Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Joseph Seddon]

I would like to also point out a central notice banner was displayed on
Mediawiki.org to logged in users.

Seddon

On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 2:28 AM, Gergő Tisza  wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 4:44 PM, Adrian Raddatz 
> wrote:
>
> > A lack of other community members participation is perhaps half on a lack
> > of advertising, and half on a lack of interest.
> >
>
> The drafting process was advertised to the point of obnoxiousness. I count
> 30 announcements in my inbox from Matt, and that's with Gmail merging
> identical emails from multiple mailing lists. There has been a discussion
> section in all IRL tech events. There has been an extended talk page
> discussion with 126 distinct accounts (36 of which have "WMF" in their
> name).
>
> For comparison, AFAIK the largest discussion in the technical community so
> far was the one to switch from Bugzilla to Phabricator (something that
> affects the average contributor far, far more than the existence of a group
> of people who address harassment concerns), which had seen the involvement
> of 91 accounts:
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Phabricator
>
> So IMO neither interest nor participation has been lacking.
> I'll also note that I find it unhelpful that this topic is being
> forum-shopped here instead of one of the discussion channels of the
> Wikimedia tech community (wikitech-l being the obvious one).
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-- 
Seddon

*Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)*
*Wikimedia Foundation*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Gergő Tisza]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 4:44 PM, Adrian Raddatz  wrote:

> A lack of other community members participation is perhaps half on a lack
> of advertising, and half on a lack of interest.
>

The drafting process was advertised to the point of obnoxiousness. I count
30 announcements in my inbox from Matt, and that's with Gmail merging
identical emails from multiple mailing lists. There has been a discussion
section in all IRL tech events. There has been an extended talk page
discussion with 126 distinct accounts (36 of which have "WMF" in their
name).

For comparison, AFAIK the largest discussion in the technical community so
far was the one to switch from Bugzilla to Phabricator (something that
affects the average contributor far, far more than the existence of a group
of people who address harassment concerns), which had seen the involvement
of 91 accounts:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Phabricator

So IMO neither interest nor participation has been lacking.
I'll also note that I find it unhelpful that this topic is being
forum-shopped here instead of one of the discussion channels of the
Wikimedia tech community (wikitech-l being the obvious one).
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Todd Allen]

The idea was floated that since discussion has taken place on individual
sections, discussion was not needed for the final document. I did not see
any indication that this was the final decision on the matter. Though
clarification would be quite appreciated.

Todd

On Feb 26, 2017 5:12 PM, "Pine W"  wrote:

> >now reneged on previous agreements to hold a final vote
>
> Has that actually happened? I'm hoping that no statement like "the total
> document isn't subject to an RfC" was actually made. That would add
> needless disagreement to a process that is challenging enough even in the
> best of circumstances, and in any case would likely be overridden by the
> community.
>
> Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Pine W]

>now reneged on previous agreements to hold a final vote

Has that actually happened? I'm hoping that no statement like "the total
document isn't subject to an RfC" was actually made. That would add
needless disagreement to a process that is challenging enough even in the
best of circumstances, and in any case would likely be overridden by the
community.

Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Leila Zia]

On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 7:39 PM, Tim Landscheidt 
wrote:

> Leila Zia  wrote:
>
> > […]
>
> > On a separate note to those of you who contribute to technical spaces and
> > are not happy about how some aspects have gone:
>
> > Matthew and a few other people have been trying /really hard/ to make
> > Wikimedia's technical spaces better. You know that embarking on such a
> path
> > is very difficult: it requires spending many many hours of your time
> (read
> > life) on it, elaborating, deliberating, documenting, discussing things
> with
> > people from different paths of life, etc. They have been doing it for
> > months now. It's my understanding that they are doing this not to
> exercise
> > power over others but to make our technical spaces better, to make them
> > more enjoyable to contribute in.
>
> > For all of us who contribute in technical spaces, we should remember: We
> > may not agree with every step they take, but we all owe it to them to
> help
> > them on this path. What they are doing is a good thing and that's
> something
> > that sometimes gets lost in these lengthy conversations.
>
> This is a circular and illogical argument.  Just because
> someone has good intentions or invested time and effort does
> not mean that the path they chose is the right one to take.
> And if someone is steering towards a cliff, encouraging peo-
> ple to keep pushing the cart to honour the navigator's dedi-
> cation is self-destructive.
>

I agree with everything you say above, and I'd like to clarify something in
response to your first sentence, as reading that and re-reading the latter
part of my initial post, I realize I may have signaled something that I
didn't mean to:

I didn't mean to say that since people have spent a lot of time on task X,
we need to help them finish it. I meant to say the following:

* I wanted to ask everyone involved in these discussions to have more
empathy towards one another. Things sometimes don't go well when we start
sending back-and-forth emails on this list, and on this thread
specifically, we've already started some loaded statements. My request was
to please remember that there is a human on the other side reading your
message, most likely operating based on good faith: this person is,
hopefully, making decisions based on logic, but he/she does have emotions,
let's keep that in mind.

