If you are going to quote Chatham House Rule, then look it up first please.
The secretive behaviour of the TCC, along with the habit of choosing to
suppress evidence or answer questions, to the stage where WMF employees do
not want to explain what they read with their own eyes for fear of falling
foul of extream interpretations of the CoC, even when originally the
incident was a public published record, is way more paranoid than applying
CHR.
The top level stated values of our community and the WMF are explicitly to
remain as open and transparent as possible. Recent incidents involving the
TCC and the apparent worsening relationships between unpaid volunteers and
WMF contractors/employees demonstrate a failure to meet those ethical and
good governance considerations. Hiding behind an anonymous email address is
merely the most obvious anti-transparency measure. You would think that TCC
members are worried about putting their names against their own Committee's
actions.
"At a meeting held under the Chatham House Rule, anyone who comes to the
meeting is free to use information from the discussion, but is not allowed
to reveal who made any comment. It is designed to increase openness of
discussion." See
Fae (from a mobile phone)
On Mon, 25 Jun 2018, 11:04 David Cuenca Tudela, <dacuetu(a)gmail.com> wrote:
@Nemo: It could be that the priority change was not
seen as aggressive, and
probably it was not initially as we have the "be bold" tradition. However,
that changes as the issue heats up and becomes an edit war. In this case it
didn't get to that point (less than 3 reverts, although the reverts might
be perceived more strongly in Phabricator, and because the person doing
them had a position of power). Linguistically it is also challenging
because maybe the person using the word "troll" was not aware that it could
have been interpreted as "assuming bad faith". Even if an act is qualified
as "troll" there is some judgement about something that the author of the
action might have not intended.
It is not fair to put all the blame on WMF employees, they might be part of
the issue, but every coin has two sides. WMF employees could improve their
openness with the frustration they get from the community, and also the
community should be more willing to be constructive and understanding.
Probably neither the WMF employees nor the community is getting the help
needed to collaborate better, but whose role is to provide it?
I agree that normally the weakest suffer the most, and that somebody
(again, who?) should take the lead in this case to explain to the
contributor what happened and offer an apology.
@Fae: indeed friendly mediation seems more appropriate in this case, but
again, by who? The people involved in this case didn't have anywhere to go,
so I find it understandable that they resort to their only available option
right now.
If the TCC wants to create a friendly environment, they cannot tackle
unfriendliness in an unfriendly way (unless there are no other options, or
the gravity of the situation requires so).
I am not worried about the lack of transparency of the TCC, because
actually it should be done that way to protect its participants (cfr.
Chatham House Rule), but of course they could document how they reached
difficult decisions. It could be useful to assess future cases.
Micru
On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 11:19 AM Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The lack of transparency of TCC actions and
assessment processes is
troubling. TCC was supposed to be a means to handle serious misuse or
harassment, not to use steel boots to stamp out all "non-positivity".
Trivial cases like this should best be handled firstly by off project
grown-up mediation, rather than TCC warnings for which the next step may
be
a global ban.
Honestly, the TCC's actions have looked so authoritarian to my eyes, I
fear
I am adding evidence to a case for a permanent
ban of my account by
writing
non-positive words here. The TCC is guilty of
creating a hostile
environment that appears unwelcoming and threatens volunteers in all
"technical spaces".
Fae
On Sun, 24 Jun 2018, 22:46 MZMcBride, <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>Hello,
>Please refrain from name calling, the CoC has received some reports
about
> >users being offended by you calling them trolls. While those comments
> >might not have been malicious they are not constructive and do not
> >contribute to a welcoming environment for contributors.
> >
> >Best
> >
> >--
> >This email was sent by TechConductCommittee to MZMcBride by the "Email
> >this user" function at MediaWiki. If you reply to this email, your
email
> >will be sent directly to the original
sender, revealing your email
> >address to them.
>
> Wikimedia Foundation Inc. employees have blocked the ability of new
users
to report
bugs or file feature requests or even read the issue tracker.
But yes, please focus on me calling Andre a troll for resetting the
priority of <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T197550>. My single
comment
> ("andre__: Such a troll.") is clearly what contributes to an
unwelcoming
> environment for contributors, not blocking
them from reading the site
and
demanding
that they be vetted first. Great work, all.
A pseudo-focus on "civility" while you take a hard-line and skeptical
view
toward outsiders. Maybe these people are
auditioning for roles in the
Trump Administration. :-)
I'm mostly forwarding this garbage here so that there's some better and
more appropriate context when, in a few months, someone says "well, the
code of conduct committee has dealt with dozens of incidents! Clearly
it's
> necessary!" The people pushing this campaign for more bureaucracy have
> repeatedly declined to provide specifics about incidents because it's
> pretty obvious that nobody would take them seriously (and rightfully!)
if
there
were a clearer understanding of what they're actually doing.
Best!
MZMcBride
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