clarification as to what is meant by "unwanted photography." - Jmabel (talk) 14:27, 11 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Certainly clarification is needed as the policy is open ended and non-specific at the moment.
 * Keep in mind that conferences are not necessarily public places and physical meetings might be in many countries, so there are several ways of interpreting personality rights and the nature of intrusion or reasonable expectations for privacy even when photographs are taken in a public place (I'm thinking of UK law here, rather than US law). This is where the policy would be much better split so that hard and enforced policy elements are clearly distinguished from best practice guidelines for participants. I doubt that anyone intends to create a policy which removes a citizen's right to free speech or the rights of journalists or "citizen journalists" to report events by threatening anyone that breaks it with punitive, publicly humiliating and permanent global bans. --Fæ (talk) 15:00, 11 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Jmabel -- actually, Commons has been generally receptive on several occasions to requests for deletion of such photographs (don't remember any from Fremont Solstice Parade, but do remember one from Burning Man) as a matter of "courtesy deletion" (though the photographed person doesn't have a strict right to demand deletion). AnonMoos (talk) 16:05, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The code of conduct says "unwanted photography", it doesn't say "photography without permission". It also doesn't say anything about publishing photographs (or a "special recourse")—thus personality rights are irrelevant to the discussion, as is Commons, as is the example about the Fremont Solstice Parade. As to your example of someone giving a speech, I think it is totally reasonable for someone to request that they not be photographed while giving a speech. For example, what if they are a Chinese citizen and speaking out against the Chinese government? In such a situation, repeatedly ignoring their request would be rightfully considered harassment, IMO. Kaldari (talk) 21:24, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Jmabel requested clarification. If someone asks for photographs to avoided for a talk, we respect their wishes as a courtesy; this already happens. However making threats of global bans will not stop "unwanted" photographs of a notable person being taken by journalists or anonymous tweeters if a conference is in a public place, or has public access. Neither should anyone in fear for their safety be given an impression that a code of conduct for technical spaces makes it acceptable to take more risk. Were I organizing a conference I would consider it unethical to have the event used in a way that creates serious unnecessary risk of harm, such as future imprisonment by their government, for any attendee. --Fæ (talk) 01:09, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * First, we need to distinguish between community policy and government law. There is no law in the U.S. against written personal attacks (unless they are libel), but the English Wikipedia still has a No personal attacks policy.  The primary goal of provisions like the unwanted photography one is to ensure people don't completely ignore the photography subject's intentions.   If you just didn't know about their preference, I don't think that would be considered a violation.  As far as WMF major public figures, I don't know any of them that have such a preference.  If they did, and people felt that it interfered with e.g. documenting major speeches at WMF technical events, the right remedy would be to ask them to reconsider their preference.
 * I'm not sure how an unrelated public bicycle parade could possibly be considered a Wikimedia technical space. It's not based on who the person is; it's based on the space.  So if you see Brion Vibber at some unrelated conference, you should follow their policy, not this one.  And if you see him at the grocery store, it's between you and him (of course, being respectful is always good). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 02:08, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * So the issue is "unwanted photography" in the technical space, not "unwanted photography" of someone you might have interacted with in such a space? Because that is certainly not clear here. Also, "unwanted" is still hopelessly vague, especially if the sanction is a global ban. If it means "taking photographs of someone who has clearly and explicitly said not to take them" it should say so. If it means a photographer can get in trouble because someone decides the expression on their face doesn't flatter them, that is a very different thing. And, no, that's not just a hypothetical: things like that are by far the main reason for requests for courtesy deletions. I'm all for courtesy deletions, but not for sanctions against a photographer for taking (nowhere here does it even say publishing) pictures. - Jmabel (talk) 07:56, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I think unwanted photography should be defined as taking photographs where the subject has either asked that their picture not be taken, or has a sticker saying no photos (Or I guess if the photographer is doing something creepy like specifically trying to sneak photos of someone). Bawolff (talk) 10:10, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I've rephrased this line. 'Clearly inappropriate' is intended to mean basically what Bawolff described as creepy.  Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:31, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The document says "follow this policy in Wikimedia's technical spaces", not "follow this policy anywhere you see a MediaWiki software engineer or bug-reporter". Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 20:31, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Encouraging others to behave badly
I was wondering if it would be worth adding the following bullet point under the "Do not harass contributors or users" section: Personally, I think that encouraging harassing behavior is also a form of harassment. Thoughts? Kaldari (talk) 23:45, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Encouraging others to do any of the above.


