Talk:Code of Conduct

Prevision discussion was archived at:

• Talk:Code of Conduct/Archive 1
• Talk:Code of Conduct/Archive 2
• Talk:Code of Conduct/Archive 3
• Talk:Code of Conduct/Archive 4

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

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

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

Why is this necessary?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Support

Support easy agree

Support

Support

Support

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

Support

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

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

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

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

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