Universal Code of Conduct/Discussions/East and South Africa EDGR meeting

Summary

A meeting was held on Google meet on Friday 24th September 2021, to gather feedback from volunteers in the east and south Africa wiki communities about the UCoC Enforcement Draft Guideline. About 12 people joined this meeting. There were participants from Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa. The discussion centred around the open questions asked by the drafting committee. Below is the feedback gathered from the conversation.

On Escalation:

• Some people on the call were in support of having local committees that will process complaints first hand. While one person suggested that there should be a committee for each language project to process complaints, another person suggested that a regional committee (something similar to the new grants regional committees) will be much more realistic. He supported his point with the reason that some local language communities are very small with very few active editors. As a result, this could lead to a situation where the same active Wikimedians who review articles will be the ones processing complaints and this could lead to the possibility for decisions taken to be biased. And in the end newcomers may feel reluctant to submit complaints.
• Some people also supported the idea of having a global U4C committee. However, they were of the view that it would be better if regional committees process complaints and then special cases are escalated to the global committee because according to them, the problems African communities face are distinct from what first world countries face.
• One person suggested that there should be an option available for people to decide which committee they want to process or submit their complaints to; whether the global U4C committee or a local level U4C committee.

On Appeal

• One person suggested that appeals should also be processed by the regional committee and special cases should be escalated to the global committee.

On to what extent should individual Wikimedia projects be allowed to decide how they enforce the UCoC?

• Someone suggested that the individual projects should be allowed to decide how they enforce the UCoC based on their local policies although there will be a problem for projects which do not have local policies.
• Another person suggested that some autonomy should be given to the individual projects to come up with their own policies but these policies should be built on the baseline,the UCoC.

On Composition of the U4C Committee

• One person suggested a periodic change in members of the global committee, stating that there should be, for instance, an annual process to choose the members of the committee. In addition, he suggested that members of the U4C committee should be diverse in terms of regional and gender representation. And this point was supported by some people on the call.
• Another person pointed out that U4C committee members should be competent enough to be able to judge a situation whether there has been a violation of the UCoC or not. And according to him, one way to ensure this is by setting in place minimum eligibility requirements for members. He suggested that committee members should have enough knowledge about the Wikimedia movement, the different roles(rights), bye laws and policies that govern the movement.
• It was also suggested that intensive training should be given to committee members to enable them become capable of processing all kinds of complaints and resolving conflicts.