Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard

←Board of Trustees

Board noticeboard

Archives →

Welcome to the Board of Trustees' noticeboard. This is a message board for discussing issues related to Wikimedia Foundation governance and policies, and related Board work. Please post new messages at the bottom of the page and sign them.

• For details of the Board's role and processes, see the Board Handbook.
• Threads older than 90 days will be automatically archived by ArchiverBot.

Archives

---

Board statement posted at Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram

Below, for archival purposes and for discussion at this noticeboard, is a copy of a statement issued by the WMF Board and originally published on the English-language Wikipedia at: Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram.

Everyone,

The Board is a deliberative body and we strongly believe that it is important that we consider issues of high importance thoroughly. We realize that for many of our community members our silence has been frustrating, but we genuinely used this time.

A recent ban of an editor by the Wikimedia Foundation under the Terms of Use on the English Wikipedia has generated discussions and debate. There were calls for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees to respond to the discussions.

Almost three years ago, the board published a strong statement against toxic behaviors and directed the Wikimedia Foundation teams to work to make Wikimedia communities safer for all good faith editors. A safe and respectful environment is not only one of our five pillars, it will also allow for more diverse voices to join our communities, bringing new knowledge with them.

While we remain fully committed to this position, we also recognize the critical importance of allowing communities to be self-governing and for the movement, as a whole, to make high-level decisions. While we realize that the Wikimedia Foundation staff did not take this decision lightly, we also believe that we need the right processes to reach the right results.

It is also evident that existing processes within the communities and T&S have failed, as we have cases which obviously need some form of sanctions, in which sanctions have not occurred.

We believe that the communities should be able to deal with these types of situations and should take this as a wake-up call to improve our enforcement processes to deal with so-called "unblockables". In fact, those in a position of authority should be held to a higher standard. We also recognize that the communities may need support to carry out these needed steps.

This could include funding for training of community members involved in dealing with harassment or helping long term contributors correct behaviors that are inappropriate. We support the provision of the necessary resources to allow the community and its representatives to discuss these issues with the board and staff members.

Even the larger projects struggle to effectively address the most difficult and controversial cases. There is a gap between our movement principles and practices. This is an issue we need to solve together. That is a task that needs to be led by the communities, with the support of staff and guidance from the board.

As such, we have asked Katherine Maher, CEO of Wikimedia Foundation, to work closely with staff in support of our communities to identify the shortcomings of current processes and to propose solutions. This could include current and upcoming initiatives, as well as re-evaluating or adding community input to the two new office action policy tools (temporary and partial Foundation bans).

We recognize that T&S has established a track record for managing highly complex situations. While the aforementioned conversations between T&S and our communities take place, we recommend T&S focus on the most severe cases, for instance: the handling of legal issues, threats of violence, cross-wiki abuse, and child protection issues until consultation and agreement between T&S and the community are achieved.

Any changes in the long-established practices of dealing with toxic behavior within the communities should be introduced carefully and only following close collaboration with the communities. As discussed above, we have directed the Foundation to take on that conversation.

We support ArbCom reviewing this ban. We have asked T&S to work with the English Wikipedia ArbCom to review this case. We encourage Arbcom to assess the length and scope of Fram’s ban, based on the case materials that can be released to the committee. While the review is ongoing, Fram’s ban will remain in effect, although Arbcom and T&S may need ways to allow Fram to participate in the proceedings.

We do not consider any of the admin resignations related to the current events to be “under a cloud” (under suspicion) though we also realize that the final decision with respect to this lies with the community.

The Board views this as part of a much-needed community debate on toxic behavior. In spite of the considerable disruption this has caused for many, we hope this serves as a catalyzing moment for us to move forward together to ensure the health and vitality of our communities.

The chair has formally delegated this matter to the vice chair and was not involved in the issuing of this statement or in any of the deliberations that led to our response.

On behalf of the board,

1. Schiste (talk) 23:02, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
2. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:14, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
3. Pundit|utter 04:57, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Discussion on en-Wikipedia of the above statement is primarily taking place here. Carcharoth (talk) 16:47, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

13 years - inaccessibility for sight-impaired editors.

I would like to draw the Board's attention to this thread started by @Guy Macon:. Guy sets out the problem - and the lack of effort from the Foundation in addressing it - very clearly. I have asked if anyone on the Board has a responsibility for equalities issues such as this. I would expect an organization such as this to have a lead member assigned for equalities. DuncanHill (talk) 19:48, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi there. The Board recently approved the WMF Medium Term Plan, where Platform evolution is very much a top priority. The Core Platform Team explicitely includes increasing accesibility and usability among its outcomes. Kind regards, Raystorm (talk) 18:36, 11 July 2019 (UTC)