Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 for FY 2014-2015 now on-wiki

[Fæ]

On 5 June 2016 at 02:28, Liam Wyatt  wrote:
> On Sunday, 5 June 2016, Greg Varnum  wrote:
...
> Not to put too fine a point on it... But are you saying that Sue remained
> the most highly paid contractor to the WMF, and at a significantly higher
> rate than when she was the actual ED, until FIVE DAYS ago? That is, well
> beyond any 'transition period' (and in fact longer than the employment of
> the person who replaced her)?

Yes, this jumped out for me. I can understand paying out a 12 month
golden handshake on the way out, and paying a previous CEO for a few
days or weeks support during handover, but continuing to pay out at an
eye-watering equivalent salary of $300,000 per annum, was a
super-duper bonus for Sue.

However this is wrapped up in the normal "nothing to see here,
move-along" WMF PR speak, these lottery prize level payouts have been
a terrible, terrible deal in terms of the WMF delivering on its goals
and values. I certainly did not see Sue saying anything in public to
help avoid or repair any of the WMF board's strategic disasters in its
highly public annus horribilis. I doubt that in truth she did much
more in private, sorry, it's just not credible that the WMF has all
its strategic manipulators hidden away in private rooms as if this
were a court for the Borgia family.

I am utterly convinced that the WMF would do exactly as well, and
possibly even better, by paying a CEO slightly less than it currently
pays it's head of legal, certainly it would be rather stupid to pump
up the interim CEO's salary by three times to match the celebrity CEO
salaries that the WMF seems to have locked itself into.

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

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Harassment and blaming the victim

[Pine W]

Hi Pax,

I agree that blaming the victim is an unsatisfactory resolution.

On the other hand, defining what is meant by "incivility" and "harassment"
can be very tricky. Just because there is a strong disagreement doesn't
imply that people are being uncivil, and we cannot expect that no one will
ever lose his or her temper when provoked. Similarly, a pattern of
disagreement doesn't necessarily imply harassment, and the presumption of
good faith is rebuttable which means that questioning the motives of others
is occasionally OK.

So, as Sumana once said, we have a tricky situation with regards to
balancing free speech with hospitality.

I think there are situations in which behavior is egregious enough that it
is a net harm to community health and cannot be excused. For example,
comments that demean someone on the basis of race, gender, age,
nationality, or religious or political beliefs, are generally out of bounds.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about how we should define
harassment, and how we should seek to reduce the frequency of it on
Wikimedia sites.

Thank you for speaking up.

Pine
On Jun 4, 2016 19:15, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen" 
wrote:

> Hi all, I'm Pax aka Funcrunch [1]. I've been a Wikipedian since 2008, but
> this is my first post to this mailing list. (I've been reading list
> messages on the archives page occasionally for the last several months.)
>
> I'm writing because of a concern I have about the community's attitude
> toward harassment on Wikipedia. I got a Wikinotice about this month's
> Inspire Campaign, which specifically asks: "What ideas do you have that can
> help prevent and generally address cases of harassment?" [2] As a victim of
> several of the harassing behaviors mentioned as examples - " name calling,
> threats, discrimination, stalking, and impersonation" - I was encouraged to
> see that this problem was (hopefully) being taken seriously by the
> Foundation, and submitted a proposal.
>
> Looking at the other proposals submitted, I soon noticed that the most
> popular "ideas" on the list included complaints of "political correctness"
> and suggesting we shouldn't be so sensitive [3], and that we should just
> get some sleep and exercise and reconsider why we're so offended. [4] (That
> first "idea" has since been recategorized by a WMF staffer to remove it
> from the current campaign.)
>
> It really bothers me that a campaign specifically designed to combat
> harassment - which is a very serious and real problem for people of
> marginalized identities like myself [5]- is being co-opted by people saying
> things like " Harassment doesn't cause actual damage," " The existence of
> harassment is an opportunity to improve ourselves further through
> self-discipline," and " Harassment on Wikimedia has been exaggerated." I
> suggest that people who honestly believe this, but are willing to accept
> that they might be wrong, read a recent essay about online harassment by
> Anil Dash: "The Immortal Myths About Online Abuse." [6]
>
> I'm not "looking to be offended," and I'm not trying to "censor" people
> who simply disagree with me. I'm trying to help build an encyclopedia,
> without being harassed by block-evading stalkers hurling hate speech my
> way. The existing tools and policies are *not* sufficient to deal with
> this. That's (what I thought was) the point of this Inspire campaign, not
> complaining about censorship and " crybullying."
>
> I've posted a much shorter version of this concern on the Inspire Campaign
> talk page [7], so feel free to weigh in there instead of here on the list
> if that's more appropriate. Thank you for reading.
>
> - Pax, aka Funcrunch
>
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Funcrunch
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire
> [3]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Stop_%22Political_Correctness%22_as_gauge
> !
> [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Don't_feed_the_trolls
> [5] Queer, trans, and black, in my case.
> [6]
> https://medium.com/humane-tech/the-immortal-myths-about-online-abuse-a156e3370aee
> [7]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:IdeaLab/Inspire/Meta#Blaming_the_victim
>
> --
> Pax Ahimsa Gethen | p...@funcrunch.org | http://funcrunch.org
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Harassment and blaming the victim

[Pete Forsyth]

Pine, as one of the admins who has worked to fend off this sustained
attack, I can attest it is exactly that. Your point is a valid one, but it
does not apply to this situation.
Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Jun 5, 2016 7:13 AM, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen" 
wrote:

> I am defining harassment primarily as personal attacks, not merely
> disputes (even strongly-worded disagreement) over content.
>
> Some examples of what I consider harassment:
>
> - Vandalizing an editor's user or talk page (hence my Inspire proposal:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Protect_user_space_by_default
> )
>
> - Making derogatory comments about an editor's gender, sex, race,
> ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or (dis)ability
>
> - Posting personal information about an editor that was gathered off-Wiki
>
> - Evading bans with IP-hopping to do any of the above.
>
> These actions not only cause "net harm to community health," they cause
> unnecessary, avoidable harm to specific individuals, and discourage
> marginalized people from participating in the project.
>
> - Pax
>
>
> On 6/5/16 5:09 AM, Pine W wrote:
>
>> Hi Pax,
>>
>> I agree that blaming the victim is an unsatisfactory resolution.
>>
>> On the other hand, defining what is meant by "incivility" and "harassment"
>> can be very tricky. Just because there is a strong disagreement doesn't
>> imply that people are being uncivil, and we cannot expect that no one will
>> ever lose his or her temper when provoked. Similarly, a pattern of
>> disagreement doesn't necessarily imply harassment, and the presumption of
>> good faith is rebuttable which means that questioning the motives of
>> others
>> is occasionally OK.
>>
>> So, as Sumana once said, we have a tricky situation with regards to
>> balancing free speech with hospitality.
>>
>> I think there are situations in which behavior is egregious enough that it
>> is a net harm to community health and cannot be excused. For example,
>> comments that demean someone on the basis of race, gender, age,
>> nationality, or religious or political beliefs, are generally out of
>> bounds.
>>
>> I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about how we should define
>> harassment, and how we should seek to reduce the frequency of it on
>> Wikimedia sites.
>>
>> Thank you for speaking up.
>>
>> Pine
>> On Jun 4, 2016 19:15, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen" 
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all, I'm Pax aka Funcrunch [1]. I've been a Wikipedian since 2008, but
>>> this is my first post to this mailing list. (I've been reading list
>>> messages on the archives page occasionally for the last several months.)
>>>
>>> I'm writing because of a concern I have about the community's attitude
>>> toward harassment on Wikipedia. I got a Wikinotice about this month's
>>> Inspire Campaign, which specifically asks: "What ideas do you have that
>>> can
>>> help prevent and generally address cases of harassment?" [2] As a victim
>>> of
>>> several of the harassing behaviors mentioned as examples - " name
>>> calling,
>>> threats, discrimination, stalking, and impersonation" - I was encouraged
>>> to
>>> see that this problem was (hopefully) being taken seriously by the
>>> Foundation, and submitted a proposal.
>>>
>>> Looking at the other proposals submitted, I soon noticed that the most
>>> popular "ideas" on the list included complaints of "political
>>> correctness"
>>> and suggesting we shouldn't be so sensitive [3], and that we should just
>>> get some sleep and exercise and reconsider why we're so offended. [4]
>>> (That
>>> first "idea" has since been recategorized by a WMF staffer to remove it
>>> from the current campaign.)
>>>
>>> It really bothers me that a campaign specifically designed to combat
>>> harassment - which is a very serious and real problem for people of
>>> marginalized identities like myself [5]- is being co-opted by people
>>> saying
>>> things like " Harassment doesn't cause actual damage," " The existence of
>>> harassment is an opportunity to improve ourselves further through
>>> self-discipline," and " Harassment on Wikimedia has been exaggerated." I
>>> suggest that people who honestly believe this, but are willing to accept
>>> that they might be wrong, read a recent essay about online harassment by
>>> Anil Dash: "The Immortal Myths About Online Abuse." [6]
>>>
>>> I'm not "looking to be offended," and I'm not trying to "censor" people
>>> who simply disagree with me. I'm trying to help build an encyclopedia,
>>> without being harassed by block-evading stalkers hurling hate speech my
>>> way. The existing tools and policies are *not* sufficient to deal with
>>> this. That's (what I thought was) the point of this Inspire campaign, not
>>> complaining about censorship and " crybullying."
>>>
>>> I've posted a much shorter version of this concern on the Inspire
>>> Campaign
>>> talk page [7], so feel free to weigh in there instead of here on the list
>>> if that's more appropriate. 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Harassment and blaming the victim

[Pax Ahimsa Gethen]

I am defining harassment primarily as personal attacks, not merely 
disputes (even strongly-worded disagreement) over content.