 * Is encouraging someone to do X the same as doing X? If so, I've won a bunch of professional sports games... Yaron Koren (talk) 00:14, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * No, encouraging someone to do X is rarely the same as doing X. But occasionally it is. For example, encouraging someone to commit a crime is often committing a crime. Kaldari (talk) 00:32, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * What is and is not regarded as a crime in various jurisdictions is not a meaningful metric, as completely ridiculous things find their way into legal codes all the time. As for the matter at hand, encouraging people to harass others is not inherently harassment. Don't call it what it isn't, just call it what it is - something that is also problematic, and should not be done. -— Isarra ༆ 01:19, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * What's a specific example of this? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:30, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I would be fine with adding that. To address Isarra's point, rather than putting it in the "Examples of harassment" list, it could be a separate line item afterwards, saying "Do not encourage people to harass or personally attack others" or something like that. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:51, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Need clarification on the scope
I'm watching this discussion since someone posted a link in Commons' village pump. At first, I didn't see anything concerning to my activities there (my main project) and wonder how it affects a Commoner. Now I saw more Commoners raising concerns here. So I re-read the draft. It has two parts of scope; physical and virtual. "Physical" is noway relevant to Commons or any other WM projects as we are not physically meeting any. In "virtual", I see only "MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical mailing lists, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad". No other WM project like Commons is mentioned. My understanding is also a WM project like MediaWiki has no control over such projects. General policies like Global ban must be defined in Meta. So I wonder from where these concerns are coming?

I can understand MW has the right to block somebody if s/he misbehaved to a volunteer here on/off-mediawiki. But off wiki activities need investigations by some higher authorities like Arbcom. Commons doesn't such a setup and many people make benefit from it. But it is a "common" problem and not relevant here.

I also see "global ban policy" is mentioned in the draft. It only means people who apply global ban can consider the reasons which result a block here too, while considering a GB against a user. It is quite logical and I see nothing particular in it.

Am I correct? Let me correct; if I'm wrong. J ee 02:46, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think this is basically right. Some of the prior questions and comments were when it said, "virtual (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical mailing lists, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad)".  Now it says, "virtual (MediaWiki.org, Phabricator, Gerrit, technical mailing lists, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad)" (no "but not limited to", so no ambiguity about which web sites (or parts of them) it applies to).  If there are problems in virtual technical spaces that are not listed here, the policy could be amended after further discussion. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:06, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks Mattflaschen for the clarification. Tgr's suggestion below is also very good. It is other project's responsibility to monitor their lists and IRC channels. J ee 04:48, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Would it be fair to say that technical mailing lists are the ones listed under Mailing_lists/Overview, and technical IRC channels are the ones listed under IRC/Channels? Those lists seem fairly comprehensive (and if not, they should probably be fixed anyway). --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 04:27, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure a lot is missing from both those lists. Bawolff (talk) 08:05, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Bug management/Phabricator etiquette
If this code of conduct is adopted, what will happen to Bug management/Phabricator etiquette? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:55, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Parts of the CoC might cover and hence supersede parts of the Phabricator etiquette, while other parts of the Phabricator etiquette are so Phabricator-only specific (e.g. status and priority fields) that they could remain and simply extend the CoC. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:35, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