​Leila​


>
> Tim
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Rogol Domedonfors]

Perhaps this need for use cases was addressed in the "report" which the
staff commissioned from consultants over a year ago but which was never
shared with the community at large – assuming that it was ever produced.

"Rogol"

On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 7:22 PM, Isarra Yos  wrote:

> On 26/02/17 18:21, MZMcBride wrote:
>
>> Then you and others should have no problem providing specific examples.
>> I'd like to see links to Gerrit changesets and Phabricator tasks where
>> this new policy and its committee would help. If you want to make claims
>> of serious unacknowledged problems, substantiate them with evidence. This
>> is exactly the same burden of proof you would expect from anyone else.
>>
>> MZMcBride
>>
>
> I've asked for this before, but got nothing but hypotheticals. It's hard
> to weigh in on a document that does not cite specific examples, with
> context, of what it seeks to address. When designing anything - processes,
> software, architecture - you need to know your use cases in order to
> properly address them. We spent months researching what the users were
> actually doing, and the problems they were running into, before we started
> making anything for WikiProject X. For every decision we made, we can point
> to examples on-wiki of the trends that led us to this; or the software
> limitations; or the fact that it actually was kind of arbitrary, and that
> if any actual reasons to change it are provided, this can totally be done.
>
> And this Code of Conduct is much bigger, in both scope and likely impact,
> than WikiProject X.
>
> -I
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Isarra Yos]

On 26/02/17 18:21, MZMcBride wrote:

Then you and others should have no problem providing specific examples.
I'd like to see links to Gerrit changesets and Phabricator tasks where
this new policy and its committee would help. If you want to make claims
of serious unacknowledged problems, substantiate them with evidence. This
is exactly the same burden of proof you would expect from anyone else.

MZMcBride


I've asked for this before, but got nothing but hypotheticals. It's hard 
to weigh in on a document that does not cite specific examples, with 
context, of what it seeks to address. When designing anything - 
processes, software, architecture - you need to know your use cases in 
order to properly address them. We spent months researching what the 
users were actually doing, and the problems they were running into, 
before we started making anything for WikiProject X. For every decision 
we made, we can point to examples on-wiki of the trends that led us to 
this; or the software limitations; or the fact that it actually was kind 
of arbitrary, and that if any actual reasons to change it are provided, 
this can totally be done.


And this Code of Conduct is much bigger, in both scope and likely 
impact, than WikiProject X.


-I

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Tim Landscheidt]

David Gerard  wrote:

>> Eh, they do and that is one of the reasons to oppose the
>> Code of Conduct.  Its draft implicitly alleges that the
>> technical spaces currently are a cesspit that is in urgent
>> need of someone with a rake while protecting actual offend-
>> ers by granting immunity to "neuroatypical" behaviour.

> This is a pretty reasonable presumption regarding technical spaces: if
> you *don't* have a code of conduct, it's a reasonable conclusion from
> outside that there will be serious unacknowledged problems.

> e.g. "You literally cannot pay me to speak without a Code of Conduct"
> http://rachelnabors.com/2015/09/01/code-of-conduct/

> This is literally all well-worn discourse territory, but I'm sure if
> you both persist you can wear everyone down.

Repeating "reasonable" does not replace arguments.  There is
a lot of conjecture around code of conducts, just like there
are a lot of prejudices elsewhere.  Even if a belief is held
by a significant number of people that does not make it a
fact.

Tim


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Fæ]

On 26 February 2017 at 18:12, Pax Ahimsa Gethen
 wrote:
> Thank you for sharing that Rachel Nabors post, David; bookmarked. I think
> some on this list are missing the point that codes of conduct are necessary
> to help provide a welcoming and safer environment for marginalized people,
> including the neuroatypical that Tim refers to (somewhat disparagingly). It
> isn't about virtual signaling or earning social justice cred; it's about
> addressing some of the legitimate concerns and fears that prevent people
> including women (of all races), people of color (of all genders), LGBT+
> people, and others from participating fully in spaces and events.
>
> - Pax aka Funcrunch

Sorry to disagree, but this particular committee is being created on
hypothetical grounds rather than on practical experience and past case
histories for the technical environments being targeted.

