Talk:Code of Conduct

Finalize "Amendments" section?

Should the "Amendments" section be considered done? This is the last section under consideration, so after it is approved, the Code of Conduct will become policy. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 23:20, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

This is just a reminder, since there is related discussion below. This is a draft policy of the Wikimedia technical spaces, and decisions about the draft are made by participants in these spaces. This is the same as all the other sections, and normal procedure on MediaWiki.org and the other Wikimedia wikis. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 22:06, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Consensus reached. Thank you for participating. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 23:44, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Some of the opposes offered suggestions that could be offered for future amendments, e.g. clarifying when the veto power is intended to be used. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 23:55, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. I think we reached a reasonable compromise in response to the feedback about the Committee veto. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 23:22, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support NRuiz (WMF) (talk) 00:39, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support This process seems fair to me. Rfarrand (WMF) (talk) 01:50, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support Gamaliel (talk) 02:00, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose: The concerns raised in the Final approval of CoC section have not been addressed. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:52, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:41, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Per previous issues unaddressed, such as Committee confidentiality compromised by copying all interesting correspondence to WMF Legal in an ungoverned way, the fact that volunteers have had no sight of the advice given from paid experts and have waited for a year for it to appear, and that the promised final review will, apparently, not happen and instead we have a Frankensteinian review process of 'agreeing' a significant policy one body part at a time and with no serious attempt to build a consensus rather than relying on majority votes. Consensus never has been achieved by popularity votes. --Fæ (talk) 15:26, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose concerns. --Steinsplitter (talk) 18:11, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support no concerns. Ckoerner (talk) 19:58, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose The COC included some very basic mistakes (I fixed a couple of them). It should never be policy anywhere. It is very easy to improve it in its current form, so I would consider it far from stable. There is no consensus for this COC. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 17:17, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

  [moved from top of section] That is incorrect, you need consensus in order to make it policy, and there is no consensus for any of it. The way you've handled this is so bad that you would need to start over if you wanted to get consensus. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 18:26, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose By now I'm afraid to voice my opinion. Natuur12 (talk) 18:14, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support Mompati Dikunwane (talk) 11:26, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as other editors have concerns. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:55, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support --Miriya52 (talk) 23:40, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support Looks good. --brion (talk) 23:47, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support Amendments section looks good to me. Kaldari (talk) 00:15, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support Good work. Milimetric (WMF) (talk) 03:26, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support Looks OK. --Vladimirrizov20 (talk) 14:14, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support I think this section provides a good way to improve the CoC if needed, as we learn from experience.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 14:52, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support I previously objected when any committee member could veto an amendment, but now that this has been changed to require a majority of the committee, that satisfies my concern. --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 18:32, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support This will make it possible to improve the Code of Conduct as we learn and progress. Looks good to me. MSchottlender-WMF (talk) 22:42, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support, the time has come. Max Semenik (talk) 22:46, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• Weak Oppose, I'm still not loving the committee members' veto power. I don't have a better proposal which is why this is a weak oppose. -- ArielGlenn (talk) 01:13, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose any sort of ArbCom being founded here, and also oppose the removal of comments from past discussions by WMF under the guise of the discussion being "resolved". Clearly it isn't. Ajraddatz (Talk) 08:01, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

  @Ajraddatz: I didn't remove any comment, so I ask that you retract your false allegation. Since you're active on multiple wikis, on what wiki do discussions stay open forever, allowing people to comment literally weeks or months late at their leisure, with the outcome forever in flux? Several people have mentioned striking the late votes (some of which themselves acknowledged being late!), but no one has explained how and where the other policy works. Many discussions use time-based closures, as you know. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 01:32, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

  I would say that striking comments is a removal of those comments from the discussion, so I'll keep it right where it is. Ajraddatz (Talk) 01:41, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

  Note how Ajraddatz ignored the question. There is no such wiki where weeks-late comments would be considered in (re-)making a decision. What I did is standard practice. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 01:53, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

  If this entire discussion had been closed for weeks or months, then yes. But requests for comment on Meta tend to stay open for easily that period of time, and during that time all comments are welcome. That's what happens when you're dealing with a broad community that uses something (for example, these technical spaces) but this isn't their "home" project. I disagree with closing sub-discussions, especially when people obviously still have comments to add. Ajraddatz (Talk) 02:18, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. This sets up a self-perpetuating organization that cannot be amended by the powers that created it. --Tim Landscheidt 00:21, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

  That is not accurate. Like some other policies (on-wiki and elsewhere), the document can be amended by the community, but a threshold is defined. In this case, the threshold is straightforwarad to cross: The community can amend it, unless a majority of the Committee affirmatively decide to veto because the amendment would make the policy less effective/ineffective. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 07:37, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

  You see that word "but" in your sentence? --Tim Landscheidt 17:18, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support. Code of Conduct/Amendments section looks good to me. KavithaMuthu 22:23, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support I think this proposal is a good compromise between fairness and practicability. Physikerwelt (talk)--
• Oppose Per User:Steinsplitter, User:Fæ, and User:MZMcBride. Also the issue immediately above my comment is troubling. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:39, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Though assuming the good faith of the proposers, I believe the process has gone severely astray. There are many items which could be analyzed - e.g. too small participation, bad advice from perhaps poor sources, incomplete consideration of failure modes - but even if each could be defended as the best possible for the time, the overall result strikes me as simply too flawed to proceed with it. Moreover, a full community discussion is essential to any final policy. I would suggest incorporating some of the recent experience which came out of "lambdaconf" and subsequent consideration of a "Code of Professionalism". -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 17:27, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support weak oppose I think the current wording makes it to easy for the Committee to block proposals (and as a consequence it burdens them with having to decide when to use that power, without clear guidelines). More specifically,
  • I'd like the sixth bullet point to make it clear that a Committee veto is reserved for exceptional circumstances (ie. when a proposal would endanger the safety or effectiveness of the CoC). The current wording suggests that an amendment can only pass if both the majority of the community and the majority of the Committee supports it. I think the Committee should accept community consensus unless they feel that puts them in an untenable position. (Proposal: replace the bullet point with A proposal is accepted and integrated to the Code of Conduct by the Committee when the community reaches consensus. A majority of the regular Committee members can veto proposals in exceptional cases to protect the integrity of the Code.)
  • (I would prefer vetos to require unanimity but wouldn't insist on that.)
  • I find the wording "can be amended under the condition that changes made are not expected to reduce its effectiveness" too ambiguous. That seems to say the Committee can only get more power (and a bigger scope of what to police), never less. If the intent was to say that amendments should not leave the CoC ineffective (so e.g. no one should be able to suggest an amendment that makes the enforcement completely voluntary), I agree with that but it should be phrased better. (Proposal: replace "reduce" with "endanger".)
  • I think the last bullet point should be dropped. I agree with the spirit but the freshness of a discussion cannot be quantified (consensus can change over time) and I can't see any productive enforcement mechanism. Lots of people simply commenting "oppose per last time" is still the best way to handle dead horse abusers.

  Unrelated nitpick: "in the related Discussion page" should link somewhere. I suppose the related page is Talk:Code of Conduct/Amendments but never hurts to spell it out. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 23:43, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

  @Tgr (WMF): I think the text already handles your main points, just with minor difference in wording. And in one, I think there may be a misunderstanding. There is no requirement that a majority of the Committee vote "yes" on a proposal. It just says, "unless a majority of the regular Committee members oppose it.", so they have to affirmatively say "No" because it might "reduce its effectiveness". If everyone abstained, for example, they're not opposing, so that is not a veto. "reduce its effectiveness" is not the same as "reduce its jurisdiction". For example, an amendment could make it less effective by shrinking the Committee, or requiring burdensome case procedures. On the opposite side, an amendment could improve case procedures, increasing effectiveness, without increasing scope. Since these are mainly questions of emphasis (you said you don't consider the unanimity change a requirement), I think we could consider these as an amendment (meta, I know). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 10:19, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

  I still have mixed feelings about fixing the amendment process via amendments. On the other hand, with the amount of quality trolling going on around here, I have even more mixed feelings about dragging this process out any more than necessary, so let's go with that. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 18:08, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support Thanks for all the work. I am looking forward to have a working and adjustable CoC for this community. --Frimelle (talk) 14:55, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support I overall can support this version —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 15:25, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support I like the balance it strikes. Greg (WMF) (talk) 00:37, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support Looks good and am excited to have a functioning CoC in place soon. --Charlie Kritschmar (WMDE) (talk) 19:39, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support Important policy. Thanks for working on this! (It'll surely evolve...! I think the main concerns raised can be addressed as we go.) —AndyRussG (talk) (participating in personal capacity)
• Support Thanks for all the work on this, seems fair to me -- MViswanathan (WMF) (talk)
• Support appreciate the effort behind this CoC, and that it can be fluid as we learn from putting it in practice. Dchen (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support The amendments process seems reasonable to me. Thank you! --ARipstra (WMF) (talk) 22:20, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Bad ideas

• Offensive comments are, will be and should be allowed. Almost everything is offensive to someone, for example your stupidity is offensive to me. Offensiveness is incredibly subjective. The words "fuck nazi scum" are probably offensive to nazi scum. Does anyone (who is not nazi scum) really think I should not be allowed to say "fuck nazi scum"? BTW, many good jokes are offensive, and we should all be allowed to make jokes (within certain limits of course). Whiners who complain about stuff they consider offensive should not be given carte blanche to block/ban everyone they dislike.

If I had a large amount of money I should certainly found a hospital for those whose grip upon the world is so tenuous that they can be severely offended by words and phrases and yet remain all unoffended by the injustice, violence and oppression that howls daily about our ears.

—Stephen Fry

It's now very common to hear people say, "I'm rather offended by that", as if that gives them certain rights. It's no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended by that." Well, so fucking what?

—Stephen Fry

• Quote: "Harming the discussion or community with methods such as sustained disruption, interruption, or blocking of community collaboration (i.e. trolling)". -- This will be abused as an excuse to block people who disagree with other people. We do not need a sentence in a CoC about trolls, everyone agrees that they should be blocked (and no one cares when they are).
• Quote: "Discrimination (unless required by law), particularly against marginalized and otherwise underrepresented groups." -- No, people are equal and should be treated equally. People like myself ("white" heterosexual male born in a rich country) deserve the same protection against discrimination as those who actually experience discrimination on a regular basis. We won't need/use it anyway. I cannot recall ever being discriminated against, but if I would be then I deserve the same protection as everyone else, not more and not less. Treat me and others like me the same way as you would treat for example LGBTQ+ people and other minorities. And treat them the same way you would treat me. That is the entire point.

