Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024/Candidates/Civvì
Civvì (Questions)
| Account | Civvì (talk • meta edits • global user summary • CA) |
|---|---|
| Candidate details |
|
| Selected home wiki | Italian Wikipedia |
| Type of seat (regional; community-at-large; or both) (division of regional seats) | Northern & Western Europe or community-at-large |
| Candidate Introduction | |
| Introductory statement / Application summary (maximum 200 words): Why are you running for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee? What would you contribute? | As a member of the UCoC drafting committee I closely followed the creation of the enforcement guidelines and of the charter of the U4C; I believe that one of the main tasks of this first committee is to try to complete the missing parts of this process, that is, to define the operational procedures, how things will be done. So, in my opinion, it is important to know the UCoC and the guidelines, the rationale of the current documents, but also to have a solid understanding of moderation and conflict resolution activities and the ability to observe and understand how they are carried out in the projects.
Aspects with which I think I can contribute are a good experience in administrative activity related to conduct, a good knowledge of UCoC, and, because of my professional experience, a good knowledge of process definition and procedure creation. |
| Please describe your Wikimedia experience (such as contributions to the Wikimedia projects, memberships in Wikimedia organizations or affiliates, experience working on conduct issues in your community, activities as a Wikimedia movement organizer, or participation in building Wikimedia policies). | I started contributing to the Italian Wikipedia in 2004, I was admin from 2004 and bureaucrat from 2005 until 2008, after a break of 7 years from 2008 to 2015 (kids, work, RL stuff...) I am again admin since 2016 and bureaucrat since 2017. I have been VRT from 2017 to 2022. Since 2021 I am global renamer, since July 2023 global rollbacker (but a very very lazy one).
I am in the WLE Italy team, I have a good experience in organizing offline and online events (2017, 2018 and 2022 ItWikiCon, several editathons, school projects and online writing initiatives). I am not a member of any affiliate. |
| Professional Experience, Skills and Education | |
| Please briefly describe 3 situations that show how you worked on, or advised others on, a complex conduct or policy issue. How did you work with others to address the situations? | In the drafting phase of UCoC one of the points I was very insistent on was “translatability”. I tried to involve the members of the committee in making sure that every sentence was easy to translate in the languages they knew in order to reduce possible misunderstandings and misinterpretations.
One of the points I always insist on in the creation of a new policy or guideline is the consistency with the already existing guidelines and help pages. Not consistent or contradicting policies are not only confusing for good faith users but something bad actors love to exploit. For the same reason, I firmly believe in keeping guidelines clear and easy to read; sometimes guidelines evolve over time until they become so convoluted that it is difficult to understand the logic and meaning. Sometimes changing the wording to make a guideline clearer and easier to understand and use is a long process with long discussions, I am always happy to facilitate these processes. |
| Leadership Experience | |
| Can you describe a policy, on wiki or off, that you helped to create or change? What did you learn from this experience? | Drafting policies and guidelines is a team effort, so although I have initiated a few, the most important things in the creation are collaboration and acceptance by the entire community, without these a guideline can never become a useful tool within a project.
Among those I have created are the guidelines and the handbook about RC Patrolling, the guideline about how to deal with vandalism, the project about contributor copyright investigations (back in 2006, way before the same page on en.wiki…). The policies in which I have participated the most are those about the criteria for assigning and removal of user rights and the criteria and election procedure of admins. What I learned is that guidelines are tools that communities create when faced with issues. They need to be clear, easy to read and to understand, and most importantly they need to be created in a shared process. Otherwise they will never be seen as something that belongs to the entire community of a project and that everyone is ready to follow even if they do not completely agree with them. |
| How have you been able to empower people to make their voices heard? | There is an incredible number of “silent editors” in our projects creating wonderful content and doing an amazing volume of activity. We cannot thank them enough. Some of these volunteers do not like visibility or being put in the spotlight.
It happens quite often that I get in touch privately with some of these silent volunteers, it happens that they contact me asking for advice or I thank them for a nice article or I give them some advice if I see them struggling with technicalities, often we end up just chatting a little bit. Sometimes I ask if they feel ready for committing more, some of the women admins on itwiki come from this kind of contacts. I would love to have more time for this, it is also a great way to listen and understand the issues of our less visible and silent volunteers. |
| Sometimes in professional situations, there are personality conflicts. Explain how you remain productive even with personality conflicts. | One of the first things you learn - you should learn - when you become an administrator is that people observe what you do, how you behave and how you react and reply. Even more as a bureaucrat, strangely ‘crats are sometimes regarded as a kind of "wise figures" from whom to seek advice on complicated matters.
I think that in all these years I have learned to keep the needed detachment to respond calmly and objectively (even if sometimes I need some deep breaths to do so). These are also good opportunities to reflect on the origins of conflicts and to find out whether there are ways to prevent or reduce them. |
| Strategic Thinking | |
| In your opinion, how can the U4C be a positive influence in the Wikimedia movement? | I believe that one of U4C's roles should be to offer help and support to communities to establish governance and enforcement procedures that are consistent with the life stage of their project, appropriate to the size and the ways their users participate online and offline, and taking into account local customs.
There are always unprecedented situations that challenge our communities, and this is often very stressful for all parties involved, but often other communities have already dealt with similar situations. In my opinion, the U4C should also be a resource to call upon in such cases, a sort of a "repository of experience" to lean on for advice. |
| How would you help the Universal Code of Conduct develop and improve over time? | The U4C responsibilities to which I feel most inclined are those related to prevention, establishing best practices and useful training materials, and ensuring that the UCoC and the enforcement guidelines become and remain useful tools for maintaining a safe and pleasant environment for editing and all related activities. |