The following statement is Wikimedia Taiwan(WMTW)'s response to the announcement "Board of Trustees on Next steps: Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) and UCoC Enforcement Guidelines <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/April_2022_-_Board_of_Trustees_on_Next_steps:_Universal_Code_of_Conduct_(UCoC)_and_UCoC_Enforcement_Guidelines>". The below statement has also been approved in the WMTW board meeting on May 1, 2022. We sincerely invite the Wikimedia Foundation and all Wikimedians to review and comment.
We urge the Foundation board to consider the official ratification and enforcement of the current version of the Enforcement Guidelines, and continue the conversation and refinement based on the community feedback and concerns during the implementation. As an affiliate in the Wikimedia Movement, we (the WMTW) understand that the Wikimedia movement places more emphasis on consensus-building rather than a pro forma democracy of majority vote. However, the vote was nearly 60%(58.6% versus 41.4%), not an extremely small difference of 50.1% versus 49.9%. From the experience of Chinese Wikipedia, it is detrimental to our movement in a situation like this; a situation of overemphasizing the strong opposition in order to gain more consensus, and ignoring the opinions of the ones in favor. The Chinese Wikipedia has long faced the problem of strong opponents occupying discussions on guidelines or the content of articles. When facing controversial issues, it is easy to overrule the majority as long as a small number of users support each other and form strong opinions to express oppositions. They often invoke guidelines such as "Wikipedia is not a testing ground for democracy <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:DEM>" and "Voting is not a substitute for discussion <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:PNSD>", claiming that the majority of opponents still need to reach a consensus with the minority; but when others try to communicate with them, they often refuse to open the conversation by giving lengthy debates, until the volunteers give up on the discussion due to fatigue. In Chinese Wikipedia, such long-term so-called GAME behavior has led to a failure of internal community management mechanisms. It is not easy to push for changes regarding policy and guidelines, it is difficult to stop the vandalism, and these even led to well-intentioned editors leaving the movement. All of which contributed to the Foundation's action on Chinese Wikipedia last year indirectly. If UCoC's enforcement of the guidelines has to be postponed because of receiving objections, it raises doubts about the Foundation's credibility with the communities. In the re-run of the community vote, will it be delayed again due to strong opposition, regardless of the outcome? Does this case also encourage potential spoilers whose behavior will be affected by the UCoC to continue to find reasonable excuses to freeze the enforcement process, making the UCoC become a mere formality? Does it imply that in the re-run of the community vote, it does not matter if the communities participate actively or not, because the supporting opinions won't be given equal respect anyway? If the current version of the enforcement guideline can be ratified and implemented first, and take a conservative approach towards the strongly challenged content temporarily, as well as shorten the time frame for the first iteration reviews, this should be able to show respect to the voting result, and also give those reasonable opinions a chance to be incorporated. This is in line with the consensus spirit of the Wikimedia movement. --------- This open letter was written in Mandarin by WMTW Secretary General Reke Wang (User:Reke) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Reke>, approved by the WMTW Board, and translated by Joyce (User:Joycewikiwiki) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Joycewikiwiki>, our International Coordinator
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