Wikimedia Foundation: Universal Code of Conduct/Draft Review | Hacker News Reader

Wikimedia Foundation: Universal Code of Conduct/Draft Review

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30 pointsg42gregory50 comments

The objection I have to CoC documents is that by design they reward people who litigate language to push agendas instead of participating in the community they are designed to support based on genuine welcome. This legalism empowers people who specialize in exploiting leverage to achieve governance, while policing and alienatating contributors. In this sense, CoC's are an anti-pattern that exacerbates the very problem they ostensibly solve.

In Canada, we have a colloquialism that says, "well, that opens up the constitution," which means that when you open up founding principles for change, every obscure chancer takes a shot at getting their niche interest encoded into it. Builders aren't engaged in political struggles, but political strugglers' whole existence is around finding new communities to exploit and govern.

For Wikipedia to spend time on this seems like bike shedding, and there is literally no upside to appeasing the social litigants who benefit most from code of conduct pseudo-legalisms. Products are not countries and they are not societies. They are things, which people make and take responsibility for. Forfeiting responsibility and discretion to these exogenous power struggles arguably betrays the people whose work makes it valuable.

The objection I have against CoCs is that there’s no actual evidence they work.

Your assertion that people will abuse the code of conduct of push agendas is interesting. I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm not seeing that as different.

Wikipedia already pushes agendas; they don't need the code of conduct to push those agendas.

The shortest version of this is: a set of principles provides a basis for recourse and a means for people to reconcile their differences, but a code-of-conduct is like just throwing them a bag of hammers and knives to police each other with.

The only rational response to a code-of-conduct accusation is not reconciliation, but litigation by rejecting the legitimacy and standing of both the code and the accuser, by any and all means necessary, and in this sense they are a foundation of conflict that produces permanent struggle.

Seems generally harmless. As usual there's the natural tension in self-organizing groups between ensuring inclusiveness while not weaponizing the tools used to protect inclusiveness. No doubt someone will succeed in the latter with the UCoC. No doubt in its absence someone would have abused their position unshackled by these explicit norms. It's just an optimization problem.

But that's just the nature of the thing. The network of WMF controlled sites is just far too big now for efficient auto-cooperation, which often happens. So now we have rules to mediate. The rules don't seem particularly onerous, though doubtless one day someone will find out that I advocated against organ donation on Twitter and drag me through the mud and request a rewrite of all my en-wiki contributions.

But until then, I've found en-wiki very easy to contribute to. I think the norms around picture copyright inclusion are super strict but everything else is easy. I've been a member for more than a decade and auto-confirmed for some long time so maybe that's it, but honestly I don't interact with other people at all, and the other day I looked back and I haven't been reverted once over that period.

It doesn't really address the actual problems on Wikipedia - things like people "owning pages", or people contributing incorrect information, or people appointing themselves as the arbiter of what is and isn't useful (or correct) information.

In my entire time contributing I've never even once, been aware of the other person's physical characteristics, or social standing. So it seems rather pointless to include those (although I guess harmless).

What I would like for a COC is things like not demeaning other people's contributions by just removing them with barely even a comment, or just a dismissive one.

I nearly died because of bullying. One of the worst moments of my life, obviously it exacerbated an existing condition but it was terrible. A CoC would definitely have helped.

Not to disparage your situation, whatever it may be, but that’s a pretty big jump in logic to make with no explanation as to how a CoC would have had meaningful impact.

Wow, sorry to hear that. I'm glad you're still around. Was this on Wikipedia?

It was, it was awful and had there been a code of conduct around respect then I’m pretty certain it would have been dealt with a lot better.

In my experience COCs aren't used for inclusiveness ever, they are used to ban dissidents in any form. Some that misbehave, but also those that "aren't a good fit" or generally unpopular people.

That said, it is still easy to contribute, but some politicized topics are a nuclear wasteland of orthodoxy and I don't think COC will be an improvement, on the contrary.

To get a sense of the community consensus, it is worth browsing the General Comments section: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Code_of_Condu...

Additionally, the overall project page (not just the draft review) offers the foundation's arguments for why they believe this needs to be made: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct

Can Wikipedia really be a fair, neutral, and global resource if its code of conduct includes political and cultural positions? For example this code of conduct mentions gender identities and pronouns, a topic that is the subject of significant debate and also very much a product of the American progressive perspective rather than universal. Whether a trans woman is actually a woman is not only controversial (rather than decided), but also a political war over a definition change in one language and culture. There are other cultures where there are instead three categories of gender identities, and the existence of these concepts predates western civilizations even. Given there is this diversity of opinions, it seems strange to require participants in Wikimedia adhere to one set of views.

