The WMF section of the village pump is a community-managed page. Editors or Wikimedia Foundation staff may post and discuss information, proposals, feedback requests, or other matters of significance to both the community and the foundation. It is intended to aid communication, understanding, and coordination between the community and the foundation, though Wikimedia Foundation currently does not consider this page to be a communication venue.
Discussions of proposals which do not require significant foundation attention or involvement belong at Village pump (proposals)
This page is not a place to appeal decisions about article content, which the WMF does not control (except in very rare cases); see Dispute resolution for that.
Issues that do not require project-wide attention should often be handled through Wikipedia:Contact us instead of here.
This board is not the place to report emergencies; go to Wikipedia:Emergency for that.
Threads may be automatically archived after 14 days of inactivity.
Background: Some time ago some Foundation staff thought Wikidata item-descriptions could be used as convenient short-descriptions for Wikipedia articles. They began displaying them in several locations on our articles or as descriptor/links to the articles. Several concerns arose when the community noticed and examined the practice, resulting in consensus against using Wikidata on/for our articles in this fashion. (Link to one of several discussions.) Several editors and I discussed collaborative resolution with staff. The Foundation created a new feature allowing us to create and manage these descriptions locally (see WikiProject Short descriptions). The Foundation wanted to avoid suddenly blanking all descriptions, so Wikidata descriptions continued to appear when no local description is present. The Foundation agreed to shut complete the shutoff of Wikidata descriptions once we had created approximately 2 million local descriptions.[1]
I am happy to announce there are now 2,250,000 mainspace pages with short descriptions - approximately 1,939,000 articles, approximately 312,000 disambiguation pages, plus thousands of other assorted pages in and out of mainspace (portals, help pages, drafts, redirects, project pages etc).
Almost two months ago I created Phabricator task T248457 for the WMF to implement the agreed shut-off. The task appears to have slipped through the cracks unnoticed/forgotten. Ping DannyH (WMF) who gave the original shutoff commitment (or any Liaison or other staff) to get the ball rolling on this. I am eager to celebrate successful collaboration and resolution on this issue. Thanx. Alsee (talk) 13:39, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In case it is unclear from the above, the WMF committed to disabling short description Wikidata fallbacks: the WMF plan is to switch from a Wikidata-fallback to full enwiki control when there are 2 million non-blank short descriptions on enwiki (quoting DannyH (WMF) from the discussion linked above). They have not done so yet, even though en.WP has exceeded that criterion by over 10%. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:53, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's worth reminding DannyH (WMF) of his statement at the time: "the WMF plan is to switch from a Wikidata-fallback to full enwiki control when there are 2 million non-blank short descriptions on enwiki". Nevertheless, we are going to have to wait for somebody to triage phab:T248457 and then get it assigned and finally get it implemented. There's no timescale for that, nor is there any likelihood that anyone other than DannyH will feel under any obligation to do the job. I can only suggest that everyone who thinks that it's important for staff to respect their promises to the community, should post on that phabricator thread to urge some progress on implementation. --RexxS (talk) 00:05, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It would be good to see enwp control. We have a large number of editors working and we can do this. Wikidata is a super fine project, there is no doubt on it. However several things continue to disturb me: example, one Wikipedia article has an IMDb or Twitter external link or some other article value being called from Wikidata. Now you go to Wikidata, and find they are linking back (imported from/Reference) to English Wikipedia. This is confusing and make things circular (note: this particular topic is not in scope in this discussion, and we may discuss somewhere else if you want). Coming back to short descriptions, if we really need short descriptions, we should do it following our own guidelines and thoughts, and not from another project, specially where generic item descriptions are mass-created using QuickStatements and other tools. Regards. --Titodutta (talk) 00:49, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Titodutta: one of the first features I implemented in Module:WikidataIB was to filter out values that were unsourced or referenced only to Wikipedia, That facility has been available for four years now, so there's no excuse for having the feedback loops you describe. If you let me know whenever you find those sort of problems, I'll fix them. --RexxS (talk) 01:20, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I did not prepare a list. I'll create one on the go now. Anyway, a couple of (not the best) examples I can find now: Jan_Schmid external links "FIS Nordic combined skier ID" is on Wikidata, Wikidata says it is imported from English Wikipedia. Similarly "EL" section Official website at WePay. It might be a good idea to directly link, than going to Wikidata and learn it was imported from Wikipedia. --Titodutta (talk) 02:04, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Okay - that shows up because Zyxw used #property which doesn't filter. I can fix it by using a Wikidata call, but are you sure you need references for an identifier? An identifier will link to the entry in the relevant database, so following it will verify the id almost always. I don't usually worry about sources for images and their captions for the same reason. Anyway, I'll have a look at any list you want me to. --RexxS (talk) 02:35, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
First, this is unrelated to the WMF so perhaps discussion should move elsewhere. The last Wikidata RFC was a long time ago, a lot of issues are unresolved, and I would welcome some clarity. If anyone gets the ball rolling on that, please ping me with the location. RexxS: On a personal note I've noticed some of your comments elsewhere to the Foundation, particularly in relation to Wikidata descriptions, and I wanted to express my appreciation. Back to the immediate topic, it sounds like you're considering a "fix" of filtering out values that are sourced from Wikipedia. In this case, I don't think that was the concern. If you recheck Titodutta's comment they didn't want the value gone. They were suggesting that the info should be "directly link"ed from Wikipedia, rather than coming through Wikidata. See my diff. I want to know whether or not the community wants edits like that applied broadly. I think it's an improvement, I believe(?) that is what Titodutta was suggesting, but we're in consensus-limbo on it. Alsee (talk) 11:11, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If you mean the short descriptions are clutter then I very strongly disagree - they're extremely useful and the big shame is that they're going to disappear from the majority of articles if wikidata fallback is turned off (if it must be turned off, waiting until local coverage is close to 100% would achieve the goal without the any unnecessary accessibility issues). If you mean that the local (vs soured from WikiData) descriptions are clutter, then I'm not sure I agree - they're certainly unnecessary duplication of effort but a single line in the page source isn't really what I'd call "clutter". Thryduulf (talk) 14:27, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't mind relying on local short descriptions. A few days ago, someone changed wikidata descriptions to label iCarly seasons as "child pornography" and "isis propoganda", but I only noticed because they bragged on Twitter. Changes to local short descriptions will show up in people's watchlists. Schazjmd(talk)22:52, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't involved in the prior discussions about Short Descriptions, so I don't have a well-formed opinion about them, but since this is the WMF page, I think the scope of the discussion here ought to be limited to encouraging the WMF to abide by the agreed-upon community consensus, not challenging that consensus, which inappropriately muddles things. As a new page, we need to set down some strong norms about what is okay to post here. That said, there does seem to be a fair amount of sentiment questioning where we are at with short descriptions, so I think it might be appropriate to open up a conversation at a more appropriate venue to take stock of where we are at with short descriptions and to potentially reassess whether we ought to go ahead with using 2 million as the point to cut off Wikidata imports. One piece of data that I can't resist sharing (despite what I just said above) since it might help frame the discussion is this: of the 43,000 Level 5 Vital Articles (example of the kinds of pages in that group here), currently 19,000 (44%) have no short description. {{u|Sdkb}}talk19:43, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sdkb we're all figuring on the scope of this page together. For what it's worth: My concept when I created this page, and according to the notes at the top, this is the correct page for discussing and forming consensus on the relevant topics. Therefore this would be the correct place to consider a new/different consensus. That said, I was also a central participant in the previous discussions. The consensus was actually to eliminate the Wikidata descriptions immediately, effectively blanking everything while we rebuilt local descriptions. Waiting for 2 million descriptions before shutoff was a compromise with the WMF, insofar as it wasn't particularly unreasonable and no one pressed the issue any further. At that time not shutting off wikidata, or waiting for "close to 100%" local descriptions, were pretty well WP:SNOWy territory. I expect that remains true today. Alsee (talk) 22:27, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Alsee, that makes sense. I'm concerned a little, though, that having too many conversations directly on this page (given how sprawly they can often get) might make it harder for WMF folks (who are understandably very busy) to follow along with it all. For some issues, it may be better to discuss them elsewhere as a sort of staging area, and then to come here once they're decided enough that we can present a more straightforward "this is what the community thinks" message. (We'd of course link to the full discussion; the idea isn't to hide anything, but just to keep this page more readable.) {{u|Sdkb}}talk08:03, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Given that Danny is active, and his line manager is probably Katherine Maher, probably suck it up. And stop adding short descriptions. Unless someone can get her attention on Twitter. I do not think she is paying any attention to what is happening on Wikiprojects. I am not going to resign an admin bit over it.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:12, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
And do not forget to take it with the candidates on the Board elections which are going to happen next year. Some of you (not me) may even try to check with the candidates from affiliates.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:15, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
One option is to effectively shut off Wikidata descriptions from our end. Right now there is a filter in place to prevent us from setting a description that is blank or only punctuation. We could modify {{short description}} to check if the value is blank, and then fill in some non-blank value of our choosing. (Perhaps "No description yet.") Then we can do a bot run to make sure {{short description}} is present on every article.