Some examples of what I consider harassment:

- Vandalizing an editor's user or talk page (hence my Inspire proposal: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Protect_user_space_by_default)


- Making derogatory comments about an editor's gender, sex, race, 
ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or (dis)ability


- Posting personal information about an editor that was gathered off-Wiki

- Evading bans with IP-hopping to do any of the above.

These actions not only cause "net harm to community health," they cause 
unnecessary, avoidable harm to specific individuals, and discourage 
marginalized people from participating in the project.


- Pax


On 6/5/16 5:09 AM, Pine W wrote:

Hi Pax,

I agree that blaming the victim is an unsatisfactory resolution.

On the other hand, defining what is meant by "incivility" and "harassment"
can be very tricky. Just because there is a strong disagreement doesn't
imply that people are being uncivil, and we cannot expect that no one will
ever lose his or her temper when provoked. Similarly, a pattern of
disagreement doesn't necessarily imply harassment, and the presumption of
good faith is rebuttable which means that questioning the motives of others
is occasionally OK.

So, as Sumana once said, we have a tricky situation with regards to
balancing free speech with hospitality.

I think there are situations in which behavior is egregious enough that it
is a net harm to community health and cannot be excused. For example,
comments that demean someone on the basis of race, gender, age,
nationality, or religious or political beliefs, are generally out of bounds.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about how we should define
harassment, and how we should seek to reduce the frequency of it on
Wikimedia sites.

Thank you for speaking up.

Pine
On Jun 4, 2016 19:15, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen" 
wrote:


Hi all, I'm Pax aka Funcrunch [1]. I've been a Wikipedian since 2008, but
this is my first post to this mailing list. (I've been reading list
messages on the archives page occasionally for the last several months.)

I'm writing because of a concern I have about the community's attitude
toward harassment on Wikipedia. I got a Wikinotice about this month's
Inspire Campaign, which specifically asks: "What ideas do you have that can
help prevent and generally address cases of harassment?" [2] As a victim of
several of the harassing behaviors mentioned as examples - " name calling,
threats, discrimination, stalking, and impersonation" - I was encouraged to
see that this problem was (hopefully) being taken seriously by the
Foundation, and submitted a proposal.

Looking at the other proposals submitted, I soon noticed that the most
popular "ideas" on the list included complaints of "political correctness"
and suggesting we shouldn't be so sensitive [3], and that we should just
get some sleep and exercise and reconsider why we're so offended. [4] (That
first "idea" has since been recategorized by a WMF staffer to remove it
from the current campaign.)

It really bothers me that a campaign specifically designed to combat
harassment - which is a very serious and real problem for people of
marginalized identities like myself [5]- is being co-opted by people saying
things like " Harassment doesn't cause actual damage," " The existence of
harassment is an opportunity to improve ourselves further through
self-discipline," and " Harassment on Wikimedia has been exaggerated." I
suggest that people who honestly believe this, but are willing to accept
that they might be wrong, read a recent essay about online harassment by
Anil Dash: "The Immortal Myths About Online Abuse." [6]

I'm not "looking to be offended," and I'm not trying to "censor" people
who simply disagree with me. I'm trying to help build an encyclopedia,
without being harassed by block-evading stalkers hurling hate speech my
way. The existing tools and policies are *not* sufficient to deal with
this. That's (what I thought was) the point of this Inspire campaign, not
complaining about censorship and " crybullying."

I've posted a much shorter version of this concern on the Inspire Campaign
talk page [7], so feel free to weigh in there instead of here on the list
if that's more appropriate. Thank you for reading.

- Pax, aka Funcrunch


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Funcrunch
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Stop_%22Political_Correctness%22_as_gauge
!
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Don't_feed_the_trolls
[5] Queer, trans, and black, in my case.
[6]
https://medium.com/humane-tech/the-immortal-myths-about-online-abuse-a156e3370aee
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:IdeaLab/Inspire/Meta#Blaming_the_victim



--
Pax Ahimsa Gethen | p...@funcrunch.org | 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Harassment and blaming the victim

[Pine W]

Thanks, Patrick. The community regularly expends considerable volunteer
time and effort to protect the intrgrity of article content and to deal
with block evasion. I think it would be helpful if further efforts could be
made to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of tools and processes
for addressing block evasion, including the use of Legal Department
resources as appropriate. Block evasion is a problem that affects many
aspects of Wikimedia, including article integrity and loss of volunteer
time as already mentioned, as well as the harms to harassment victims, the
stress on the volunteer admins and functionaries, and negative impact on
community population and health.

Thanks for working on this. Is there anything more that you can do to
assist with Pax's situation in particular?

Pine
On Jun 5, 2016 11:11, "Patrick Earley"  wrote:

> Pine,
>
> As many of our admins and functionaries are well aware, both the Wikimedia
> sites, and the internet architecture as a whole, favour anonymity and
> protection of privacy over the ability to track individuals.  When a user
> is technically proficient in hiding themselves, platforms and even law
> enforcement can have little luck in determining who or where they are.
> Anonymity has great benefits, but also can allow great abuses.
>
> There are of course "easy" solutions that would involve changes to our
> site accessibility - for instance, requiring secondary identification, such
> as social media accounts or verified emails.  However, those are decisions
> that the community as a whole needs to discuss, and not something I or my
> department can change unilaterally. That said, improving Wikimedia's
> blocking tools and detection methods is an area where some progress can be
> made.
>
> One of the benefits that this Inspire campaign can provide is open
> discussion and consideration of new approaches.
>
> Pax, I am disheartened to see how some of the IdeaLabs are being used to
> belittle this problem, and am working over the weekend to keep at least the
> worst instances of abuse and hate-speech off of the pages :(
>
> Best,
>
> On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 9:48 AM, Pine W  wrote:
>
>> Hi Pax and Pete,
>>
>> It sounds like part of the issue in this case may be that may we need
>> more effective tools for dealing with troublemakers who are banned but
>> continue to return and cause problems. I'm wondering if Patrick Early can
>> comment on what efforts WMF is making in terms of dealing with persistent
>> block evasion.
>>
>> Pine
>> On Jun 5, 2016 07:13, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen" 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I am defining harassment primarily as personal attacks, not merely
>>> disputes (even strongly-worded disagreement) over content.
>>>
>>> Some examples of what I consider harassment:
>>>
>>> - Vandalizing an editor's user or talk page (hence my Inspire proposal:
>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Protect_user_space_by_default
>>> )
>>>
>>> - Making derogatory comments about an editor's gender, sex, race,
>>> ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or (dis)ability
>>>
>>> - Posting personal information about an editor that was gathered off-Wiki
>>>
>>> - Evading bans with IP-hopping to do any of the above.
>>>
>>> These actions not only cause "net harm to community health," they cause
>>> unnecessary, avoidable harm to specific individuals, and discourage
>>> marginalized people from participating in the project.
>>>
>>> - Pax
>>>
>>>
>>> On 6/5/16 5:09 AM, Pine W wrote:
>>>
 Hi Pax,

 I agree that blaming the victim is an unsatisfactory resolution.

 On the other hand, defining what is meant by "incivility" and
 "harassment"
 can be very tricky. Just because there is a strong disagreement doesn't
 imply that people are being uncivil, and we cannot expect that no one
 will
 ever lose his or her temper when provoked. Similarly, a pattern of
 disagreement doesn't necessarily imply harassment, and the presumption
 of
 good faith is rebuttable which means that questioning the motives of
 others
 is occasionally OK.

 So, as Sumana once said, we have a tricky situation with regards to
 balancing free speech with hospitality.

