Translations:Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2015/Questions/2/233/en

I have to admit that I am not intimately aware of the differences between American law, the European regulations, and other legal nuances in this area. I generally fully support non-hostile working environment standards and I do believe that they require procedures, and when left to innuendo and just common courtesy, may result in actually perpetuating a hostile environment (as common courtesy is also a part of power system, that is abused in hostile work environments). It is my understanding that US laws are reasonably ok in this area and thus I would not mind their application to our online volunteers. Still, I do think that any universal procedures have to be applied very carefully, also to avoid legal colonialism: Some American regulations and practices for employees are way below typical standards I'm used to, for instance, an unpaid and short maternity leave, or the way pension funds work. But I do think that a safe working environment is important and poorly addressed currently for online volunteers. So, in practice, I would for instance support creating a procedure for online volunteers to allow for safe harassment reporting. I also would support starting a discussion on how we can address the issue (seeking clever solutions from our community, across projects and legal cultures), as well as try to better understand the problems online volunteers face in this area.