Another option (and we can proceed with both options simultaneously) is to draft a message to Executive Director Katherine Maher and submit it as a formal consensus message from the EnWiki community. My concept would be to start by expressing serious community concern at the poor relationship, poor alignment, and poor level of partnership between the Foundation and the community. I'd suggest phrasing it like 'perhaps you are unaware of these systemic problems', as I suspect staff aren't reporting these issues up to the Director. Then we briefly lay out the Short Description case, that Wikidata descriptions were deployed without consulting the community, that there was a commitment to shut off Wikidata descriptions once we created 2 million descriptions, and then lay out how long the Phab task has been ignored, how long the manager who made the agreement has been non-responsive, and how long the liaison has been non-responsive. (Note: The liaison was only pinged 6 days ago, which is not good but also not badly excessive yet. However those figure will presumably be higher if/when we deliver the message.) Then I would close by requesting her help improving Foundation-engagement, and that we have other specific concerns we hope to be able to bring to her attention. I tend to procrastinate, but I'd be willing to draft it and open the proposal if there's support for this route. (Ping me for quickest action.) I have other specific issues that I want raise for consensus-discussion, but I think we should start with this one simple item. Asking the Director to follow through on an existing Foundation-commitment should be comparatively easy, and it will hopefully establish the path for trying to resolve other issues. Alsee (talk) 20:45, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I pinged DannyH on 16 May in this very thread as he's the one responsible for keeping the promise he made, so he has no excuse for not having enough time. I can't help but wonder whether we could take the unusual step of discussing the issue on Jimbo's talk page first and asking for his help and advice. That would at least make sure that we try all of the avenues available to us before starting a formal complaint to the CEO. It would also perhaps raise the profile of the problems we've encountered because of the number of talk page watchers there. I almost made that very post there today, but I thought it would be reasonable to leave it a few days yet, just in case we do get a reply from WAID as she was only pinged a few days ago. --RexxS (talk) 23:45, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The end of the fiscal year is always a busy time of year for him. He and I are usually in a meeting together on Mondays; I'll try to ask him about this the next time I see him. That may be more effective right now than asynchronous communication. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:39, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi everyone, I'd like to let you know that we are currently working on plans to make the switch to entirely using local short descriptions on English Wikipedia, without the Wikidata fallback. We really appreciate that people have put in so much time and work populating the local descriptions.
I don't have an estimate yet for when we expect the work to happen, because there are a few use cases that we need to figure out. Right now, the Wikipedia apps allow people to write and edit short descriptions on their phone, and that's a popular feature that helps readers who may not typically be Wikipedia editors to contribute new descriptions, and to keep existing descriptions accurate. We want that feature to only use the local descriptions now, so we're going to work on that. We also want to make sure that the descriptions work properly when they're dynamically generated from an infobox, as Template:Infobox settlement currently does.
Engineers are talking about this now, and you'll see activity on the Phabricator ticket. I can let you know when we have a stronger idea of how and when the changes are going to be made.
One thing that I'd like to ask about is the point that Sdkb brought up above: how do we get from ~2 million descriptions to ~6 million (minus disambiguations and lists)? When we make this switch, descriptions are going to "disappear" on a lot of articles, and as Sdkb points out, that will include some important articles. I know that some people have been using automated tools to import descriptions from Wikidata, and I'd like to know if folks plan to continue doing that, and if we can help. I'm interested to know your thoughts. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:46, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@DannyH (WMF): thanks for your announcement, it is very welcome. I'm sure we will all be happy to hear your estimate for when the work will happen as soon as you have that information.
I'd like to suggest that the solutions to the issues you raise could lie in a change of mindset. When you consider the short description text that accompanies searches on mobile and acts as a subtitle on the app, it may be helpful to forget about Wikidata and to think about short description text as being sourced authoritatively from the enwiki short descriptions; then to refocus your efforts into finding ways of making the enwiki short descriptions as comprehensive as possible. These are some examples that come to mind:
Support a proposal to import missing enwiki short descriptions from Wikidata on a one-off bot run. This won't be easy to generate support for, but it would represent a way of closing the old chapter and starting a new one.
Redirect mobile apps that allow editing of short descriptions to creating enwiki short descriptions. Worry about getting those descriptions into Wikidata as a secondary issue.
Support moves to allow bots to update the Wikidata description field periodically to import enwiki short descriptions as the authoritative text. There will be resistance from Wikidatans but it should be possible to offer a good case for doing it.
I know you'll think "that's what I'm already proposing", but I wanted you to consider principally the focus of where the short descriptions come from. While you think about the issue as an uneasy hybrid between enwiki and Wikidata, you can't hit the targets you want. If you embrace the concept that the authoritative text resides on enwiki, you'll mobilise the large workforce on enwiki (who have already done so much amazing work) to continue to improve and expand the coverage of enwiki short descriptions. Having that sense of ownership of our content is fundamental to keeping work going on it. --RexxS (talk) 22:35, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
RexxS: Well, that is still what I'm already proposing. :) We are now thinking about enwiki as the authoritative text for English short descriptions, and with that as the focus, we want to help to get descriptions on those x-million more enwiki articles. I think we're on the same page. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 05:58, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
that's a popular feature that helps readers who may not typically be Wikipedia editors to contribute new descriptions, and to keep existing descriptions accurate Well, it is also a feature that turns existing descriptions into inaccurate ones and allows people to create new inaccurate ones where no description existed. This seems to be common for Indian caste articles, where glorification and denigration is the name of the game, and it is difficult to track. - Sitush (talk) 09:27, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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@DannyH (WMF) How do we get from 2M descriptions to 6M? Make them visible on the article page in desktop web and mobile web. People won’t edit what they can’t see. Once they get used to seeing the shortdesc on good articles, they’ll want to add them to others.
Perhaps, as Alsee suggested, display "No description yet". But now that we have way more than a critical mass of articles with local descriptions, that mightn’t be necessary.
I know the en-wp community tends to be resistant to changes that are opt-out rather than opt-in. But if we can get consensus on this, will the Foundation support us?
Aside: another team at W?F is looking at simple structured tasks to engage new users, short descriptions could be a good fit for that.
Instead of backsliding, and playing for time, if WMF actually did what they said they would and shut down the displays of Wikidata descriptions, now that we have basically paid up on the extortion, it might encourage Wikipedians to add more short descriptions. · · · Peter Southwood(talk): 13:04, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi WMF! Back in January, we held a discussion, WP:TOUSL, which was closed with overwhelming near-unanimous community support. Copying the proposal:
The January 27 Signpost "From the editor" column describes the several years-long and ongoing paid advocacy abuse by Status Labs (formerly Wiki-PR), including their community ban from the English Wikipedia, their global ban imposed by the Foundation, a cease-and-desist letter sent in 2013, and six recent and ongoing paid advocacy abuses reported by the Wall Street Journal last month. Foundation officials told the Signpost that they would only take further action if the English Wikipedia community requests such "through its usual governing processes." Accordingly, this RFC asks the Wikimedia Foundation to enforce the Terms of Use against Status Labs violations, such as by reporting infringement of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, seeking civil penalties for those violations, and any other actions which the Foundation's attorneys believe will most likely halt the ongoing abuses. 07:30, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
I believe this discussion was shared with the WMF board, so I was wondering whether anyone from the legal department might be able to give us an update. No worries if there are sensitive aspects that shouldn't be discussed publicly, but I think many of us in the community would appreciate having at least an acknowledgement of receipt and some reassurance that the suggestion is being given serious consideration. And to the extent it's possible/desirable, I'm sure many editors would love to help out with whatever's needed to move this forward.
I have emailed user:Kbrown (WMF) as she might be the relevant WMF person - although I don't know whether she'll see the email before next week. That email also went to the functionaries in case any of the CUs can saying anything useful or know who better to talk to at the WMF. Thryduulf (talk) 21:37, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I got a response quicker than I was expecting, which is good. They (Karen Brown specifically and the Foundation more generally) are aware of the community's request and have confirmed to the Functionaries they are looking into it. The request for a public message has been noted and they'll see what they can do but they (entirely understandably) want to be careful about what they say and how they say it, so we wont get anything immediately - not least because it's Memorial Day weekend in the US meaning Monday is a public holiday. Thryduulf (talk) 11:05, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all. I want to confirm from the Foundation legal team that this is noted and we're still working on it. This is a particularly hard topic to give details on publicly, both given legal privilege and not wanting to give away too much before we do anything publicly. What I can say is that we finished an initial investigation and we're working on some legal research at the moment. I'm hoping to have another update sometime around end of June. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 02:13, 28 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Seconding this thanks - perfectly understand not in a position to share, good to hear proper consideration of it. Enjoy the long weekend! Nosebagbear (talk) 21:34, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Branding event - 16 June
The rebranding team has Announced naming convention proposal discussions starting 16 June. Two proposals will centered on Wikipedia, one will be a Wiki/Wikipedia hybrid, plus an open response area to suggest other naming proposals. A live presentation is planned on 16 June at 15:00 UTC, via youtube. There will be two weeks of feedback to help remove, refine and recombine elements from the proposals into a single, synthesized proposal.
