12 ms·

Wikimedia Foundation: Universal Code of Conduct/Draft Review

30 points by g42gregory 6y ago

Mizza 6y ago
Asking for discussion: Is there a point at which imposing a specific set of left-wing American cultural values upon functionally autonomous communities elsewhere around the world becomes a form of cultural imperialism? To leave a more positive comment, I'm glad that the scourge of deletionism is addressed in here.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bawolff 6y ago
  > Asking for discussion: Is there a point at which imposing a specific set of left-wing American cultural values Which "left-wing american values" are those specificly (I'm not american, i'm honestly not sure which values you think are american left wing ones)? Whether or not its appropriate for WMF to centerally impose behavioural standards has been argued back and forth for probsbly about a decade at this point. (Not saying either side is right or "won", just that both sides have yelled at each other a lot) > To leave a more positive comment, I'm glad that the scourge of deletionism is addressed in here. How so? I don't see anything related to that in this document.
  - Mizza 6y ago
    I'm not trying to personally nitpick any of the individual points, since there's already a process in place for that discussion, I'm just asking if it ever crosses a line into cultural imperialism, and if so, where is that line? > Which "left-wing american values" are those specificly Without even mentioning any specifics of the documents, I guess I'm referring to the general trend of the HR-ification of everything. There has been a huge creation of rule systems which give elites and managers more weapons to bludgeon people and groups who want to operate differently than the universal corporate structure, largely as a way of preventing the need to save face in the case of social media outrage. One thing I have noticed from multiple real life experiences: this mentality rots organizations. The HR-minded are more concerned with creating an impossible perfect organization that crashes into the ground than creating an imperfect organization that actually produces something of tangible social value. Re: deletionism, it includes this: > Repeated removal of Wikimedia content without appropriate peer review or constructive feedback for improvement Which hopefully could help address drive-by speedy deletions.
    - disposekinetics 6y ago
      > Without even mentioning any specifics of the documents, I guess I'm referring to the general trend of the HR-ification of everything. There has been a huge creation of rule systems which give elites and managers more weapons to bludgeon people and groups who want to operate differently than the universal corporate structure, largely as a way of preventing the need to save face in the case of social media outrage. This is such a strange trend. Organizations are adopting American style progressive ethos, but not via their explicit values but via inserted HR processes that seem to be en vogue. > One thing I have noticed from multiple real life experiences: this mentality rots organizations. The HR-minded are more concerned with creating an impossible perfect organization that crashes into the ground than creating an imperfect organization that actually produces something of tangible social value. It is hard not to see this as a form of entryism in that the people pushing these polices are looking for the power and control without the cost of creation. However, I think there is a far more cynical approach. A huge company can bare the cost of socially expensive HR-values but a small open source team cannot afford the toll of the policies.
      - Mizza 6y ago
        > This is such a strange trend. Organizations are adopting American style progressive ethos, but not via their explicit values but via inserted HR processes that seem to be en vogue. Exactly. I think it's obviously dangerous to allow the corporate class to take the moral high ground. Apple will gladly publicly support any progressive social program of the week - as long as there is no need for _any_ material change - but will still use slave labour to produce their products.[1] This is now 100% universal. [1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-china-xinjiang-factory-nike-shoe-apple-dell-volkswagen-a9366956.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-...
    - bawolff 6y ago
      Fair enough, ossification of rules and too much beurocracy can kill a project. People already posit that rule explosion is linked to a decline in wikipedia. > Re: deletionism, it includes this: I think usually deletionism more implies following proper procedure and due process to delete things (including speedy deletion if the page fits the criteria). I think the code of conduct doc is more concerned with deletions as targeted abuse of power, which is a bit different. Deciding what should be deleted and should not be is something highly vested in the local community and i doubt anyone would want to try to attempt to centralize it
- RobLach 6y ago