It is kinda bizarre that you guys seem to want to take the opinion of one person and make it into policy without gaining any form of consensus. I would recommend getting input from all the communities, because important decisions like this one should not be taken by an tiny group of likeminded people. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 17:25, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Sänger: See [1] and the text above. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 17:49, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I reverted most of your edits as inappropriate. If you disagree with the concept of a CoC, I would suggest you follow the lead by other people who agree with you by participating in discussions as they are. Legoktm (talk) 19:56, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Same here. If you disagree with my improvements then you can use the talkpage to discuss them. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 21:20, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Those sections have already been approved, after extensive discussion. Thus, I am not going to (re-)debate your specific points now, and changes to the draft, on already-approved sections (ignoring consensus) will be reverted. I don't think the above is at all a constructive proposal, but if someone had a constructive proposal for these sections, they could propose an amendment after the CoC is in place. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 22:49, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

None of the sections of this draft have been approved by the community. None of the discussions have been extensive. If you are not willing to debate the draft then others will. But it will not be policy until it gets community consensus, and you are being counterproductive. If you want this draft to become policy then I would recommend that you step back and let someone who is more experienced take over. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 22:51, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

We should ask the people who are affected by this draft if they support it. That means a widespread discussion that can take weeks. That way we can perhaps turn this into something useful. But having a handful of people make decisions like this and pretend that there is consensus is not going to work. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 22:54, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Mattflaschen-WMF: Please look at some RfC's about controversial topics on en.wiki. For example the recent Daily Mail RfC. For this COC we need a discussion (or perhaps multiple, splitting it up by section) that is larger than that one. I have tried to help you by fixing some of the worst problems, but the draft is still far from perfect. Please ask User:Fæ to help you, User:Fæ has experience setting up RfC's. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 22:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Mattflaschen-WMF: Have you read the RfC I linked to above? We need a discussion that involves many people. A handful of people are simply not enough. Do you have experience creating RfCs and WP:CONSENSUS on a large scale? If not then I recommend asking someone for help. You are not able to decide when we should stop asking for people's opinions. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 23:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Mattflaschen-WMF: We are on a talkpage, please use it to discuss. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 23:25, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Mattflaschen-WMF's actions

Mattflaschen-WMF does not seem to understand how consensus (and communities in general) work(s). Mattflaschen-WMF has sabotaged this COC by closing discussions way too early without inviting the affected communities to provide input and has struck through many opinions Mattflaschen-WMF disagreed with. Therefore it would be best if Mattflaschen-WMF would voluntarily stop editing this page, and that someone who is more neutral and experienced can start this process again. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 18:30, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

These personal remarks are out of place and more importantly grossly misinformed as many have pointed below. NRuiz (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Typically RfCs and proposals are driven by someone who is in support of them and have an interest in seeing them succeed - I don't think there's any need for Matt to step back. Legoktm (talk) 19:58, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Then I can safely assume you haven't read this talkpage. Please do. Typically RfCs on for example en.wiki are driven by someone who is an experienced member of the community, and people demand that it is done fairly. Matt has handled this incredibly badly (for example read the section about striking votes above (a diff before I started editing)-- and check which votes he struck and why). We need someone who is experienced who can start over. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 21:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Looking at user contributions on mediawiki.org, Matt is clearly an experienced member of the community. --Malyacko (talk) 22:01, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Then he should know better. I haven't found any evidence of him having experience with consensus building. This page indicates he is not an experienced member of any community other than maybe mediawiki.org (1500 edits), and of course this draft affects many communities, not just mediawiki.org. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 22:27, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

This page might look a little better. ;-) --Vogone talk 01:37, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

@Malyacko: Please use the talkpage instead of simply reverting with an editsummary. It is unclear to me what your edisummary means; I have not made any incorrect assumptions as far as I am aware. Collapsing misleading and incorrect comments like I did is generally considered a good idea. Would you prefer it if I struck through them? If not, then how do you propose dealing with those comments? Simply removing them? Thank you, The Quixotic Potato (talk) 22:46, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

This policy will only affect the technical spaces. I have been a member of the technical community since at least 2012 (probably earlier depending how you define it), and the broader Wikimedia community years before that. I have carefully built consensus every step of the way. Everyone affected has been invited (by email, banner, Phabricator notice, and more), and awareness in the technical community about this process is extremely high. You came from outside the community to unilaterally disrupt things by edit-warring to call things "silly", re-wrote much of the CoC (including the parts where consensus was carefully established after long discussion), and tried to take control of a process you had no involvement in (claiming "the process of getting consensus hasnt even started yet" when it has been going for a year and a half).

It's very telling that you repeatedly cited enwiki, even pushing to start an RFC on enwiki, despite this being completely outside of enwiki's scope (per their own policy, "Some matters that may seem subject to the consensus of the community at the English-language Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) are, in fact, in a separate domain. In particular, the community of MediaWiki software developers, including both paid Wikimedia Foundation staff and volunteers [...] These independent, co-equal communities operate however they deem necessary or appropriate [..] This does not constitute an exhaustive list as much as a reminder that the decisions taken under this project apply only to the workings of the self-governing community of English Wikipedia." [emphasis added]. That is because the community here has reached consensus on the resolved sections. You were not happy with the result, so you tried to override it with the opinion of a different community this policy does not govern. That is blatant attempted disruption.

That is also not how consensus-building works, and is unacceptable, particularly when combined with blatant and disruptive edit-warring.

I didn't strike anything, except positions posted after the discussion was resolved (sometimes months after). I never considered the viewpoint in doing so. Period. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:18, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

[moved from header to here] There is currently no consensus for any part of this draft. One WMF member seems to be unaware of how WP:CONSENSUS works and has tried to create policy that affects many people from many communities by asking a tiny group of people for their opinion (and striking through opinions that he disagreed with). It would be best if Mattflaschen-WMF would voluntarily stop editing this page, and that someone who is more neutral and experienced can start this process again. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 18:40, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• Being forthcoming and aggressive with your idea is good but to strike votes to achieve your desired, so-called unanimous result is absolutely toxic and I do not find why people are condoning the act. It's only my 2 cents and I very much doubt it'll matter at all to WMF. --QEDK (talk) 17:46, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

• • The votes were struck because they were weeks late to the party, not because they were opposing votes. Valhallasw (talk) 21:43, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
    • How many supporting votes have been struck? Note that the two-week deadline was something made up by the same person enforcing the procedure. This exceptional review procedure was never agreed by consensus of any kind. --Fæ (talk) 18:12, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• I don't understand why striking any comments is necessary. This entire thing is obviously still under discussion - let discussion happen. If people have objections that didn't raise them before, let them. And finally, I'm not concerned with Matt being involved here, but I do have issues with him deciding which comments are allowed and which aren't in this manner. Ajraddatz (Talk) 08:03, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

improvements are not disruptive, none of the sections have community consensus (although they may have been approved by a handful of WMF staffers)

If the WMF keeps editwarring then I am not going to help you anymore. We need a discussion that involves many people. A handful of people are simply not enough. Do you have experience creating RfCs and WP:CONSENSUS on a large scale? If not then I recommend asking someone for help.

WP:CONSENSUS has widespread support. I do not understand why the WMF keeps antagonizing the various communities by ensuring that they do not get a say. Maybe you have a tiny group of people (most of whom work for the WMF) who think that that draft is awesome. But I can introduce you to the enwiki community, which has many members that will disagree with the draft as I found it and will be displeased about the way the WMF treated members of the community.

A tiny group of people has been talking about this draft for a very long time. The result was very bad (I made many improvements and it is still quite bad). You should've asked the communities for input.

WMF staffers should stop reverting, and if you do not want those misleading and incorrect comments to be put in collapse templates then you can remove them or strike through them. Do you have a better suggestion?

You guys don't mind striking through someone else's posts, but when misleading and incorrect posts made by someone who works for the WMF get collapsed then it is a big problem? The Quixotic Potato (talk) 00:40, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

@Mattflaschen-WMF:@MSchottlender-WMF: How do you think the enwiki community (for example) is going to react when they hear how non-WMF users get treated on this page? The Quixotic Potato (talk) 00:42, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

This discussion has been widely communicated to the technical spaces (email, Phabricator, banner, etc.). See my post in Talk:Code_of_Conduct/Draft#Mattflaschen-WMF.27s_actions, particularly regarding openly seeking disruption from enwiki, which would be in violation of enwiki's own policy. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:23, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

More opinions are better

I haven't seen anyone point out any problems with the improvements I made, and I do not understand why having more opinions would not be better. The discussion has fragmented, some of it is here, some of it is on my talkpage, some of it is over at User talk:MSchottlender-WMF and User talk:Mattflaschen-WMF. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 01:22, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

We have constantly sought more opinions. This discussion has been widely communicated to the technical spaces (email, Phabricator, banner, etc.). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:24, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

This has not been publicized very well on en-wiki where most of your audience is. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:57, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

How is enwiki most of the audience? I see the audience as developers and sysadmins. Chico Venancio (talk) 18:25, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

All bug reporters & Co. will have to submit to the Code of Conduct as well, and with enwiki accounting for 50 % of the traffic, this is at least a major chunk of the audience. --Tim Landscheidt 18:41, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

That does not make much sense. If a bug reporter participates in the technical spaces enough to be affected by the CoC then he will know about mediawiki, mailing lists and Phabricator. I fail to see how enwiki is the main audience. Chico Venancio (talk) 18:47, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

There is no requirement on participating "enough" to be affected by this; if you encounter a bug or want to propose a new feature, you'll have to abide by these rules if you want to share your observation or suggestion. If you have someone else to do that for you at his own risk, then this will not affect you, I agree. --Tim Landscheidt 19:09, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

That is also true for policies on commons, and we don't expect the commons community to consult enwiki for every policy they enact. Valhallasw (talk) 20:49, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

You don't have to use Commons. You can always enable local uploads as a community. But if Commons would do something major like this, yes. Local communities like en-wiki and de-wiki should be informed. Natuur12 (talk) 16:13, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree that major wikis like en-wiki and de-wiki should be informed. The few votings here (including a lot of votings by staffers) can't be considered community consensus imho. --Steinsplitter (talk) 19:35, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Any participant in the technical spaces can participate in the decision here. The question of whether they are staff or volunteer is not even relevant. As for other wikis, the participants on those wikis decide those wikis' policies. But they do not decide the policies of the Wikimedia technical community, unless they are also participants here. Visitors to a city do not vote for mayor. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 02:01, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Being publicly critical of the WMF or its employees ensures you stay an outsider to the WMF political inner circle, to think otherwise would be to ignore the last 400 years of corporate history. For anyone under contract, doing so would be career limitingly stupid. So yes, how many people voting here who are under contract, or want future WMF employment, is highly relevant to understanding why the votes of unaffiliated volunteers are diametrically opposed to those who are under contract and still choose to express a public opinion. --Fæ (talk) 10:23, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