Note: The community-initiated RFC[2] "Is it acceptable for the Foundation to use the name Wikipedia to refer to itself?" has over 90% opposition. There seems to be some question by staff whether this RFC has any relevance to the upcoming proposals.
Anyone is welcome to steal or adapt my question during the live discussion: Given the overwhelming level of opposition to a Wikipedia-based re-branding, it is easy to foresee this may become an issue in the next Board of Trustees election. Has your risk analysis considered the cost and impact of a rebranding rollback by the new Board of Trustees?Alsee (talk) 16:47, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Now we only have three community trustees, and only two of them are eligible to run again, and only because they have given themselves a third term earlier. I am not sure either of them wants to run again though.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:18, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
But whether or not they want to run again is moot because they quietly cancelled the election and voted to keep themselves in office…17:56, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
To be fair, they abstained from voting, but, yes, the term is effectively extended by a year. However, the resolution does not say that they are prohibited from running for the third term (after this one year).--Ymblanter (talk) 18:05, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not surprising that they cited COVID-19 as justification for this democratic backsliding. Doesn’t make as much sense as, say, postponing the Olympics, simply because this is a website and the Board election might actually see increased turnout due to people being stuck at home. The WMF has a lot of money[citation needed], and I'm sure they would be able to put together a Board election if they weren't so busy stomping on the community per usual. Of course, China recently tried to ban Hong Kong’s Tiananmen Square massacre memorial vigil for a similar reason — so if this Wikimedia→Wikipedia renaming goes through, then there's only one thing left to say... —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 22:04, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Concerning the "community feedback", I think we should go there and remind them that the community discussion already happened,. and the result was an overwhelming no.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:20, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The way en.wp works has always seemed a little magical to me ... though that may just be because I lack the skill sets and data sets to understand it properly. But I'm pretty sure that if you added a lot of the wrong kind of editors to the mix, things would go downhill fast ... I mean editors whose interests and skill sets aren't relevant to encyclopedia-building. So I can understand why this proposal is rattling a lot of people ... and with everything that's going on in the world right now, why anyone would think it's a good idea to accelerate the timetable on rebranding is beyond me. Still, I don't want to prejudge it ... if we can get a preview of what's coming on June 16, great, and if not, I guess I'll wait and see what they have to say. Thx for posting this, Alsee. - Dank (push to talk) 17:44, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Inserted later: when I wrote about people without the relevant interests and skill sets, I wasn't targeting any person or group in particular (though now I see that it might have looked that way). I meant that if you start using the word "Wikipedia" to refer to any individual or group that wants to think of themselves as "Wikipedia", then it may confuse people about what's expected on the encyclopedias. Ideals like reliable sourcing and neutrality and verifiability are often unenforced or sporadically enforced elsewhere. - Dank (push to talk) 19:29, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) The problem there is that the rebranding project was set up solely to examine alternatives to "Wikimedia". It's not even in their remit to consider keeping the status quo. I've now asked if they will commit to a run-off survey between the winner of the 3-option survey and "Wikimedia". If they are so sure of the benefit of change, it should be simple for them to provide the convincing reasons for it. --RexxS (talk) 19:06, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. As you may be aware, the WMF has proposed three options for renaming of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia Movement. For reference, the three proposed names for the Wikimedia Foundation are "Wikipedia Network Trust", "Wikipedia Organization", and "Wikipedia Foundation"; the three proposed names for the Wikimedia Movement are "Wikipedia Network", "Wikipedia Movement", and "Wiki". Full details are available at subpages of m:Communications/Wikimedia brands/2030 movement brand project/Naming convention proposals.
There are a few things you can do to make your opinion heard:
I haven't been following the rebranding discussion closely, so I'll apologize for making someone repeat or link to something that's probably been explained a dozen times—but having read the above, I have to ask, why is there any need or desire to rebrand anything? Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:56, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. That much I understand, but I guess my question should have been why is this being pursued given the feedback so far? Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:42, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The obvious reason is that there are people whose jobs depend on doing the busywork caused by rebranding. If we don't rebrand then there will be nothing for them to do. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:43, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Why do we oppose this branding proposal
It is probably good to summarize here the opposition argument. What I do below are not necessarily my arguments (though I agree with all of them to some extent) but what I have seen in numerous discussions, mainly on Meta and on wikimedia-l, but not exclusively. Please add whatever you feel necessary.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:42, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In short: The rebranding is not needed. If the rebranding is needed for some reasons what have not been communicated to the community (for example, legal issues, which were not important for 13 years but suddently became important) the new name should not be the Wikipedia Foundation or similar.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:42, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia foundation makes a false impression that WMF deals with the content of Wikipedia. In fact, communities create the content and deal with it.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:42, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The rebranding is not needed. The complaints that the brand "Wikipmedia" is unknown are not justified because nobody ever tried to advertise and market this brand.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:42, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
There is a feeling in the community that WMF wants to sell the things they have not created and they do not own (identity theft).--Ymblanter (talk) 07:42, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
WMF projects not only include Wikipedia but also other projects some of which are large and relatively successful. Rebranding to Wikipedia will alienate them.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:42, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
(my adds from here) Having every site branded "Wikipedia" will cause an influx of inappropriate complaints at the Village Pumps, Help Desks and Talk:Main Page of the individual Wikipedias, since readers who've spotted a copyright violation on Commons, a mistranslation on Wikisource and so on, will quite reasonably assume that Wikipedia is the correct place to raise issues about the content of "Wikipedia". That will in turn actively damage editor recruitment and reinforce the public stereotype that Wikipedia is incomprehensible to all but a hardcore of insiders; the people raising concerns, who under normal circumstances would be prime candidates for recruitment (many if not most people got their start here when they came to fix an error), will be greeted by some variant of "Sorry, this is Wikipedia and we can't help with enquiries about Wikipedia, you'll need to ask at Wikipedia instead of Wikipedia".
Use of the same name and branding throughout has a strong likelihood of compromising Wikipedia's hard-won reputation for neutrality, sourcing, and conciseness. Search engine queries will regularly take people to "Wikipedia" pages from the former Wikivoyage which are obviously based on personal opinion, to pages from the former Commons which present obviously contentious material without enough text to provide a context, to pages from the former Wikisource that cut-and-paste entire texts, and readers will reasonably assume that Wikipedia has relaxed its quality standards and is now taking an "anything goes" approach as it won't be clear that these are different sites with different purposes.
The proposal that includes the term "Wiki" on its own will cause bad feeling among non-WMF wikis who will feel we're trying to assert dominance over the entire sector, and will make it even harder to explain to readers that we're not responsible for the content of those wikis (in particular Wikia).
A similar problem with "Movement", which will cause people to reasonably assume that the sites are entirely independent bodies which share a similar aim (c.f. Black Lives Matter movement, Impressionist movement, Anti-war movement, Evangelical movement…) rather than aspects of a single entity, and that any home-made wiki can call itself part of the "Wikipedia Movement". ‑ Iridescent08:41, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, but as an active Wikivoyage user I would not expect anything good from the Wikipedia Foundation (not that the Wikimedia Foundation is doing much either).--Ymblanter (talk) 21:16, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Czar:centering our brands on Wikipedia is literally from the first sentence of the Executive Statement. It's not something we've just plucked out of the air, nor is the alternative (that what the WMF have in mind is e.g. "Wikimedia Commons by Wikipedia") credible. (Yes, Facebook and Google do that with Instagram and YouTube, but that's because Facebook and Google are toxic brands and they're intentionally dissociating their products from their ownership, quite the opposite of what the WMF envisages.) ‑ Iridescent 219:21, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm reading #4/5 above as explicitly saying sister projects will be rebranded when the Executive Statement and everything else I've read (e.g., FAQ) suggests that it's solely "Wikimedia" to "Wikipedia" (i.e., centering our [Wikimedia] brands on Wikipedia—the WM orgs and WM Commons; not "Wikisource" to "Wikipedia Source"). If the argument is that the WMF could suggest rebranding sister projects or that their stated intentions are untrustworthy or that they were advantageously vague in their Exec Statement, that's fine/reasonable but different from how the sister project rebrand is written above as fact. czar20:06, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Well, now we got a very clear statement by Heather Walls that the rebrtanding will happen does not matter what we are thinking about it meta:Communications/Wikimedia brands/2030 movement brand project/Executive statement. I am afraid the only option we have is to open an RfC stating that we do not recognize the rebranding including banning of all User (WPF) accounts and taking down the fundraising banners which aim to get funding for WPF (can we do it technically?). --Ymblanter (talk) 19:45, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
And I understand that people need to get salary, to feed their families etc, but a person responsible for this happening must be idenbtified and, well, evaluated whether they fit their job.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:49, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If this goes through I will seriously consider whether I should continue contributing here. I can easily spend all my free time elsewhere.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:49, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly suspect that things are going to look different soon, actually. The Board seems to think that they just asked the WMF to look into branding issues together with the community, and the WMF thinks the Board told them to implement a change to "Wikipedia" regardless of community opinion. (The liaisons' understanding seems to match the Board's, strangely.) I'd wait until things resolve before planning any drastic steps. --Yair rand (talk) 19:51, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I can give them a benefit of the doubt, but if we do not get a clear Board statement acknowledging that the rebranding is not going through, on a scale of a week, I think we should proceed.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:54, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'd give it more than a week. Some quotes: "I definitely support us exploring the options. I believe that the survey is meant to find out which of the NEW pathways are most desirable, and not to make a final decision about the outcome, and as such it makes sense that it does not include the status quo (as it is not an alternative). ... Once there is a solid proposal it'll make sense to discuss if it is better than the existing naming convention, AFAIK." - Pundit, yesterday. "[W]hat I wouldn't support, is either of these options: "There was an RfC and people expressed significant opposition, so we should immediately drop the whole concept rather than explore more deeply to see if there is a solution that works for people" nor "There was an RfC and people expressed significant opposition, so we ram it through regardless."" - Jimbo, today. --Yair rand (talk) 19:57, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is pretty clear that in some other situation running a survey could have made sense, but now it obviously does not. Whatever the survey results could give, it is not going to be accepted by the community. Then there is no need to wait until 30 June, and the Board can convene tomorrow - they do not (and can not) convene physically anyway. I do not see why they should wait longer than a week risking negative publicity. I already had my son asking me today whether I know anything about rebranding, and not that I am discussing Wikmedia issues with him on a regular basis.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:06, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Just to make sure nobody misses the point of the message, since the message buries the lead:
We should have been clearer: a rebrand will happen. This has already been decided by the Board. The place where we seek consultation and input is on what an optimal rebrand looks like, and what the path to get there will be.