 I think there are situations in which behavior is egregious enough that
 it
 is a net harm to community health and cannot be excused. For example,
 comments that demean someone on the basis of race, gender, age,
 nationality, or religious or political beliefs, are generally out of
 bounds.

 I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about how we should define
 harassment, and how we should seek to reduce the frequency of it on
 Wikimedia sites.

 Thank you for speaking up.

 Pine
 On Jun 4, 2016 19:15, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen" 
 wrote:

 Hi all, I'm Pax aka Funcrunch [1]. I've been a Wikipedian 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 1:08 PM, Pine W  wrote:

> Hi Board search folks,
> Can you comment in response to the email from Lord Bumbury?
>
>
it is difficult for me to respond, as I agree in principle. I think we
should have more than just 9 most dominant languages, and as the bottom
line we should allow for additional translations to be made.

However, the most important principle that the ED search committee assumed
was speed. For quite a while we have been considering if we can afford
several weeks for the survey (with translations, before and after, adding
about a month to our search, over just 1 language version). We decided that
we definitely need input from the communities other than just the English
one, but we made a hard choice to go just for the ones we could have had
speedily translated.

This is highly suboptimal, and I understand Nikola's disappointment. From
my point of view, this is something we need to improve in the future -
perhaps by finding a large, multilanguge translation agency (especially
since the quality of raw output varied and we had to make serious proof
reading with the help of ad hoc volunteers), and also making translating
into some 20-30 languages a default in important cases. This time we wanted
to go with a quick general survey, hoping that the choices we're asking
about will not differ radically between languages (since our culture is
very specific). We will know from the results if this intuition was more or
less right (that is, if there will be significant differences between the
languages we went with).

best,

dj




> On Jun 1, 2016 14:21, "Nikola Kalchev"  wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > about the ED search survey [0] I, as a member of an emerging community,
> the
> > Bulgarian one [1], disagree that anyone wants "to invite also emerging
> > communities". Translating the survey into "the 9 major languages of our
> > projects" is not enough. Letting emerging communities participate, and in
> > my region [2] there are quite a few active ones, who collaborate on some
> of
> > the largest projects in the wikiverse like Wikimedia CEE Spring [3] and
> > Wiki Loves Earth [4]. We might not have large communities, but together
> we
> > build a very large and strong one and we work hard for bringing free
> > knowledge to the world. Depriving those of our members, who do not know
> > those "9 major languages" of the right to participate in the discussion
> > about the future of our global movement, does not make me feel that the
> > wished change in direction transparency transparency is on track; this
> > rather makes me feel as in a large corporation where a small group of
> > people decide about the future of the organisation and pretend to engage
> > the masses by populistic pseudo-measures.
> >
> > The only two languages of the 30 countries of Central and Eastern Europe
> > among those in the survey are Polish and Russian. 838 active Ukrainianian
> > editors, 658 active Turks, 638 active Czechs, 419 active Serbs, 418
> active
> > Hungarians and 5501 active editors from the region in total will not be
> > able to answer in their own language (reference: Wikimedia CEE Spring
> > 2016/Goals <
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Spring_2016/Goals>).
> > I plead that the money that we donate be used for translating the
> questions
> > at least in the languages with more than 200 active editors, or at least
> > that volunteers are allowed to translate the questions. Furthermore I
> > request that in order to get more input the survey runs for a month
> instead
> > of a week. Important decisions should not be taken in a hurry.
> >
> > Best regards,
> > User:Lord Bumbury / Nikola Kalchev
> > Wikimedians of Bulgaria, a Wikimedia CEE Spring International organiser
> >
> > [0]
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Executive_Director_Transition_Team/2016/Updates/CW20_update
> > [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Bulgaria
> > [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Central_and_Eastern_Europe
> > [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Spring_2016
> > [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Earth
> >
> > On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 2:43 PM, Luis Sanabria 
> wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 12:29 AM, Alice Wiegand  >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hello all,
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > > > Our survey is currently open in the top 10 wiki languages. A sample
> of
> > > > editors from various languages have been invited to participate and
> we
> > > are
> > > > also sending an invitations to anyone here and through our networks.
> > > Please
> > > > participate in the survey and help us to shape the new ED’s profile.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > I read here [1] that the survey will be open for 1 week.
> > >
> > > Does that mean it will be open until June 8 (inclusive)?
> > >
> > > Saludos,
> > > Luis Sanabria
> > >
> > > [1]
> > 

[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Polska Conference and Board update

[Wojciech Pędzich]

On June 3-5, the Polish Wikimedia chapter held its annual Wikimedia 
Polska Conference, including the General Assembly of Members (June 4). 
As it was the end of the current term for the Board, seven Board members 
were elected for the next term, 2016-2018:


* Tomasz Ganicz / Polimerek, President
* Michał Buczyński, Aegis Maelstrom, Vice-President
* Marek Stelmasik / Masti, Treasurer
* Wojciech Pędzich / Wpedzich, Secretary
* Małgorzata Wilk / Maire
* Tomasz Skibiński / Elfhelm
* Jarosław Błaszczak / Powerek38

The new Revision Commitee was also elected, as well as the Internal 
Court. The relevant Metapage and chapter page have been updated, but if 
you'd care to update some language versions, you're invited.


https://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adze/en


Kind regards,
Wojciech Pędzich / User:Wpedzich


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Harassment and blaming the victim

[James Alexander]

In general discussing specific cases on public mailings lists is not useful at 
helping the situation (Pax is, of course, feel free to do so if they feel it 
would be right). I think if people want to help then thinking about, and 
talking about, ways to do so is the best way to tackle the problem. Those 
discussions (and possible solutions) can take many forms and while the inspire 
campaign right now is a perfect (and tailor made) opportunity to do so it is in 
now way the only one.

Some thoughts to help people having difficulty coming up with what to do:

1. Do you think that the social or policy rules that currently exist are not 
enough? Then talk about that on the pages and what you think should be changed 
(and why) and how to roll that out. Do we need another policy or a global one? 
Do we need to rewrite an old one? Should it be a local/global community policy 
or a part of the ToU? Something else entirely from the board?

2. Do you think that the current rules are enough but are not being enforced 
properly and/or not ABLE to be enforced properly? Then let's talk about what 
could help. Is it other community members ignoring or misunderstanding the 
rules? Is it people being able to evade too easily? Is it that those who 
enforce the rules get harassed themselves and back off? Are they just so 
overwhelmed that they can't keep up? Something else?

What would be good for this? Is it social pressure or support to enforce the 
rules already in play? A global arbcom type body? Better blocking tools? (do we 
have ideas on better how?) A "reporting" tool that reports to admins/the 
community in some fashion with the ability to escalate to the WMF (either 
harassment specific or made to deal with other reports as well such as 
vandalism or COI)? 

These and others have all been brought up to me in conversations by community 
members so I know people are thinking about it. We want to get it down where 
everyone can think about it. On a personal basis I think it's likely it's a mix 
of different things + something we haven't thought about before but we can only 
do so much at once obviously.

If someone sees a proposal that you think would cause more harm then good I 
would strongly encourage them to consider making other proposals that they 
think WOULD help rather then targeting and attacking those who created other 
proposals (or even attacking the proposals themselves). Doing so has a tendency 
only to help people feel harassed and attacked and moves them to belittle and 
ignore your concerns. What we need is more ideas, not more shit slung over the 
fence. 

In the end I do agree that any idea that harassment is "not real" or not a 
major problem right now is, at best, naive and could overall be very dangerous 
not only to our users but the projects as a whole. That does not, of course, 
mean we know the answer. In fact, we know we don't, it's what we're (all) 
trying to figure out. 

James Alexander
Manager, Trust & Safety
Sent from my iPhone

> On Jun 5, 2016, at 12:31 PM, Pine W  wrote:
> 
> Thanks, Patrick. The community regularly expends considerable volunteer
> time and effort to protect the intrgrity of article content and to deal
> with block evasion. I think it would be helpful if further efforts could be
> made to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of tools and processes
> for addressing block evasion, including the use of Legal Department
> resources as appropriate. Block evasion is a problem that affects many
> aspects of Wikimedia, including article integrity and loss of volunteer
> time as already mentioned, as well as the harms to harassment victims, the
> stress on the volunteer admins and functionaries, and negative impact on
> community population and health.
> 
> Thanks for working on this. Is there anything more that you can do to
> assist with Pax's situation in particular?
> 
> Pine
>> On Jun 5, 2016 11:11, "Patrick Earley"  wrote:
>> 
>> Pine,
>> 
>> As many of our admins and functionaries are well aware, both the Wikimedia
>> sites, and the internet architecture as a whole, favour anonymity and
>> protection of privacy over the ability to track individuals.  When a user
>> is technically proficient in hiding themselves, platforms and even law
>> enforcement can have little luck in determining who or where they are.
>> Anonymity has great benefits, but also can allow great abuses.
>> 
>> There are of course "easy" solutions that would involve changes to our
>> site accessibility - for instance, requiring secondary identification, such
>> as social media accounts or verified emails.  However, those are decisions
>> that the community as a whole needs to discuss, and not something I or my
>> department can change unilaterally. That said, improving Wikimedia's
>> blocking tools and detection methods is an area where some progress can be
>> made.
>> 
>> One of the benefits that this Inspire campaign can provide is open
>> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Nikola Kalchev]

Dariusz, thank you for your clarification. I understand that translations
take time.

