Policy talk:Universal Code of Conduct

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Universal Code of Conduct News – Issue 1

Universal Code of Conduct News
Issue 1, June 2021Read the full newsletter

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Welcome to the first issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code, and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.

Please note, this is the first issue of UCoC Newsletter which is delivered to all subscribers and projects as an announcement of the initiative. If you want the future issues delivered to your talk page, village pumps, or any specific pages you find appropriate, you need to subscribe here.

You can help us by translating the newsletter issues in your languages to spread the news and create awareness of the new conduct to keep our beloved community safe for all of us. Please add your name here if you want to be informed of the draft issue to translate beforehand. Your participation is valued and appreciated.

• Affiliate consultations – Wikimedia affiliates of all sizes and types were invited to participate in the UCoC affiliate consultation throughout March and April 2021. (continue reading)
• 2021 key consultations – The Wikimedia Foundation held enforcement key questions consultations in April and May 2021 to request input about UCoC enforcement from the broader Wikimedia community. (continue reading)
• Roundtable discussions – The UCoC facilitation team hosted two 90-minute-long public roundtable discussions in May 2021 to discuss UCoC key enforcement questions. More conversations are scheduled. (continue reading)
• Phase 2 drafting committee – The drafting committee for the phase 2 of the UCoC started their work on 12 May 2021. Read more about their work. (continue reading)
• Diff blogs – The UCoC facilitators wrote several blog posts based on interesting findings and insights from each community during local project consultation that took place in the 1st quarter of 2021. (continue reading)

Harassment

The following is said to be unacceptable harassment:

Disclosure of personal data (Doxing): sharing other contributors' private information, such as name, place of employment, physical or email address without their explicit consent either on the Wikimedia projects or elsewhere, or sharing information concerning their Wikimedia activity outside the projects.

1. As written, this actually forbids any discussion of another contributor's Wikimedia activity outside the projects, regardless of whether any private information is revealed or not, unless they give their explicit permission. If you parse the sentence, you arrive at this: The following is said to be unacceptable harassment: [(1) ... or (2)] sharing information concerning [other contributors'] Wikimedia activity outside the projects. Could this be remedied?

2. As for "place of employment", how will this affect Wikimedians' ability to discuss cases like the following, either on Wikimedia projects or elsewhere? Is it the drafters' view that any of the editors involved in these cases were victims of harassment as a result of their activities being discussed on-wiki or elsewhere?

• en:Wikipedia:Congressional_staffer_edits
• en:Orangemoody_editing_of_Wikipedia
• en:Wiki-PR editing of Wikipedia
• en:Church of Scientology editing on Wikipedia

3. What about cases like the ones listed below? Is it the drafters' view that any of the editors involved ("David r from Meth Productions", "Wifione", "Qworty") were victims of harassment as a result of their activities being discussed on-wiki or elsewhere?

• The tale of Mr Hari and Dr Rose
• Manipulating Wikipedia to Promote a Bogus Business School
• Revenge, ego and the corruption of Wikipedia

Thanks, --Andreas JN466 18:26, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Good points. I'm reminded of the problems that certain religions have got into for having rules against telling the Police about paedophiles. It would be good to have an exemption in the UCOC that allowed for reporting criminals to the Police. In a less extreme instance, I can see a problem with explaining CC-BY-SA to an end user who wants to know who to attribute a photo to if you are not allowed to say "that photograph was uploaded by User:Voldemort - please attribute the photo to them. WereSpielChequers (talk) 12:49, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: It would be good to have an exemption in the UCOC that allowed for reporting criminals to the Police. No. And judging from the Foundation's actions on zh.wp by banning editors/admins who threatened some editors who have a different POV that they would be reported to the Chinese national security police, I think there shouldn't be exemption clauses because it's a slippery slope and just a step shy of legal threats. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:13, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi Ohana, I agree that we don't want people reporting other editors to the Police in dictatorships, nor do I want us protecting paedophiles. I don't see that as a slippery slope, but I agree that it is complex. WereSpielChequers (talk) 16:43, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

It's complex and I argue that it's slippery slope because political situations can change and even democratic countries can elect quasi-dictator (see Hong Kong prior to 2020 and Trump from 2017 to 2021). Certainly US is not a dictatorship country while Trump was the president. But if an US editor threatens to report another editor's immigration status to ICE, where do you draw the line? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 23:10, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: I have asked about these cases on the Wikimedia-l mailing list: [1] --Andreas JN466 16:51, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

May I suggest that the following phrase be added to the above clause:

"except where there is very good cause such as the legitimate involvement of the local legal authorities once all avenues within Wikimedia have either been exhausted or are noit relevant".