I agree with the sentiments expressed above. Wikipedia is an incredibly important project and we must safeguard its long-term viability. We should think carefully about what organisation(s) we want to partner with as a volunteer community to run it. When the community started the WMF, did we ever anticipate them writing sentences like this:
"when community discussions began to sway toward attempting to prevent a rebrand, we failed in clearly and consistently responding that a rebrand itself was not up for debate. "
Does this sound like an organisation we can trust with the long-term viability of this project? At least they are being more brazen than they've been previously, and no longer hide their contempt for volunteer communities' autonomy. The latest meta straw-poll has virtually universal opposition to their plans, and the over 500-strong RFC was a landslide. When community discussions 'began to sway toward attempting to prevent a rebrand' (itself an understatement), they should have realised they made a mistake - not ploughed on whilst pretending nothing was decided. If the only leverage they are willing to grant us is to consider measures such as restricting/removing fundraising banners etc., then so be it. Acather96 (click here to contact me) 21:13, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
They can rebrand the Wikimedia Foundation / Wikimedia Movement / MediaWiki to a million things and that would be fine. WikiMovement Foundation would be good. Free Knowledge Foundation would be good (or something similar, like WikiKnowledge Foundation since FKF is already a thing). The only thing that is not acceptable is rebranding to Wikipedia anything. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}21:48, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That. As far as I'm concerned the WMF can rebrand to whatever they like (Jimmy can hand over the "Wikia" name and trademarks and they can just use that as far as I care); what they can't do is call non-Wikipedia sites "Wikipedia". I honestly don't think they (or their expensive management consultants) appreciate just how raw a nerve this is; if they stick to their guns I wouldn't be surprised if at minimum Commons and Wikidata fork and resign en masse rather than accept being ordered to refer to themselves as subsidiary to Wikipedia. ‑ Iridescent22:07, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
So far it looks like neither Commons nor Wikidata care. Communities who somewhat care are either from large Wikipedias (en, de, nl, it, haven not yet seen fr or es), or small project (I am myself a Wikivoyage admin and I know that we are tolerated on the servers but to get even crucial programming work done by WMF is impossible).--Ymblanter (talk) 17:40, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The 2019 Community Wishlist closed in November 2018. A year and a half later, of the ten chosen suggestions, three have been completed. Five have not yet even been started. The 2020 Community Wishlist closed more than six months ago. Only a single proposal has even been started at all. None have been completed.
It is disappointing. The three naming convention options don't make sense. The third naming option: "Wiki..." on an email on 7 May, a brand project representative clearly wrote that "Wiki" naming convention is going to be difficult for legal and other reasons. It is also noted briefly in the survey. I am quite sure that the third option is a dead-end, and it is not going anywhere. Then you have 2 options. That's it. Wikipedia network, and Wikipedia movement – the two options. They "know" the end point. Actually after the executive statement, it is pretty clear that they "knew" the end point. The decision was followed by a discussion, a long RfC process, etc. The RfC was called Should the Foundation call itself Wikipedia. As some of you have pointed out "when community discussions began to sway toward attempting to prevent a rebrand, we failed in clearly and consistently responding that a rebrand itself was not up for debate" is a horrible statement. It clearly states that they thought that the community would love and welcome the idea, and they could show that as a democratic, consensus-based process. It didn't work. I am wondering what made them to post this Executive Statement all of a sudden? Is it really an apology or just a step of the plan? --Titodutta (talk) 17:17, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I added a link to the survey on Template:Cent - spread it everywhere. In the medium term, maybe we should hold a RFC where the question is a no-confidence motion on the WMF. Depending on consensus, there are avenues for external escalation if the WMF still doesn't change. MER-C18:29, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The board statement should be out today or tomorrow. We need to wait until it is out. So far, people started to appreciate that this is not just a handful of particularly vocal users, but that the opposition to the decision and to the way it was communicated is so significant that it can not go through.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:13, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In the meanwhile, I am keeping this at my uner page. When the decision has been reversed and ideally apologies issued I will take it down.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:15, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@MER-C: All due respect, but the proposal has already been rejected by the community on the order of 10 or 11 to 1. The CN proposal on meta is dead in the water. When they've already said they don't care about our opinions, I'm not sure a notice on CENT is exactly justified. GMGtalk20:01, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
We need to elect trustees who will actually turn the WMF around. Ridiculous that every option on that survey still had "Wikipedia" in it. I support an RFC that, in whatever way is best, disavows this. But really change won't happen until we get serious about electing trustees that are serious about changing the WMF. And if we really want to kick them where it hurts, ban all fundraising banners from enwiki. Levivich[dubious – discuss]18:49, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I may just be a very casual unregistered editor, hanging about for years now. But i have to say this is an absolute joke. Why even have a survey when one cannot even say no change. Especially given that the community, not just the english language one, has already decided that it is not wanted. It sends an awful message in regards to consensus building, something that is at the very heart of Wikipedia and related projects. Why should pov pushers, or anyone for that matter, care about consensus building if the people that run the site (and i use that phrase extremely loosely, for lack of better words so to speak) do not care one bit about it. When things get dictated and not agreed on it seems counter to the very core of how this place should work. Took part in the survey and some of the questions were almost bizarre. The one regarding the legal protection or what it was in particular (cannot recall the wording as i cannot look it up again). And the way they framed to rate 1-4 which is best... thats how they cheese the survey in the end. "But that was everyones second favorite! You all said it was second best so we just do what you wanted!". Sadly i could not do more than strongly disagree with almost everything. Feel free to remove anyway, i am more an onlooker than active part in the community after all. 2003:D6:2714:3741:D471:A1B0:53F7:22B6 (talk) 21:23, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
However, it is important to be clear: the Board absolutely can change the name of the Wikimedia Foundation, even to the “Wikipedia Foundation,” if it decides. I disagree with this legal analysis. :-) Levivich[dubious – discuss]02:50, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is no urgent need any more to start an RfC about taking the fundraising banners down, we can wait till August. However, the option is clearly still on the table.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:53, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Reading from the Board's statement, plus some of their members' comments on the exec statement TP, the tl;dr seems to be "There isn't a firm decision on what exact renaming to do, with some different viewpoints within the Board, but we definitely reserve the authority". Definitely no dramatic cause for action, we'll see what the next 6 weeks bring. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:01, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
..or perhaps after the recent executive mess up they understood things have become a lot worse suddenly, and trying to control the damage to some extent. If it so, I feel that's also a positive thing. The rebranding idea does not make sense (it is not a WP:ILIKEIT or WP:IDONTLIKEIT statement, I know I should explain "why", but the reasons are told many many times.). My good wishes and regards. --Titodutta (talk) 12:55, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As I said somewhere in this mess, rebranding isn't a bad idea per se; most people have had the "no, Wikimedia isn't a version of Wikipedia that covers the media" conversation at some point. What is a bad idea per se is addressing the problem either by subsuming everything into "Wikipedia" or by claiming the name "Wiki" and cementing in the public mind the idea that we're responsible for Wikileaks and Wikia, and what's an equally bad idea is issuing mutually contradictory statements that by definition can't all be true. ‑ Iridescent15:19, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think "running around like headless chickens" describes thing better than deliberate lying. I subscribe to the theory that most things that go wrong are cock-ups rather than conspiracies. Of course that doesn't make them any more acceptable. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:28, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'd lean more towards "intentional misrepresentation", since it's not credible the board haven't been talking to each other. I assume that when an explanation is eventually squeezed out of them, it will be along the lines of "technically it was correct to say we hadn't approved a specific recommendation, as although we decided we were going to rebrand as 'Wikipedia Foundation' come what may, we hadn't signed off on the font to use on the new logo yet". ‑ Iridescent15:34, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I would not do it without having an RfC here first, and by the time we could close an RfC the rebranding hopefully will be fully dead.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:49, 30 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
My preference would be not to do so. I have signed the letter, but that is because I personally agree with it, whether or not other editors of the English Wikipedia do so. I prefer to say what I think myself rather than have it assumed that I agree with consensus. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:35, 30 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I believe having individuals sign this open letter is far more powerful. (And having just looked, I see as of this moment 586 individuals have signed this open letter, as well as 46 affiliates. If the rebranding process doesn't stop at this point, then the Foundation is undeniably operating in bad faith.) -- llywrch (talk) 21:21, 1 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mdaniels5757: & several former Foundation Trustees/board members. This is trending to the point where either the re-branding process pauses -- or stops entirely -- or someone will decide to spend more time with their family. (An excuse often given in the US when an executive finds it necessary to quit his or her job.) -- llywrch (talk) 07:41, 4 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
A minor gesture of protest: W?F
As a minor gesture of protest against the Wikimedia foundation's decision to rebrand itself with Wikipedia's good name, until they back down I choose to call them "the W?F".