Would you please elaborate on the assumption that the most important
principle of the ED search committee was speed and not, e.g. participation
of a larger part of the community? What would the bad effects of a 2 months
longer search on the WMF be?

I fear that user groups will be underrepresented again (another notable
example is the number of representatives at the WMCON with chapters having
up to four participants and user groups exactly one). There are 59 user
groups and (as well as I could count) only 10 of them will be able to
participate at the survey in their own language. Why was the opinion of 49
user groups considered less worth that a delay of two months?

Best regards,
User:Lord Bumbury / Nikola Kalchev
Wikimedians of Bulgaria, a Wikimedia CEE Spring International organiser

On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 10:30 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak 
wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 1:08 PM, Pine W  wrote:
>
> > Hi Board search folks,
> > Can you comment in response to the email from Lord Bumbury?
> >
> >
> it is difficult for me to respond, as I agree in principle. I think we
> should have more than just 9 most dominant languages, and as the bottom
> line we should allow for additional translations to be made.
>
> However, the most important principle that the ED search committee assumed
> was speed. For quite a while we have been considering if we can afford
> several weeks for the survey (with translations, before and after, adding
> about a month to our search, over just 1 language version). We decided that
> we definitely need input from the communities other than just the English
> one, but we made a hard choice to go just for the ones we could have had
> speedily translated.
>
> This is highly suboptimal, and I understand Nikola's disappointment. From
> my point of view, this is something we need to improve in the future -
> perhaps by finding a large, multilanguge translation agency (especially
> since the quality of raw output varied and we had to make serious proof
> reading with the help of ad hoc volunteers), and also making translating
> into some 20-30 languages a default in important cases. This time we wanted
> to go with a quick general survey, hoping that the choices we're asking
> about will not differ radically between languages (since our culture is
> very specific). We will know from the results if this intuition was more or
> less right (that is, if there will be significant differences between the
> languages we went with).
>
> best,
>
> dj
>
>
>
>
> > On Jun 1, 2016 14:21, "Nikola Kalchev"  wrote:
> >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > about the ED search survey [0] I, as a member of an emerging community,
> > the
> > > Bulgarian one [1], disagree that anyone wants "to invite also emerging
> > > communities". Translating the survey into "the 9 major languages of our
> > > projects" is not enough. Letting emerging communities participate, and
> in
> > > my region [2] there are quite a few active ones, who collaborate on
> some
> > of
> > > the largest projects in the wikiverse like Wikimedia CEE Spring [3] and
> > > Wiki Loves Earth [4]. We might not have large communities, but together
> > we
> > > build a very large and strong one and we work hard for bringing free
> > > knowledge to the world. Depriving those of our members, who do not know
> > > those "9 major languages" of the right to participate in the discussion
> > > about the future of our global movement, does not make me feel that the
> > > wished change in direction transparency transparency is on track; this
> > > rather makes me feel as in a large corporation where a small group of
> > > people decide about the future of the organisation and pretend to
> engage
> > > the masses by populistic pseudo-measures.
> > >
> > > The only two languages of the 30 countries of Central and Eastern
> Europe
> > > among those in the survey are Polish and Russian. 838 active
> Ukrainianian
> > > editors, 658 active Turks, 638 active Czechs, 419 active Serbs, 418
> > active
> > > Hungarians and 5501 active editors from the region in total will not be
> > > able to answer in their own language (reference: Wikimedia CEE Spring
> > > 2016/Goals <
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Spring_2016/Goals>).
> > > I plead that the money that we donate be used for translating the
> > questions
> > > at least in the languages with more than 200 active editors, or at
> least
> > > that volunteers are allowed to translate the questions. Furthermore I
> > > request that in order to get more input the survey runs for a month
> > instead
> > > of a week. Important decisions should not be taken in a hurry.
> > >
> > > Best regards,
> > > User:Lord Bumbury / Nikola Kalchev
> > > Wikimedians of Bulgaria, a Wikimedia CEE Spring International organiser
> > >
> > > [0]
> > >
> > >
> >
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Pine W]

Hi Board search folks,

Can you comment in response to the email from Lord Bumbury?

Thanks,

Pine
On Jun 1, 2016 14:21, "Nikola Kalchev"  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> about the ED search survey [0] I, as a member of an emerging community, the
> Bulgarian one [1], disagree that anyone wants "to invite also emerging
> communities". Translating the survey into "the 9 major languages of our
> projects" is not enough. Letting emerging communities participate, and in
> my region [2] there are quite a few active ones, who collaborate on some of
> the largest projects in the wikiverse like Wikimedia CEE Spring [3] and
> Wiki Loves Earth [4]. We might not have large communities, but together we
> build a very large and strong one and we work hard for bringing free
> knowledge to the world. Depriving those of our members, who do not know
> those "9 major languages" of the right to participate in the discussion
> about the future of our global movement, does not make me feel that the
> wished change in direction transparency transparency is on track; this
> rather makes me feel as in a large corporation where a small group of
> people decide about the future of the organisation and pretend to engage
> the masses by populistic pseudo-measures.
>
> The only two languages of the 30 countries of Central and Eastern Europe
> among those in the survey are Polish and Russian. 838 active Ukrainianian
> editors, 658 active Turks, 638 active Czechs, 419 active Serbs, 418 active
> Hungarians and 5501 active editors from the region in total will not be
> able to answer in their own language (reference: Wikimedia CEE Spring
> 2016/Goals <
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Spring_2016/Goals>).
> I plead that the money that we donate be used for translating the questions
> at least in the languages with more than 200 active editors, or at least
> that volunteers are allowed to translate the questions. Furthermore I
> request that in order to get more input the survey runs for a month instead
> of a week. Important decisions should not be taken in a hurry.
>
> Best regards,
> User:Lord Bumbury / Nikola Kalchev
> Wikimedians of Bulgaria, a Wikimedia CEE Spring International organiser
>
> [0]
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Executive_Director_Transition_Team/2016/Updates/CW20_update
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Bulgaria
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Central_and_Eastern_Europe
> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Spring_2016
> [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Earth
>
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 2:43 PM, Luis Sanabria  wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 12:29 AM, Alice Wiegand 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hello all,
> > >
> > >
> >
> > > Our survey is currently open in the top 10 wiki languages. A sample of
> > > editors from various languages have been invited to participate and we
> > are
> > > also sending an invitations to anyone here and through our networks.
> > Please
> > > participate in the survey and help us to shape the new ED’s profile.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > I read here [1] that the survey will be open for 1 week.
> >
> > Does that mean it will be open until June 8 (inclusive)?
> >
> > Saludos,
> > Luis Sanabria
> >
> > [1]
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Executive_Director_Transition_Team/2016/Updates/CW20_update
> > ___
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> > 
> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Harassment and blaming the victim

[Pine W]

Hi Pax and Pete,

It sounds like part of the issue in this case may be that may we need more
effective tools for dealing with troublemakers who are banned but continue
to return and cause problems. I'm wondering if Patrick Early can comment on
what efforts WMF is making in terms of dealing with persistent block
evasion.