Based on my experience of homophobic harassment, I would not go near
this committee to report an issue as it cannot provide any assurance
of confidentiality, nor can they provide assurance that information
provided will not be used for other purposes. Emails sent to the
envisioned committee can be kept as records indefinitely by WMF legal,
who have already refused to explain what records they already hold on
volunteers, and will not cooperate with the police or an attorney of a
victim of harassment without a subpoena (which presumes you already
know what evidence they are holding).

It's a nice thought that the motivation for a code of conduct is to
provide safer spaces for LGBT+ people and others, but the
implementation, in this case, is an overly bureaucratic ghastly mess,
before it has even started.

Fae
-- 
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Adrian Raddatz]

In terms of substantive concerns, the ArbCom model is what most non-staff
commenters seem to be caught up on. I'm personally concerned with any
creation of a dispute resolution "class" of editor, since I feel that the
community does a terrible job of mob resolution at places like ANI on
enwiki, or RfC on meta. The less you can exclusively resolve disputes
on-wiki, the better.

And this proposal for an ArbCom is perhaps the most bureaucratic and
expansive one I've ever seen. A regular and supplementary committee? And
one which hears all cases, rather than just appeals? This sounds like a
perfect recipe for diffusing responsibility for blocks/bans and that's not
a good thing. The benefit to individual admins (and whatever the equivalent
is on phab) making decisions about blocks is that you know who did it and
how to appeal it. That's a lot harder when it was done because of a 3-2
vote on some strange committee that will be hard for newcomers or
occasional users to understand the composition of.

Replace the enforcement section with authority for admins (and equivalent)
to add sanctions as they see fit, but with some sort of formal appeal
option like asking another admin, or a small and randomly selected group of
them, or a small and randomly selected group of others.

Adrian Raddatz

On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 10:12 AM, Pax Ahimsa Gethen <
list-wikime...@funcrunch.org> wrote:

> Thank you for sharing that Rachel Nabors post, David; bookmarked. I think
> some on this list are missing the point that codes of conduct are necessary
> to help provide a welcoming and safer environment for marginalized people,
> including the neuroatypical that Tim refers to (somewhat disparagingly). It
> isn't about virtual signaling or earning social justice cred; it's about
> addressing some of the legitimate concerns and fears that prevent people
> including women (of all races), people of color (of all genders), LGBT+
> people, and others from participating fully in spaces and events.
>
> - Pax aka Funcrunch
>
>
> On 2/26/17 9:53 AM, David Gerard wrote:
>
>> On 26 February 2017 at 17:49, Tim Landscheidt 
>> wrote:
>>
>> Eh, they do and that is one of the reasons to oppose the
>>> Code of Conduct.  Its draft implicitly alleges that the
>>> technical spaces currently are a cesspit that is in urgent
>>> need of someone with a rake while protecting actual offend-
>>> ers by granting immunity to "neuroatypical" behaviour.
>>>
>>
>>
>> This is a pretty reasonable presumption regarding technical spaces: if
>> you *don't* have a code of conduct, it's a reasonable conclusion from
>> outside that there will be serious unacknowledged problems.
>>
>> e.g. "You literally cannot pay me to speak without a Code of Conduct"
>> http://rachelnabors.com/2015/09/01/code-of-conduct/
>>
>> This is literally all well-worn discourse territory, but I'm sure if
>> you both persist you can wear everyone down.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
>> --
> Pax Ahimsa Gethen | http://funcrunch.org
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[MZMcBride]

David Gerard wrote:
>This is a pretty reasonable presumption regarding technical spaces: if
>you *don't* have a code of conduct, it's a reasonable conclusion from
>outside that there will be serious unacknowledged problems.