If you had actually taken a look at previous votes you could have spotted some "Oppose" votes by community members who are also WMF employees or contractors. --Malyacko (talk) 10:51, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately it's almost impossible to check as so many WMF employees are using sock accounts which are hard to verify connections for without doing lots of hunting around. For example "Malyacko" bears no obvious resemblance to "AKlapper (WMF)" even though you own both accounts. Even more confusingly you are actively contributing to these discussions using both accounts, giving the impression to most casual readers that you are two people with your opinions. Please stop doing that, it undermines confidence in any process with a vote, and on other projects such as the English Wikipedia is specifically against policy as it would be considered misuse of sock accounts. --Fæ (talk) 12:23, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

As you mention English Wikipedia policies, you may want to refresh your knowledge about what you call "sock accounts" by checking the "Designated roles" item of w:Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry#Legitimate_uses before spreading further misleading information. --Malyacko (talk) 13:10, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Perfectly aware, thanks. Using multiple accounts during any consensus process is against policy as it is misleading and not legitimate use of socks. Stop doing it. --Fæ (talk) 13:33, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Feel free to link to the policy for mediawiki.org you're referring to and I'll happily refrain from putting efforts into separating my personal and my professional activities during a "consensus process". Thanks in advance! --Malyacko (talk) 14:43, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Fæ first claimed, falsely, that "For anyone under contract, doing so would be career limitingly stupid." and "the votes of unaffiliated volunteers are diametrically opposed to those who are under contract". After it was noted that staff members have voted oppose (and I would add, many volunteers have supported), he then suddenly changed the subject to distract attention. There is no way anyone could miss that a user voting {{Oppose}} with a username ending in "(WMF)" (as there have been) is a WMF employee. Hence, Fæ's sudden change in subject. I will bring it back to the actual subject: It is completely unacceptable to try to exclude some members of the technical community because they are employed (regardless of employer). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 07:24, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

What I wrote started with "Being publicly critical of the WMF or its employees ensures you stay an outsider to the WMF political inner circle". Don't twist my words into something I never said. There are millions of ways to twist my words, please stick to what others actually write rather than creating false reasons to polarize views. --Fæ (talk) 08:09, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

WMF employees confusingly using personal and staff accounts in the same consensus building discussion

To close out this tangent, Project:Sock puppetry applies on Mediawiki. This states that "editors to any Wikimedia Foundation wiki, including this one, should each use only one account". While WMF employees should use their WMF accounts for WMF business, it is against this policy to use both personal and WMF accounts in the same discussion in a way that would confuse other contributors. The Mediawiki policy points to en:Wikipedia:Sock puppetry for further information.

Should anyone persistently use their sock accounts on Mediawiki in a confusing way, it would be a reasonable step to ask for administrator action to ensure the misuse stops, regardless of whether the sock accounts include WMF employee accounts. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 22:14, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the link and for confirming that splitting personal and professional activity is in compliance, as that page says "Wikimedia Foundation staff may operate official staff accounts and non-official accounts for normal editing" (which you unfortunately omitted from your quote above for unknown reasons). I do not share your personal policy interpretation, so I'm afraid there's nothing to add here. Cheers! :) --Malyacko (talk) 14:10, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Just to clarify, because I have difficulty matching your actions to your words, you are using your WMF employee account to engage with discussion on this page and vote in proposals. You have then swapped, apparently arbitrarily to using another account which does not comply with WMF naming policy for staff accounts and casual participants here would presume is not the same person. Are you saying that you were fulfilling your necessary contracted role within the WMF, as required by your WMF manager, for every edit you have made on this discussion page under the account User:AKlapper (WMF)? Please reply using your WMF employee account, or ask your manager to do so, as this is a question for you as a WMF employee, not an unpaid volunteer speaking for themselves alone. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:38, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

People can have personal views as community members, and also professional views in their work role. I'd not call that "arbitrary". --Malyacko (talk) 15:01, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Arbitrarily swapping between personal accounts and official WMF employee accounts is by definition arbitrary and in this case misleading for other contributors during a consensus building process. You are in breach of the sockpuppet policy for this project.

Please provide a direct official answer to the above question using your WMF employee account, or ask your manager to do so. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 15:16, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Currently I personally do not plan to spend time on this discussion thread as part of my professional role, sorry. --Malyacko (talk) 15:30, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Summary of criticisms

In the most cynical outlook, this is a Wikimedia Foundation-imposed policy. The revision history of the page and activity on the related Phabricator tasks make this pretty clear: <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P4985> and <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90908>.

All of the statements in the original post are false.

First, your attempt to exclude members of the community because they are employed (regardless of employer) is unacceptable. You have been around long enough to know that staff of various organizations are part of this community. The query you show is not for the right pages, but only for the draft. You excluded the talk page, where many people have proposed and commented on draft text (with many suggestions making it into the approved text). If people are interested in the real query, it's at https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/16863 and shows hundreds of edits by volunteers. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 10:07, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I think your reply pretty much perfectly illustrates one of the issues I have with your refusal to discuss what types of behavior you find acceptable or expected. You're characterizing my comment here as unacceptable, and yet I think it's completely appropriate to correctly point out that a significant number of edits to the subject-space page have come from Wikimedia Foundation staff. Nobody, including me, is suggesting that members of the Wikimedia community such as yourself should be excluded. I am suggesting that you and your colleagues from the Wikimedia Foundation have had an outsized influence in both the drafting and attempted implementation of this code of conduct. Your suggestion that your modified query, which shows you and Quim Gil with almost 400 edits each ahead of the next non-staffer, is somehow "better" is pretty laughable. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:40, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

The draft text regarding initial committee membership reads: "The first Committee will be chosen by the Wikimedia Foundation's Technical Collaboration team."

Yep, and this text has been approved by clear community consensus. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 10:07, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

As I pointed out to Pine, there's been a decent amount of discussion regarding whether this proposed committee or this entire document can even apply to Wikimedia Foundation staff. The Wikimedia Foundation Human Resources and Legal teams have weighed in and seem to have attempted to carve out an exemption for employees, since they're (probably rightfully) concerned that this proposed policy and its committee will create HR and Legal headaches.

This is an outrageous and false statement. The policy is clear that it applies to everyone ("Technical skills and community status make no difference to the right to be respected and the obligation to respect others."). Perhaps you are confusing this with the unrelated Confidentiality text. Legal has made it crystal clear that the Committee has absolute freedom ("For this point, regardless of whether the committee makes any disclosures to the WMF, it would be able to act freely. The CoC committee gets to determine how it wants to respond to issues that come to it in technical spaces and will not be consulting with WMF Legal or HR about what to do."), and this is backed by the policy. The committee is not restrained in any way from imposing consequences on staff. I believe you know this already, because you posted in that talk page section. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 10:07, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

When asked about specific examples that this code of conduct is attempting to address, there has been extreme evasiveness. Problematic behavior in technical spaces (for example, spammers in IRC channels, Phabricator, and Gerrit) are typically quickly resolved. What is this committee intending to work on, exactly? Getting a simple answer to that question has been nearly impossible.

This is again completely false. On multiple occasions, you have transparently attempted to divert a policy discussion into a debate about past incidents. There have been past incidents, and this is not the place to drag people's names in by discussing specific incidents. For other people that are interested, statistics are available. Categories that have been a problem are quite clearly listed. It is not true that problems "are typically quickly resolved". In some cases, problems are never resolved, and in others offenders repeat their misbehavior over and over again. That is why there is such strong support for this policy. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 10:07, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Should I be apologizing for being so transparent about wanting clear examples of what you find to be problematic behavior? I thought we valued transparency. :-) I think it's pretty reasonable to have clear use-cases ("user stories," if you must) before attempting to solve a problem. Isarra explains this in a mailing list post. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:45, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

And the previous explicit agreements to have a final vote on the document have now been changed by one side. Instead of having a final vote, Matthew and the rest of the people pushing this document forward are trying to claim the ability to use per-section consensus as a basis for overall consensus, even though they specifically told people there would be a final vote and people supported specific sections with this understanding.

You quoted an extremely old (the first in fact) consensus discussion, and even in that, I did not say there would be a final vote. I said there would be a "separate procedure to approve the CoC", because already by that time, I didn't know what that procedure would be. It became clear that a good (and consistent with precedent, e.g. Wikipedia:Civility) procedure was to do it by section. And I publicly announced that almost a year ago (and on this talk page too). Your attempt to characterize this as unfair or a last-minute change is completely false. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 10:07, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I suppose readers of this page can decide what to make of this discussion, started in August 2016 by Valhallasw, in which he calls you out for unilaterally changing the final approval process. As I explain in that section, I don't necessarily have an issue with one party wanting to change the previous agreement, but it would then mean needing to re-open and re-discuss those past sections, since people participating in the past per-section discussions clearly did so with the understanding that there would be a final vote. I had this understanding, Valhallasw had this understanding, Ironholds apparently had this understanding.

Also, I think it's worth pointing out that the discussion that Valhallasw started was the same day as it became clear, from edits to this talk page, that you were attempting to change the final approval process. There was a short discussion, you were specifically pinged, and then you waited five months to reply. People noticed and objected to your change and were met with months of silence. (It's true that nobody seems to have read your March 31, 2016 e-mails.) After you finally replied, in February 2017, Valhallasw replied again on the same day. Volunteer response time looks a lot better than staff response time in that section. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:10, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it is a cynical outlook to be sure, but if you examine what's happening here, this a proposed policy from Wikimedia Foundation staffers that puts the Wikimedia Foundation in charge of creating a code of conduct committee. That's already a huge red flag. Add to it that the Wikimedia Foundation is trying to exempt itself from its own creation, can't cite what specific problems this new policy/committee is intended to solve, and has now reneged on previous agreements to hold a final vote, presumably because there's a concern that a final vote would result in rejection of this policy. Bleh. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:48, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

You don't have to like how the Committee is formed, but you do have to accept that this text was approved by clear community consensus, with support from multiple volunteers and non-WMF (among others). It's not a "proposed policy from Wikimedia Foundation staffers". The remaining are repeats of false statements covered above. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 10:07, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Matt, your persistent arguing, badgering and overruling volunteers throughout this process serves to highlight how strangely poor the WMF itself is at leading any consensus that relies on volunteers. A walled garden majority vote is not a consensus, and the way that you have personally forced and policed this series of 2-week votes to piecemeal drive through this document while on the way upsetting volunteers, guaranteeing entrenched opposing views and ignoring critical questions as if all those that disagree with you are trolls, just shows how lacking in credibility the outcome will be.