Pine
On Jun 5, 2016 07:13, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen" 
wrote:

> I am defining harassment primarily as personal attacks, not merely
> disputes (even strongly-worded disagreement) over content.
>
> Some examples of what I consider harassment:
>
> - Vandalizing an editor's user or talk page (hence my Inspire proposal:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Protect_user_space_by_default
> )
>
> - Making derogatory comments about an editor's gender, sex, race,
> ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or (dis)ability
>
> - Posting personal information about an editor that was gathered off-Wiki
>
> - Evading bans with IP-hopping to do any of the above.
>
> These actions not only cause "net harm to community health," they cause
> unnecessary, avoidable harm to specific individuals, and discourage
> marginalized people from participating in the project.
>
> - Pax
>
>
> On 6/5/16 5:09 AM, Pine W wrote:
>
>> Hi Pax,
>>
>> I agree that blaming the victim is an unsatisfactory resolution.
>>
>> On the other hand, defining what is meant by "incivility" and "harassment"
>> can be very tricky. Just because there is a strong disagreement doesn't
>> imply that people are being uncivil, and we cannot expect that no one will
>> ever lose his or her temper when provoked. Similarly, a pattern of
>> disagreement doesn't necessarily imply harassment, and the presumption of
>> good faith is rebuttable which means that questioning the motives of
>> others
>> is occasionally OK.
>>
>> So, as Sumana once said, we have a tricky situation with regards to
>> balancing free speech with hospitality.
>>
>> I think there are situations in which behavior is egregious enough that it
>> is a net harm to community health and cannot be excused. For example,
>> comments that demean someone on the basis of race, gender, age,
>> nationality, or religious or political beliefs, are generally out of
>> bounds.
>>
>> I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about how we should define
>> harassment, and how we should seek to reduce the frequency of it on
>> Wikimedia sites.
>>
>> Thank you for speaking up.
>>
>> Pine
>> On Jun 4, 2016 19:15, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen" 
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all, I'm Pax aka Funcrunch [1]. I've been a Wikipedian since 2008, but
>>> this is my first post to this mailing list. (I've been reading list
>>> messages on the archives page occasionally for the last several months.)
>>>
>>> I'm writing because of a concern I have about the community's attitude
>>> toward harassment on Wikipedia. I got a Wikinotice about this month's
>>> Inspire Campaign, which specifically asks: "What ideas do you have that
>>> can
>>> help prevent and generally address cases of harassment?" [2] As a victim
>>> of
>>> several of the harassing behaviors mentioned as examples - " name
>>> calling,
>>> threats, discrimination, stalking, and impersonation" - I was encouraged
>>> to
>>> see that this problem was (hopefully) being taken seriously by the
>>> Foundation, and submitted a proposal.
>>>
>>> Looking at the other proposals submitted, I soon noticed that the most
>>> popular "ideas" on the list included complaints of "political
>>> correctness"
>>> and suggesting we shouldn't be so sensitive [3], and that we should just
>>> get some sleep and exercise and reconsider why we're so offended. [4]
>>> (That
>>> first "idea" has since been recategorized by a WMF staffer to remove it
>>> from the current campaign.)
>>>
>>> It really bothers me that a campaign specifically designed to combat
>>> harassment - which is a very serious and real problem for people of
>>> marginalized identities like myself [5]- is being co-opted by people
>>> saying
>>> things like " Harassment doesn't cause actual damage," " The existence of
>>> harassment is an opportunity to improve ourselves further through
>>> self-discipline," and " Harassment on Wikimedia has been exaggerated." I
>>> suggest that people who honestly believe this, but are willing to accept
>>> that they might be wrong, read a recent essay about online harassment by
>>> Anil Dash: "The Immortal Myths About Online Abuse." [6]
>>>
>>> I'm not "looking to be offended," and I'm not trying to "censor" people
>>> who simply disagree with me. I'm trying to help build an encyclopedia,
>>> without being harassed by block-evading stalkers hurling hate speech my
>>> way. The existing tools and policies are *not* sufficient to deal with
>>> this. That's (what I thought was) the point of this Inspire campaign, not
>>> complaining about censorship and " crybullying."
>>>
>>> I've posted a much shorter version of this concern on the Inspire

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Harassment and blaming the victim

[Adrian Raddatz]

Hi all,

As someone who deals with a lot of long-term abuse on the community side, I
can give a bit of a comment here. Most of the abuse response comes from the
community, not the WMF- they only get involved through their Trust & Safety
team on the worst cases.

Our ability to deal with block evasion is limited at best. Anyone who wants
to is able to by-pass a block through a mobile range or a proxy, and often
times to deal with block evasion we end up blocking ranges which include a
lot of collateral damage. The Inspire campaign doesn't seem to be directed
at this, but there are ways that we could improve our abuse response - the
primary one being an email requirement on account creation, and giving some
users the ability to check accounts based on their email. This has been
done on Wikia, and when combined with IP blocks has been very effective in
reducing long-term abuse. But it is very unlikely to happen here.

It will never be possible to totally remove this sort of harassment,
because these are cases where the system has initially worked, but the user
is evading the system. As an open website, we only have a limited ability
to protect against that, and that will always be the case. And
unfortunately, this isn't an area that a code of conduct or any of those
proposals would help with.

Adrian Raddatz

On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Pine W  wrote:

> Hi Pax and Pete,
>
> It sounds like part of the issue in this case may be that may we need more
> effective tools for dealing with troublemakers who are banned but continue
> to return and cause problems. I'm wondering if Patrick Early can comment on
> what efforts WMF is making in terms of dealing with persistent block
> evasion.
>
> Pine
> On Jun 5, 2016 07:13, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen" 
> wrote:
>
> > I am defining harassment primarily as personal attacks, not merely
> > disputes (even strongly-worded disagreement) over content.
> >
> > Some examples of what I consider harassment:
> >
> > - Vandalizing an editor's user or talk page (hence my Inspire proposal:
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Protect_user_space_by_default
> > )
> >
> > - Making derogatory comments about an editor's gender, sex, race,
> > ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or (dis)ability
> >
> > - Posting personal information about an editor that was gathered off-Wiki
> >
> > - Evading bans with IP-hopping to do any of the above.
> >
> > These actions not only cause "net harm to community health," they cause
> > unnecessary, avoidable harm to specific individuals, and discourage
> > marginalized people from participating in the project.
> >
> > - Pax
> >
> >
> > On 6/5/16 5:09 AM, Pine W wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Pax,
> >>
> >> I agree that blaming the victim is an unsatisfactory resolution.
> >>
> >> On the other hand, defining what is meant by "incivility" and
> "harassment"
> >> can be very tricky. Just because there is a strong disagreement doesn't
> >> imply that people are being uncivil, and we cannot expect that no one
> will
> >> ever lose his or her temper when provoked. Similarly, a pattern of
> >> disagreement doesn't necessarily imply harassment, and the presumption
> of
> >> good faith is rebuttable which means that questioning the motives of
> >> others
> >> is occasionally OK.
> >>
> >> So, as Sumana once said, we have a tricky situation with regards to
> >> balancing free speech with hospitality.
> >>
> >> I think there are situations in which behavior is egregious enough that
> it
> >> is a net harm to community health and cannot be excused. For example,
> >> comments that demean someone on the basis of race, gender, age,
> >> nationality, or religious or political beliefs, are generally out of
> >> bounds.
> >>
> >> I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about how we should define
> >> harassment, and how we should seek to reduce the frequency of it on
> >> Wikimedia sites.
> >>
> >> Thank you for speaking up.
> >>
> >> Pine
> >> On Jun 4, 2016 19:15, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen"  >
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi all, I'm Pax aka Funcrunch [1]. I've been a Wikipedian since 2008,
> but
> >>> this is my first post to this mailing list. (I've been reading list
> >>> messages on the archives page occasionally for the last several
> months.)
> >>>
> >>> I'm writing because of a concern I have about the community's attitude
> >>> toward harassment on Wikipedia. I got a Wikinotice about this month's
> >>> Inspire Campaign, which specifically asks: "What ideas do you have that
> >>> can
> >>> help prevent and generally address cases of harassment?" [2] As a
> victim
> >>> of
> >>> several of the harassing behaviors mentioned as examples - " name
> >>> calling,
> >>> threats, discrimination, stalking, and impersonation" - I was
> encouraged
> >>> to
> >>> see that this problem was (hopefully) being taken seriously by the
> >>> Foundation, and submitted a proposal.
> >>>
> >>> Looking at the 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Pine W]

I'll add a question of my own here. I find this statement interesting: "Please
rate these other qualifications: (Please rate 0 to 5 with 0 being 0 not
important; 5 for extremely important)... Experience of working in an
a-hierarchical, participative management environment". I find this puzzling
because WMF is generally hierarchical organization, with the board an
executive director at the top, followed by middle management, followed by
line employees, contractors, and interns. I'm wondering if what is intended
here is a sentiment that the ED Search Committee would like to *transform *WMF
into a less heirarchical organization. Could someone from the ED Search
Committee or the Board expand on what your intentions are with this
question? I cannot imagine how WMF could function as an "a-hierarchical...
management environment", although I could understand if there is an
aspiration to collapse a layer or two in the org chart and/or to delegate
more responsibility from the Board or ED to employees who have more
expertise in various domains.

Thanks,

Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-06-05 23:07, Nikola Kalchev wrote:
Dariusz, thank you for your clarification. I understand that 
translations

take time.

I fear that user groups will be underrepresented again (another notable
example is the number of representatives at the WMCON with chapters 
having

up to four participants and user groups exactly one). There are 59 user
groups and (as well as I could count) only 10 of them will be able to
participate at the survey in their own language. Why was the opinion of 
49

user groups considered less worth that a delay of two months?