Then you and others should have no problem providing specific examples.
I'd like to see links to Gerrit changesets and Phabricator tasks where
this new policy and its committee would help. If you want to make claims
of serious unacknowledged problems, substantiate them with evidence. This
is exactly the same burden of proof you would expect from anyone else.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Pax Ahimsa Gethen]

Thank you for sharing that Rachel Nabors post, David; bookmarked. I 
think some on this list are missing the point that codes of conduct are 
necessary to help provide a welcoming and safer environment for 
marginalized people, including the neuroatypical that Tim refers to 
(somewhat disparagingly). It isn't about virtual signaling or earning 
social justice cred; it's about addressing some of the legitimate 
concerns and fears that prevent people including women (of all races), 
people of color (of all genders), LGBT+ people, and others from 
participating fully in spaces and events.


- Pax aka Funcrunch


On 2/26/17 9:53 AM, David Gerard wrote:

On 26 February 2017 at 17:49, Tim Landscheidt  wrote:


Eh, they do and that is one of the reasons to oppose the
Code of Conduct.  Its draft implicitly alleges that the
technical spaces currently are a cesspit that is in urgent
need of someone with a rake while protecting actual offend-
ers by granting immunity to "neuroatypical" behaviour.



This is a pretty reasonable presumption regarding technical spaces: if
you *don't* have a code of conduct, it's a reasonable conclusion from
outside that there will be serious unacknowledged problems.

e.g. "You literally cannot pay me to speak without a Code of Conduct"
http://rachelnabors.com/2015/09/01/code-of-conduct/

This is literally all well-worn discourse territory, but I'm sure if
you both persist you can wear everyone down.


- d.


--
Pax Ahimsa Gethen | http://funcrunch.org


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Rogol Domedonfors]

I don't think the WMF is "trying to exempt itself from its own creation",
it is simpy giving its own staff a privileged position within it.  Anyone
who makes a complaint against a member of staff will have the privacy of
their complaint breached by having details sent to the WMF with its
millions of dollars and its staff of lawyers whose remit is to protect the
Foundation, not the volunteers.  That creates a two-tier system within the
technical community and is bound to have a chilling effect on complaints of
that kind.

Nonetheless, the question I think we should focus on is, should the code as
written be put to the Community for approval and, if so, how?

"Rogol"

On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 5:45 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Tim Landscheidt wrote:
> >This is a circular and illogical argument.  Just because
> >someone has good intentions or invested time and effort does
> >not mean that the path they chose is the right one to take.
> >And if someone is steering towards a cliff, encouraging peo-
> >ple to keep pushing the cart to honour the navigator's dedi-
> >cation is self-destructive.
>
> This is basically the .
> This also can partially explain many of the software development-related
> disputes we've seen with the Wikimedia Foundation. Once a bunch of time,
> energy, and other resources are devoted to a particular software project,
> it becomes a lot more difficult to give it up, even if it's doomed.
>
> Leila Zia wrote:
> >​Matthew used English Wikipedia as one example to say that the statement
> >"This is always the case." is not correct.​ Using English Wikipedia as an
> >example to negate that statement is not in contradiction with what Matthew
> >said to you on mediawiki.org.
>
> Sure, but that wasn't the contradiction (or hypocrisy) I was discussing.
> In one case, Matthew is relying on outside behavior and accepted practices
> on other Wikimedia wikis (re: meatpuppetry, sockpuppetry, etc.). In the
> other case, Matthew is saying outside policies and practices are
> irrelevant as those policies are local to that wiki. You both are quite
> smart enough to see what's happening here.
>
> Vi to wrote:
> >I think methodological objections shouldn't prevail over substantial
> >objections.
> >I can agree most of consensus in CoC draft came from WMF
> >staffers/contractors, but:
> >*no one was prevented from weighing-in
> >*lists were filled with invitations to weigh-in
> >*I think most of us didn't comment just because they agree with the
> >overall meaning of the draft.
> >IMHO most of criticism doesn't actually target the draft but rather
> >increasing influence of WMF in various sectors traditionally
> >community-driven or unregulated. I'm not commenting nor this influence nor
> >the objections but I think CoC is just a symbol of another issue.
>
> I'll try to summarize the latest criticisms and I'll copy them to the talk
> page as well, for posterity.
>
> Re: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct/Draft
>
> 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:
>  and
> .
>
> The draft text regarding initial committee membership reads: "The first
> Committee will be chosen by the Wikimedia Foundation's Technical
> Collaboration team."
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[David Gerard]

On 26 February 2017 at 17:49, Tim Landscheidt  wrote:

> Eh, they do and that is one of the reasons to oppose the
> Code of Conduct.  Its draft implicitly alleges that the
> technical spaces currently are a cesspit that is in urgent
> need of someone with a rake while protecting actual offend-
> ers by granting immunity to "neuroatypical" behaviour.