The WMF has a large reserve of skilled and experienced volunteers, it's a pity that we are "managed" as a threat rather than a supporting resource. --Fæ (talk) 11:59, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

@Mattflaschen-WMF: do you have any idea how intimidating your behaviour is? Natuur12 (talk) 13:48, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

@Natuur12: What's your proposal to make pointing out facts less intimidating for you? --Malyacko (talk) 14:23, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Obviously I need to hear Mattflaschen-WMF's response before I can give some pointers. (Ignoring your attempt to incriminate my question.) Natuur12 (talk) 14:30, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

It is not arguing, badgering, or overruling to reply to a false statement. The people reading this page need accurate information. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 02:45, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Mattflaschen was never elected to rule Mediawiki. Even if his paid job is to ensure this document gets delivered, that is not a reason to beat critics into submission rather than embracing critical views with an actual consensus process. I fully agree with MZMcBride's summary of "Bleh". --Fæ (talk) 12:08, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

No person "rules" MediaWiki and no one was ever elected to rule MediaWiki - that's exactly why there have been votes on each section. IMHO critical views have been discussed and addressed among community members in the threads above; the difference here might be that I would not use the term "critical views" to categorize opinions based on false information. --Malyacko (talk) 14:22, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

All we have left is "bleh", because the discussion has degenerated to twisting the words of those with critical views so that they are repeatedly called liars. Please stop sockpuppeting these discussions, your actions in using both your employee account and your non-employee account to argue your viewpoint on the same discussion page is misleading, and a breach of the sockpuppeting policy for this project. --Fæ (talk) 14:26, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I have a different proposal: Could you please check the content of the pages that you linked above and then stop repeating incorrect accusations? :) --Malyacko (talk) 14:46, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

No "incorrect accusations" have been made. Please stop manipulating discussion using misleading sockpuppet accounts. If you are editing to comply with the terms of your contract, just continue to use your WMF account, as you were previously on this page. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:59, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

The links which you posted explain that sockpuppet accounts are unrelated to separating personal and professional activity... --Malyacko (talk) 10:14, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

"unless a majority of the regular Committee members oppose it."

I've tried reading this page, but it's somewhat long, dense and hard to follow. I couldn't see an answer to my question:

Can someone please give some examples of situations where "the majority of the regular committee" may oppose an amendment when the community has reached a consensus.

(And can anyone who is not answering that direct question please refrain from responding.)

--HappyDog (talk) 23:52, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Yep, glad to help explain that. If 3 or more (a majority, since the Committee is 5) agree, they can veto an amendment. This is a safety valve in case of harmful or poison pill amendments that could "reduce its effectiveness". A example might be, "No consequences will be imposed on a Gerrit +2 user for a first offense." (hurts the effectiveness and goes against the key principle, "Technical skills and community status make no difference to the right to be respected and the obligation to respect others.").

But really it's hard to predict what the amendments might be and vetos are up the Committee, but expected to be used cautiously and judiciously. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 00:06, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Other factors taken into consideration when that section was drafted:

• In practice, "when the community reaches consensus" might mean a majority of votes from any users in a section of a wiki page. As a consensus process, that is not a perfect system. Low and biased participation in complex, dense, or divisive topics is a real risk. Influx from opinions external to the Wikimedia technical community (or even Wikimedia) is another risk. In those situations, "consensus" might or might not reflect the actual sentiment of the Wikimedia technical community at large.
• Even when a discussion might really reflect the opinion of a majority, it cannot be taken for granted that the changes proposed contribute to the effectiveness of the CoC. A majority voting changes that directly or indirectly affect minorities and marginalized people is a real risk, and the CoC needs to be especially effective protecting these groups.
• There are many examples in human communities where a majority of votes brought changes that went directly or indirectly against the principles of "an open and welcoming community (...) respectful and harassment-free". There are also many examples of those dysfunctional processes happening in places where people would say "no worries, *this* would never happen here", but then...--Qgil-WMF (talk) 07:15, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Removing 'draft' status

Since discussion has mostly wound down and the votes on the final amendments section are done, I'm declaring the draft period over and will move the page out of the 'Draft' state.

This will trigger bootstrapping of the CoC committee per Code of Conduct/Draft#Creation and renewal of the Committee. I am not 100% certain if the email address for candidatures is active yet, so leaving the marker about it being inactive. (Checking with Quim.)

Thanks to everyone for all your participation in the discussion over these last many months. --Brion Vibber (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Brion Vibber (WMF)! This email address is functional now, yes. I will announce a call for candidates to join the first Committee, explaining the next steps as described in the Code of Conduct.

The CoC content is frozen until the Committee starts exercising as such and the amendments process kicks off. Small edits to i.e. fix red links, improve navigation to subpages and similar technical improvements are possible, as long as the content remains untouched.

I also want to thank all contributors, also those who have been watching the process from a distance (this morning I was checking the page view statistics, quite impressive for a community of this size). Special thanks to Matt and Moriel , who have contributed so much, all along, since the beginning, every week.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 21:23, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I also want to thank everyone who's helped lead and participate in this process. It means a lot. You've made this result possible. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 01:26, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

This code of conduct has never been approved and any step for its enforcement is null and invalid. Nemo 13:11, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I respect where you're coming from, and the process could have been cleaner, but it seems valid enough to me. Not everything needs a maximally pure RfC process. In this case, a large contingent of the most active users of MW are on board; including those who already respond to and try to handle conduct complaints — and who are already technically empowered to carry out such enforcement. That's enough to justify ad-hocracy in my book, including ignoring some rules. Sj (talk) 18:22, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to make this a hill to die on, since I'm not politically well-positioned for it - but a general RfC was promised at the start, true or false? Then it was decided by proponents simply to not keep to that, with only some fairly obscure notices regarding such a dramatic process change. To me, that's not right. It adds to my pessimistic view of how these CoC's tend to work out in practice, whatever the assumed good intentions of proposers -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 13:31, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

What do you mean by "the most active users of MW"? Yaron Koren (talk) 21:43, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I meant active users of MW technical spaces. I shouldn't have said "most", this doesn't depend on the metric you use. Just: it was a thoughful proposal by people who are active here, care about the issue, and already deal with some of it. In the wikiverse that should always trump rules-lawyering; try it, see what happens. Sj (talk) 18:14, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

The process wasn't by any means valid. Everyone who disagreed with the main proposers (a very vocal minority, as pointed out in #Drafting phase data) was either ignored or bullied. Naturally, most people gave up with the pointless discussion, waiting instead for the final approval !vote. The approval has never happened, so we don't know what the community thinks. Nemo 06:47, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

The process is valid and ongoing. A list of candidates is close to be announced for community review, after several and extensive calls in multiple Wikimedia technical spaces. Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:50, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

My question above - "... a general RfC was promised at the start, true or false? ..." - remains unanswered. Again, overall, this is not my fight. But essentially reneging as was done, does not augur well for any sort of fairness in future -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 23:47, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Bootstrapping the Code of Conduct Committee

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T159923

The review of the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces has been completed and now it is time to  bootstrap its first committee. The process is defined in Code_of_Conduct/Committee#Selection_of_new_members.

Actions:

•  Enable techconductcandidates@wikimedia.org
•  Technical Collaboration team to start the search of 10 candidates (5 committee members, 5 auxiliary members).
•  A public announcement inviting interested parties to nominate themselves or recommend others.
•  Publication of a list of candidates. 2 week private feedback phase starts.
•  If needed, update the list of candidates and start another review phase.
•  Identification of members to the Wikimedia Foundation and signature of confidentiality agreement.
•  Training period for newly proposed members.
•  6 weeks after the final list of candidates was published, the new committee is constituted.

Phab:T159923 is being used to track the details of this work. Announcements and major updates will be posted here as well. Your questions and feedback are welcome.Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:46, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

The Call for candidates to form the first Code of Conduct Committee has been sent to wikitech-l, mediawiki-l, engineering, labs-l, analytics, wiki-research-l, and design. I welcome help to cover other spaces.Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:34, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I am posting a web version of the call below, in order to have a URL to link to from short announcements. Better than linking to a post in a mailing list archive.Qgil-WMF (talk) 20:40, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Call for candidates to form the first Code of Conduct Committee

Dear Wikimedia technical community members,

Code of Conduct

The review of the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces has been completed and now it is time to bootstrap its first committee. The Technical Collaboration team is looking for five candidates to form the Committee plus five additional auxiliary members. One of them could be you or someone you know!

You can propose yourself as a candidate and you can recommend others *privately* at  techconductcandidates AT wikimedia DOT org

We want to form a very diverse list of candidates reflecting the variety of people, activities, and spaces in the Wikimedia technical community. We are also open to other candidates with experience in the field. Diversity in the Committee is also a way to promote fairness and independence in their decisions. This means that no matter who you are, where you come from, what you work on, or for how long, you are a potential good member of this Committee.  The main requirements to join the Committee are a will to foster an open and welcoming community and a commitment to making participation in Wikimedia technical projects a respectful and harassment-free experience for everyone. The committee will handle reports of unacceptable behavior, will analyze the cases, and will resolve on them according to the Code of Conduct. The Committee will also handle proposals to amend the Code of Conduct for the purpose of increasing its efficiency. The term of this first Committee will be one year.

Once we have a list of 5 + 5 candidates, we will announce it here for review. You can learn more about the Committee and its selection process at Code of Conduct/Committee and you can ask questions in the related Talk page (preferred) or here.

You can also track the progress of this bootstrapping process at Talk:Code of Conduct#Bootstrapping the Code of Conduct Committee

PS: We have many technical spaces and reaching to all people potentially interested is hard! Please help spreading this call.

Selection process for CoC Committee candidates

The call for CoC Committee candidates was announced one week ago. Here goes a status update.

We have received some self-nominations and some recommendations, and we have shared next steps with all the candidates involved. We have also received some questions, which we are documenting at Code of Conduct/FAQ#Committee.

We are starting our own search for additional candidates to be invited. Our current objective is to complete a list of potential candidates. Once we have a good list, we will start the selection process.

Diversity is the key factor in the Committee that we envision. One way to search for diverse candidates is to look into different areas in our technical community, and try to look well in each of these areas (as opposed to relying on generic lists only, like code review contributors, participants in hackathons, and so on). The list of areas we have so far (which welcomes suggestions) is:

• Bots
• CoC Talk page
• Code contributors / reviewers
• Gadgets
• GSoC / Outreachy / GCi
• MediaWiki Stakeholders
• Researchers
• Tech ambassadors / Bug reporters
• Templates / Lua modules
• Tools
• Translators
• Wikidata
• Wikimedia Foundation

The important points about the selection process are:

• We will have a conversation with each candidate selected before the announcement; we will not announce any candidate before their confirmation and review.
• Only the candidates selected will be announced publicly; the full list of candidates will remain private.

