Wikimedia LGBT+/Governance/2023-05-24

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This online videoconference is focused on the tasks of the LGBT+ User Group governance, and is intended as an opportunity for organizers to discuss shared opportunities, challenges, and issues.

  • Date: 24 May, 2023
  • Time: 4:00pm UTC+0 (9:00-10:00am PT/12:00-1:00pm ET)
  • Duration: 1 hour
  • GCal: GCal link
  • Location: Zoom link. Meeting ID: 82868087467. The meeting will have an entry lobby, please reach out on the Telegram group if you are left waiting.

The Wikimedia Universal Code of Conduct will be followed for this meeting.

Attendees[edit]

Agenda[edit]

  • Setting up a shared GDrive

Notes[edit]

  1. Check-In
    1. Dorothy
    2. Lane - Lane at University of Virginia. These notes will be transferred to meta in a week. Anyone can edit them.
    3. Jeffrey
    4. Owen - Editing Wikipedia for about 20 years just outside the UK
    5. anonymous editors - would like to be able to contribute usefully without harassment
  2. discussion of harassment
    1. There are many issues in Wikipedia at the intersection of LGBT+ issues and political controversy.
    2. Editors who edit these articles get attention and hostility from LGBT+-phobic people. Some of these people are openly anti-LGBT+, and some just practice anti-LGBT+ sentiment for whatever reason.
    3. When people who are LGBT+ or who edit LGBT+ topics go through Wikipedia's bureaucracy, then they have worse outcomes than people who are outside of LGBT+ issues. This is because of discrimination.
    4. When there is an LGBT+ dispute the labor commitment on LGBT+ people to either complain or defend themselves is extraordinarily high as compared to non-LGBT+ connected issues.
    5. There is an open secret in the Wikimedia community that some editors are covertly anti-LGBT+ but tolerated.
    6. There are articles written to promote pseudoscience, such as Blanchard's Transexualism Typology, Homosexual Transsexual (recently snow-deleted thankfully), Attraction to Transgender People, and generally articles written by the Cantor crew
    7. It is even hard for LGBT+ individuals to support other LGBT+ individuals, as there is Wikipedia community social pressure that when any LGBT+ person supports another LGBT+ person then there is something inappropriate or conspiratorial about this.
    8. There is a significant and high emotional burden for LGBT+ people who have to justify their routine editing and activities.
    9. The different kinds of hate have similarities and differences. Transphobia can be distinct from homophobia.
    10. Some of the anti-LGBT+ phobia or hate is not explicitly labeled or identifiable from text alone as LGBT+ hate. It could be editing or conversation about anything.
    11. Wikipedia values "neutrality". To some people, they interpret this to mean that pro-LGBT+ and anti-LGBT+ are merely two sides of a discourse. This is an error and these two are not opposites. Asking for rights versus hating a community are not valid comparisons.
    12. Wikimedia LGBT+ does not currently offer case support. It is a service that we could offer but it has labor costs.
    13. LGBT+ users experience many unfair hateful experiences. When they meet each other they share these experiences with each other. They cannot easily share these experiences outside the Wiki LGBT+ community. Non-LGBT+ wiki editors may be unaware of these experiences, or at best, sympathesize without knowing how to take action to help.
    14. There are publications and views which there is societal consensus to designate as hate-based views from hate organizations. The Wikipedia editoral process does not currently have a sufficient process for recognizing when users spread LGBT+ hate content in Wikipedia.
    15. There is major political financial investment in misinformation on LGBT+ issues, for example https://apnews.com/article/transgender-health-model-legislation-5cc4a7cb4ab69150f670d06fd0f361ab
    16. Wikipedia is a battleground for this kind of propaganda.
    17. If an LGBT+ person defends themselves then for social reasons, defense may have the appearance of guilt. The social phenomena here is that in Wikipedia conversations, wiki editors tend to perceive guilt in editors who post a lot of text. If one person gets attacks from 10 people, then the one person defending 10 statements is talking a lot and may seem defensive and therefore guilty.
    18. What can Wikimedia LGBT+ do?
      1. there are certain things the organization can do
      2. there are certain things the Trust and Safety at the Wikimedia Foundation can do
      3. Wikimedia LGBT+ can write to Wikimedia Foundation to request some issues
      4. Possibly Wikimedia LGBT+ can set up a safe space for community networking to talk about these things.
      5. Wikimedia LGBT+ could arrange for Wikimedia Foundation funding for counseling or mental health support services for people who have experienced a certain level of harassment as a consequence of their Wikipedia community engagement.
      6. We have a contact email, governance@wmlgbt.org, which is general for all problems. We have limited administrative capacity but want to develop support.
      7. Wikimedia LGBT+ could issue organizational position statements. Many problems are what the organization would recognize as obvious and conventional LGBT+ phobia or transphobia, and a position statement may dispel misunderstandings that hate activity could be an editorial dispute.
  3. Queering Wikipedia
    1. Reflections
