Code of Conduct/FAQ

Frequent Arguments and Questions related to the Code of Conduct for technical spaces. Replies must conform to the current draft. Please keep the entries concise and neutral, linking to existing discussions for details.

What are "marginalized and otherwise underrepresented groups"?
This Code of Conduct doesn't aim to have its own definition of marginalized and otherwise underrepresented groups. People related to these groups are more likely to become targets of discrimination, explicitly or as a consequence of unconscious bias , both in the societies where they live and online, and this is why we are stressing explicitly this risk as unacceptable behavior.

Isn't this CoC placing excessive responsibility on volunteers?
Candidates to join the Committee may be volunteers or employees of a related organization. They are self-nominated, and they assume the responsibility voluntarily. The Committee may request support from experts and reviewers external to the Committee and unrelated to the case.

Are Committee members required to disclose their legal identity publicly?
No, in the same way that i.e. Stewards are not required to publish their real names either. If a person is known by their username only, they can just keep this identification when they join the Committee. All Committee members need to be identified to the Wikimedia Foundation, following the Access to nonpublic information policy.

How much work are Committee members expected to put?
As of March 2017, this is hard to predict. For what is worth, the Technical Collaboration's Community Health group (who handles conduct reports submitted to them) processes between one to ten incidents every quarter, the majority of them being equivalent to immediate response cases resolved quickly and without major controversy. About once every quarter there is one case requiring the equivalent of a longer-term response, sometimes connected to one of our major developer events.