Questions or feedback? Please comment here or privately at techconductcandidates AT wikimedia.org. Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:58, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Status update: 37 people have been contacted so far, from which 32 are currently potential candidates. 6 people are self-nominated, 18 have been recommended, and 13 have been invited by us. We are still reaching out to new candidates and we welcome more self-nominations and recommendations. We have started to discuss selection criteria. With our focus on diversity in mind, we are trying to cover fairly well aspects like gender, age, location, languages, affiliation, developer experience, Wikimedia experience, and areas of specialization. Qgil-WMF (talk) 14:23, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Status update: 76 people have been contacted, from which 17 are currently potential candidates. We are still accepting self-nominations and recommendations until the end of Monday, April 3rd. We consider our own outreach completed, and we have started to evaluate potential candidates.Qgil-WMF (talk) 16:12, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Presentation of candidates and community review

Following the process described in the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Technical Collaboration team has selected five candidates to form the first Code of Conduct Committee and five candidates to become auxiliary members.

Here you have their names in alphabetical order. For details about each candidate, please check Code of Conduct/Committee members.

Committee member candidates:

• Amir Sarabadani (Ladsgroup)
• Lucie-Aimée Kaffee (Frimelle)
• Nuria Ruiz (NRuiz-WMF)
• Sébastien Santoro (Dereckson)
• Tony Thomas (01tonythomas)

Auxiliary member candidates:

• Ariel Glenn (ArielGlenn)
• Caroline Becker (Léna)
• Florian Schmidt (Florianschmidtwelzow)
• Huji
• Matanya

This list of candidates is subject to a community review period of two weeks starting today. If no major objections are presented about any candidate, they will be appointed in six weeks.

You can provide feedback on these candidates, via private email to techconductcandidateswikimedia.org. This feedback will be received by the Community Health group handling this process, and will be treated with confidentiality. Qgil-WMF (talk) 22:33, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Just a reminder: the community review of the proposed list of candidates ends this weekend. Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:14, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Community review period completed without any feedback challenging the current list. Code of Conduct/Committee members updated. Yay! Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:00, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Process completed, CoC Commitee constituted

The Code of Conduct Committee bootstrapping process has been completed. Some intermediate updates were posted in phab:T159923. Starting today, the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces is enforced by the new Committe formed by Amir Sarabadani (Ladsgroup), Lucie-Aimée Kaffee (Frimelle), Nuria Ruiz (Nurieta), Sébastien Santoro (Dereckson), and Tony Thomas (01tonythomas). Congratulations to them, to the additional five auxiliary members (Απεργός, Léna, Florianschmidtwelzow, Huji, Matanya), and to everybody who contributed to this process! Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:19, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Drafting phase data

Here is some history about the drafting phase, captured for posterity. To put these numbers into perspective, as of today Special:Statistics reports 1,420 active users in MediaWiki.org in the past 30 days.

Code of Conduct

• 449 edits
• First edit: 2015-07-16 (1 year 6 months 22 days ago) by Mattflaschen-WMF (after a session scheduled in the Wikimania 2015 Hackathon, original session notes).
• 40 unique editors (1 IP address).
• 88 watchers
• Pageviews Oct 2015 - Feb 2017: 10,680 (628/month) -- Oct 2015 - Feb 2017 only due to page renames.

Talk:Code of Conduct

• 2,718 edits
• First edit: 2015-08-07 (1 year 6 months ago) by Bawolff (a suggestion for improvement).
• 142 unique editors (6 IP addresses)
• 147 sections (subsections not included)
• 21 voting rounds
• 88 watchers
• Pageviews: 38,137 (2,243/month) -- Oct 2015 - Feb 2017 only due to page renames.

Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:24, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

To add some context, for posterity, of the 451 edits to Code of Conduct, 313 of those edits, about 69%, came from three editors, all of whom work for the Wikimedia Foundation.

For "Talk:Code of Conduct" (this page), of its 2,730 edits, two Wikimedia Foundation staffers contributed 943 edits, or about 35% of edits. These two editors have over 200 edits each ahead of the next highest contributor by edit count. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:03, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

MZMcBride How does that differ from other policy discussions in this community (MediWiki) and other communities of the Wikimedia Movement? Is it uncommon for one or two editors to "drive" the discussions along, and make (most of) the changes (even the changes proposed by other editors) on the policy page? Chico Venancio (talk) 14:27, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Chico Venancio. You can use the tool I linked to look at the editing profile of other pages. For example, w:en:Wikipedia:Civility: <http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=en.wikipedia&page=Wikipedia:Civility>. If you're interested in similarish local pages, you could look at <http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=www.mediawiki&page=Bug+management%2FPhabricator+etiquette> and friends, I suppose. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:06, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

It would also be nice to compare with other policies to see how many required that people not agreeing with a pre-determined outcome be blocked. Nemo 06:44, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Comparison of different models for review?

This code looks good, including fine elements from some of its sources. Thanks to those who worked on it. Sj (talk) 13:37, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Has there been consideration of any sort of A/B testing of different models for reviewing different cases? (There's an argument against that you want all cases to be treated 'equally', but even with a fixed group of reviewers that isn't the case; it is unclear whether a fixed, short set of rules is more or less equal than a fixed set of reviewers with their own internal inclinations beyond those rules).

I ask because some of the most scalable models for conduct have some sort of ad-hoc, rotating, or randomized selection of a small group to make a decision. If you support appeals you might want to make the appeal process to a fixed group more carefully chosen; but testing a more ad-hoc model for the first pass might increase speed of response and reduce bureaucracy. Sj (talk) 13:37, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

New members in the Technical Collaboration's Community Health group

The Technical Collaboration team has a Community Health group who handles reports on behavior in Wikimedia technical spaces. It is also the group that is now tasked with the bootstrapping of the first Code of Conduct Committee (more about this later today). Andre Klapper, Rachel Farrand, and Quim Gil have been doing this work for several years. In order to respond better to the role that the CoC assigns to this group, we have decided to have five members and one auxiliary member, to mirror better the procedures of the Committee. Developer advocate Srishti Sethi and community liaison Chris Koerner are joining the group, while Nick Wilson (Community Liaison) has been appointed as auxiliary member in case of absence or conflict of interest by any of the group members. These additions bring other perspectives about technical contributors in various areas, with various backgrounds and types of experience. Thanks to them we will be able to put more time, experience, and opinions in the search and selection of candidates for the first Code of Conduct Committee in the next weeks.Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:47, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Making the Code of Conduct more visible

What would be a good way to make the Code of Conduct more visible to members of the community? For example, we could put a link in the sidebar or footer. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 16:24, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

See also After Code of Conduct is approved, Etherpad footer should link to it. (T136744). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 16:27, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

IMHO footer - feels similar to Privacy Policy and the Disclaimers. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 21:42, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

We should notify the CoC to anyone creating a new account to be used on gerrit/phabricator/wikitech etc. We should also make it very clear which spaces this CoC applies to. GLavagetto (WMF) (talk) 07:13, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

The spaces are listed in the first sentence. Basically, any tech event in the Wikimedia community, plus "Wikimedia technical presentations in other events", plus the explicit list of online spaces given (note there is no "such as" on the online list). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 06:27, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

I would also very much appreciate it, if we can link this somehow during the phabricator signup phase. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 13:47, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

It needs to be added as a condition of use in the notice on each IRC channel it applies to, i.e. the table of technical channels linked in the CoC document. Implicitly all of the users of these channels have now agreed to comply with this policy. --Fæ (talk) 11:18, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

See also T165540 - Add CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md to Wikimedia projects. Qgil-WMF (talk) 13:34, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I have Gerrit change 354612 to add a footer link on mediawiki.org and wikitech. I think we can get that deployed on or before 2017-05-25. --BDavis (WMF) (talk) 22:29, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Y Done this is now live. --BDavis (WMF) (talk) 23:38, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Translation

Should the CoC pages be translatable? --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 20:34, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

This was asked today by one of the future Committee members. I'd say yes, of course! Although... a) please wait until the Committee is constituted on Saturday, so this can be their decision, and b) I would consider the possibility of adding a note explaining that the English version is the canonical one, in case of incorrect translations or outdated versions. I don't know whether there is already a best practice in place for translatable Wikimedia policies and similar docs. Qgil-WMF (talk) 20:39, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

The content of Code_of_Conduct#See_also should be probably be left out of the translation (there is not much to translate anyway). I am proposing a change to simplify it. Qgil-WMF (talk) 07:44, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I think it should be. Re "b)", I agree it definitely needs such a note. Unfortunately (I understand not everyone speaks English), the English version is the only version that was approved, and there is no guarantee the meaning exactly matches a translation. This is the same as e.g. the Privacy policy (see part, "Esto es una traducción. Para la versión auténtica y vinculante de este documento por favor vea el documento original en inglés.")

I don't see any reason to exclude anything from the translation. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:44, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Cleaning the "See also" section

Code_of_Conduct#See_also grew organizally as we were discussing the CoC draft. Thinking of someone landing for the first time on that page (to learn about the CoC or to report a problem), I think the current collection of links can be more confusing than informative. Here is a proposal to simplify it:

• Phabricator etiquette, applicable to any incidents in Wikimedia Phabricator.
• Friendly space policy, applicable to any incidents in Wikimedia events.
• Expected behavior, a spin-off of this Code of Conduct complementing the Unacceptable behavior section.
• m:Code of conduct, an extensive collection of related resources across Wikimedia.

We should check that all the links removed are mentioned in m:Code of conduct.

This section is not part of the Code of Conduct and it didn't go through the review that the canonical sections went. For this reason, I don't think we need to treat it as a CoC amendment in order to discuss it, agree on it, and edit accordingly. Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Future of conduct-discussion@

During the CoC draft discussion period, conduct-discussion@wikimedia has been available for people preferring a private channel to send their feedback. Now that we will have a Committee in place, it doesn't make much sense that Kalliope (WMF) and myself keep being involved. If we keep this email address, it should point to the Committee members. Then again, we have already techconduct@wikimedia, which will reach the Committee members already, so maybe the simplest is to close conduct-discussion@. Thoughts? Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:06, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Can a permanent auto-reply be setup to indicate the discussion is mostly over, and if people still have private/anonymous comments they'd like to leave about the CoC they can send it to the committee? Legoktm (talk) 18:00, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Since the account was created, it has received only three genuine messages with private feedback (one of them actually misplaced, since it was not about the CoC). The last one was received on February 2016. All the rest is spam. I think it would be simpler to to just delete the account. Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:06, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Suggest forwarding to techconduct@, since that is the email address given for anonymous amendments, and that is really the only text to discuss now. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:50, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

This solution makes sense. If nobody objects, I will proceed accordingly. Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:43, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Chair of the Committee

The Code of Conduct Committee bootstrapping process is about to be completed (I just posted an update). A step not included in this phase that will need to be handled by the newly appointed Committee is the selection of one of its members as chair. Code_of_Conduct/Committee#Selection_of_new_members simply says: "After new Committee members are chosen, the Committee selects a chair." I'm leaving this note here to avoid ambiguities about who does what. :) Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

The committee has elected User:Dereckson with unanimous vote to be the chair :) Ladsgroup (talk) 21:31, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Linking to Code of Conduct/Committee members

There is one minor change to the CoC pages that I wanted to do before the Committee was constituted but... I forgot. Code of Conduct/Committee members was created in the past weeks as we were bootstrapping the Committee, and currently is basically an orphan page. A couple of suggestions:

• In Code of Conduct/Committee, add a link "The Code of Conduct Committee is a team of five trusted individuals..."
• In the same page, under Conflict of interest, add a link "Auxiliary members will join as needed, to replace recused members."