"Sexual imagery or verbiage in public technical spaces"
I believe this example has been expressed oddly; possibly "verbiage" is used differently in modern British English compared to American English. Was the intent to say that sexual imagery and sexual texts are harassment, or was it actually intended that "verbiage" of any kind can be interpreted harassment? This reads as if writing a long complaint could now be called harassment just for being long-winded.
 * The adjective is meant to apply to both nouns. In other words, it's equivalent to "sexual imagery or sexual verbiage".  If someone else finds this confusing, we could change it to that. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 23:47, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

As a secondary issue, the example concerns me as "sexual imagery" is vague wording, and in practice has been clearly interpreted on the English Wikipedia to include "sexuality", hence material like LGBT event photographs and historic material which might include partial nudity, such as 19th century ethnographic photographs. I understand what is probably intended, something like nudity or sexual photographs which are likely to cause offence when presented inappropriately. Could someone rephrase this so that the example is unlikely to be a cause of arbitrary future contention if we are discussing technical issues with topics like Wiki Loves Pride events or linking to categories for media in a medical education/history project and could include photographs or diagrams with partial nudity, such as the images from the Wellcome Library or diagrams from Cancer Research? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:16, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This is intended to be a code of conduct for technical spaces; it doesn't affect how Wikipedia chooses to cover e.g. 19th century ethnography. I think people will understand that if you are in the process of working on a technical problem, and incidentally have to link to an image or category with nudity, that would not be a violation (but it might be worth adding a NSFW on the bug report or whatever). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 23:47, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Right to appeal
The right to appeal has been mentioned in several places. As a general principle, of course anybody being accused of breaching the CoC must have the right to appeal. The first ones having to excel at Conduct are the ones using it to file a complaint and the ones using it to enforce it on someone. The exact implementation of the appeal process can be defined only after the processes for starting and handling a complaint has been defined, though. For instance, complaints filed privately probably will have an appeal process that is equally private, unless one of the parts wants to bring the issue to the public. Let's agree first on how to file a complaint and how to handle it?

Let me add that the root of the questions about an appeal process seem to be based on the assumption or fear that this CoC and its enforcement will be authoritative and unfair by nature. If this is the concern, then let's focus on this concern in the first place. This CoC and its application in the Wikimedia technical spaces can only become a reality if the Wikimedia technical community embraces it and maintains it. If there is anything suspicious and unfair in this CoC, it will not be approved, it will not become a policy.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 07:25, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

First line of enforcement
I would like to float an alternative proposal for first line enforcement. I suggest that there should be a small group (probably either 3 or 5) of people from our technical community (both volunteers and staff, based on their involvement in the tech community). There would be an OTRS or mailing list address pointing to that group. I think the steps would be something like that:


 * 1) Someone emails e.g. techcoc@wikimedia.org, or contacts one of the members on IRC.  If it's OTRS, I think the email could auto-create a ticket, and maybe for IRC it could be created manually from the web interface?
 * 2) For a simple case (e.g. first offense, minor harassment in a single space), a single member could:
 * 3) * Defer to the space itself (e.g. MediaWiki.org admins in the case of an incident on MediaWiki.org, or event organizers for a hackathon), if they seem best-equipped to handle it.
 * 4) * Issue a public or private warning directly.
 * 5) * Decide to take no action (logging why and notifying the reporter)
 * 6) For a more complicated case (e.g. repeat offense, when a ban looks like like it will be required, or where there is cross-space harassment), the initial responder could ask other members of the group for feedback, and can also bring in people from the spaces involved (e.g. if it happens on both MediaWiki.org and IRC, bring in involved admins and IRC contacts).
 * 7) In case of even more complicated or urgent matters, or if the group is unable to reach a decision (e.g. the minority in the group objects to the decision), it can be escalated.
 * 8) After the initial outcome (which would always be logged, even if it's just 'deferred to XYZ' or 'no action taken'), the reporter should be notified.
 * 9) The reporter always will be notified of the initial outcome, and has the right to appeal (see separate discussion).
 * 10) If public action is taken on the basis of the CoC (whether by the group or by local maintainers of the space), the alleged offender also has the right to appeal.
 * 11) Appeals would be taken to the same group that the committee could choose to escalate to (which group is under discussion).

