IRC office hours/Office hours 2015-09-18

Log

[15:00:04] <Maggie_Dennis> Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Community Advocacy office hour. There is no agenda here. We have the entire team on hand in case you'd like to talk about our work (or the weather or your favorite music). Otherwise, we may just sit quietly and work.
[15:00:20] <oxyacantha> hello everyone!
[15:00:22] <Maggie_Dennis> I'm Maggie, aka Moonriddengirl in volunteer mode. Other advocates want to identify?
[15:00:40] <Jamesofur> <-- James, Jamesofur as a volunteer
[15:00:42] * Jamesofur waves
[15:00:52] <Jan_telco> Moin
[15:00:52] <Jamesofur> (and Jalexander-WMF in staff account mode)
[15:00:54] <pearley> I'm Pat Earley, aka The Interior in volunteer mode. Hola!
[15:00:59] <Karen-WMF> Hi all :)I'm Karen, aka Fluffernutter. I just joined the team this week so this is my first office hour in an official capacity. I will try not to break anything!
[15:00:59] <JohnFLewis> so, Jamesofur - what's the weather like? :)
[15:01:03] <oxyacantha> I am Kalliope (WMF) aka Kalliope (volunteer capacity User:tsoukali)
[15:01:12] <Jamesofur> JohnFLewis: it's really very hot where we are this week
[15:01:20] <pearley> Muggy
[15:01:32] <Maggie_Dennis> We're having our teamoffsite. We're sat somewhat in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of the Tulsa business district. :)
[15:01:36] <Jamesofur> we've been doing an offsite and while they chose somewhere CHEAP it also happens to be... disturbingly hot
[15:01:53] <JohnFLewis> the cheap places always are
[15:02:17] <Maggie_Dennis> What's the weather like where you are, JohnFLewis?
[15:02:17] <Jamesofur> I know SF has almost perfect weather but... let's just say bringing the team there isn't cheap
[15:02:57] <JohnFLewis> Maggie_Dennis: the usual bland cloudly mix of cold but not freezing
[15:03:17] <JohnFLewis> which is the weather by UK law ironically :)
[15:03:21] <Maggie_Dennis> LOL!
[15:04:04] <Jamesofur> welcome actervoegsel
[15:05:26] <actervoegsel> hi Jamesofur
[15:05:39] * Karen-WMF sets out the coffee pot and the "welcome" sign
[15:05:40] <Jamesofur> I like this kind off office hours better, I feel less required to have something prepared and more like what my college office hours always were "drop by and ask questions, or not, we don't care"
[15:05:40] <Maggie_Dennis> Anybody have any questions about CA work? :) Life in general? The weather?
[15:07:00] <Negative24> whats a teamofsite?
[15:07:06] <Negative24> *off
[15:07:06] <Maggie_Dennis> Oh, a question!
[15:07:23] <Negative24> yes!
[15:07:26] <Maggie_Dennis> Negative24, our team is scattered all over the world. At least once a year, we come together in one place to do focused, intense work on projects. :)
[15:07:29] <Maggie_Dennis> This is that week.
[15:07:47] <Glaisher> Hmm.. Karen-WMF seems like a new name..
[15:08:15] <JohnFLewis> sort of a nice time so; Jamesofur Maggie_Dennis: either of you able to follow up https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90407 with lawyers or provide a stance? people will love to get a response on that :)
[15:08:28] <Karen-WMF> Glaisher: I just joined the WMF on Monday! You might have seen me around previously as Fluffernutter, though. I'm fairly active on enwp
[15:08:46] <JA95|bUsY> Could you explain what *intense* work are you on now?
[15:08:56] <Glaisher> :O
[15:08:59] <Glaisher> I see. :)
[15:09:14] <Maggie_Dennis> Sure. We are focusing on trust & safety processes and practices and on our outreach on harassment and other behavioral issues.
[15:09:33] <Maggie_Dennis> Those are our primary tasks for the week, as well as approaches for ensuring that community inquiries to the WMF are handled promptly.