After some consideration, I would not add the page to the navigation infobox, as this would give more prominence than needed to the people forming the Committee at a point of time.

Considering that this is a minor detail informing an obvious question (who integrates the Committee), I think it could be added without having to wait until the next review phase. Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:19, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree in this specific case. I don't have any objection here. Such links shouldn't be added to try to define (change the meaning of things), though, without an amendment. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 05:19, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

I am also in support of both changes. Huji (talk) 04:46, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Y Done Thanks for the suggestion. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 03:55, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Suggested Amendment: Include GitHub

For the amendments process: GitHub should be added as a covered space, for GitHub projects connected to the Wikimedia community. Although it's not a primary space, there are some repos only on GitHub, and even on the Gerrit ones, occasionally people will submit a pull request there (on the GitHub mirror).

This was an accidental oversight. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:35, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Some projects also use github as primary source of development, some repositories of WMDE's Wikidata team and almost all of ORES is stored in github and mirrored in diffusion. I think CoC should apply to those too but how we can clearly define such projects, I don't know. Ladsgroup (talk) 21:36, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Projects maintained by Wikimedia organizations? --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:44, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Organization in the technical GitHub sense, or just meaning affiliates/employees/members of a Wikimedia organization (in the normal sense of the word) maintain the project? I would interpret that to include other organizations like Wikimedia Germany, but perhaps that should be clarified. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:01, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

This needs to be worded with extreme care so as not to extend to repositories that are connected to different parts Wikimedia community (local projects, mainly). My suggestion would be to keep it at most for https://github.com/wikimedia --Strainu (talk) 11:50, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Projects maintained by affiliates/employees/members of a Wikimedia organization (in their official capacity), yes. (Ideally such organizations should use Github orgs to make their project ownerships transparent, but whether someone forgot to do that should not change whether the CoC applies.) --Tgr 05:44, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

It should include any GitHub repositories that are part of the Wikimedia ("Wikimedia" in the sense of the movement, not any particular organization) technical community, whether the repository is developed by volunteers or staff (or both). This would certainly include anything in https://github.com/wikimedia , https://github.com/wmde , etc. But I agree with Tgr it should go beyond that, so things that are truly Wikimedia technical work (but perhaps not in a formal GitHub organization) are not accidentally omitted. Like everything else, it should be space-based. If a repository is covered, all activity in that repository is covered. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 01:51, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Feedback from Vienna hackathon

Hi,

Some CoC committee members met at the Vienna hackathon. This was an opportunity to see each other in real life, and to discuss how we can organize workflows to handle cases. We also discussed our communication tools, see this and this slide.

A point of action is to create a private wiki to archive the cases and coordinate procedures.

During this hackathon, some concerns have been voiced about ideas to improve the CoC, but too late to discuss these in the initial round. The CoC is a living tool, it can still be amended and improved. So if you wish to organize a consultation in your community/team/group about ideas to improve the CoC, it's still time, and it will be still time in the future.

--Dereckson (talk) 09:01, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

One thing that I'm greatly interested in for now is to add a link in mediawiki repos about the CoC. It's being discussed in phabricator. Ladsgroup (talk) 10:11, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

(For reference, that's T165540 --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:43, 8 June 2017 (UTC))

Blog post

You can find an overview of the Code of Conduct at the new blog post. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:39, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Suggested Amendment: Add tool labs

While wikitech.wikimedia.org is listed in the scope of the CoC, and tool-labs (https://tools.wmflabs.org/) is technically a part of its operations, I think it would make sense to literally add it in to scope. This also makes sense, since tool-labs (and the new platform for 'cloud' services in general) is a technical environment, holding/hosting tools and code for our projects. It makes sense to add it in explicitly, even if it is already included implicitly (by including wikitech) Moriel Schottlender (talk) 00:41, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not against the addition, but something like "Wikimedia Cloud Services products" might be better wording. Tool Labs is about to be renamed Toolforge and other products will be renamed as well. Attempting to explicitly enumerate each technical space also opens the door for arguments about "space X was not explicitly named in the policy so behavior there does not apply". --BDavis (WMF) (talk) 01:36, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I support the proposed "Wikimedia Cloud Services products" (which would include Tool Labs) addition. Further expansion is also worth discussing as another amendment. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 01:26, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Maybe something more general, like replacing wikitech with "and other development-oriented spaces operated by the Wikimedia Foundation"? We probably don't want to make a new amendment every time something new is created. --Tgr 05:46, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Y Done Added "and other development-oriented spaces operated by the Wikimedia Foundation" Ladsgroup (talk) 11:31, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Suggested Amendment: Remove “unless required by law”

I propose to remove " (unless required by law)" from "Unacceptable behavior". This was meant to acknowledge certain real-world legal issues (ages and contract law).

However, it is confusing and unnecessary.

It's especially confusing since this is a prominent section, intended to be read by reporters and everyone in the community (as opposed to a section about internal mechanisms, like Cases).

Reading the clause out of context and without knowing the talk page rationale also makes it sound unwelcoming to newcomers.

It’s also unnecessary, since clearly the policy does not override any law.

We should remove this clause. Applicable law will still be applicable. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 22:13, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

So... There will be an unwritten qualifying point in direct contradiction to the written code, that will have full force regarding how the policy is implemented?

The code of conduct already has several points which are already bordering on dangerous, including listing "Attempting to circumvent a decision of the Committee or appeals body" as a violation (without even listing any place to find out what those decisions are), and several extremely vaguely worded points which are not (afaict) clarified anywhere. Making the Code of Conduct to be partly composed of points that are not written down yet still have full force sets an extremely dangerous precedent.

I'm going to assume that there aren't already unwritten rules in the code of conduct that I'm violating with this comment. --Yair rand (talk) 19:07, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

+1 If we can make it shorter, we should. And it should indeed go without saying that we will deviate from the policy when required by law. --Tgr 05:48, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Y Done Removed Ladsgroup (talk) 11:33, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Suggested Amendment: No impersonation

We should prevent impersonation, including trying to make people confuse you with others.

Suggested text (to add to Unacceptable behavior):

"Impersonation, including inappropriate patterns of behavior that cause people to confuse one’s identity with others". Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 23:13, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

What real-world problem is this intended to solve? --MZMcBride (talk) 13:47, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

It's not a real-world problem, thanks for highlighting that fact. The amendments we see proposed recently seem to be worryingly extending the reach of the CoC, extending the "WMF policed zone" way beyond Wikimedia projects, let alone Wikimedia technical forums.

I suggest starting informally with WMF employees, who are routinely seen using official and volunteer accounts in the same forum. This is not only confusing, but gives a false impression of consensus or who is acting as an "unpaid volunteer" or a "paid volunteer". You don't need a CoC amendment for WMF employees to behave well online. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:21, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "real-world" as it can be used to mean, "something that has happened" or "something that is plausible". I assume the latter in my reply. Let's say someone created an account on-wiki with a name like "Ckoerner (WMF)" (note the lowercase "k") and went around trying to convince people that Discovery was going to start using AltaVista for the Wikimedia search. The user name looks legitimate to folks unfamiliar, is similar to my own username for those who are familiar, and the intent is to sow confusion, disruption, and possibly tarnish whatever reputation I have. :) Folks could easily confuse this account with my own. Not only would I be harassed by this, but the community as a whole. I would have to spend time and energy working with admins to block the account and revert changes, chase after any conversations on mailing lists and talk pages to clarify that it wasn't me, allay fears that we're not doing what the account suggests, etc. The same could apply to any account, but as I'm replying my staff role I used example familiar to me. My interpretation of this amendment would make clear that such behavior is unacceptable by members of our community. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

It should be impossible to create "Ckoerner (WMF)" - the AntiSpoof extension is supposed to prevent that. Legoktm (talk) 07:48, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Since I created my volunteer account there have been two other accounts created with similar names. One remains an unblocked account. Ckoerner (talk) 19:44, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Ok, so what does this have to do with a code of conduct? It's a simple case of abusive username. --Nemo 19:48, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

We don't have a global username policy, nor one in this community, that would cover abusive usernames. The only thing I was able to find was a single line mention on English Wikipedia that says basically "don't do that", but that does not address the behavioral concerns, nor any process for handling harassment as a result, nor is it applicable here. :) From a technical perspective AntiSpoof should prevent such accounts from being created, but that only handles on-wiki names, not other technical spaces, which the Code of Conduct would cover. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

So, again, this is about the hypothetical problem that, because abusive usernames are considered too obviously abusive to even bother writing specific policies about them, something bad might happen without anybody bothering to intervene, even though no such case of neglect is known? --Nemo 20:15, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

In the past years my team has received complaints related to impersonation in Wikimedia technical spaces. We tried to intervene yet nothing could be actually done because we didn't have any policy or similar in place to solve the problem. In more general terms, impersonation is a frequent form of online harassment and I don't see why Wikimedia technical spaces would be immune to it. What is being discussed here is whether impersonation should be considered "unacceptable behavior". What is the benefit of not including impersonation as unacceptable behavior in the CoC? Will we be protecting potential victims of impersonation better by including this concept in the CoC or by not including it? Qgil-WMF (talk) 20:41, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it would be harmful because it would encourage to handle in non-standard ways what is routine work on our wikis. By the same reasoning, we could end up adding wiki vandalism to the CoC and then people would go complain to the committee instead of clicking "undo" or "rollback". In the cases you mention where "nothing could actually be done", have you tried using standard wiki processes such as talking with the user and reporting to administrators or (for cross-wiki abuse) stewards? Nemo 20:48, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Nemo, I think you're overlooking the fact that the "technical spaces" covered by the Code of Conduct does not perfectly coincide with "our wikis". It is entirely possible for a person to to be involved in the "technical spaces" without ever touching a wiki. How well do you think our "standard wiki processes" work for dealing with problems that occur exclusively in off wiki? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:48, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

The complaints mentioned in my previous comments were not about MediaWiki usernames and therefore "routine work on our wikis" could not be applied. I also want to note that such routine work in relation to abusive usernames seems to be limited to deleting such usernames and preventing the creation of new ones. It's oversighters work, maintenance work. The perspective of harassment is (as far as I can see) missing. By adding impersonation as unacceptable behavior in this CoC we are improving the support and protection to those being harassed through this method, also through MediaWiki usernames. Qgil-WMF (talk) 07:25, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

How is this oversighters' work? The required action is a quick block and revert by one of the global admins or stewards or one of the ~200 local admins. If there's insufficient policy clarity on impersonation, get consensus for importing the Commons username policy here. And in other technical spaces, how does impersonation even work? IIRC Gerrit and Wikitech don't have open account registration, and IRC and the mailing lists have their own ways of dealing with this issue, and Etherpad is so removed from identities in general so as to make the concept of impersonation meaningless.