This is a pretty reasonable presumption regarding technical spaces: if
you *don't* have a code of conduct, it's a reasonable conclusion from
outside that there will be serious unacknowledged problems.

e.g. "You literally cannot pay me to speak without a Code of Conduct"
http://rachelnabors.com/2015/09/01/code-of-conduct/

This is literally all well-worn discourse territory, but I'm sure if
you both persist you can wear everyone down.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Tim Landscheidt]

Robert Fernandez  wrote:

>>Personally I'm much more grateful for the people who did not
>>spend their energy on this code of conduct to "accidentally"
>>exercise power over others

> If the organizers of this proposal responded in kind with even a fraction
> of the bad faith accusations that have been leveled at them, the howls of
> outrage would be deafening.

> […]

Eh, they do and that is one of the reasons to oppose the
Code of Conduct.  Its draft implicitly alleges that the
technical spaces currently are a cesspit that is in urgent
need of someone with a rake while protecting actual offend-
ers by granting immunity to "neuroatypical" behaviour.

It also turns the technical spaces from a place that served
to advance Wikimedia's mission into an aimless "community".

Tim


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[MZMcBride]

Tim Landscheidt wrote:
>This is a circular and illogical argument.  Just because
>someone has good intentions or invested time and effort does
>not mean that the path they chose is the right one to take.
>And if someone is steering towards a cliff, encouraging peo-
>ple to keep pushing the cart to honour the navigator's dedi-
>cation is self-destructive.

This is basically the .
This also can partially explain many of the software development-related
disputes we've seen with the Wikimedia Foundation. Once a bunch of time,
energy, and other resources are devoted to a particular software project,
it becomes a lot more difficult to give it up, even if it's doomed.

Leila Zia wrote:
>​Matthew used English Wikipedia as one example to say that the statement
>"This is always the case." is not correct.​ Using English Wikipedia as an
>example to negate that statement is not in contradiction with what Matthew
>said to you on mediawiki.org.

Sure, but that wasn't the contradiction (or hypocrisy) I was discussing.
In one case, Matthew is relying on outside behavior and accepted practices
on other Wikimedia wikis (re: meatpuppetry, sockpuppetry, etc.). In the
other case, Matthew is saying outside policies and practices are
irrelevant as those policies are local to that wiki. You both are quite
smart enough to see what's happening here.

Vi to wrote:
>I think methodological objections shouldn't prevail over substantial
>objections.
>I can agree most of consensus in CoC draft came from WMF
>staffers/contractors, but:
>*no one was prevented from weighing-in
>*lists were filled with invitations to weigh-in
>*I think most of us didn't comment just because they agree with the
>overall meaning of the draft.
>IMHO most of criticism doesn't actually target the draft but rather
>increasing influence of WMF in various sectors traditionally
>community-driven or unregulated. I'm not commenting nor this influence nor
>the objections but I think CoC is just a symbol of another issue.

I'll try to summarize the latest criticisms and I'll copy them to the talk
page as well, for posterity.

Re: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct/Draft

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:
 and
.

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

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.

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.

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.

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



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] proposal for regular surveys of community opinion

[Peter Southwood]

I agree with the general concepts raised here, far too many surveys (in 
general, not pointing fingers at anyone specific)are appallingly badly set up, 
with leading questions, irrelevant options, insufficient options etc. Much of 
this could be avoided by extra scrutiny before finalisation.
Cheers,
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Jonathan Cardy
Sent: Sunday, 26 February 2017 2:44 PM
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] proposal for regular surveys of community opinion

I'm keen on surveys, used to work in that line a few years ago, and the first 
we did was I think at least in part a response to a proposal I made on the 2009 
Strategy wiki. In hindsight the big mistakes of that survey were that we didn't 
repeat it annually, and the lack of community input in setting and analysing 
the questions.

I'm not convinced that we need to move to a monthly survey, I could live with 
quarterly but still prefer annual as the ideal interval - long enough to avoid 
survey fatigue, short enough that we can plan around it and use it to answer 
questions worth addressing. As for recruiting people, make it annual and I'd 
hope we could get consensus for a site notice. I'd like that site notice to be 
tailored to ask different and relevant questions based on people's number of 
edits. - not much point asking someone with less than a 1000 edits if they are 
an admin.

The place to set the questions is on meta, not on some external site.