[15:09:34] <actervoegsel> Karen-WMF: what's your function? replacing Philippe? :D
[15:09:41] <Jamesofur> JohnFLewis: I think the discussion there has generally gotten to the answer as I would say it. In general I don't think there is enough reason to do so
[15:10:23] <Jamesofur> and that doing so has relatively limited benefit
[15:11:03] <JohnFLewis> Jamesofur: could you comment that? since somehow CA has ownership of mailman :)
[15:11:25] <Karen-WMF> actervoegsel: Nah, no one can replace Philippe, and I am very much not stepping into anything resembling a management role like he had. I will be doing general CA support tasks - working with the Trust & Safety team, liaising between the communities and the WMF, and generally doing whatever else needs doing to let us help the people we help
[15:12:13] <Jamesofur> I'll put it on my list and comment next Tuesday/Wednesday after I'm back in office and ensure i have no other important sides of the story to answer :)
[15:12:28] <Jamesofur> JohnFLewis: ^ If you don't hear from me by Thursday poke me here or by email
[15:12:55] <JohnFLewis> Jamesofur: okay! I'll hold you to that
[15:12:59] <pearley> JA95|bUsY - some of the work on harassment is rather intense. We're doing work with the community on specific areas of the problem through working groups, conducting research, and planning community consusults.
[15:13:18] <pearley> consults I should say.
[15:13:46] <JA95|bUsY> You mean on-wiki harassments?
[15:13:47] <pearley> Here's some of the research work: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Online_harassment_resource_guide
[15:14:01] <oxyacantha> wiki-related harassment
[15:14:07] <JA95|bUsY> ah..
[15:14:50] * foks only now realises who oxyacantha is
[15:15:11] <pearley> Here's some research on support orgs: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Advocacy/Support
[15:15:48] <Jamesofur> foks: she hides
[15:15:55] <foks> :P
[15:16:21] <Jamesofur> she pronounces it amazingly too
[15:16:51] <Karen-WMF> (she's curled up on the floor of our meeting room right now with her laptop - she's pretty good at hiding irl too!)
[15:16:54] <Kalliope-WMF> that better?
[15:17:01] <Maggie_Dennis> These time offsites are a good chance to pull people out of hiding. :) Kalli has been working for the WMF for five months, and this is the first time I've met her in person!
[15:17:05] <Maggie_Dennis> time=team
[15:17:41] <Kalliope-WMF> working out of different continents does not facilitate frequent face-to-face time
[15:18:35] <Jamesofur> You say that Kalliope-WMF but I've seen you 3 out of the past 3 months ;)
[15:18:55] <Kalliope-WMF> Jamesofur, you are stalking me
[15:18:56] <Kalliope-WMF> :P
[15:19:01] <Jamesofur> fair
[15:21:33] <Jamesofur> Along with Kalli's work with Patrick on Harassment the T&S team is working on reworking our child pornography and protection policies, scalability options for global ban enforcement and LTA investigations into Orange Moody (the recent paid editing batch on enWiki) and a couple other users.
[15:21:54] <Jamesofur> T&S === Trust & Safety
[15:22:42] <foks> Kalliope-WMF, I was mostly joking haha
[15:22:56] <foks> I would ask more questions but I don't know what to ask!
[15:23:31] <Maggie_Dennis> No issues, foks. :) This is just time when we're here to talk if there's questions. :D
[15:23:44] <Jamesofur>  ;)
[15:23:51] <foks> I guess I could ask why "Trust & Safety"
[15:24:00] <Jamesofur> foks: why the name?
[15:24:02] <Maggie_Dennis> Why is it called "Trust & Safety"?
[15:24:02] <foks> and like, if that's moving to a deeper restructuring
[15:24:09] <foks> Well, why the change to that name
[15:24:20] <Maggie_Dennis> If so, that's the industry standard for the area of work. We're just calling it out explicitly.
[15:24:36] <foks> Ahh.
[15:24:37] <Maggie_Dennis> As to deeper restructuring, we have limited staffing to dedicate solely to that work (in fact, none - James and Kalli both still do CA stuff.)
[15:24:47] <Maggie_Dennis> But we do want to formalize the work and build structures for future expansion.