Feel free to assume that this stands for "WMF", "WPF", or "WTF".
I call on those who oppose the rebranding to start using "W?F".
"We should have been clearer: a rebrand will happen. This has already been decided by the Board."[4] -- Heather Walls, head of the Communications department at the Wikimedia Foundation and executive sponsor of the Brand project.
@Guy Macon: I certainly like this idea. Given the fact that there's literally no "M" anywhere in "Wikipedia Foundation", the fact that some people have said that we could just keep using the WMF acronym, even though it would no longer have any non-legacy meaning, is laughable. Plus, it would also easily get around the confusion that will inevitably result when the word "Wikipedia" refers to the website, the community, and the foundation. At the same time.
And, of course, it's a small act of civil disobedience to help delegitimize the organization that has already started calling it's leader the "CEO of Wikipedia" at public events: see this and this, Katherine Maher is prominently referred to as the "CEO of Wikipedia" and the "Wikipedia CEO" with only the most minor mention in the fine print for her on the main speakers list of the Foundation being a separate organization from the community and the community consensus that is supposedly what actually manages the site's operations. Nathan2055talk - contribs23:03, 1 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Noting here for completeness: the W?F Brand Project Team has sent (2 July) a multi-wiki message with a link to the survey, now giving the closing date as 7 July. For English Wikipedia, it is posted at WP:VPM#Feedback on movement names. — Pelagic ( messages ) Z – (09:39 Sun 05, AEST) 23:39, 4 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Fundraising banner testing starting next week
Starting July 8, for users in the US, the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and Ireland, the WMF will be beginning fundraising tests for "1-3 hours, one to several times a week" in preparation for the 2020 fundraiser, which starts in these countries at the end of November. (Source: m:Special:Diff/20231683/m:Special:Diff/20231701.) --Yair rand (talk) 01:33, 1 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Any chance of being a bit less cryptic? Does you mean some of us in those countries will see dummy banners or what? Is there any way I can opt out of the entire process, including seeing the real things come November? - Sitush (talk) 19:45, 1 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Yair rand: just to note that if logged in, opting out isn't necessary. We don't show fundraising banners to logged users and haven't for.... maybe 7-8 years? That gadget has been redundant for some time. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 19:52, 1 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Sitush: - Yair_rand pretty much covered the basics and I'll post a formal notice tomorrow. We run fundraising banner tests through the summer every year. Initially these occur once a week, typically on a Wednesday for a few hours. Later in the year, as we get closer to the fundraiser this increases in frequency to a couple of times a week, changing to different days and sometimes over weekends. These tests enable up to evaluate both infrastructure, enable us to see whether there have been any changes in how our readers view our content and trial new concepts. As I mentioned above, fundraising banners aren't shown to logged in users, so if you stay logged in you shouldn't have any disruption to your work on the projects. There are limitations to that and want to recognise that, especially with multiple browsers, privacy modes or using multiple devices. We don't track you across devices or browsers so it makes it difficult to suppress it everywhere for volunteer editors. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 1 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Seddon (WMF): There doesn't appear to be a feedback link on the fundraising advertisements.
There seems to be a scaling problem; the first ad I saw (while viewing Pyramid of Capitalist System, no less) took up the majority of my screen, with text much larger than what's displayed in the article. When I refreshed the page, I saw a smaller, but even more obtrusive ad in the middle of the article. I checked the edit history, but couldn't find the editor that added this.
There's also no feedback link on the FAQ page, nor is there a link to give feedback about the FAQ. When I donate to a nonprofit, I like to get an idea of what my money's actually going to. The FAQ doesn't make it clear whether donations made through the banner on Wikipedia will go to supporting Wikipedia, or any of the other projects listed on the FAQ, or how the money is allocated in general. Maybe I just didn't see it - it seemed a strange omission from an organization built around transparency and access to information. 2601:194:300:130:29F2:3B8B:B437:96E0 (talk) 15:41, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hey IP! @2601:194:300:130:29F2:3B8B:B437:96E0:. I'm not sure if you'll get the ping or see this response but you ask some totally valid questions so I'll leave a response here anyway just in case. On the FAQ we provide the donatewikimedia.org email address throughout the page 1234. This is the same email address we also provide on the problems donating page 1234. Both of these pages are linked to in the banner. We also link to our Contact Us page from the FAQ where the donatewikimedia.org email address. So with all that, the general idea is email that address. We have been asked in the past and internally talked about putting the email address in the banner but the amount of spam that would generate would overwhelm our donor response team. That team is already dealing with tens of thousands of emails, in fact it might be more than 100k emails a year. Increasing the noise would put the team under excessive strain and reduce the experience donors receive.
The trouble we face is that even with all that, only the surface of the work that's supported is covered. The best we can do is to point to all of the different resources that exist describing out work. But an FAQ is never going to be able to capture all that. At least without making it even more difficult to surface stuff than it already is.
I'm not sure when the next review of the FAQ is but I'll make a note of your message and see if we can make some improvements without overwhelming users or the donor response team. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 18:02, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Seddon (WMF): Since you're pointing potential donors to the FAQ, could you specify in the FAQ that volunteer contributors, who add almost all the content the readers sees, do not receive funding and that the award of grants is also out of the hands of those volunteers? While the FAQ states the facts about volunteers at the top, the portions you linked to above are a bit nebulous on what that money actually does "sustain free knowledge through Wikipedia", intoning that W?F provides help to editors "grants to volunteer contributors", making no mention of the slush fund endowment W?F is trying to build. Chris Troutman (talk)18:18, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Chris troutman: Re "the award of grants is also out of the hands of those volunteers". While the WMF seized control of the APGs in 2018 ("temporarily"), I'm pretty sure volunteers still run the project grants. (Also the SAPGs, IIRC.) --Yair rand (talk) 18:49, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Drafting Committee for the Universal Code of Conduct
The WMF has stated that they intend to impose a Universal Code of Conduct on all WMF-hosted projects, including the English Wikipedia. As part of that process, there will be a drafting committee, which will include some community members. Of particular note:
Committee members will not be elected. Rather, they will be appointed by Maggie Dennis, the WMF's Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability, after a review by the Trust and Safety team.
The committee will have 5 or 6 volunteer members and four or five paid WMF staff members.
On 16 March 2020, the 50 millionth edit was made using the visual editor on desktop.
Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:
The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.
50 million is indeed impressive! A little handwave over the second sentence given what other thing happened since its intro, but the 600,000 articles in 2019 and growing proportions are particularly key notes of success. @Whatamidoing (WMF): Do we have any idea on what reasons new editors would give for not opting for visual editor for their first edit (not knowing what each one was, told to by another, etc), even if only anecdotal? Nosebagbear (talk) 17:02, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, @Nosebagbear. Let me start by providing some more details about this query. It looks at edits from people who had made ≤99 edits at that local wiki (while logged in), on either the mobile or desktop sites (but excluding apps or flagged bots), in "content" namespaces, at only Wikipedias, regardless of account age. Edits that switched to/from visual editing are not counted as using the visual editor. I think it also excludes edits made in the 2017 wikitext editor. (I'm certain that it doesn't count those as visual edits; I'm not certain whether it excludes them entirely from the denominator vs counting the as non-visual edits.) Also, hitting the undo button always opens the wikitext editor, and all edits that don't use an editing environment at all (e.g., Twinkle) or offer no choice are untagged, so those are edits are "not visual". Once it has identified eligible edits, it compares are edits tagged as being in the visual editor against all the other eligible edits (WikiEditor, Undo, Twinkle, HotCat, WikEd, etc.).