There are of course biases in self reported surveys, there could even be a 
seasonal bias, but biases tend to even out as your sample size grows, and an 
annual survey of the editing community could get a very high turnout. Also 
biases don't necessarily hide trends, provided the biases are consistent. If we 
were doing an annual survey of the editing community I suspect we wouldn't need 
many years before we knew whether our gender skew was stable, growing or 
improving. 

As well as the gender skew, it would be good to have an updated age profile of 
the community. We still sometimes see people referring to teenage admins 
without realising that the adolescents who were our youngest crats and admins 
ten years ago are now mostly graduates. I suspect that a new survey would 
confirm the theory of the greying of the pedia - our growing number of silver 
surfers combined with our near total failure to recruit very active editors 
from tablet/smartphone only users means that the average age of our most active 
editors is going up by more than a year a year.

I'm happy with most of Will's suggestions re questions, but instead of date 
people started editing you really want month or quarter to keep the survey 
anonymous. On smaller wikis that would need to be year.

It would also be good to survey former editors and particularly those who left 
after only a brief period of activity. We have a long tail of people who 
probably don't consider themselves Wikipedians but who have fixed one or two 
things while they are reading Wikipedia. But we also have a huge attrition rate 
among editors who have started out and done 50 or 500 edits. Many will have 
gone because sourcing edits is too much like hard work, their view on 
notability was different to ours or because they couldn't work out how to deal 
with an edit conflict. But it would be good to get an idea of the ratio between 
those main reasons, and also to find out if there are other significant reasons 
for losing goodfaith newbies.

Regards

WereSpielChequers


> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 19:18:47 -0700
> From: Bill Takatoshi 
> To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] proposal for regular surveys of community
>   opinion
> Message-ID:
>   

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Vi to]

I think methodological objections shouldn't prevail over substantial
objections.
I can agree most of consensus in CoC draft came from WMF
staffers/contractors, but:
*no one was prevented from weighing-in
*lists were filled with invitations to weigh-in
*I think most of us didn't comment just because they agree with the overall
meaning of the draft.
IMHO most of criticism doesn't actually target the draft but rather
increasing influence of WMF in various sectors traditionally
community-driven or unregulated. I'm not commenting nor this influence nor
the objections but I think CoC is just a symbol of another issue.

Vito

2017-02-26 15:31 GMT+01:00 Robert Fernandez :

> >Personally I'm much more grateful for the people who did not
> >spend their energy on this code of conduct to "accidentally"
> >exercise power over others
>
> If the organizers of this proposal responded in kind with even a fraction
> of the bad faith accusations that have been leveled at them, the howls of
> outrage would be deafening.
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 10:39 PM, Tim Landscheidt 
> wrote:
>
> > Leila Zia  wrote:
> >
> > > […]
> >
> > > On a separate note to those of you who contribute to technical spaces
> and
> > > are not happy about how some aspects have gone:
> >
> > > Matthew and a few other people have been trying /really hard/ to make
> > > Wikimedia's technical spaces better. You know that embarking on such a
> > path
> > > is very difficult: it requires spending many many hours of your time
> > (read
> > > life) on it, elaborating, deliberating, documenting, discussing things
> > with
> > > people from different paths of life, etc. They have been doing it for
> > > months now. It's my understanding that they are doing this not to
> > exercise
> > > power over others but to make our technical spaces better, to make them
> > > more enjoyable to contribute in.
> >
> > > For all of us who contribute in technical spaces, we should remember:
> We
> > > may not agree with every step they take, but we all owe it to them to
> > help
> > > them on this path. What they are doing is a good thing and that's
> > something
> > > that sometimes gets lost in these lengthy conversations.
> >
> > This is a circular and illogical argument.  Just because
> > someone has good intentions or invested time and effort does
> > not mean that the path they chose is the right one to take.
> > And if someone is steering towards a cliff, encouraging peo-
> > ple to keep pushing the cart to honour the navigator's dedi-
> > cation is self-destructive.
> >
> > Personally I'm much more grateful for the people who did not
> > spend their energy on this code of conduct to "accidentally"
> > exercise power over others, but made our technical spaces
> > better and more enjoyable by reporting bugs, debugging, an-
> > swering questions, writing patches, reviewing contributions
> > or creating or translating documentation.
> >
> > Tim
> >
> >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> >
> ___
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>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Draft Code of Conduct for Technical Spaces

[Robert Fernandez]

>Personally I'm much more grateful for the people who did not
>spend their energy on this code of conduct to "accidentally"
>exercise power over others

If the organizers of this proposal responded in kind with even a fraction
of the bad faith accusations that have been leveled at them, the howls of
outrage would be deafening.