We want to create an open, welcoming community. Making the CoCC the one-stop location for problems in general does not accomplish this, and expanding the domain of the completely-unaccountable secretive uber-powered unchallengeable-without-ban Committee comes with real consequences. --Yair rand (talk) 02:33, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Having a "one-stop location" for conduct issues is a feature, not a bug (I agree non-conduct problems should be reported elsewhere, but impersonation is clearly a conduct issue). It makes it easy to report, and that's a good thing. There are also some other incorrect or unproven assumptions here. Wikitech does have open account registration. I also specifically disagree with your assumption that IRC and mailing lists deal effectively with this issue. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:17, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: The comparison to vandalism is invalid for multiple reasons.

• There are existing project pages here that deal with vandalism, including but not limited to Project:Deletion. There is no policy dealing with impersonation.
• Some things can be reported in more than one place. E.g. unacceptable behavior at events can be reported to an event organizer and/or to the Committee. The same could go for impersonation (local admins or Committee, or both, as necessary).
• Dealing with impersonation is not "routine work on our wikis" for two reasons. It's not that routine (thankfully) and (as Whatamidoing (WMF) already noted) it's not just on the wikis. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:17, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

[unindent] So there seems to be two sub-cases here:

1. Someone unintentionally creates a username very similar to another username. The user does not intentionally use this username to mislead people, it appears to be purely accidental. This does happen from time to time. I don't think Code of conduct comittee needs to be involved in such cases - its something that can probably be worked out between the people involved, or mediated by an uninvolved party.
2. Someone intentionally creates a username similar to a different username for the express purpose of misleading people. Usually this kind of behaviour is obvious because they don't just have similar usernames, they also try and talk/behave like the other user. I think this sort of thing can be handled the same way people who spam the wiki (or spam phabricator, or spam gerrit) are handled - block and move on. At least, naively it doesn't seem like a complex user dispute requring "judgement" by the committee (Of course its always possible that username impersonation is happening in the context of a larger dispute in which case the CoC should consider it, etc).

Thus I tend to agree with Nemo here. Furthermore, I worry about delegating things I would consider "everyday" vandalism to the committee due to the committee's commitment to confidentiality. While I understand the arguments for confidentiality in cases of serious harrasment, I am unconvinced of the appropriateness of confidentiality in such day-to-day incidents. Bawolff (talk) 18:29, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I am slightly concerned at the phrase all I can see is a single line - that is quite sufficient. In fact it is more than enough since it is obvious that impersonation is in general a bad act.

Rich Farmbrough 23:21, 31 August 2017 (UTC).

@Bawolff: Note that the Committee only reacts to reports, and will resolve on reports deemed to be related with harassment or disrespect. Adding the use case of impersonation in the CoC does not mean that now the Committee will be encouraged to fiddle in the regular processes that already exist to deal with abusive usernames. It doesn't mean either that cases of unintentional similarity of usernames will be handled by the Committee. It means that people who feel disrespected or harassed because of an alleged case of impersonation will be able to report the problem to someone who will not only look at the fact (a username created that might or might not be deleted) but also the root of the problem (someone harassing someone else, and whether there is an intention behind). Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:31, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Maybe I'd understand the opposition better with an example:

Imagine that someone is intentionally impersonating you, and that this impersonation is actually causing a problem for you. Under that circumstance, which of these options sounds more like your position?

1. You should have the right to voluntarily report that problem under the Code of Conduct, if you choose to.
2. You should be prohibited from voluntarily reporting that problem under the Code of Conduct, even if you wanted to. The committee is prohibited from acting upon complaints about impersonation. We might all agree that impersonation is bad, and that it is a serious security risk when it takes the form of w:Pretexting, but the Code of Conduct doesn't cover that, and every victim will need to figure out some other process(es) for addressing it (probably a different process for each separate forum or tool).
3. Maybe you should be able to report it under the Code of Conduct, but it is desirable (why?) for there to be some uncertainty around whether this behavior is covered by the Code of Conduct.

Based upon this conversation, that last item appears to be what we've got, and I don't like it.

Bawolff, I am certain that if I found someone impersonating you (or anyone on your team), then reporting it under the Code of Conduct would be the last thing on my mind. My first action would be a face-to-face video call with your teammates and any staff member who could convince Darian that I really was me, and not part of the hacking. But this question isn't about what I would do. It's not even about what you would actually do. It's about what you should be permitted to do, if you personally and voluntarily chose to do it. In the end, my question is: Do you want victims to have an uncontested ability to voluntarily report this kind of problem, at their own discretion, under the Code of Conduct, or not? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:31, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Also: This conversation seems to have gotten fixated on the idea of a similar username. So let me give you an example that has nothing to do with usernames, but which an acquaintance in university administration reports as a surprisingly common reason for academics to file harassment complaints against students: Imagine that you are participating in a technical event. Imagine that you learn there that some person completely unknown to you is claiming to be your spouse or romantic partner. That's "impersonation". This is not a problem that can be solved by blocking accounts. I assume that staff, if attending in their paid capacity, could report it to HR to get some assistance. Should our volunteers also have an easily identifiable source of official assistance? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:44, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

The CoC already forbids harassment and sustained disruption, and also unspecified other types of clearly inappropriate behavior, so presumably the concern is that someone might impersonate someone else in such a way that it is not harassment nor disruptive not clearly inappropriate, but nevertheless harmful to the community. That seems like an empty set to me. Some examples would help.

Even if something is already covered by the CoC, it might be worth calling it out specifically (after all "inappropriate behavior" already covers everything) if we think that it's not something everyone would recognize as inappropriate so we want to clearly warn away would-be perpetrators, or if it's not something generally covered by codes of conduct so we want to assure readers that they are going to be protected against that kind of behavior if they join the Wikimedia community. Impersonation doesn't seem like either case to me.

As for claiming to be somebody's partner (relative, etc) that's not actually impersonation in itself, as you do not pretend to be someone else, you just lie about your relationship to them. In any case it's pretty clearly inappropriate and covered by the current CoC. --Tgr 06:59, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes, pretending to be someone is a case of impersonation. You don't have to use the exact words "I'm Anne, the Princess Royal" to impersonate her; you could equally say "I'm the Queen's daughter". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:31, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

@Bawolff: It's expected that some Code of Conduct violations can be dealt with informally (rather than through the Committee), if it makes sense. The policy even spells that out in the reporting section. It's still valuable to note that it's unacceptable, to provide a reference point. But a true one-time accident wouldn't be a violation. However, I would argue that the user in your second example is particularly harmful, and a good use case for the policy. What they've done is worse than just putting some juvenile vandalism, or spamming their company (everyday vandalism). They're actively attempting to impersonate someone to misuse or harm their reputation, and I think that's exactly the kind of unacceptable interpersonal behavior this policy should cover. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:17, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

• Comment: If we already say "impersonation is bad". I do not see anything wrong with adding that fact to the CoC. Doc James (talk) 16:12, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

To be clear, is the proposal about impersonating a specific person, or just generally pretending to be someone else? For example, is it impersonation to post under a random real-sounding name (random as in not belonging to anyone specific) to a mailing list? I would suppose it's not, but in that case I really have trouble interpreting "inappropriate patterns of behavior that cause people to confuse one’s identity with others". Isn't that exactly what "impersonation" means? --Tgr 06:59, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

It's about impersonating a specific person, e.g., pretending to be your wife, your boss, or you. It could reasonably be extended to impersonating a role, e.g., pretending to be a WMF employee when you're not (think criminal impersonation, not entertainment). It does not include accidental confusion, such as two people who happen to have the same name, or two users who happen to have similar usernames. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:31, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Both, depending on the details. Clearly it covers impersonating a specific person. Choosing a "random real-sounding name" in good-faith is fine. Maybe someone wants to volunteer under a psuedonym, so they choose John Smith. That's fine. If it turns out there is already a John Smith (or something confusingly similar like Jon Smith) in the community, that's probably a good-faith mistake. It's a one-time thing, so not an "inappropriate pattern[] of behavior", and not impersonation (unless it was intentional). However, if they then pick Robert Cooper as a psuedonym, and it "accidentally" turns out Bob Cooper is also a long-standing user, it starts to become a pattern (especially if this continues). Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:17, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

I'll respond to some topics from above here. Almost everyone agrees that it is a real problem, and some have pointed to policies that cover all or part of the problem on other wikis (e.g. username spoofing). Yair rand also stated that "We want to create an open, welcoming community.", which I agree with, and I hope everyone does.

Yet, there is no policy here about it. (At least, no one has pointed to one, and AFAICT there is none.). It is claimed that putting it in the CoC would make it "non-standard". But it's just the opposite. No one can point to any existing MediaWiki.org standard. We are trying to establish a clear, written, standard here, based on known best practices. Yair rand says we need to "get consensus" to import a policy. Well, that's exactly what we're doing here (except there is no reason our policy needs to be a copy of Commons, we can write one that makes sense for here).

I don't understand the argument that it's a real-world problem, but shouldn't be in here (or should use the catch-all clause). It's common enough that there are existing policies on other wikis. It's not some obscure thing and it's not minor. We just need to cover it here clearly. The clearer we are about real-world problems, the more useful this list is as a formal and informal reference point.

I specifically want to emphasize that this policy is needed for all the spaces, not just the wikis. Username abuse is a valid example, but as noted, it's not the only valid example. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 04:17, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree that in non-wiki spaces such a policy is needed. Part of my concern here is we're conflating many different needs into a single point. I think the different types of impersonation differ in severity very signficantly, and its a mistake to group them all together under a single point. I personally believe its important to be specific when it comes to forbidden behaviour, and also to treat things differently depending on context. If we go too broad, we run the risk of the policy turning into a vauge blanket statement of "Don't be an asshole". Bawolff (talk) 17:56, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Bawolff, do you have a feeling that "I can report something that I perceive as a problem to the CoC committee" almost automatically means "Somebody will get punished"? Sure, the level of urgency and severity varies for this problem. But don't we think that the CoC committee could say, "Thanks for the report. Yes, your real name is practically the same as this other person's real name. We can see that might cause some confusion. But, you know, this isn't the end of the world. Have you considered just putting a note on your talk page about it, to say 'I'm Brian. You might be looking for Brion'?"