Part of the goal here is the person who feels harassed does not need to look up different policies and points of contact depending which space it happened in. They can always contact the same email (or IRC). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 21:21, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, I suggest that all participants in the first-level group be required to be identified to the WMF. Exactly how the group is formed could be determined if people otherwise support this proposal. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 21:36, 14 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I think this is a good start. I think that the Engineering Community Team is a logical group for the second level response. I'd like to see this group made up of WMF staff, technical volunteers, and one representative from ECT, since ECT has considerable knowledge about community structures and dynamics. I think that an email ought to be a sufficient place to report to--IRC is likely to be more complicated to monitor, and I don't think it's necessary as long as emailed reports get a prompt response. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 02:38, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Some notes and suggestions:
 * Anonymizing reports are terribly important here. Specially when it comes to sexual harassment. we need more explicit statements on this to ensure people to feel more comfortable. I think CA can help us.
 * In lots of cases people already made contact with local maintainer of space (e.g. someone harassed me in mediawiki.org and initially I will contact admins of mediawiki.org but in some cases they don't handle it well. Lack of experience from admins, influential friends, being "too" valuable, etc.) So we need to determine a way to handle such cases.
 * Punishment vs. protecting the system: Imagine I offended someone in pywikibot code review. What is the best action? Do you think I should be banned for a while or I should be stripped off from my owner rights or both? this states "Project maintainers who do not follow or enforce the Code of Conduct may be permanently removed from the project team." Should we have something like this?
 * Removal of comments: you didn't define anything about this. e.g. the CoC says: "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. By adopting this Code of Conduct, project maintainers commit themselves to fairly and consistently applying these principles to every aspect of managing this project." Ladsgroup (talk) 08:22, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Body size
We don't have anything related to body size, or this falls under physical appearance? It is important to me since I was born with a medical condition that makes me super skinny and I was called names a lot in school and people told me horrible things that continues today, It never happened in mediawiki space but I can imagine the possibility Ladsgroup (talk) 08:22, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
 * There are only examples in this CoC. Harassment may be alleged for whatever someone believes is harassment which easily includes appearance, medical conditions or the perception of these (this is how the police explained their approach to me in the UK, i.e. it's not their job to interpret what is or is not harassment, they take seriously any complaint and document it for further action). --Fæ (talk) 11:06, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

From the perspective of a maintainer
In other sections, others have already clarified why a code of conduct is a good idea from the perspective of potential contributors and victims, but I'd also like to share the perspective of a maintainer. On the Pywikibot mailing list, we have had our fair share of behavior that is not OK, but I've always been reluctant to actually put the users on moderate, or to ban them from the mailing list altogether. Why? I wasn't sure whether that was the right thing to do, and I was afraid of the backlash that would probably follow.

Having an explicit policy makes policing behavior also much easier. From one side, it's much easier to say 'hey, you are violating the code of conduct', and from the other side, having the policy means we //have to// intervene. It's much easier to act on a previously agreed policy than acting off the cuff. Let's make clear rules, and let's use them to make this environment more fun to work in. Valhallasw (talk) 21:31, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Criticize ideas, not people
I am not a fan of that phrasing. First, there is not all that much difference between "your idea is stupid" and "you are stupid". There is an unfortunate misconception in certain circles of the community that the second is a personal attack but the first is fine, and we should not reinforce that. Second, publicly challenging improper behavior can be an important part of upkeeping community norms and socializing newcomers, and the "consequences" part explicitly suggests it as a first step of enforcement, but it would be itself a violation under this rule. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:49, 16 August 2015 (UTC)