Wikimedia LGBT/2022-04-16

Wikimedia LGBT+
Communications
Talk page Telegram: @wmlgbt LGBTlists.wikimedia.org Twitter: @WikiLGBT Mastodon: @wmlgbt@tech.lgbt Bluesky: @wmlgbt.org Wiki99: Wiki99/LGBT+
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This online videoconference is open to all participants of the LGBT+ User Group, and is intended as an opportunity to discuss shared opportunities, challenges, and issues.

• Date: Saturday 16 April 1700 UTC
• GCal: link
• Location: Zoom The meeting will have an entry lobby, please reach out on the Telegram group if you are left waiting.

The Wikimedia Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct will be followed for this meeting.

Agenda

Please feel free to add to the agenda!

1. Intro
2. QW Planning team status
   1. The conference - QW2022
   2. grant was just funded - Grants:Conference/QW22/QW2022
   3. Wikimedia LGBT needs to sign the Wikimedia Foundation's "fiscal and grantees agreement". This is private and unpublished by WMF's choice; we cannot share.
3. We need a representative for the Wikimedia Summit
   1. Talk:Wikimedia_LGBT+#Call_for_Summit_nominations
4. We need to draft and publish this proposal
   1. Wikimedia LGBT+/conversation series proposal
5. Universal Code of Conduct results
   1. Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Enforcement_guidelines/Voting/Results