If you split the results between mobile and desktop sites, the visual editor is used for 40% of mainspace edits by people using the desktop site, but 23% on the mobile site, and when you combine the two sites (this group made three edits on desktop for every one it made on mobile in 2019), then you get an average of 35% of eligible edits being made exclusively in the visual mode.
As for the cause, some of it is unavailability. This can be either "hard" unavailability (e.g., no Javascript = no visual editing) or "soft" unavailability (hard to use or find). For example, even after the significant improvements to the mobile visual editor, it's still hard to edit on a smartphone, and the visual editor (assuming you even know it exists) there is quite limited: you can type, and it can add character formatting and links. There are no buttons to insert templates, images, tables, etc., so you have to switch back to wikitext on mobile to do any of that).
Even when they have a choice, new editors tend to use whatever's put in front of them for their first edits, so having this (the largest) Wikipedia assume that newbies' first edit should happen in the wikitext editor puts a lot of unintentional pressure these results. The rise in mobile editing, which is wikitext-first on all sites, exerts a similarly strong pressure. Additionally, there were (and still are) some bugs in the "SET" (Single Edit Tab) system that pushed editors into wikitext editing. The SET system is here, but it's not at most large Wikipedias. So with all of that in mind, you should not be surprised to hear that for the English Wikipedia specifically, the visual editor (desktop+mobile) was only 27% last year, which is significantly lower than the average. By comparison, at the French Wikipedia, 55% of all article edits by newcomers were in the visual editor, Russian was 50%, Spanish was 48%, Portuguese was 49%, etc.
When the visual editor was first introduced, we saw a spike in "failed" edits (in both editing environments). People seemed to open one, look at it, close it ("failed"), open the other and look at it, and then decide which one they wanted to use. Experienced editors tend to use both depending upon the type of edit we want to make. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:11, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the answers @Whatamidoing (WMF):! The phone editor looks like the massive area to me. I don't edit by phone, but might if a better VE was there (none of the general benefits of a wikitext editor vs normal VE would really apply on a phone), and in general I'd be way more open to phone editing defaulting to (an updated) VE than the standard site. Are the changes in talk pages intended to be phone-friendly? Nosebagbear (talk) 20:03, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The mobile version does not have talk pages , unless I am missing something. This actually means that the mobile version is not intended for collaborative editing.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:11, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Ymblanter: Mobile web has talk, but only if you’re logged in. I didn’t realise before now that logged-out users don’t see a Talk link or button.
The iOS app has "View talk page" regardless of logged-in status.
(Aside: logging out of the app also logged me out here and deleted the reply I was typing.)
The (currrent version of the) Reply tool is not visible on the mobile site. The goal for this stage is to not make engineering choices that would make it hard to expand it to the mobile site. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note that, apart from the 10 million VE edits in 7 years on enwiki, the other statistics are all, as far as I can tell, about Wikipedia as a whole, not specific about enwiki. This is not really clear from the way they are presented. Rather noteworthy is that 50% of new editors start in VE, but that this drops to 35% afterwards. Fram (talk) 08:34, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee
Hello, all. The Arbitration Committee asked me to stop by and talk to you here about the new Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee. :)
In a nutshell, this committee exists to review eligible Foundation Trust & Safety office actions (or decisions not to take action) on appeal. This committee is interim until a permanent process is created following the conclusion of the Universal Code of Conduct conversations. The intention is to help calibrate Trust & Safety actions to make sure that those actions are at the appropriate level with due respect to local governance capacities on the various Wikimedia projects and that those who are impacted by Trust & Safety actions (or, again, decision not to take action) have appropriate opportunity to request review by an international group of experienced volunteers. There are some risks in this process both for reviewers and for individuals in cases, so we are working very carefully with Foundation lawyers and external counsel to make sure that the process has as many safeguards as possible to protect all sides.
I have carved time in my calendar over the next few days to answer questions here, per ArbCom’s request, and also on Meta, here. I may have to roll questions up rather than answer each individual comment, because I do have a limited amount of time I can engage in this and physical limitations on how much time I can spend typing these days. But that does depend on how many questions I receive. :) I also plan to host another office hour in August, although I’ve not yet been told the time. (You can see the notes from last office hour on Meta.)
I also have the following caveats:
I can’t and won’t discuss specific Trust & Safety cases. Instead, I can discuss Trust & Safety protocols and practices and approaches as well as some of the mistakes we’ve made, some of the things I’m proud of, and some of the things we’re hoping to do, especially with this appeal body.
I will not respond to comments or questions that are disrespectful to me, to my colleagues, or to anyone in our communities. I can talk civilly about our work even if you disagree with me or I disagree with you. I make every effort not to be too sensitive (I’ve dealt with a lot of unhappy people in my volunteer capacity, so I know people can be sharp when unhappy), but if I think something crosses the line I won’t engage. I won’t compromise on this.
Hi Maggie. Is it expected that the cases will be discussed by the committee members with each other (collective activity), or just reviewed and sent back to T&S (individual activity)? Also, what do you mean be committee members meeting several times? Not in person I guess?--Ymblanter (talk) 15:55, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Ymblanter. While the process will be refined and nailed down with the interim committee, my expectation would be that the cases are sent back to T&S after the group reaches consensus. And, no, not in person meetings. Even if not for the COVID-19 travel restrictions we have, I don't have budget for that. :D But online meetings. Sorry for that lack of clarity! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:05, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Mdennis (WMF), thank you for the post. I looked at the committee's charter, and I get the general idea, but I think it would be helpful for the community if you could briefly talk through what an appeal would like. Let's say user FooBar is blocked as a T&S office action and requests case review, and let's assume that this is indeed a case eligible for review. What does the appeal process look like, both from FooBar's perspective and the review committee's perspective? GeneralNotability (talk) 16:26, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, GeneralNotability. :) We have an idea for how it could work, but wanted to go over it with the committee before nailing it down to say this is how it WOULD work. Let's assume they think what I think is perfect and adopt it wholecloth. :) Using your theoretical, FooBar would email the appeal inbox which we're setting up which is accessible by only three people: the contractor who will be hired to support the committee (I hope; waiting for word on budget), the attorney appointed to support the committee, and the committee chair. Once the attorney appointed to support the committee confirms it is eligible for review, the contractor would respond telling FooBar that the case is going to undergo review and giving time expectations, which we hope are reasonable but won't know until we see the caseload. The Committee Chair will look at the case to see the particulars and appoint 5 members of the committee to review the case. The files will be provided to the five, who will be asked to assess against the criteria of "appropriate level of handling; appropriate collection of evidence; appropriate outcomes." They have the opportunity to talk to the assigned attorney if particulars are unclear. The review committee members assigned to the case will vote on whether to support, overturn, or return the case. If they return the case, they will review it after T&S does further work with the General Counsel or her delegate to make sure that the additional work satisfies their concerns. Once they decide, they will communicate to FooBar. If they decide to overturn FooBar's ban, Trust & Safety will enact that decision. If they decided to affirm it, FooBar will be advised. The person or people who reported FooBar will also be advised and, if the case was overturned because T&S shouldn't have handled it at all (say if a local process should have), pointed to the proper process. The Review Committee also has the option to request that a local governance process review the case, but they cannot share case files with that committee and that's a courtesy request only. They don't have the mandate to tell them to. :) That's assuming what I have in my head is what they adopt. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mdennis (WMF): Thanks very much for this, Maggie. Your work is greatly appreciated
Do you have any idea how many of these cases you expect to go to the "T&SCRC" (as I'm sure nobody will ever call it again!)? I've seen the 5 hours a week estimate on Meta, which seems quite high, given that the current number of office actions is relatively low compared to the activity of the largest WMF projects.
Additionally, could you talk some more about your plans with regard to linguistic diversity? Of course, there are plenty of excellent English speakers with non-English home wikis, but requiring a level of English sufficient to read and parse complex and potentially legal texts will obviously have implications for a linguistically diverse participation. I understand fully why this is - obviously this is a tricky problem to solve - but I was wondering if you had any further thoughts on potential solutions to it. Likewise, if there is a need to review an office action taken in respect of a case where the subject(s) of the action are non-English speakers, and have activity solely on non-English projects, how will that be conducted?
Hi, Naypta. :) We really don't know what to expect in terms of numbers of appeals, but the appeals can be lodged by those whose requests for sanctions were declined as well. (Not by those whose requests that T&S review a case were declined because they were out of T&S's scope. This is only cases that were investigated and closed without action.) Those cases are not publicly logged but make up the majority of Trust & Safety's caseloads. Trust & Safety also does have one sanction in its toolbox that is not publicly logged: event bans. So there may be more appeals than that ban list would suggest. I hope that five hours a week is higher than needed, but I also know that reading a single case can take me several hours, and I am used to them. Without attachments and links, they range from say 20-40 pages of text apiece. The language is not legal per se - once in a while - but it is long and complicated.
I'm not sure what the long-term solutions are going to be in terms of language diversity. :/ We've considered trying to simplify our reports to make them easier to process and have actually begun doing that in some ways, but since everything is under potential review, cases eligible well predate that simplification. I might have to hope that somebody has good ideas for handling that when we get to talking about the permanent process in phase 2 of the Universal Code of Conduct. Right now, "machine translation" is all I have.