I think I'm not understanding why anyone would want to prohibit people from being allowed to talk to the committee about their (perceived) problems. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:07, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

No I imagine that the committee would give complaints all due consideration and act appropriately given whatever the complaint is (The committee is new however and much of its proceedings are secret. We have yet to see how the committee will actually act, and if its judgements are wise. Time will tell). That said, I don't believe one size fits all for all things, and small issues (of which some but not all of the things mentioned in this section are) should be handled by local means. Bawolff (talk) 18:57, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Anonymous statistics

I think it would be good for the Committee to publish periodic anonymous statistics like Talk:Code_of_Conduct/Archive_2#Summary_of_conduct_reports_handled_in_April-June_2016. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 22:35, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

I would also like to see this. I would also be interested to know very roughly the breakdown of sanctaions enforced by the committee are. (i.e. What percentage of complaints were resolved with no action taken by the comittee, What percentage resulted in a minor disciplenary action (e.g. Giving someone a warning. Blocking someone for < a day, etc), and what percentage resulted in a major disciplenary action (for some definition of major). The action itself wouldn't need to be disclosed, just rough stats on how many actions of each category in the designated time period). Bawolff (talk) 06:45, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

+1 from me. How do we make this an official suggested amendment? Legoktm (talk) 14:19, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

+1. Maybe add "The Committee publishes anonymous quarterly statistics about the outcomes of cases." to the end of Code_of_Conduct/Cases#Responses_and_resolutions? --Tgr 06:38, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Y Done Added to Code_of_Conduct/Cases#Responses_and_resolutions Ladsgroup (talk) 11:34, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Discrimination in section against discrimination

"particularly against marginalized and otherwise underrepresented groups"? This means that discrimination against the majority is bad, but not as bad as discrimination against the minority. 1984, anyone? This part of the Code of Conduct needs to be reworded. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 02:02, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely true. Orwell's Animal Farm also applies here: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." Yaron Koren (talk) 16:10, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Definitely, as there is death penalty for being straight in parts of the world and men are being catcalled on daily basis in streets of NYC Ladsgroup (talk) 09:54, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

That comment was uncalled for and contributes to a hostile environment. There are legitimate arguments you could have made in favor of the delineation, and instead you have made the strongest argument against: Openly mocking the circumstances of non-underrepresented groups, coming straight from a member of the Committee.

When coming here to contribute to Mediawiki, please leave your local culture's grudges and conflicts at the door. We are not here to RIGHTGREATWRONGS. --Yair rand (not logged in) 08:31, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

The emphasis is intentional, to encourage considering under-represented groups. However, the discrimination clause doesn't allow harming any group, so no change is needed. I would replace Yair rand's statement with "We are not here to ignore context and pretend we're an island". Ignoring the real world is not how you build a welcoming and successful community.

Ladsgroup didn't mock any person or group. He used sarcasm to criticize a fallacious argument. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 07:13, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't think you're contradicting anyone else's statement here - you're saying that the WMF needs to discriminate against certain people, in order to counter discrimination in the real world against others. Which is either justified and common sense or disturbing and Orwellian, depending on how you look at it (I tend to view it as the latter). Yaron Koren (talk) 13:27, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

I feel like some folks are reading this part of the Code of Conduct and are worried that "Oh! They're going to discriminate against ME!". That shows a lack of understanding of the inherent power/privilege between the groups and individuals involved in any case that could potentially involve this part of the CoC - or in society in general. That's OK to not understand, people make mistakes and we're all learning. This concept is sometimes referred to as "reverse discrimination". It is, by all accounts, a myth.

Discrimination can be leveraged at 'non-marganlized' folks. It's just called discrimination - and covered by any healthy social norms - like what you'd find in a Code of Conduct. It's when you consider the systemic relationship of power between the group of underrepresented folks and those that are not, that the importance of this statement become apparent. We can't assume there's a fair and equal playing field. We don't exist in a vacuum in which all groups have equal power. This line of the CoC acknowledges that and makes it clear that we don't discriminate against marginalized and otherwise underrepresented groups here. Ckoerner (talk) 22:17, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

You may want to revise your language. You seem to be trying to make a point that "reverse" discrimination is a useless term because it's just another kind of discrimination. But in saying it's a myth, you may be confusing others into thinking you're advocating the (IMO blatantly false) position that it's impossible to discriminate against members of the group generally considered to hold the societal power. Anomie (talk) 14:17, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

@Mattflaschen-WMF: Which fallacy specificly do you believe that Yair rand committed? From my reading of this conversation I do not believe he committed a fallacy so much as you and he have a difference of opinion, probably rooted in different cultural/moral values. If we're speaking of fallacies though, ladsgroup's statement is arguably committing the naturalistic fallacy (Just because there does exist groups that are marginalized, does not neccessarily imply that we ought to be especially careful about marginalized groups in the code of conduct. Facts about the world generally cannot imply by themselves what we should do) [Of course I'm being a little unfair here in that I don't think his statement was intended to be a full argument on why we should have the discrimination statement in the code of conduct] [Edit: I'm striking this part of my statement as I think it might be unfair. In the context of the conversation its not clear enough what argument ladsgroup was specificly making, whether he made his statement to imply specificly that the descrimination clause should be in the CoC or if he was just asserting a factual statement about the world that not everyone is equal]. Bawolff (talk) 01:09, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

---

I feel like people are talking past each other here. Moral beliefs are kind of like religious beliefs in that they vary a lot between different folks and its basically impossible to say one belief is right, and the other is wrong. At best you can evaluate an argument in the context of foundational moral values, informed by factual statements about the world (which can be true or false). To that end, I think both sides have legitament arguments here (hopefully I do not misrepresent anyone's opinion here. I've tried to start each argument with what I believe is the base assumption that people are arguing from):

For the against side:

• Based on the foundational belief of isonomy/Equality before the law: All people should be judged equally. Justice should be object as possible and not "relative". Any sort of special treatment of any group based on who they are (as opposed to the context of their crime) is morally repugnant. While it is certainly true and very unfortunate that there exists certain groups who are marginalized, advising people to especially consider marginalized groups and thus polluting the equality of decision making is a greater evil then advising people to consider things without any reference to a person's background.
• Based on the belief that justice should be as objective as possible, and that such a clause is inherently subjective: While the code of conduct needs to be flexible as to the context of various offenses, it should still nonetheless be as objective as possible; When evaluating a CoC claim in a given context, different people should ideally come to the same conclusion regardless of their personal views. The definition of a marginalized group, usually actually means a "popular" marginalized group. After all, the code of conduct is inherently an attempt to marginalize people who are "assholes"; nobody would suggest the code of conduct should try to prevent marginalization of mean, disruptive people. Nor would probably anyone suggest we need to especially consider how terrorists, pedophiles, etc are marginalized in Wikimedia projects. But at the same time, there probably exists groups which are unfairly marginalized but we just don't realize they are marginalized, or we are mistaken in our belief that such a group deserves to be marginalized - and whether or not a group deserves to be a legitimately marginalized group probably varries depending on who you ask. Given that there is no real definition of marginalized in CoC other than a group treated unfairly that doesn't deserve to be treated unfairly (With whether or not they deserve to be treated unfairly left up to the eye of the beholder) this is inherently unfair to groups that are treated unfairly but that the general public has not yet realized are being treated unfairly. The argument would go, that such inherent subjectivity has no place in a policy designed to govern how we behave.
• Argument from symbolism - Symbols have power over people. They are statements about the type of people we are and the type of people we want to be. Having symbolic associations that people disagree with can make them uncomfortable to belong to our community - even if the symbol is theoretical and not a practicial concern. This argument would go: we're not really worried that such a clause would actually cause people to discriminate against us (where I assume the person making the argument is not in a marginalized group) but we don't like the symbolism of suggesting that group membership should have any bearing on the code of conduct. Its easy to dissmiss this argument as irrelavent since the symbolic meaning doesn't hurt anyone, but I think symbols are a lot more influential than most people give them credit for. Of course the opposite of this argument could also be made - that the marginalized group clause is a symbol and without it people will feel less comfortable.

Arguments for:

• Argument from dispensing the best justice for the most people (I suppose this is semi-utilitarism?): The fairest thing to do is the action that increases the sum of the overall justice in our community: We have to acknowladge that we live in an imperfect world where groups are marginalized. We may wish this wasn't the case, but it is actually the case. Furthermore, this marginalization often limits affected people's access to justice. To this end, to maximize overall justice well treating all groups the same when it comes to infractions, we also need to specially consider groups that are more likely to be discrimated against and may be less able to seek recompense for the discrimination.

In many ways, the for and against break down is really a comparision of - do we optimize for consequences in the context of current society or do we optimize for global objectivity outside of current societal context. I believe there are no right answers, only trade-offs, and that which trade-off you like best is probably going to vary by person. Hopefully i represented these arguments faithfully and fairly. I tried in any case, but I'm only human and I'm not sure I agree with all of them so its possible I may have missed the mark. That's all the arguments on this point I recall hearing, both here and in other places, but its probable there are other arguments also.Bawolff (talk) 01:58, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Bawolff. I do agree I think folks are talking past one another. I do appreciate the attempt to bridge the understanding. I am trying to understand the folks who take umbrage with this section, even if I don’t personally agree. I’m assuming good faith that folks are genuinely concerned. I hope my reply is perceived as equally genuine. Ckoerner (talk) 14:00, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I'm confused by how you dismiss reverse discrimination as "a myth" in the process of defending a literal case of reverse discrimination. Yaron Koren (talk) 14:09, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

One other dispute I've seen related to this statement is more practical than ideological. The CoC explicitly exempts targeted outreach (e.g. outreach where people not meeting certain criteria are denied participation) from falling under the general ban on discrimination when it's outreach to marginalized and otherwise underrepresented groups. That implies that targeted outreach to groups that aren't marginalized or otherwise underrepresented is indeed banned as discrimination, otherwise the CoC would just say some variation on "targeted outreach is allowed and encouraged" or "targeted outreach is allowed, and targeted outreach to such groups is encouraged".

There's one popular outreach program that no one wants to ban but that limits participation to a group that does not seem to be "marginalized" or "underrepresented". The counter-arguments, as far as I can make them out, include that it's only discrimination if the organizer "intends" to discriminate; that it's only discrimination if it promotes "harassment and disrespect"; that no one actually wants to ban that program so it's "obviously" not against the CoC; that the program has "positive outcomes" so it can't be considered discriminatory; that anyone with sufficient time, money, and/or level of academic achievement could theoretically become a member of the group so limiting to that group isn't discrimination; that "to such groups" is supposed to be ignored when interpreting the statement; and that any "sane" committee wouldn't ban it regardless of the actual text of the CoC so the wording was non-problematic. Anomie (talk) 15:15, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Relation between Phabricator Etiquette and Code of Conduct

Since early 2014 we have Bug management/Phabricator etiquette. Since 2017 we also have a Code of Conduct for technical spaces. This has led me to some questions in phab:T167786 how these two documents influence each other. Your thoughts are welcome in phab:T167786 (so the discussion is centralized in a single place). Thanks in advance! --17:40, 18 October 2017 (UTC)