Attendees

• Lane Rasberry
• Owen Blacker
• z. blace
• others

Notes

1. Intro
2. Queering Wikipedia 2022 conference Planning team status
   1. need to attract more people from more places
   2. challenging to do - this is first time for this group
   3. anecdote - we had ~3 LGBT+ people from a lower middle income country organize an LGBT+ event in their local community. As a result they experienced serious harassment.
      1. The Wikimedia Foundation has relationships with this country; whatever safety and support this group has is from the WMF because they hold the resources
      2. As has always been the case, Wikimedia LGBT+ does not have resources for anything other than peer to peer support. When newcomers to Wiki LGBT+ have harassment concerns and regional issues the best that we can do is point them to the WMF.
   4. Things that make people vulnerable:
      1. identifying publicly as LGBT or supporting LGBT+ issues
      2. being new to Wikipedia. In this case users had less than several thousand edits, not more than a few years, and had only attended a few Wikimedia events prior. This is much more than a beginner but still not highly experienced.
      3. anyone whose online identity is linked to their offline identity.
      4. We have seen such groups allocate 10% of budget to security - from one perspective this seems like a lot for a one-off, undocumented process. From another perspective this is not much money considering there is no global recommended safety procedure.
   5. Mixed messages from Wikimedia Foundation - there is a global environment of individuals and groups in lower/middle income countries with strange behavior. There are claims that learning Western diversity speak is a path to career advancement or funding, and for example, people may professionally pose as LGBT+ or some other "diversity equity inclusion" (DEI) corporate metric. By presenting as LGBT+ they get access to WMF funds. WMF sometimes asks Wikimedia LGBT+ to support people they refer, but if a person does not actually edit LGBT+ content in Wikipedia or do LGBT+ activities, it is difficult to evaluate them.
   6. (group named off various wiki editors) We have various people who have done LGBT+ activities and down Wikimedia community organizing in the past, but who mostly care about their local Wikimedia affiliate and have not committed their attention to Wiki LGBT+ specifically. Probably if Wiki LGBT+ had a more developed administrative structure, then more people would engage, but few people want to enter the organization with no resources, lots of big social challenges like harassment and event coordination, and an unclear Wikimedia Foundation relationship.
3. The conference - QW2022
   1. grant was just funded - Grants:Conference/QW22/QW2022
   2. Wikimedia LGBT needs to sign the Wikimedia Foundation's "fiscal and grantees agreement". This is private and unpublished by WMF's choice; we cannot share.
4. We need a representative for the Wikimedia Summit
   1. Talk:Wikimedia_LGBT+#Call_for_Summit_nominations
   2. for the same reason we need volunteers / contributors engaged in the Queering Wikipedia conference, we need people to represent the organization in venues like this Wikimedia Summit
   3. (named various people who could represent the group well)
   4. The selection process right now is that Lane / bluerasberry makes the selection. Democracy is difficult. We wish for voting but do not have management capacity to organize voting for situations like this.
5. We need to draft and publish this proposal
   1. Wikimedia LGBT+/conversation series proposal
   2. WMF has invited a submission of this sort
   3. unclear what exactly they will fund, but they have invited our ideas
   4. we do not have staff in mind but can ask a few people
6. we discussed the WikiMove podcast organized by Wikimedia Germany
   1. https://www.wikimedia.de/en/wikimove/
   2. in that podcast the discussion topic was funding to more diverse wiki community organizations, so that topic applies to Wiki LGBT
   3. also the podcast itself is the same kind of conversation that this proposal is seeking to encourage
   4. proposal: For things like the Queering Wikipedia grant proposal, we could have a recorded conversation talking about the conference as a complement to the written proposal. That written grant proposal is in a certain format which is attractive to the Wikimedia Foundaiton, but grant proposals are not something that typical people wish to read. A video could be more attractive to some people.
7. Universal Code of Conduct results
   1. Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Enforcement_guidelines/Voting/Results
   2. issue: when these kinds of opportunities arise, is it better for Wikimedia LGBT+ to use its scarce contributor attention and labor to engage during the drafting process, or during the comment period at the first draft?
   3. Rachel and Jeffrey are Wikimedia LGBT+ contributors who participated in the drafting of the Code of Conduct
   4. as for everyone else, now could be a time to comment
   5. the ballot and voting process which the Wikimedia Foundation designed accepted private comments from individuals, and the Wikimedia Foundation is holding these comments. They said that they will summarize the comments for the public.
   6. The vote came in with enough opposition that Rosie of the WMF board of trustees said that she was sending the comments to the community drafting committee, who are to consider and respond to the comments.
8. harassment issues
   1. harassment in English Wikipedia, reports of harassment to LGBT+ people from other languages which many of us do not speak
   2. reports to the Wikimedia Foundation Trust and Safety do not produce reactions that Wikimedia LGBT+ is able to see; WMF will not comment on most issues, they do routinely say that they have plans to stop harassment but they also do not say what they do, and give the appearance that they do nothing
   3. The en:Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram issue continues to be discussed in the context of Wikimedia Foundation decisions to pass judgement on behaviorial issues in the Wikimedia Community. Fram was a complicated issue.
   4. Wikimedia LGBT+ has some opportunity to receive media coverage for topics of interest to the community. Should we seek this attention? Advantages: it seems useful to surface the challenges that Wiki LGBT+ contributors face. Disadvantages: hard to coordinate messages, hard to have community discussions which everyone follows; hard to develop organizational consensus statements; significant difficulties in coordinating messaging and understanding accross language barriers.
   5. Also, there are other stakeholders in the fundamental problem than LGBT+ contributors. AfroCROWD and Women in Red experience minority difficulties. There are countries which are underrepresented as a whole. We could start listing cases which could be discussed, with LGBT+ one of them, and present it all together. However that is an even bigger organizational challenge.
   6. What is our goal is surfacing problems? Answers: Wikimedia Foundation in many cases dismisses harassment against LGBT+ people as a problem unworthy of addressing with either staff attention or funding for community-sourced peer to peer support. Other minority groups - not only LGBT+ - experience the same issues.
   7. addressing serious obvious problems - harassment and hatemongering - are out of scope for Wikimedia Foundation, according to them
   8. if we could coordinate anonymous interviews with harassed LGBT+ wiki editors then this could create interesting journalism worth publishing
   9. we consider these stories interesting because they are queer experiences and also tell stories of LGBT+ communities in countries which benefit from more LGBT+ documentation of interests
9. Management overhead as bottleneck for so many of our activities
   1. we are often aware of community contributors who write a lot of excellent original content
   2. these community contributors need outlets including
      1. publishing and journalism to go to news or public facing community newsletters
      2. interviews, in text, podcast, or video
      3. conference speaking opportunities, both wiki and external to wiki
      4. project collaborations with Wikimedia regional and thematic groups, to mutual benefit
   3. while experienced Wiki editors can see these opportunities in many places, new editors cannot see those and need management / leadership support
   4. we are lacking for management in Wikimedia LGBT+