  Define "left-wing American cultural values". As far as I can tell, "left-wing Amerians" are in constant debate about such values amongst themselves, to a fault.
  - Mizza 6y ago
    I mean, the idea of a Universal Code of Conduct, as far as I can tell, is actually an interesting new one. However, it reads like it's been written entirely by Californian twenty somethings, and it looks like there is no input from foreign language users, only direct translations from English. I would _love_ to see what people would come up with if this was a different process where each language came up with their own, and then there was a process of mediation. But, AFAIK, that didn't happen, because these things always come from the top down as a way of creating and solidifying control for the educated upper class types.
- hkt 6y ago
  I'm in the UK and am happy to report the values are not American. Ask some Aussies or Kiwis and I'm sure they'd say the same. I'd also remark that perhaps you wouldn't be so quick to comment in such a trite way if Wiki had instead make a statement on respecting people's sexualities. Once controversial, now widely accepted as a facet of who people are, and originally a darling cause of the left. It's recognised as a human rights issue, which is to say it has outgrown reasonable politics. I look forward to gender identity doing the same.
  - Mizza 6y ago
    This isn't in any way about gender identity, it's about the fact that there _isn't_ a universal values system. You mentioned the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand - do you notice a pattern there? Throw in Canada and you've perfectly recreated the FIVEEYES international surveillance pact members. It's a culturally homogeneous group. I think you'd get very different results if you were trying to come up with a universal conduct framework and you actually bothered including Russia, China, India, Venuzuela.. Of course, they weren't properly asked and provided no input , because this is a subtle form of upper class Western imperialism.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      Of course there is not a universal value system. If you asked someone from nazi germany how they felt about jewish people editing wikipedia, they would probably respond negatively. Does it follow that we should care? Creating Wikipedia is fundamentally a political act. It subscribes to views like information should be free, amateurs can compete with professionals in information compilation, articles should attempt to neutrally represent the facts, etc. These are all ideological views, many of them controversial. Why should we succumb to moral relativism when deciding on how wikipedians ought to collaborate, when we don't subscribe to moral relativism in other aspects of the creation of wikipedia. To put another way: being neutral in article content doesn't imply that we have to be neutral in literally every organizatiinal aspect. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
throwawaysea 6y ago
Can Wikipedia really be a fair, neutral, and global resource if its code of conduct includes political and cultural positions? For example this code of conduct mentions gender identities and pronouns, a topic that is the subject of significant debate and also very much a product of the American progressive perspective rather than universal. Whether a trans woman is actually a woman is not only controversial (rather than decided), but also a political war over a definition change in one language and culture. There are other cultures where there are instead three categories of gender identities, and the existence of these concepts predates western civilizations even. Given there is this diversity of opinions, it seems strange to require participants in Wikimedia adhere to one set of views.
- bawolff 6y ago
  There have always been behavioural requirements in Wikimedia. The obvious example is that vandals don't get to roam free because blocking them would be non neutral. Its also always been the case that if you are enough of an asshole, you will eventually get blocked. It can't possibly work otherwise - a social project that fails to prevent antisocial behaviour cannot flourish. Having no behaviour standards is just as much a failure case as having the thought police. So whether or not we do this is not new. The question is where is the line. I am of the view that requiring people to not engage in bigoted behaviour that is likely to drive away a specific group of people, is reasonable.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  I think you're just going to accept that there are going to be some things that Wikipedia and friends are going to assume as the state. An example is that maybe you think people whose name starts with R are morons who shouldn't be able to add to Wikipedia. Well, Wikipedia, the cultural imperialist that it is, will choose not to entertain this, even if you find a sizable following in some nation. In any case, this one variant of "Can an encyclopedia be objective?" is not a particularly interesting¹ angle. It's just folded into the general question of how Wikipedia can be objective. For instance, WP has to cover criticism of itself and one can hope that we can aggregate that into some semblance of neutrality. ¹ In the ... mathematical sense of interesting. Like talking about characteristics about a+b√2 that are all shared with a+b√p which we've already discussed.
