Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2022-10

Opportunities open for the Ombuds commission and the Case Review Committee

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Hi everyone! The Ombuds commission (OC) and the Case Review Committee (CRC) are looking for members. People are encouraged to nominate themselves or encourage others they feel would contribute to these groups to do so. There is more information below about the opportunity and the skills that are needed.

About the Ombuds commission

The Ombuds commission (OC) works on all Wikimedia projects to investigate complaints about violations of the privacy policy, especially in use of CheckUser and Oversight (also known as Suppression) tools. The Commission mediates between the parties of the investigation and, when violations of the policies are identified, advises the Wikimedia Foundation on best handling. They may also assist the General Counsel, the Chief Executive Officer, or the Board of Trustees of the Foundation in these investigations when legally necessary. For more on the OC's duties and roles, see Ombuds commission on Meta-Wiki.

Volunteers serving in this role should be experienced Wikimedians, active on any project, who have previously used the CheckUser/Oversight tools OR who have the technical ability to understand these tools and the willingness to learn them. They must be able to communicate in English, the common language of the commission. They are expected to be able to engage neutrally in investigating these concerns and to know when to recuse when other roles and relationships may cause conflict. Commissioners will serve two-year terms (note that this is different from past years, when the terms have been for one year).

About the Case Review Committee

The Case Review Committee (CRC) reviews appeals of eligible Trust & Safety office actions. The CRC is a critical layer of oversight to ensure that Wikimedia Foundation office actions are fair and unbiased. They also make sure the Wikimedia Foundation doesn’t overstep established practices or boundaries. For more about the role, see Case Review Committee on Meta-Wiki.

We are looking for current or former functionaries and experienced volunteers with an interest in joining this group. Applicants must be fluent in English (additional languages are a strong plus) and willing to abide by the terms of the Committee charter. If the work resonates and you qualify, please apply. Committee members will serve two-year terms (note that this is different from past years, when the terms have been for one year).

Applying to join either of these groups

Members are required to sign the Confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information and must be willing to comply with the appropriate Wikimedia Foundation board policies (such as the access to non-public information policy and the Foundation privacy policy). These positions requires a high degree of discretion and trust. Members must also be over 18 years of age.

If you are interested in serving in either capacity listed above, please write in English to the Trust and Safety team at cawikimedia.org (to apply to the OC) or to the Legal Team at legalwikimedia.org (to apply to the CRC) with information about:

• Your primary projects
• Languages you speak/write
• Any experience you have serving on committees, whether movement or non-movement
• Your thoughts on what you could bring to the OC or CRC if appointed
• Any experience you have with the Checkuser or Oversight tools (OC only)
• Any other information you think is relevant

There will be two conversation hours to answer any questions that potential applicants may have:

• 17 October 2022, 03:00 UTC (other timezones) (Zoom meeting link) (add to calendar)
• 16 November 2022, 18:00 UTC (other timezones) (Zoom meeting link) (add to calendar)

The deadline for applications is 31 December 2022 in any timezone.

Please feel free to pass this invitation along to any users who you think may be qualified and interested. Thank you!

On behalf of the Committee Support team,
Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 12:49, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Hossein Ronaghi's life is in danger

I don't know if I am raising this issue in the right place or not, but I am so desperate that I am ready to grab any rope. Our colleague at Wikifa, en:Hossein Ronaghi (his user page: user:hosseinronaghi), has been arrested for the umpteenth time by the forces of the Islamic regime during the mass arrests of protesters against the murder of Mahsa Amini in Iran. According to the family, on the same day of his arrest, both of his legs were broken by the agents who tortured him, and since then Hossein has been on a complete hunger strike and refuses to receive any food or medicine. Today is the 13th day of his strike with broken legs and his life is in serious danger. If any of the friends in the Wikimedia community can do help, please do it now, maybe tomorrow will be too late. IamMM (talk) 07:07, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Think big! Open letter about Wikimedia Commons

Dear friends of free knowledge,

Wikimedia Commons is in crisis. There are numerous concerns and complaints about our central media platform, for many years. Therefore, this open letter asks the Wikimedia Foundation to Think big! about the future of Wikimedia Commons.

In late August 2022, we at the Commons Photographers User Group talked about Wikimedia Commons. The result of these and other talks is this open letter.

We invite everyone to sign this open letter to show how important Wikimedia Commons is to you. You may be a regular Commons contributor, a Wikipedian, an editor of Wiktionary or Wikivoyage, or maybe you represent an affiliation. We also invite other people who are involved with Commons directly or indirectly, maybe in the context of a cultural institution (GLAM).

Please inform others about this open letter.

Kind regards, Ziko (talk) 11:22, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Unicode 11 case map transition

I'm looking for community help in reviewing the big table at Unicode 11 case map migration. We're going to rename or delete 560 pages, and I'm not sure if the planned action is appropriate in all cases. -- Tim Starling (WMF) (talk) 22:35, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

I've started reviewing the en.wikipedia.org ones @Tim Starling (WMF): Is there some reason w:ⓥ isn't going to get deleted by the script since the uppercase redirect goes to the same place? * Pppery * _{it has begun} 02:37, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

That's because Krinkle (who is working on this project with me) edited the redirect after the script was run. -- Tim Starling (WMF) (talk) 02:50, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Oh. I would have RfD-ed both cases of v instead, and did that for the rest of the circled letter pair. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 03:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I also noticed that the script is trying to move two different pages to the title w:St (technical rename). That's likely to cause a problem. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 02:39, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Another case that's mistaken: the clashing roman numeral redirects on Commons (c:Category:ⅰ etc.) as well as c:Category:ẖ can just be deleted since they are soft redirects that would have been deleted if they were hard. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 03:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

That's everything for pages in languages I speak ... * Pppery * _{it has begun} 03:03, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to delete a lot of the pages myself. The fact that I can't speak French is not a good excuse for screwing up the French wiki. There's no point moving the ligature ffi, which is a redirect to an article about ligatures, to Ffi, i.e. the three ASCII characters, that's just vandalism. -- Tim Starling (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

LGBTQIA+phobia and racism

Hi Please look at this RFC about non-nominative insults and death threat against LGBTQIA+ people to integrate them in the oversight policy Scriptance (talk) 09:40, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Wiki-style canonical questions?

What about a Wiki site where people ask canonical questions and provide canonical answers?

I see it as a mix of Wikipedia, Quora, Stack Exchange, and libraries or encyclopaedias in that the content could be fully structured with Library of Congress style subject tags as well as a total ordering of cataloguing.

Maybe the answers could be freely edited as Wikipedia currently is. There's a chance I would like to see voting on criteria that the questions/answers are supposed to fulfil, like "accuracy", "stylistic neatness", "comprehensiveness" (doesn't leave anything out). Questions could also be tagged "answerability", like we are looking for specific questions with ideally one correct answer, not "What is the meaning of life?"

It could basically be like Wikipedia's version of Quora, taking out all the social media aspects of that site. Or it could be thought of as what Wikipedia already is, except instead of encyclopaedia articles, short, canonical questions and answers.

I'd love to see this happen. I noticed there is already the "Reference Desk" where people can ask questions, but it could be greatly expanded into its own site entirely. WikiQA or WikiQ or WikiQuest or WikiQuestions or something. Julkhamil (talk) 10:53, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

@Julkhamil: There have been several proposals advanced like this: some are linked in the recent Wikianswers proposal, where you may wish to add your support or comments. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 17:13, 28 October 2022 (UTC)