On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 10:39 PM, Tim Landscheidt 
wrote:

> Leila Zia  wrote:
>
> > […]
>
> > On a separate note to those of you who contribute to technical spaces and
> > are not happy about how some aspects have gone:
>
> > Matthew and a few other people have been trying /really hard/ to make
> > Wikimedia's technical spaces better. You know that embarking on such a
> path
> > is very difficult: it requires spending many many hours of your time
> (read
> > life) on it, elaborating, deliberating, documenting, discussing things
> with
> > people from different paths of life, etc. They have been doing it for
> > months now. It's my understanding that they are doing this not to
> exercise
> > power over others but to make our technical spaces better, to make them
> > more enjoyable to contribute in.
>
> > For all of us who contribute in technical spaces, we should remember: We
> > may not agree with every step they take, but we all owe it to them to
> help
> > them on this path. What they are doing is a good thing and that's
> something
> > that sometimes gets lost in these lengthy conversations.
>
> This is a circular and illogical argument.  Just because
> someone has good intentions or invested time and effort does
> not mean that the path they chose is the right one to take.
> And if someone is steering towards a cliff, encouraging peo-
> ple to keep pushing the cart to honour the navigator's dedi-
> cation is self-destructive.
>
> Personally I'm much more grateful for the people who did not
> spend their energy on this code of conduct to "accidentally"
> exercise power over others, but made our technical spaces
> better and more enjoyable by reporting bugs, debugging, an-
> swering questions, writing patches, reviewing contributions
> or creating or translating documentation.
>
> Tim
>
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] proposal for regular surveys of community opinion

[Jonathan Cardy]

I'm keen on surveys, used to work in that line a few years ago, and the first 
we did was I think at least in part a response to a proposal I made on the 2009 
Strategy wiki. In hindsight the big mistakes of that survey were that we didn't 
repeat it annually, and the lack of community input in setting and analysing 
the questions.

I'm not convinced that we need to move to a monthly survey, I could live with 
quarterly but still prefer annual as the ideal interval - long enough to avoid 
survey fatigue, short enough that we can plan around it and use it to answer 
questions worth addressing. As for recruiting people, make it annual and I'd 
hope we could get consensus for a site notice. I'd like that site notice to be 
tailored to ask different and relevant questions based on people's number of 
edits. - not much point asking someone with less than a 1000 edits if they are 
an admin.

The place to set the questions is on meta, not on some external site.

There are of course biases in self reported surveys, there could even be a 
seasonal bias, but biases tend to even out as your sample size grows, and an 
annual survey of the editing community could get a very high turnout. Also 
biases don't necessarily hide trends, provided the biases are consistent. If we 
were doing an annual survey of the editing community I suspect we wouldn't need 
many years before we knew whether our gender skew was stable, growing or 
improving. 

As well as the gender skew, it would be good to have an updated age profile of 
the community. We still sometimes see people referring to teenage admins 
without realising that the adolescents who were our youngest crats and admins 
ten years ago are now mostly graduates. I suspect that a new survey would 
confirm the theory of the greying of the pedia - our growing number of silver 
surfers combined with our near total failure to recruit very active editors 
from tablet/smartphone only users means that the average age of our most active 
editors is going up by more than a year a year.

I'm happy with most of Will's suggestions re questions, but instead of date 
people started editing you really want month or quarter to keep the survey 
anonymous. On smaller wikis that would need to be year.

It would also be good to survey former editors and particularly those who left 
after only a brief period of activity. We have a long tail of people who 
probably don't consider themselves Wikipedians but who have fixed one or two 
things while they are reading Wikipedia. But we also have a huge attrition rate 
among editors who have started out and done 50 or 500 edits. Many will have 
gone because sourcing edits is too much like hard work, their view on 
notability was different to ours or because they couldn't work out how to deal 
with an edit conflict. But it would be good to get an idea of the ratio between 
those main reasons, and also to find out if there are other significant reasons 
for losing goodfaith newbies.

Regards

WereSpielChequers


> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 19:18:47 -0700
> From: Bill Takatoshi 
> To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] proposal for regular surveys of community
>   opinion
> Message-ID:
>