Qub3d 6y ago
To get a sense of the community consensus, it is worth browsing the General Comments section: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Draft_review#General_comments https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Code_of_Condu... Additionally, the overall project page (not just the draft review) offers the foundation's arguments for why they believe this needs to be made: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
renewiltord 6y ago
Seems generally harmless. As usual there's the natural tension in self-organizing groups between ensuring inclusiveness while not weaponizing the tools used to protect inclusiveness. No doubt someone will succeed in the latter with the UCoC. No doubt in its absence someone would have abused their position unshackled by these explicit norms. It's just an optimization problem. But that's just the nature of the thing. The network of WMF controlled sites is just far too big now for efficient auto-cooperation, which often happens. So now we have rules to mediate. The rules don't seem particularly onerous, though doubtless one day someone will find out that I advocated against organ donation on Twitter and drag me through the mud and request a rewrite of all my en-wiki contributions. But until then, I've found en-wiki very easy to contribute to. I think the norms around picture copyright inclusion are super strict but everything else is easy. I've been a member for more than a decade and auto-confirmed for some long time so maybe that's it, but honestly I don't interact with other people at all, and the other day I looked back and I haven't been reverted once over that period.
- ars 6y ago
  It doesn't really address the actual problems on Wikipedia - things like people "owning pages", or people contributing incorrect information, or people appointing themselves as the arbiter of what is and isn't useful (or correct) information. In my entire time contributing I've never even once, been aware of the other person's physical characteristics, or social standing. So it seems rather pointless to include those (although I guess harmless). What I would like for a COC is things like not demeaning other people's contributions by just removing them with barely even a comment, or just a dismissive one.
  - chris_wot 6y ago
    I nearly died because of bullying. One of the worst moments of my life, obviously it exacerbated an existing condition but it was terrible. A CoC would definitely have helped.
    - andrewxdiamond 6y ago
motohagiography 6y ago
The objection I have to CoC documents is that by design they reward people who litigate language to push agendas instead of participating in the community they are designed to support based on genuine welcome. This legalism empowers people who specialize in exploiting leverage to achieve governance, while policing and alienatating contributors. In this sense, CoC's are an anti-pattern that exacerbates the very problem they ostensibly solve. In Canada, we have a colloquialism that says, "well, that opens up the constitution," which means that when you open up founding principles for change, every obscure chancer takes a shot at getting their niche interest encoded into it. Builders aren't engaged in political struggles, but political strugglers' whole existence is around finding new communities to exploit and govern. For Wikipedia to spend time on this seems like bike shedding, and there is literally no upside to appeasing the social litigants who benefit most from code of conduct pseudo-legalisms. Products are not countries and they are not societies. They are things, which people make and take responsibility for. Forfeiting responsibility and discretion to these exogenous power struggles arguably betrays the people whose work makes it valuable.
- pyuser583 6y ago
  The objection I have against CoCs is that there’s no actual evidence they work.
- sleepysysadmin 6y ago
  Your assertion that people will abuse the code of conduct of push agendas is interesting. I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm not seeing that as different. Wikipedia already pushes agendas; they don't need the code of conduct to push those agendas.
  - motohagiography 6y ago
    The shortest version of this is: a set of principles provides a basis for recourse and a means for people to reconcile their differences, but a code-of-conduct is like just throwing them a bag of hammers and knives to police each other with. The only rational response to a code-of-conduct accusation is not reconciliation, but litigation by rejecting the legitimacy and standing of both the code and the accuser, by any and all means necessary, and in this sense they are a foundation of conflict that produces permanent struggle.

