Dear Reke, Many thanks to the Wikimedia Taiwan’s Board for sharing its statement and for inviting a response.
Your concerns about stagnation in the process are very well made. Speaking as a long-term Wikimedian, I am very familiar with the kind of debate fatigue you describe. It is not our wish, and neither is it the wish of the staff to discourage those who supported the guidelines as currently written from participating in future votes, or in future conversations. On the contrary, what we took away from the vote is that the guidelines are already functional for most participants, and that addressing some concerns may help make them better. While the policy was ratified by a Board vote and is already in effect, we recognized that building out a global system of enforcement is a difficult matter that requires changes to processes and structures. Our hope with the recently concluded vote was to discover if there were major areas of concern, and to identify areas of improvement. The vote did point out areas of concern and we have requested the staff to lead further discussion on these specific topics. In our conversation with staff, we learned that one of the challenges with supporting the implementation of the guidelines prior to resolving these issues is that the recommendations ask for changes that have dependencies on each other. We also know that the voter’s comments may indicate areas of general agreement where preliminary work can start sooner. This is why we felt it was important for us to collectively examine these areas deeply after the report is produced later this month. While delaying the implementation in Enforcement Guidelines is not ideal, I do want to point out that the Universal Code of Conduct is already an active policy. In fact, there are a number of communities who have already begun referring to it while enforcing behavioral issues, and as Maggie said in another thread, the Foundation’s staff have been implementing it in their work for over a year now. Consensus-building is key to progress in relation to enforcement matters. This does not mean that we are ignoring the opinions of those who feel the Enforcement Guidelines are ready now. It just means that we would like to recognize that valid concerns were shared that bear additional conversation to help the enforcement guidelines work better in our communities. This would mean a better framework for everybody. I believe that the staff will publish the timelines of the next steps very soon and provide a clearer picture of how we can move forward. Best, Rosie rosiestep / Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight Acting Chair, Community Affairs Committee Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/CYFAW6AHRMX3INL2GXU6APT33ZJ6GIVH/ To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