Best regards,
User:Lord Bumbury / Nikola Kalchev
Wikimedians of Bulgaria, a Wikimedia CEE Spring International organiser



Whereas I fully understand and partially share the sentiment, may I 
please repeat the question I asked on this list in relation to a similar 
topic some time ago. Could we estimate a number of active community 
members (whom we would reasonably expect to participate in the survey) 
who do not speak any of the languages to which the survey was 
translated, to the point that their ability to fill in the survey would 
depend on the others? If this is a considerable number, or if it is less 
significant but considerably compromises on the representation, which 
languages do these community members speak?


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 5:32 PM, Pine W  wrote:

> I'll add a question of my own here. I find this statement interesting:
> "Please
> rate these other qualifications: (Please rate 0 to 5 with 0 being 0 not
> important; 5 for extremely important)... Experience of working in an
> a-hierarchical, participative management environment". I find this puzzling
> because WMF is generally hierarchical organization, with the board an
> executive director at the top, followed by middle management, followed by
> line employees, contractors, and interns. I'm wondering if what is intended
> here is a sentiment that the ED Search Committee would like to *transform
> *WMF
> into a less heirarchical organization. Could someone from the ED Search
> Committee or the Board expand on what your intentions are with this
> question? I cannot imagine how WMF could function as an "a-hierarchical...
> management environment", although I could understand if there is an
> aspiration to collapse a layer or two in the org chart and/or to delegate
> more responsibility from the Board or ED to employees who have more
> expertise in various domains.
>
>
I don't think it is the role of the ED search committee to transform the
organization. However (speaking for myself) I believe that an experience in
a-hierarchical, participative management environment helps understand
wiki-culture a lot.

I'd dare say that some of the WMF employees I knew had great skills, but
had trouble with adjusting to the a-hierarchical/participative nature of
our movement that the WMF is part of. The WMF is less hierarchical than
many NGOs, and also as a part of a larger movement is subject to
participative and discursive culture (just take this very discussion as an
example: a very hierarchical and non-participative ED would find it
difficult to understand why we are even having it).

dj
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Harassment and blaming the victim

[Pine W]

Agreed that uncivil administrators can be a part of a negative feedback
loop of stress and cynicism, as can uncivil WMF staff and others in
positions of authority. However, there are no perfect human beings and if
we demanded that all administrators and WMF staff be perfect at all times
then there would be no one left to guard the fort, so we must accept that
we are all human beings who will occasionally mess up. People who mess up
in particularly significant ways, or who mess up repeatedly, can be sacked;
English Wikipedia's arbitration committee has not been shy about removing
admin rights of admins who mess up. Fortunately, it seems to me that the
vast majority of administrators are net assets to the community (perhaps I
am biased because I am an admin, although on small wikis.) I do think that
offering professionally designed training to administrators might be
helpful in certain areas, such as training administrators on how to deal
with harassment and conflict including how to de-escalate situations, and
how to interact with victims as well as bullies. For training sessions, I
think that videos and group discussions might be more memorable and
reinforcing than written materials for individual study.

I agree with James that we likely need a mix of approaches, one of them
being better ways of dealing with block evasion.

Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Nikola Kalchev 
wrote:

> Dariusz, thank you for your clarification. I understand that translations
> take time.
>
> Would you please elaborate on the assumption that the most important
> principle of the ED search committee was speed and not, e.g. participation
> of a larger part of the community? What would the bad effects of a 2 months
> longer search on the WMF be?
>

The assumption is that any organization under an interim leader is
basically frozen. An interim leader is unlikely to make any change. Also,
one of the gripes of the past was a long (way over a year) process of ED
searching. The ED search team wants to avoid repeating this.




>
> I fear that user groups will be underrepresented again (another notable
> example is the number of representatives at the WMCON with chapters having
> up to four participants and user groups exactly one). There are 59 user
> groups and (as well as I could count) only 10 of them will be able to
> participate at the survey in their own language. Why was the opinion of 49
> user groups considered less worth that a delay of two months?
>

I think the main assumption may have been that there will be decreasing
differences - that is, the differences between the views expressed in the
10 major languages will not be big in general. Of course, we will see
whether there are significant differences within these 10.



On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 5:16 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter 
 wrote:

> Whereas I fully understand and partially share the sentiment, may I please
> repeat the question I asked on this list in relation to a similar topic
> some time ago. Could we estimate a number of active community members (whom
> we would reasonably expect to participate in the survey) who do not speak
> any of the languages to which the survey was translated, to the point that
> their ability to fill in the survey would depend on the others? If this is
> a considerable number, or if it is less significant but considerably
> compromises on the representation, which languages do these community
> members speak?
>
>
Yaroslav's question is a good one - I don't know from the top of my head
how to estimate this easily. However, let me repeat: we are asking general
questions, and the results are not binding. It is not an issue of
representation. I doubt if there will be huge cultural differences to the
extent that the questionnaire would bring different results if 10 more
languages were added, mainly because I think that wiki-world is quite
hermetic and has a culture of its own.


cheers,

dj
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Pine W]

I understand now. Thank you for clarifying.

Pine

On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 2:49 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak <
djemieln...@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 5:32 PM, Pine W  wrote:
>
> > I'll add a question of my own here. I find this statement interesting:
> > "Please
> > rate these other qualifications: (Please rate 0 to 5 with 0 being 0 not
> > important; 5 for extremely important)... Experience of working in an
> > a-hierarchical, participative management environment". I find this
> puzzling
> > because WMF is generally hierarchical organization, with the board an
> > executive director at the top, followed by middle management, followed by
> > line employees, contractors, and interns. I'm wondering if what is
> intended
> > here is a sentiment that the ED Search Committee would like to *transform
> > *WMF
> > into a less heirarchical organization. Could someone from the ED Search
> > Committee or the Board expand on what your intentions are with this
> > question? I cannot imagine how WMF could function as an
> "a-hierarchical...
> > management environment", although I could understand if there is an
> > aspiration to collapse a layer or two in the org chart and/or to delegate
> > more responsibility from the Board or ED to employees who have more
> > expertise in various domains.
> >
> >
> I don't think it is the role of the ED search committee to transform the
> organization. However (speaking for myself) I believe that an experience in
> a-hierarchical, participative management environment helps understand
> wiki-culture a lot.
>
> I'd dare say that some of the WMF employees I knew had great skills, but
> had trouble with adjusting to the a-hierarchical/participative nature of
> our movement that the WMF is part of. The WMF is less hierarchical than
> many NGOs, and also as a part of a larger movement is subject to
> participative and discursive culture (just take this very discussion as an
> example: a very hierarchical and non-participative ED would find it
> difficult to understand why we are even having it).
>
> dj
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>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Nikola Kalchev]

As a patroller on my homewiki I can say that 15 of the 50 most active
editors according to stats.wikimedia.org would be capable of answering the
questions in one of the ten languages. Those are the people who translate
articles from the ten languages of the survey (13 from English, 2 from
Russian). Ask a few more patrollers from other communities, multiply by the
number of very active editors on those wikis and divide by the number of
asked patrollers :). It is not impossible to get a rough estimate.

Best regards,
User:Lord Bumbury / Nikola Kalchev
Wikimedians of Bulgaria, a Wikimedia CEE Spring international organiser

On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 11:45 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak 
wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Nikola Kalchev 
> wrote:
>
>> Dariusz, thank you for your clarification. I understand that translations
>> take time.
>>
>> Would you please elaborate on the assumption that the most important
>> principle of the ED search committee was speed and not, e.g. participation
>> of a larger part of the community? What would the bad effects of a 2 months
>> longer search on the WMF be?
>>
>
> The assumption is that any organization under an interim leader is
> basically frozen. An interim leader is unlikely to make any change. Also,
> one of the gripes of the past was a long (way over a year) process of ED
> searching. The ED search team wants to avoid repeating this.
>
>
>
>
>>
>> I fear that user groups will be underrepresented again (another notable
>> example is the number of representatives at the WMCON with chapters having
>> up to four participants and user groups exactly one). There are 59 user
>> groups and (as well as I could count) only 10 of them will be able to
>> participate at the survey in their own language. Why was the opinion of 49
>> user groups considered less worth that a delay of two months?
>>
>
> I think the main assumption may have been that there will be decreasing
> differences - that is, the differences between the views expressed in the
> 10 major languages will not be big in general. Of course, we will see
> whether there are significant differences within these 10.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 5:16 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter 
>  wrote:
>
>> Whereas I fully understand and partially share the sentiment, may I
>> please repeat the question I asked on this list in relation to a similar
>> topic some time ago. Could we estimate a number of active community members
>> (whom we would reasonably expect to participate in the survey) who do not
>> speak any of the languages to which the survey was translated, to the point
>> that their ability to fill in the survey would depend on the others? If
>> this is a considerable number, or if it is less significant but
>> considerably compromises on the representation, which languages do these
>> community members speak?
>>
>>
> Yaroslav's question is a good one - I don't know from the top of my head
> how to estimate this easily. However, let me repeat: we are asking general
> questions, and the results are not binding. It is not an issue of
> representation. I doubt if there will be huge cultural differences to the
> extent that the questionnaire would bring different results if 10 more
> languages were added, mainly because I think that wiki-world is quite
> hermetic and has a culture of its own.
>
>
> cheers,
>
> dj
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Harassment and blaming the victim