30 points by g42gregory 6y ago

Asking for discussion: Is there a point at which imposing a specific set of left-wing American cultural values upon functionally autonomous communities elsewhere around the world becomes a form of cultural imperialism? To leave a more positive comment, I'm glad that the scourge of deletionism is addressed in here.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bawolff 6y ago
> Asking for discussion: Is there a point at which imposing a specific set of left-wing American cultural values Which "left-wing american values" are those specificly (I'm not american, i'm honestly not sure which values you think are american left wing ones)? Whether or not its appropriate for WMF to centerally impose behavioural standards has been argued back and forth for probsbly about a decade at this point. (Not saying either side is right or "won", just that both sides have yelled at each other a lot) > To leave a more positive comment, I'm glad that the scourge of deletionism is addressed in here. How so? I don't see anything related to that in this document.
- Mizza 6y ago
  I'm not trying to personally nitpick any of the individual points, since there's already a process in place for that discussion, I'm just asking if it ever crosses a line into cultural imperialism, and if so, where is that line? > Which "left-wing american values" are those specificly Without even mentioning any specifics of the documents, I guess I'm referring to the general trend of the HR-ification of everything. There has been a huge creation of rule systems which give elites and managers more weapons to bludgeon people and groups who want to operate differently than the universal corporate structure, largely as a way of preventing the need to save face in the case of social media outrage. One thing I have noticed from multiple real life experiences: this mentality rots organizations. The HR-minded are more concerned with creating an impossible perfect organization that crashes into the ground than creating an imperfect organization that actually produces something of tangible social value. Re: deletionism, it includes this: > Repeated removal of Wikimedia content without appropriate peer review or constructive feedback for improvement Which hopefully could help address drive-by speedy deletions.
  - disposekinetics 6y ago
    > Without even mentioning any specifics of the documents, I guess I'm referring to the general trend of the HR-ification of everything. There has been a huge creation of rule systems which give elites and managers more weapons to bludgeon people and groups who want to operate differently than the universal corporate structure, largely as a way of preventing the need to save face in the case of social media outrage. This is such a strange trend. Organizations are adopting American style progressive ethos, but not via their explicit values but via inserted HR processes that seem to be en vogue. > One thing I have noticed from multiple real life experiences: this mentality rots organizations. The HR-minded are more concerned with creating an impossible perfect organization that crashes into the ground than creating an imperfect organization that actually produces something of tangible social value. It is hard not to see this as a form of entryism in that the people pushing these polices are looking for the power and control without the cost of creation. However, I think there is a far more cynical approach. A huge company can bare the cost of socially expensive HR-values but a small open source team cannot afford the toll of the policies.
    - Mizza 6y ago
      > This is such a strange trend. Organizations are adopting American style progressive ethos, but not via their explicit values but via inserted HR processes that seem to be en vogue. Exactly. I think it's obviously dangerous to allow the corporate class to take the moral high ground. Apple will gladly publicly support any progressive social program of the week - as long as there is no need for _any_ material change - but will still use slave labour to produce their products.[1] This is now 100% universal. [1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-china-xinjiang-factory-nike-shoe-apple-dell-volkswagen-a9366956.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-...
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Fair enough, ossification of rules and too much beurocracy can kill a project. People already posit that rule explosion is linked to a decline in wikipedia. > Re: deletionism, it includes this: I think usually deletionism more implies following proper procedure and due process to delete things (including speedy deletion if the page fits the criteria). I think the code of conduct doc is more concerned with deletions as targeted abuse of power, which is a bit different. Deciding what should be deleted and should not be is something highly vested in the local community and i doubt anyone would want to try to attempt to centralize it
RobLach 6y ago
Define "left-wing American cultural values". As far as I can tell, "left-wing Amerians" are in constant debate about such values amongst themselves, to a fault.
- Mizza 6y ago
  I mean, the idea of a Universal Code of Conduct, as far as I can tell, is actually an interesting new one. However, it reads like it's been written entirely by Californian twenty somethings, and it looks like there is no input from foreign language users, only direct translations from English. I would _love_ to see what people would come up with if this was a different process where each language came up with their own, and then there was a process of mediation. But, AFAIK, that didn't happen, because these things always come from the top down as a way of creating and solidifying control for the educated upper class types.
hkt 6y ago
I'm in the UK and am happy to report the values are not American. Ask some Aussies or Kiwis and I'm sure they'd say the same. I'd also remark that perhaps you wouldn't be so quick to comment in such a trite way if Wiki had instead make a statement on respecting people's sexualities. Once controversial, now widely accepted as a facet of who people are, and originally a darling cause of the left. It's recognised as a human rights issue, which is to say it has outgrown reasonable politics. I look forward to gender identity doing the same.
- Mizza 6y ago
  This isn't in any way about gender identity, it's about the fact that there _isn't_ a universal values system. You mentioned the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand - do you notice a pattern there? Throw in Canada and you've perfectly recreated the FIVEEYES international surveillance pact members. It's a culturally homogeneous group. I think you'd get very different results if you were trying to come up with a universal conduct framework and you actually bothered including Russia, China, India, Venuzuela.. Of course, they weren't properly asked and provided no input , because this is a subtle form of upper class Western imperialism.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Of course there is not a universal value system. If you asked someone from nazi germany how they felt about jewish people editing wikipedia, they would probably respond negatively. Does it follow that we should care? Creating Wikipedia is fundamentally a political act. It subscribes to views like information should be free, amateurs can compete with professionals in information compilation, articles should attempt to neutrally represent the facts, etc. These are all ideological views, many of them controversial. Why should we succumb to moral relativism when deciding on how wikipedians ought to collaborate, when we don't subscribe to moral relativism in other aspects of the creation of wikipedia. To put another way: being neutral in article content doesn't imply that we have to be neutral in literally every organizatiinal aspect. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

throwawaysea 6y ago

Can Wikipedia really be a fair, neutral, and global resource if its code of conduct includes political and cultural positions? For example this code of conduct mentions gender identities and pronouns, a topic that is the subject of significant debate and also very much a product of the American progressive perspective rather than universal. Whether a trans woman is actually a woman is not only controversial (rather than decided), but also a political war over a definition change in one language and culture. There are other cultures where there are instead three categories of gender identities, and the existence of these concepts predates western civilizations even. Given there is this diversity of opinions, it seems strange to require participants in Wikimedia adhere to one set of views.