This wording is chosen so as to set a high bar, but not a totally impossible bar. From a pragmatic point of view, if we try to be too clever, it will become overly legalistic and administrators with no legal training might not understand the wording. Moreover, even if we did prohibit users from disclosing personal information to discredited political authorities, would we be able to identify such action, let alone enforce sanctions against the errant editor who might well be using a "disposable" identity? Moreover, in my view, the prohibition of "legal threats" is badly worded as it in effect prohibits a user from taking legal action should the administrators fail in their duty in respect of dispute resolution. Martinvl (talk) 21:11, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Is deletionism exempt?

Re: "The repeated arbitrary or unmotivated removal of any content without appropriate discussion or providing explanation" I think this reads that if your motive is deletionism you don't need to provide an explanation. I hope that wasn't what was intended. I'm not 100% sure that this was meant to be taken literally. But the word unmotivated could cause some issues here. WereSpielChequers (talk) 12:49, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Unmotivated removal of content without appropriate discussion or providing explanation is permitted per en:Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks ("Derogatory comments about other editors may be removed by any editor") and en:Wikipedia:Vandalism ("Upon discovering vandalism, revert such edits...") Vexations (talk) 15:39, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

and per en:WP:BLPRS "contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced should be removed immediately and without discussion".(emphasis mine) Vexations (talk) 16:43, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Nominating something for deletion through a project's appropriate process is neither arbitrary nor unmotivated and does not, in my eyes, seem like any kind of UCoC violation. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:46, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I wonder why we need to put this in UCoC. And how many people will interpret "[when] without appropriate discussion or providing explanation" as "[when] I don't like the explanation". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:34, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I suspect that this is trying to get at vandalism where people just randomly blank stuff (paragraphs, sections, headers, footers, and such), seemingly on a whim and for nothing but amusement value, but as written it's a terrible description of that, to the extent that it doesn't describe it at all. Uncle G (talk) 14:46, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Will this unlock new ways for international enforcement?

I have a concrete example: the very small wikipedia community of Luxembourg. The main admin himself is violating several conduct rules nearly daily. So far noone besides other local admins (that unfortunately close their eyes) could do something against this behaviour. I have done my enquiries. Will this Universal Code of Conduct eventually open the door for international enforcement, so these aristocracies can be put to an end? R2lx (talk) 16:20, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

How to handle typos

To go along with the substantive content issues, the lack of community ratification, and unclear wording, is there a preferred mechanism for fixing the various typos?

Normally I'd just be BOLD - anywhere else on Wikipedia, but since that has been Board "ratified", does that still hold up? Nosebagbear (talk) 13:08, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

@RamzyM (WMF) and Xeno (WMF): - could either of you shed some light? Otherwise I'll just assume that BRD applies until community ratification occurs Nosebagbear (talk) 21:28, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Nosebagbear: Is it typos on the board-ratified text? Are the typos already mentioned on this page or in archives? Xeno (WMF) (talk) 22:03, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

@Xeno (WMF): assuming that the text on UCOC page is the "ratified" document, then yes. I don't know if they've been discussed on this page. There's a few different categories, such as the bullet points being all over the place with what they use to end (nothing, semicolons, full stops, etc) Nosebagbear (talk) 22:14, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

"The Wikimedia movement does not endorse "race" and "ethnicity" as meaningful distinctions among people"

'While 'race' as a meaningful distinction has fortunately (in academia at least) at last been recognised as the self-serving pseudoscientific hogwash it always was, and clearly shouldn't be endorsed, I can't help thinking that whoever decided to include 'ethnicity' in the same statement not only doesn't understand what ethnicity is, but hasn't read the rest of the document, since it uses the terms 'ethnic and cultural background' and 'ethnic groups' in contexts where not recognising the terms as meaningful would be utterly nonsensical. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:38, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

While the intention behind this declaration might be honorable, it can have some unforseen side-effects. If you google "diabetes south asian uk" you will see that "The risk of developing diabetes is between two to six times higher in SA [the South Asian community] when compared with white Europeans in the UK". Google goes on to list many studies in which this has been demonstrated. As a result Diabetes UK takes pains to ensure that the South Asian community is properly targeted in any publicity campaigns. How does the Wikimedia movement plan to handle this fact? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Martinvl (talk)

That is a perfectly valid point, though not the one I was trying to address, which is a much broader concern. Even as a social construct (which is what it is in most contexts), ethnicity is a real part of people's sense of self-identity, and of people's lives. Lumping it in with 'race' and suggesting it isn't 'meaningful' borders on being offensive. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:49, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Place to discuss violations and processes

I have a question: will there be a place on meta to discuss potential UCoC violations, and how these should be addressed across various language wikis? I think this would be very useful for getting answers to questions, exchanging views, getting advice, establishing actual practice based on use cases, etc. In fact, I have what I believe to be a UCoC violation right now, which I believe would be useful to discuss as an example Thhhommmasss (talk) 19:38, 18 February 2022 (UTC)