    2. no safe space issues reported
    3. no major complaints reported
    4. tabling this for this meeting due to lack of time
    5. There is still information and reporting coming in from organizers, staff, finance people
    6. When we have those reports we will be able to better report the outcomes
  4. Draft started for QW23 Grants:Conference/QW23/QW2023/Report
    1. Dorothy developing
    2. expects to publish within next couple of weeks?
    3. this is just a draft for community discussion
    4. Budget needs reconciling with mostly complete QW22 Grants:Conference/QW22/QW2022/Report
  5. Affiliate strategy discussions
    1. Invitation to join the Wikimedia Affiliate strategy discussions
    2. Action: Owen and Lane will take ownership of insuring that WMLGBT is represented in this process
    3. Wikimedia Foundation call for affiliate strategy representatives
    4. Wikimedia LGBT+ is eligible to send two representatives to this Wikimedia Foundation convening
    5. Unsure of details - minimal participation may be surveys and online meetings.
    6. We have a short timeline to reply.
    7. One WMF request - send people to a one-hour focus group.
  6. 2022 Annual report to Wikimedia Foundation
    1. 2021-2022 Annual Report is now marked as compliant
    2. Lane wrote in to fix an administrative error to get recognition of compliance
    3. Change of representatives
    4. This is probably no big deal but disclosure: Lane took over role of administrative contact for Wikimedia LGBT+ from Rachel
    5. Situation: Rachel lacks capacity to do routine administrative tasks with WMF; Lane stepped in to fix a problem
    6. "Group representative to the WMF" is a formalized role. Every official Wikimedia affiliate can only have two named representatives. There are certain commitments for this role.
    7. Wikimedia LGBT+ is in a transitional stage of development. We are too big to not have a governance process for designating organizational representatives, but not big enough to have labor capacity to appropriately develop such a process.
    8. In process of fixing that error, Lane removed Rachel as point of contact for annual report because there can only be two.
    9. Two current contacts are Lane and Jeffrey.
    10. Action: Any objections to Lane replacing Rachel as formal AffCom rep (in order to handle administrative stuff) should be made to Dorothy within the next 24 hours
    11. Action: Dorothy will confirm to Owen if any objections were received and, if not, will notify the Telegram group and update Meta pages appropriately
    12. Action: The future board will be responsible for owning these AffCom appointments if/when it exists
    13. Aside - example of excellent annual report from small group - West_Bengal_Wikimedians/Reports/Annual_Activities/2022
  7. Setting up Committees
    1. Communication committee
    2. Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon, Instagram, Mailing List, on-Wiki messaging - access rights, moderation and interaction, status checks, issues, strategy
    3. Partnerships committee? Others?
  8. Governance
    1. Incorporating the user group as a legal entity
    2. Discuss the potential to ask for funds to incorporate. Grant draft: Wikimedia LGBT+/Proposals/Incorporation of Wikimedia LGBT+
    3. What prerequisites are necessary beforehand?
    4. Board elections - User:bluerasberry can facilitate this conversation
      1. copy Wikimedia Medicine system?
      2. WikiProjectMed:Election, WikiProjectMed:Election/2023, https://electionbuddy.com/
    5. everyone says that board elections are a priority for next few months; details about implementation not discussed
  9. Preparing an annual grant
    1. Hiring administrative assistance
    2. voiced concern: Wikimedia LGBT+ has limited capacity
    3. one major reason for incorporation is increased access to funding
    4. if we incorporate though, then our administrative and bureaucratic burden greatly increases
    5. WMF asks us to incorporate. They also offer money, but their offer is uncertain and unclear. They do not suggest dollar amounts.
    6. We would prefer to build out paid staff administrative capacity before or at the same time as making efforts to incorporation.
    7. There are some funders, like the Wikimedia Foundation, which would provide funding for administrative capacity without us incorporating.
    8. Everyone is agreed that we should incorporate eventually.
    9. Three issues: money, developing the board of Wikimedia LGBT+, and incorporation. These things are related but we could seek any of these independently also.
    10. We could have incorporation without recognition from the Wikimedia Foundation for that incorporation. Like for example, we could easily incorporate anywhere and get a bank account at much lower cost than doing everything to make that legal entity compliant for Wikimedia Foundation official status.
    11. Incorporation is a means to an end; there could be many ways to get the benefits of incorporation without paying for or investing resources in incorporation.
  10. Wikimedia Deutschland LGBT+ meeting
    1. Owen and Lane attending
    2. happens today, 24 May
    3. general situation is that WMDE wants to establish an LGBT+ group
    4. They want to ask about the activities of our group
    5. they may also want to collaborate, which they have not done so far
  11. Setting up a shared GDrive
    1. Not discussed, but we need a way to privately share files


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