[15:25:00] <foks> Cool.
[15:25:13] <Jamesofur> I've called myself and my work that way for the past year or two, but mostly because it's become more and more the standard name ( see twitter for example https://about.twitter.com/careers/teams/trust-and-safety )
[15:25:25] <Jamesofur> though it's only been recent that we actually wrote it down as official :D
[15:25:35] <Kalliope-WMF> foks, a lot of the work related to the safety of our community requires a lot of time and designated people to see it through
[15:25:43] <Maggie_Dennis> We're connecting more broadly with external organizations on this. James and Kalli for instance recently attended the "Crimes Against Children" conference in Dallas.
[15:26:18] * foks nods
[15:26:19] <Kalliope-WMF> all platforms that allow their users to interact have a designated team focusing on that
[15:26:39] <Maggie_Dennis> They came back with some good contact and some good ideas. One of James's goals for next quarter is strengthening our policy on child safety related to images and exploitation on our sites.
[15:26:58] <foks> Ah.
[15:27:33] <geniice> You mean you are actualy going to do an in house scan for hidden .RARs and the like?
[15:28:00] <harej> Hi friends. 1) welcome aboard, Karen! 2) have you figured out yet how to make handling wiki harassment issues scalable, or is that your offsite challenge? There's surprisingly little reference to your department on enwiki; only relatively recently did I add the emergency@ address to a page (explaining what it is supposed to be used for, of course)
[15:28:39] <Karen-WMF> thanks for the welcome, harej :)
[15:28:42] <Jamesofur> foks: http://pastebin.com/DsAqsVUH <-- a draft of "what T&S does" that is a part of a draft mission we're working on for the department
[15:29:14] <Kalliope-WMF> we are going to do everything within our power to support the community in protecting itself
[15:29:38] <Jamesofur> geniice: I think that's mostly under Christ Steipp and the tech security folks but we work closely with them and I know that's something we've discussed explicitly
[15:29:51] <Maggie_Dennis> Hi, harej. (2) That won't entirely be our call. :) We're planning to consult broadly with community to discuss ways to handle wiki harassment. The issue has multiple dimensions depending on the community involved and a top-down approach likely won't work.
[15:29:54] <Jamesofur> unless you mean searching for child porn?
[15:30:19] <Jamesofur> In which case that's definitely under me and YES I would like to do, I'm actually testing out some things internally that would hopefully lead to that if it works well
[15:30:42] <Maggie_Dennis> In terms of emergency@, I believe it has long been listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Responding_to_threats_of_harm?
[15:30:44] <Jamesofur> but is something that will require some more research before we know for sure
[15:31:21] <JA95|bUsY> Why does WMF 'discourage' paid editing rather than 'restrict' them? And we don't yet have a good policy in en-wiki on how to deal with paid editors, do we?
[15:32:07] <Jamesofur> There is always a question about how much should the policy be controlled/imposed by the WMF compared to by the community.
[15:32:47] <geniice> Jamesofur there shouldn't be hidden .rars in any of our files but yes child abuse images are the obvious concern.
[15:32:53] <Maggie_Dennis> JA95lbUsY, "paid' editing is a very different issue in some areas than others. A number of Commons users, for instance, have told me that paid contributions are not an issue at all for them, and the German Wikipedia is flexible on the issue.
[15:33:11] <Maggie_Dennis> We want to be sure that whatever is done is done transparently, but not override local community ability to determine what works best for each project.
[15:33:48] <Maggie_Dennis> In terms of enWP policy, I think that there's some division there as well. :) I know I've been involved on and off in volunteer discussions in my volunteers over the years, and there does seem to be a wide variety of viewpoints for how best to handle COI.
[15:34:01] <JA95|bUsY> In case of Orangemoody? Mass blocks?
[15:34:28] <Kalliope-WMF> Orangemoody is a bigger issue
[15:34:32] <Jamesofur> geniice: yeah, as an overarching thing (and files hiding other types of files in general in the past this has been a problem for copyrighted movies for example) that is mostly on the tech security side but the child porn concern is definitely within T&S' purview. There are some resources available for free within the industry that we're looking into to help
[15:34:32] <Jamesofur> with CP explicitly.