With respect to non-English cases, Trust & Safety gets many. Where evidence exists in other languages, translations are routinely supplied in the case files. Where possible, these translations are provided by human beings, but sometimes machine translation is used when it can't be helped. Fortunately, we do have some volunteers who are helpful in providing limited translations on requests. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:47, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's not really clear how this new process will help. Let's say an editor is banned for a year from enwiki, without explanation of the reasons, the evidence used in this case, and so on. The banned editor can then ask for a review, but can not actually defend themselves or rebut any points made leading to the ban decision, since they don't know what these points are. So the review group will see the same one-sided case as the original T&S people. Basically, if T&S made the wrong decision based on the case documentation, then they will be able to overturn or change this; but if the case documentation itself is unfair, incomplete, biased, whatever, then the review will not solve anything. How this process is presented (or how I read it), the case reviewers are only expected to reread the case material, but not to check the actual evidence (if it is about onwiki actions) and the surrounding events, nor to contact the parties in the case. Which makes this review process in many instances just a case of window-dressing, but not actually an improvement. Fram (talk) 08:01, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Fram. The review committee is not prevented from checking online evidence themselves - when cases cross my desk, I follow every link and look at every document = and they are certainly able to review additional information if they choose. They are not asked to because Trust & Safety invests on average a full week of a person's team in conducting each investigation. The case files are generally pretty thick. The system is created so that if the review committee feels the documentation is incomplete, they can request additional evidence, which allows them to note and call out gaps. The intention of the review is not to re-litigate but to provide a second set of eyes to the process who are still highly active community members. Every T&S Ops staff person who conducts investigations is an experienced Wikimedian, but that connection can weaken over time - certainly it has with me as my activity has struggled woefully - and asking active Wikimedians to help assess is intended to check any biases that might rise. We try to watch for that, but humans are human, and I think this can keep us well calibrated. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:26, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. But the principle remains that the sanctioned user doesn't know what the sanction is based on (apart from very general terms like "harassment" or "failure to abide by the ToU" or so), and is thus extremely limited in how they can actually ask for a review? "I have been banned for some reason I don't know, and I can't imagine what this reason can have been" is basically all one can offer as defense then? While a more concrete set of accusations would allow defenses like "yes, I checked all of their contributions and deleted dozens of them for copyvio (or BLP, or being totally and utterly wrong, or...), but only after the complaints by editor X, Y and Z had been ignored", or "please check X again, that was not said or done by me but by some joe job" or ... It is good that they can look at the actual evidence and what surrounds it (though I guess that they then would need admin rights to properly investigate e.g. the quality of the deleted edits from an editor claiming harassment), but without any contact with the accused editor it still is just a rehash of the biased, lopsided process that was there in the first place. Fram (talk) 12:21, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Fram, the degree of detail individuals receive about actions against them varies by case, as does the degree to which they are asked for input. I'm fairly sensitive to jargon, but the term "polarities" gets tossed around a lot in the trust & safety field, and it accurately describes the tension between protecting users from abusive behavior and making sure that those accused of abusive behavior are given fair treatment. We have worked to become more specific especially with warnings issued in the last year, but it is true that specifics may be withheld when the need for protection seems overwhelming. It may be that as part of phase 2 of the Universal Code of Conduct, we can find a community governance process that can finely balance those needs in a way that everybody feels is fair. The intent of this process is not so that an individual sanctioned can request such specifics, though, but only so that individuals who are sanctioned and individuals who ask for sanctions against others which they don't receive can have outcomes reviewed as to whether the action was within due process(including whether the Foundation was the proper body to evaluate), whether the evidence is comprehensive, and whether the sanctions are appropriately calibrated. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:10, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but "outcomes reviewed as to whether the action was within due process(including whether the Foundation was the proper body to evaluate), whether the evidence is comprehensive, and whether the sanctions are appropriately calibrated." is all still based then on what the accuser has provided, not on what the accused has to say about this. To give an example outside of T&S, in my Arb case last year, there were multiple instances were I was accused of saying things, which were then included in the ArbCom Evidence page, only to be seen by others that I either had not said that but was quoting someone else (not to support me, but to contradict their point), or in another instance were a seemingly abusive "F off" edit summary was a) directed at myself, because b) I had made a typo, introducing an "f" where it wasn't needed, so I took the "f off". These are simple examples of things that are often most easily explained by the one making the edit, but which can only be adressed once the evidence is public. But then you need to know what you are accused off in the first place. Without this basic issue, no review board will ever be much more than an excuse to give the impression that T&S actions are appealable, when in reality they aren't (unless you get massive community pressure, which can't be a desired result). Checking whether things are "within due process", when the process itself is broken, is not helpful. Fram (talk) 13:56, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Fram makes a compelling case. I think the T&S has demonstrated that they are willing to use secrecy as a stalking horse for avoiding scrutiny of T&S actions. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:35, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Fram, this is starting to get into the realm of discussing a particular case which I can't do (even though it involves you). I'm sorry about that. :/ I'll note that the core issue here seems to be less whether the appeal body speaks to the accused than whether the Foundation does. This is something that we are working to calibrate in borderline cases - that is, not cases where legal risk is an issue including in protecting the privacy of the accuser. But I will note that the bulk of borderline Trust & Safety cases are not based on accuser interviews but on independent investigation of behaviors online. Requests for review do start the process but do not constrain them. It is likely that in borderline cases, we will be conducting more outreach to accused and have been doing so in recent months, but that will not be the function of this committee. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:40, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I understand that you can't and won't discuss individual cases, and I won't ask you to. I just use it as an example as it is the only case I'm really familiar with, and probably the case most people here will think about when they read about T&S and review. I'm glad to hear that more outreach to accused editors has happened recently, as that is really one of the main issues I have (apart from some very specific ones in my case which won't turn up too often probably and aren't that relevant for this discussion); both in principle, and because it turned out that independent scrutiny of the evidence and replies to it by me and the community showed that the T&S action was not appropriate or proportionate for the "crimes". In my case, not only my ban but also the distrust this caused or strengthened towards T&S / WMF could perhaps have been avoided with immediate outreach and more of a "fair process", and there was no indication that this review board would improve the chances of this happening.
This is not intended as criticism of you, and even less of the replies you give here, which were helpful and friendly. Fram (talk) 14:58, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The requirements that a volunteer keep their participation in this process secret is, to say the least, unusual if understandable given the movement's general norms around transparency. I appreciate the ways you've attempted to balance this - mainly sharing the identities with Ombud Commission. My larger question is just how permanent is this vow of secrecy? I can certainly understand that keeping private someone else's participation shouldn't go away after the interim group work ends but can a person really not acknowledge that they were part of the group, if they choose, after their service is up? It also seems like it would be doing a disservice to whatever process the UCoC setups if this interim group couldn't share their experience and views. Thanks for your time here, it is appreciated. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:49, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Barkeep49. This question makes me nervous, because I’m a bit scared of crossing the line with what I say. :D I’m a big believer in Beans. I also have to caveat that I am not a lawyer and I am not attempting to take a legal stand for the Foundation. Because our legal team is small and busy, I would need probably a few days or even weeks to get an answer from that position. :) So I'm going to do my best as a layperson involved in this work for many years. Please let me know if I’m confusing and forgive me if I either ramble or overcorrect so I don’t ramble. I’ve been known to do both. I probably can’t go into much more detail on some of these points. (Others, around bright line and borderline, I can say more.)
The basic answer is that I don’t know yet, but it may have to be forever in order to protect them, their fellow committee members, and people who are involved in cases, and here’s my rambly explanation why.
Trust & Safety systems were created to address a certain kind of situation - very clear cut cases. Nobody that I know of questions T&S's handling those cases independently; in fact, some communities (including EnWP) have requested that the Foundation deal with some materials, such as this. I've started thinking of the kinds of cases that may be criminal in nature as "bright line" cases. Not a very original term or state of the art, but it works for me. :) Then there are the cases that are clearly for communities to resolve. Edit warring, for instance. We get plenty of complaints about that kind of thing (and about article deletion or other content disputes) that we routinely revert back to communities. Sometimes we get complaints about incivility or harassment that we assess as still within community remit and also direct to community processes.
And sometimes the stuff we get is borderline. Frequently, local processes have been tried but haven't been able to do something. Sometimes the allegations are pretty serious, but may or may not cross that line and we don’t know until we review (and then once we do even if it doesn’t cross the line, it’s still pretty serious - so we do something). Generally they involve off-wiki components. Sometimes they involve organized efforts by external groups. Sometimes they take place on projects without robust self-governance. Sometimes they take place on projects with robust self-governance where members of the governance community themselves have fallen under threat and are asking for help with cases they feel they may be too biased to handle.
Our goal with this committee is to be able to share as much with experienced volunteers as possible to make sure that T&S doesn't take on borderline cases that they should not...or refuse borderline cases that they should handle, and that if they do handle borderline cases, they are doing it properly. My own goal is that the Universal Code of Conduct will create good processes so that fewer borderline cases head our way, as the team is small and busy and, in my opinion, should be primarily dedicated to the bright line stuff.