[Trillium Corsage]

Obviously racial criticisms and so forth are awful like Pax said, but on the 
matter of "troublemakers who are banned" I say it's a greatly overblown issue 
chiefly emphasized by administrative participants who feel their authority is 
threatened. One should really look to the nature of the ban-evading edits. If 
they are productive edits, I quarrel with the actions of those that revert them 
because of the supposed villainous character of any bannee or their 
psychological need to "teach the bannee a lesson" or temperamental or 
intellectual inability to actually appraise the edits.

Take a look at Russavia. He did an immense amount of contributions. He's banned 
by WMF  for, what, an escapade in which he got Australian novelty artist 
"Pricasso" who paints with his penis to do a portrait of Jimbo Wales, who 
quickly alleged "sexual harassment?" (That's one theory, but I'd argue that 
he's actually banned for, in his capacity as Wikimedia Commons administrator, 
attempting to investigate the real-life stalking of Dutch Wikipedia's 
MoiraMoira, which I say was a case that WMF wanted to quickly go away.) 
Russavia was an immensely productive participant, and he's been shabbily 
treated.

Consider that the makeup of (at least) English Wikipedia administrative 
structure is in fact a bullyocracy. There are so few controls on what are 
essentially "imperial administrators." There're an hundred more examples, but I 
think right now of "BWilkins" who actually told some poor editor to "rot in the 
hell that is is eternal block." And nobody even blinked at it. It and an array 
of his other horrific actions went to Arbcom, and they wouldn't even consent to 
hear it the first time. He ran amok for like two more years, before an 
genuinely Herculean effort by some editors, assisted by off-wiki criticicism, 
finally resulted in his desysoping. But what of all the good editors he'd done 
away with by that time. There's no repair system for that.

And WMF "san-fran-bans" are one thing. If you people are talking about 
"community bans," that's a complete misnomer for the actions of the regulars at 
WP:AN/ANI. There's no charter for WP:AN/ANI, there's no rules-based process for 
its "vote him or her off the island" mob violence, it's completely illegitimate 
mainly from the sadistic tendencies of some of those regulars that, I dunno, 
also want to feel superior and important.

Anyhow, I'm just trying to illuminate a different perspective on the hundreds 
and hundreds of wrongly perma-blocked editors, and as well the thousands and 
thousands of perma-blocked IP editors in this nearly completely unaccountable 
administrative system that attracts some of the worse kind of psychologies 
imaginable.

Trillium Corsage

05.06.2016, 17:49, "Pine W" :
> Hi Pax and Pete,
>
> It sounds like part of the issue in this case may be that may we need more
> effective tools for dealing with troublemakers who are banned but continue
> to return and cause problems. I'm wondering if Patrick Early can comment on
> what efforts WMF is making in terms of dealing with persistent block
> evasion.
>
> Pine
> On Jun 5, 2016 07:13, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen" 
> wrote:
>
>>  I am defining harassment primarily as personal attacks, not merely
>>  disputes (even strongly-worded disagreement) over content.
>>
>>  Some examples of what I consider harassment:
>>
>>  - Vandalizing an editor's user or talk page (hence my Inspire proposal:
>>  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Protect_user_space_by_default
>>  )
>>
>>  - Making derogatory comments about an editor's gender, sex, race,
>>  ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or (dis)ability
>>
>>  - Posting personal information about an editor that was gathered off-Wiki
>>
>>  - Evading bans with IP-hopping to do any of the above.
>>
>>  These actions not only cause "net harm to community health," they cause
>>  unnecessary, avoidable harm to specific individuals, and discourage
>>  marginalized people from participating in the project.
>>
>>  - Pax
>>
>>  On 6/5/16 5:09 AM, Pine W wrote:
>>
>>>  Hi Pax,
>>>
>>>  I agree that blaming the victim is an unsatisfactory resolution.
>>>
>>>  On the other hand, defining what is meant by "incivility" and "harassment"
>>>  can be very tricky. Just because there is a strong disagreement doesn't
>>>  imply that people are being uncivil, and we cannot expect that no one will
>>>  ever lose his or her temper when provoked. Similarly, a pattern of
>>>  disagreement doesn't necessarily imply harassment, and the presumption of
>>>  good faith is rebuttable which means that questioning the motives of
>>>  others
>>>  is occasionally OK.
>>>
>>>  So, as Sumana once said, we have a tricky situation with regards to
>>>  balancing free speech with hospitality.
>>>
>>>  I think there are situations in which behavior is egregious enough that it
>>>  is a net harm to community health and cannot be excused. For example,
>>>  comments that demean someone on the basis 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 for FY 2014-2015 now on-wiki

[Pine W]

I've been following this discussion with some interest. Can someone point
us to where Sue's compensation, after she left the Executive Director role,
was budgeted in the WMF annual plans? That money cannot have come out of
nowhere. Which line item, or line items, in the 2015-2016 Annual Plan were
tapped for these funds?

A second question. WMF demands exhaustive reporting from affiliates for far
smaller amounts of money than Sue received. I am hoping that WMF followed
good practice by having a careful accounting of how Sue's time was used to
benefit WMF in a manner consistent with the intent of donors when they give
to WMF. Is there an accounting for Sue's use of time as a contractor, and
if so, in what level of detail do those records exist?

My impression from Jan-Bart's emails was that Sue's role as Special Advisor
was a volunteer role, similar to Advisory Board members. Why was Sue's
contractor status not disclosed in those emails?

As Lodewijk said, why was Sue not shown on the public list of paid staff
and contractors? Interns who earn far less than $300k per year are included
on that list; I cannot imagine what good reason there would be to have
excluded Sue from the list unless there was an intent to hide that she
continued to be paid by WMF.

I am greatly troubled by this situation. It was opaque, the accounting
appears to be lax, and the more I look at it the more it seems to have been
intentionally concealed in a manner that was inappropriate and designed to
avoid transparency and accountability.

Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 for FY 2014-2015 now on-wiki

[Fæ]

Thanks Gnangarra.

I'm familiar with Bridgespan, and when I worked as a strategy
consultant, I used the "starvation cycle" myself. It's a way of
framing the need for improvement differently from simply insisting
that 5% is saved each year, and instead using more meaningful
strategic goals.

This piece in no way explains why the WMF is in the habit of paying
its CEO twice what the UK Government pays its Prime Minister. I doubt
anyone believes that the WMF job is twice as stressful, delivers twice
the value, is twice as accountable or twice as hard.

If we were to bring some hard numbers into the WMF board to
/benchmark/ the CEO salary decision making process, compare the WMF
CEO package to that of charities of the same size to the WMF. Here's a
few facts from a survey of UK charities:[1]
* In the 100 highest paying charities, CEOs are paid a median of $235,000.
* Cancer Research UK have an income of $770m and pay its CEO, Sir
Harpal Kumar, $330,000.
* Barnardo's have an income of $400m and pay Peter Brook a salary of $215,000.
* Scope has over 3,500 employees, an income of $140m, and pay Richard
Hawkes a salary of $200,000.

Probably the best comparative example from this handful is Cancer
Research UK (CRUK) as they are both in the technology and
science/academic sector and pay an almost identical CEO salary as the
WMF does. Their strategic goal is to find new cures for cancer
applying leading edge science, and run a massive programme of public
communication and education (including improving Wikipedia articles,
which I was lucky enough to help out with!). Their direct spend on
scientific research projects is over $165m,[2] more than a magnitude
larger than the WMF's spend on software development and with far, far
greater technical and ethical challenges.

The reason that the WMF rewards its CEO at the same prestigious level
as CRUK, is because they are trapped in the Silicon Valley bubble and
fixed in the belief that they must pay top executive salaries
competing with commercial Silicon Valley IT companies, rather than
comparing themselves to charities or educational institutions. If the
WMF board really want to shake up their strategy, they should start
planning to have some development and management teams in cities other
than San Francisco, if only to unlock themselves from their current
unrealistic group-think, and start behaving like a leading edge
professional educational charity, rather than a for-profit "breaking
everything is good" Silicon Valley dot com.