[15:34:43] <Maggie_Dennis> JA95lbUsY, there was more than just paid editing there (although nondisclosure was an issue), but Jamesofur can address that more explicitly.
[15:35:03] <Kalliope-WMF> there were some paid editing elements, however our work there is not finishes. We continue to work behind the scenes on this
[15:35:39] <JA95|bUsY> If Orangemoody and co. was blocked for non-disclosed paid editing, why can't others be?
[15:35:58] <Juandev> hi
[15:36:10] <Kalliope-WMF> because our action on this was not simply because somebody created article under pay, without disclosing it
[15:36:15] <Karen-WMF> hello Juandev :)
[15:36:29] <Jamesofur> 1. In that case while we worked with Risker and the functionaries from the start the actual blocks were community decisions so far.
[15:37:01] <Jamesofur> 2. The Orangemoody case involves quite wide ranging identity theft (usually of admins or trusted users) and extortion
[15:37:15] <Maggie_Dennis> ...which puts it squarely in a "trust & safety" context.
[15:37:19] <Kalliope-WMF> both of which are illegal in most places in the world
[15:37:29] <Kalliope-WMF> (identity theft & extorsion)
[15:38:09] <Jamesofur> we're still digging down to determine exactly who everyone is but working closely with legal on options
[15:38:55] <Jamesofur> now the focus switches from the 'mass' investigation to creating specific, individual, cases with concrete evidence (mostly which needs to be from stuff off-wiki in the end)
[15:41:23] <JA95> Thanks for the explanation Jamesofur, Kalliope-WMF and Maggie_Dennis
[15:41:27] <JA95>  :)
[15:41:51] <Maggie_Dennis> Thanks for the good question, JA95. :)
[15:49:55] <Kalliope-WMF> We have another 10 minutes left, if there are more questions
[15:51:35] <geniice> So what percentage of world police forces do you have contact details to hand for?
[15:52:41] <Maggie_Dennis> Geniice, we don't have that data, but if we did it would probably be less than 5%. We don't contact most of them ourselves, but pass information through the FBI which has contact with all major agencies.
[15:53:26] <Maggie_Dennis> We used to reach out directly, but are fortunate to have assistance with that, as it wasn't really that efficient. Quite often, the response we got in those days was "You work for who?"
[15:53:59] <Maggie_Dennis> Our FBI liaison is fantastic. She responds to correspondence frequently within minutes.
[15:54:18] <Jamesofur> We do likely end up having direct info for a high percentage of the largest metro and federal police forces, and still use them occasionally (especially if not able to get ahold of the FBI quickly)
[15:54:20] <geniice> step up from trying to explain the difference between a home address and an IP address
[15:54:44] <Jamesofur> yup, especially since she has people to watch her email when she's gone and does cyber crime enough to understand what we're saying
[15:54:55] <Maggie_Dennis> Yes, so much simpler. :) I remember one time a local law enforcement agency rerouted me through their 9-1-1 number. It was kind of a disaster. The 9-1-1 dispatcher was completely unable to understand what I was saying.
[15:55:30] <Jamesofur> she can go directly through the legal attaché within american embassies to get local law enforcement and has even helped put us in direct contact with people who can help us in Iran and North Korea
[15:55:52] <harej> North Korea!
[16:00:14] <Maggie_Dennis> Well, that's our hour. We hope to be able to do this once a month or so, so long as there is interest, although it's unlikely we'll all be in one room for a while. :D Or online at the same time, given our spread time zones. Really appreciate those of you who stopped to talk with us. We'll post the logs as soon as they're available, and if you have questions in the meantime, please feel free...
[16:00:15] <Maggie_Dennis> ...to reach out to us individually or via the team email at ca@wikimedia.org.
[16:00:16] <Jamesofur> Thanks for coming everyone!
[16:00:28] <pearley> Indeed, talk soon everyone.
[16:00:34] <JA95> Thanks for you too!
[16:00:37] <Karen-WMF> Thank you everyone :)