bawolff 6y ago
There have always been behavioural requirements in Wikimedia. The obvious example is that vandals don't get to roam free because blocking them would be non neutral. Its also always been the case that if you are enough of an asshole, you will eventually get blocked. It can't possibly work otherwise - a social project that fails to prevent antisocial behaviour cannot flourish. Having no behaviour standards is just as much a failure case as having the thought police. So whether or not we do this is not new. The question is where is the line. I am of the view that requiring people to not engage in bigoted behaviour that is likely to drive away a specific group of people, is reasonable.
renewiltord 6y ago
I think you're just going to accept that there are going to be some things that Wikipedia and friends are going to assume as the state. An example is that maybe you think people whose name starts with R are morons who shouldn't be able to add to Wikipedia. Well, Wikipedia, the cultural imperialist that it is, will choose not to entertain this, even if you find a sizable following in some nation. In any case, this one variant of "Can an encyclopedia be objective?" is not a particularly interesting¹ angle. It's just folded into the general question of how Wikipedia can be objective. For instance, WP has to cover criticism of itself and one can hope that we can aggregate that into some semblance of neutrality. ¹ In the ... mathematical sense of interesting. Like talking about characteristics about a+b√2 that are all shared with a+b√p which we've already discussed.

Qub3d 6y ago

To get a sense of the community consensus, it is worth browsing the General Comments section: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Draft_review#General_comments https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Code_of_Condu... Additionally, the overall project page (not just the draft review) offers the foundation's arguments for why they believe this needs to be made: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct

renewiltord 6y ago

Seems generally harmless. As usual there's the natural tension in self-organizing groups between ensuring inclusiveness while not weaponizing the tools used to protect inclusiveness. No doubt someone will succeed in the latter with the UCoC. No doubt in its absence someone would have abused their position unshackled by these explicit norms. It's just an optimization problem. But that's just the nature of the thing. The network of WMF controlled sites is just far too big now for efficient auto-cooperation, which often happens. So now we have rules to mediate. The rules don't seem particularly onerous, though doubtless one day someone will find out that I advocated against organ donation on Twitter and drag me through the mud and request a rewrite of all my en-wiki contributions. But until then, I've found en-wiki very easy to contribute to. I think the norms around picture copyright inclusion are super strict but everything else is easy. I've been a member for more than a decade and auto-confirmed for some long time so maybe that's it, but honestly I don't interact with other people at all, and the other day I looked back and I haven't been reverted once over that period.

ars 6y ago
It doesn't really address the actual problems on Wikipedia - things like people "owning pages", or people contributing incorrect information, or people appointing themselves as the arbiter of what is and isn't useful (or correct) information. In my entire time contributing I've never even once, been aware of the other person's physical characteristics, or social standing. So it seems rather pointless to include those (although I guess harmless). What I would like for a COC is things like not demeaning other people's contributions by just removing them with barely even a comment, or just a dismissive one.
- chris_wot 6y ago
  I nearly died because of bullying. One of the worst moments of my life, obviously it exacerbated an existing condition but it was terrible. A CoC would definitely have helped.
  - andrewxdiamond 6y ago

motohagiography 6y ago

The objection I have to CoC documents is that by design they reward people who litigate language to push agendas instead of participating in the community they are designed to support based on genuine welcome. This legalism empowers people who specialize in exploiting leverage to achieve governance, while policing and alienatating contributors. In this sense, CoC's are an anti-pattern that exacerbates the very problem they ostensibly solve. In Canada, we have a colloquialism that says, "well, that opens up the constitution," which means that when you open up founding principles for change, every obscure chancer takes a shot at getting their niche interest encoded into it. Builders aren't engaged in political struggles, but political strugglers' whole existence is around finding new communities to exploit and govern. For Wikipedia to spend time on this seems like bike shedding, and there is literally no upside to appeasing the social litigants who benefit most from code of conduct pseudo-legalisms. Products are not countries and they are not societies. They are things, which people make and take responsibility for. Forfeiting responsibility and discretion to these exogenous power struggles arguably betrays the people whose work makes it valuable.

pyuser583 6y ago
The objection I have against CoCs is that there’s no actual evidence they work.
sleepysysadmin 6y ago
Your assertion that people will abuse the code of conduct of push agendas is interesting. I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm not seeing that as different. Wikipedia already pushes agendas; they don't need the code of conduct to push those agendas.
- motohagiography 6y ago
  The shortest version of this is: a set of principles provides a basis for recourse and a means for people to reconcile their differences, but a code-of-conduct is like just throwing them a bag of hammers and knives to police each other with. The only rational response to a code-of-conduct accusation is not reconciliation, but litigation by rejecting the legitimacy and standing of both the code and the accuser, by any and all means necessary, and in this sense they are a foundation of conflict that produces permanent struggle.