So, this lengthy preamble aside, some of the borderline cases that this committee has been designed to review may be cases that would be more than borderline had they played out for longer. For example, we've been asked to get involved in cases of threatened blackmail. There is also the possibility of litigation. People who work trust & safety have been sued as individuals. People who are not anonymous are more easily subjected to such things...and the information they know about who else was on the committee (and thus also vulnerable) and the cases the committee reviewed is less secure. Even governments have shown an interest in the inner governance workings of Wikimedia.
Our attorneys are doing everything they can to lock this committee down so that membership is known only to essential staff and so they have every legal protection possible. If you ask any member of Trust & Safety who is on this committee, they will not know. If a member of the committee reveals their membership, they may jeopardize the wellbeing of fellow committee members and others in the community. (I’m also aware that without sharing some details I’m nervous about sharing, this probably sounds very grandiose and even a bit spy-thrillerish. I’m sorry about that. :/ But there’s a reason I’ve been working to hire a Crisis Response Manager with experience in international human rights intervention. I also don't want to imply that all the cases we deal with are HUGE AND RISKY. Occasionally, they are, and I feel a responsibility to be serious about safety in case we hit such a case that may impact the people who volunteer to serve on this committee.)
The trade-off, I think, would be being far more cautious about the cases they are able to view and their ability to review them unredacted. Even then, they would likely risk potential retaliation for people accused in some of the cases they are not able to review because they do not fall within their purview. The people we investigate in “bright line” cases are not always rational. But I would be less concerned about the exposure of those who chose not to disclose.
So, again, I don’t know the answer to your question - the legal arrangement being pursued now is based, I believe, on the expectation that this material remains confidential. But I do know that these people’s experiences will be documented and considered in whatever permanent processes may follow it. We’re looking to hire a contractor who will work to support them, and that contractor will be documenting their regular meetings to discuss the functioning of the group and potential for improvement. There’s no reason those meetings can’t be summarized without case details to share with the UCoC process (or, for that matter, even publicly on Meta). In fact, we could ask the chair to post the summaries with the use of a role account if that seemed more reliable than a post by the contractor. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:25, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Mdennis (WMF), this is helpful. Thank you for taking so much time to write this reply. I'll just note that my UCoC comment is less about formal minutes and more about establishing legitimacy and effectiveness of the UCoC committee when that gets going, both of which I think are essential for that project to be setup for success. But that's a down the road issue and might be better informed by the group once they have begun their work. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:47, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Maggie, above, you wrote (in relation to providing details to the accused) We have worked to become more specific especially with warnings issued in the last year, but it is true that specifics may be withheld when the need for protection seems overwhelming. Could you clarify the latter? Previous discussion seems to have indicated that only bare minimum details would be provided if the accuser had requested complete anonymity and even where there didn't appear to be any off-wiki activity (or risk of such) at all (and the accused's edits are obviously being monitored). This is in relevance to the temporary CRC and the areas it might be looking at, but it's also a likely flash point with the UCOC and ultimate instances there. In short, in cases where the need for protection isn't overwhelming, why aren't much more details being provided? - "overwhelming" seems to impose quite a high limit before evidence is restrained. I'd be concerned in an attempt to audit a case where I felt not just that information was lacking but there was a possibility it might be lacking due to disclosure rules. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:09, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Nosebagbear. I want to be sure I'm answering your question. :) I might be misunderstanding you. When I wrote that "We have worked to become more specific especially with warnings issued in the last year, but it is true that specifics may be withheld when the need for protection seems overwhelming" I was speaking in terms of the specificity of why we are issuing warnings to the recipients of such warnings. As an example, we do not offer such evidence when we have credible belief that a person is issuing off-wiki threats to a user and especially when there is evidence this person knows where that person is. In such cases, we default to protecting the person who reaches out to us. Saying, "We know you threatened somebody" might very well trigger the threat.
The committee should be receiving case files unredacted. One potential exception here might be, say, if we have a blackmail threat based around doxxing, which we have in the past -- suppose somebody attempts to unduly influence a functionary by threatening to reveal personal information they have (or think they have - they might be wrong; it's happened) about them to influence their on-wiki actions. This is clearly a violation of our Terms of Use, but there might be circumstances that would make it fall into "borderline." In such case, I would imagine we would redact the personal information from the case file. But we have no blanket policies as yet - this is just me thinking of a case where the committee's file might be redacted. (The committee won't be reviewing bright line cases, like allegations of sexual assault at an event, so such information would not need to be shared or redacted.)
@Mdennis (WMF):, thank you for your response. The second half wasn't my concern but all sounds reasonable. The first half was perhaps in the right area but not specifically a response - I'll attempt to clarify. In my discussions with WMF staffers, they seem firm advocates of keeping almost all accusation information to themselves when the accuser is concerned and wants it that way. You indicate that in cases of off-wiki threats you wouldn't pass that information, which is fine. However, there's quite a big gap between the two - the staffers' viewpoint would seem to indicate that nearly all information within an accusation should be held back even were the case purely on-wiki, without indication of it "bleeding" offsite. Your phrasing suggested more information was being provided, but I wanted to ask should most information of an accusation not be provided to the accused in on-wiki cases, where there isn't evidence of the possibility of off-wiki action?. Nosebagbear (talk)
Ah, I see, Nosebagbear; yes, that's a bigger question than the committee, but a good one in terms of Trust & Safety's ongoing operations. :) Hopefully I'll answer you better. While what is shared with accused is also under the determination of legal counsel, I'd say it probably depends in part on whether the action being taken is a warning or a ban and probably also whether we ever again modify the way we handle bans (into whatever form). This gets into the slider scale of whether a case is borderline or bright line, though.
I'm going to offer context. (I've always been wordy; sorry.) This can explain why you will observe evolution of thought about this work even within staff. :) Our movement as a Foundation into borderline cases was gradual - we were created to deal with pretty intense stuff. As a result, when we first started moving into the borderline because things crossed our desk that we couldn't not do something about having seen them even though they weren't the same kind of "intense stuff", we were working with the tools and policies that we already had: study the situation, ban if appropriate, provide legal notice to the individual against whom we acted, post it on Meta, never talk about it to anybody (with a few exceptions, such as talking about enforcing the bans with the stewards). As borderline cases started appearing more and more, we tried creating new tools and policies to deal with them. These range from warning some contributors instead of just banning them to supporting a mediation function within AffCom to talking more to functionary bodies about some of the cases under review to creating the temporary bans that the community later asked us to dismantle. (I was out when that RFC happened, but I was here when the decision was made to try temporary bans, and I know why that decision was made. It was the tension of knowing what to do with allegations that were valid, where we felt a responsibility to act, but where we hoped and believed that the community members being brought to our attention could change their behaviors despite having continued the behaviors after we sent them a warning. In the past, if a person continued to generate valid complaints after a warning, we had no other tool but to ban them forever.) This committee is a new tool; it means that our bans are not necessarily forever for borderline cases. It also means our refusal to ban is not necessarily the end of the line for the many people who ask us to act and on whose requests we take no action.
I'm hopeful that the UCoC escalation pathways will make it easier for Trust & Safety to step out of the borderlands (as it were) and back into the bright line, with somebody to take over those other cases. In my opinion, "bright line" cases should never have access to information that might lead them to guess who brought them to our attention. Even if their behavior has only been on wiki, these cases are potentially too risky, and the right to safety needs to be a basic one on our sites. With the cases that may be more borderline, certainly if a user's behavior is not clearcut enough that the Foundation determines to ban them, but instead warns them, they should (imo) always have access to enough information to understand the concerns and address them, including links to on-wiki behavior that is problematic. If the Foundation does issue a ban, it will probably be case-by-case. We try to give people who are banned enough information to understand why, but by default we do not anticipate a return to the projects of such people. I imagine our practices will evolve as we start to understand how many of those people actually want to come back and perhaps as we start to understand how many of our cases are "borderline." We have not been codifying them this way in the past because this committee did not exist, but will likely ask our lawyers who provide final reviews of all cases to identify them against a framework of legal responsibility, which will allow us to property track and report how many of which kind of case we handle. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As a completely distinct question, the charter reads [overturning] may result from a conclusion that the matter should have been handled at the community level. In such cases, the issue may be remanded for community review, where an appropriate body exists to review the same. Is that indicating that communities without an ARBCOM (or v.similar) will not be able to hear remanded cases? Most communities have an ANI-equivalent that handles the large majority of contestable cases. Are on-wiki cases not subject to referral to them where no ARBCOM exists, given that case files aren't being passed in any case? Nosebagbear (talk)
That's not the intention; the difference is that the committee will not reach out to the body to ask them whether they should take it on. For instance, if the committee believes a matter shouldn't have been handled by the Foundation but is still worthy of community governance, they can ask an arbitration committee or other appropriate body to look into the matter independently. Individuals have the option of seeking community pathways open to them regardless. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:40, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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