Links:
1. 
http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity-pay-study-highest-earners/management/article/1335060
2. 
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/our-organisation/annual-report-and-accounts/annual-review

Fae

On 6 June 2016 at 04:10, Gnangarra  wrote:
> this is worth reading
> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3060455/future-of-philanthropy/demanding-that-nonprofits-not-pay-for-overhead-is-preventing-them-fro
>
> On 5 June 2016 at 16:23, Fæ  wrote:
>
>> On 5 June 2016 at 02:28, Liam Wyatt  wrote:
>> > On Sunday, 5 June 2016, Greg Varnum  wrote:
>> ...
>> > Not to put too fine a point on it... But are you saying that Sue remained
>> > the most highly paid contractor to the WMF, and at a significantly higher
>> > rate than when she was the actual ED, until FIVE DAYS ago? That is, well
>> > beyond any 'transition period' (and in fact longer than the employment of
>> > the person who replaced her)?
>>
>> Yes, this jumped out for me. I can understand paying out a 12 month
>> golden handshake on the way out, and paying a previous CEO for a few
>> days or weeks support during handover, but continuing to pay out at an
>> eye-watering equivalent salary of $300,000 per annum, was a
>> super-duper bonus for Sue.
>>
>> However this is wrapped up in the normal "nothing to see here,
>> move-along" WMF PR speak, these lottery prize level payouts have been
>> a terrible, terrible deal in terms of the WMF delivering on its goals
>> and values. I certainly did not see Sue saying anything in public to
>> help avoid or repair any of the WMF board's strategic disasters in its
>> highly public annus horribilis. I doubt that in truth she did much
>> more in private, sorry, it's just not credible that the WMF has all
>> its strategic manipulators hidden away in private rooms as if this
>> were a court for the Borgia family.
>>
>> I am utterly convinced that the WMF would do exactly as well, and
>> possibly even better, by paying a CEO slightly less than it currently
>> pays it's head of legal, certainly it would be rather stupid to pump
>> up the interim CEO's salary by three times to match the celebrity CEO
>> salaries that the WMF seems to have locked itself into.
>>
>> Fae
>> --
>> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>>
>> ___
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>> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 for FY 2014-2015 now on-wiki

[Pine W]

With regard to Sue, adding to the list of concerns about the sheer amount
of money is that she wasn't the executive anymore, so why was she being
paid like one?

Pine

On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 9:27 PM, Fæ  wrote:

> Thanks Gnangarra.
>
> I'm familiar with Bridgespan, and when I worked as a strategy
> consultant, I used the "starvation cycle" myself. It's a way of
> framing the need for improvement differently from simply insisting
> that 5% is saved each year, and instead using more meaningful
> strategic goals.
>
> This piece in no way explains why the WMF is in the habit of paying
> its CEO twice what the UK Government pays its Prime Minister. I doubt
> anyone believes that the WMF job is twice as stressful, delivers twice
> the value, is twice as accountable or twice as hard.
>
> If we were to bring some hard numbers into the WMF board to
> /benchmark/ the CEO salary decision making process, compare the WMF
> CEO package to that of charities of the same size to the WMF. Here's a
> few facts from a survey of UK charities:[1]
> * In the 100 highest paying charities, CEOs are paid a median of $235,000.
> * Cancer Research UK have an income of $770m and pay its CEO, Sir
> Harpal Kumar, $330,000.
> * Barnardo's have an income of $400m and pay Peter Brook a salary of
> $215,000.
> * Scope has over 3,500 employees, an income of $140m, and pay Richard
> Hawkes a salary of $200,000.
>
> Probably the best comparative example from this handful is Cancer
> Research UK (CRUK) as they are both in the technology and
> science/academic sector and pay an almost identical CEO salary as the
> WMF does. Their strategic goal is to find new cures for cancer
> applying leading edge science, and run a massive programme of public
> communication and education (including improving Wikipedia articles,
> which I was lucky enough to help out with!). Their direct spend on
> scientific research projects is over $165m,[2] more than a magnitude
> larger than the WMF's spend on software development and with far, far
> greater technical and ethical challenges.
>
> The reason that the WMF rewards its CEO at the same prestigious level
> as CRUK, is because they are trapped in the Silicon Valley bubble and
> fixed in the belief that they must pay top executive salaries
> competing with commercial Silicon Valley IT companies, rather than
> comparing themselves to charities or educational institutions. If the
> WMF board really want to shake up their strategy, they should start
> planning to have some development and management teams in cities other
> than San Francisco, if only to unlock themselves from their current
> unrealistic group-think, and start behaving like a leading edge
> professional educational charity, rather than a for-profit "breaking
> everything is good" Silicon Valley dot com.
>
> Links:
> 1.
> http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity-pay-study-highest-earners/management/article/1335060
> 2.
> http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/our-organisation/annual-report-and-accounts/annual-review
>
> Fae
>
> On 6 June 2016 at 04:10, Gnangarra  wrote:
> > this is worth reading
> >
> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3060455/future-of-philanthropy/demanding-that-nonprofits-not-pay-for-overhead-is-preventing-them-fro
> >
> > On 5 June 2016 at 16:23, Fæ  wrote:
> >
> >> On 5 June 2016 at 02:28, Liam Wyatt  wrote:
> >> > On Sunday, 5 June 2016, Greg Varnum  wrote:
> >> ...
> >> > Not to put too fine a point on it... But are you saying that Sue
> remained
> >> > the most highly paid contractor to the WMF, and at a significantly
> higher
> >> > rate than when she was the actual ED, until FIVE DAYS ago? That is,
> well
> >> > beyond any 'transition period' (and in fact longer than the
> employment of
> >> > the person who replaced her)?
> >>
> >> Yes, this jumped out for me. I can understand paying out a 12 month
> >> golden handshake on the way out, and paying a previous CEO for a few
> >> days or weeks support during handover, but continuing to pay out at an
> >> eye-watering equivalent salary of $300,000 per annum, was a
> >> super-duper bonus for Sue.
> >>
> >> However this is wrapped up in the normal "nothing to see here,
> >> move-along" WMF PR speak, these lottery prize level payouts have been
> >> a terrible, terrible deal in terms of the WMF delivering on its goals
> >> and values. I certainly did not see Sue saying anything in public to
> >> help avoid or repair any of the WMF board's strategic disasters in its
> >> highly public annus horribilis. I doubt that in truth she did much
> >> more in private, sorry, it's just not credible that the WMF has all
> >> its strategic manipulators hidden away in private rooms as if this
> >> were a court for the Borgia family.
> >>
> >> I am utterly convinced that the WMF would do exactly as well, and
> >> possibly even better, by paying a CEO slightly less than it currently
> >> pays it's head of 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 for FY 2014-2015 now on-wiki

[Gnangarra]

this is worth reading
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3060455/future-of-philanthropy/demanding-that-nonprofits-not-pay-for-overhead-is-preventing-them-fro

On 5 June 2016 at 16:23, Fæ  wrote:

> On 5 June 2016 at 02:28, Liam Wyatt  wrote:
> > On Sunday, 5 June 2016, Greg Varnum  wrote:
> ...
> > Not to put too fine a point on it... But are you saying that Sue remained
> > the most highly paid contractor to the WMF, and at a significantly higher
> > rate than when she was the actual ED, until FIVE DAYS ago? That is, well
> > beyond any 'transition period' (and in fact longer than the employment of
> > the person who replaced her)?
>
> Yes, this jumped out for me. I can understand paying out a 12 month
> golden handshake on the way out, and paying a previous CEO for a few
> days or weeks support during handover, but continuing to pay out at an
> eye-watering equivalent salary of $300,000 per annum, was a
> super-duper bonus for Sue.
>
> However this is wrapped up in the normal "nothing to see here,
> move-along" WMF PR speak, these lottery prize level payouts have been
> a terrible, terrible deal in terms of the WMF delivering on its goals
> and values. I certainly did not see Sue saying anything in public to
> help avoid or repair any of the WMF board's strategic disasters in its
> highly public annus horribilis. I doubt that in truth she did much
> more in private, sorry, it's just not credible that the WMF has all
> its strategic manipulators hidden away in private rooms as if this
> were a court for the Borgia family.
>
> I am utterly convinced that the WMF would do exactly as well, and
> possibly even better, by paying a CEO slightly less than it currently
> pays it's head of legal, certainly it would be rather stupid to pump
> up the interim CEO's salary by three times to match the celebrity CEO
> salaries that the WMF seems to have locked itself into.
>
> Fae
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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GN.
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