Hopefully I’m living in a place where this pronoun thing have not been imported, but if someone is ever trying to bully me with his invented words (acknowledging self-declared gender with existing ones is totally fine, using "hir" is not), I’ll ask for reciprocity and I’ll impose the use of a made up pronouns that contains some of my favorite writing systems (they’re all logographic) and a few Unicode characters outside BMP. If they don’t want to play that game, why should I play theirs? It will be an easy way to uncover a lot of hypocrisy.

Come on, new words are created all the time. What do you call the grade before “1” in old English? Didn’t exist. The word is a loan word from German.

Language changes to suit the users of the language. Taking a hardline “you made words up so I’m going to retaliate to make words up” is no doubt fun rhetoric online but to do so in the real work... just makes you an asshole.

Why calling someone by their preferred names and pronouns is so difficult is beyond me. If your friend said “I’d prefer if you didn’t call me dick, please call me Richard” surely you’d grant such a trivial to you, yet important to them request.

Despite internet memes to the contrary, the use of very new pronouns (such as xie) is not super common. I’ve never seen someone get upset at being called “them”. Or structure your conversation and avoid pronouns: it’s super easy. I can’t remember names so I talk in such a way as to avoid names. Since pronouns and names fit in the same place syntactically, I can also magically talk to someone without using pronouns.

> Why calling someone by their preferred names and pronouns is so difficult is beyond me.

Read me again. If someone wants to be called he or she I have no problem with that. What is totally ridiculous is coming with things like hir or xeir which are made-up pronouns. The real assholes are the people coming with this crap and force them in other people throat.

The last part of your post is disconnected from reality. It’s not my job to contrive my speech to avoid pronouns in languages where they are mandatory. You also contradict yourself since you used "I" a lot in a sentence advocating the removal of pronouns.

Fix your heart.

Fix your grammar.

English is the only foreign language I can read where I routinely have to pause to wonder and read sentences again to be sure of what’s going on because of purposely messed up pronoun usage. Normally I’m lucky as the rules are the same as my native language (his encompass both genders when speaking of a group). However recently I’ve come across usage such as singular they and even more striking ‘her’ to encompass both gender. This bugs me out each time, not because I’m trying to be offended of everything I read (that’s an easy game...) but because if a text is deviating from convention it’s normally to put the focus or emphasis on something. In the case of her for example, this screams "warning: in this sentence the human under discussion is a woman and this is a very relevant fact for the understanding of the text". So I naturally start paying more attention to that. Except it’s not an important detail at all so it doesn’t need any attention whatsoever. This is the infuriating thing. The most ridiculous recent example of this I read was a technical document written by a Microsoft employee, where her was used as the default generic pronoun for programmers... I took me a few seconds to realize I wasn’t reading doc written in a parallel universe. For made up pronouns, they require searching on the web which is super annoying too.

So yes, I refuse to play the attention game of a few people that are decided to ruin fluid reading for anyone else for their own self-important interests. They are doing the same in my native language on a larger scale and my opposition is consequently stronger there. Language is a shared good and is the basis of human communication, so it must not weaponized by an infime minority to create division among people.

There is a point at which empathy does not supercede the mental and societal burden required to appease people

I think you're just going to accept that there are going to be some things that Wikipedia and friends are going to assume as the state. An example is that maybe you think people whose name starts with R are morons who shouldn't be able to add to Wikipedia. Well, Wikipedia, the cultural imperialist that it is, will choose not to entertain this, even if you find a sizable following in some nation.

In any case, this one variant of "Can an encyclopedia be objective?" is not a particularly interesting¹ angle. It's just folded into the general question of how Wikipedia can be objective. For instance, WP has to cover criticism of itself and one can hope that we can aggregate that into some semblance of neutrality.

¹ In the ... mathematical sense of interesting. Like talking about characteristics about a+b√2 that are all shared with a+b√p which we've already discussed.

English language Wikipedia will clearly have places in culture and politics. For a start it shuns advertising, because of the perverse incentives it brings. Some newspapers (Daily Mail, UK, to name but one) are specifically censured as prospective sources because they are so partisan as to be unreliable. Now Wikipedia has adopted a policy on pronouns used by authors which amounts to "accept what people say about themselves", and that is the moment when the question about politics gets asked.

Deciding that a news source is too partisan is, itself, a partisan decision. Last I checked, Wikipedia accepted numerous traditional publications that have veered off the path of news into spreading unverified nonsense and lies of omission.

Things that can be plainly falsified aren't true. That isn't partisanship.

There have always been behavioural requirements in Wikimedia. The obvious example is that vandals don't get to roam free because blocking them would be non neutral. Its also always been the case that if you are enough of an asshole, you will eventually get blocked. It can't possibly work otherwise - a social project that fails to prevent antisocial behaviour cannot flourish. Having no behaviour standards is just as much a failure case as having the thought police.

So whether or not we do this is not new. The question is where is the line. I am of the view that requiring people to not engage in bigoted behaviour that is likely to drive away a specific group of people, is reasonable.

They seem to have written this as basically “If someone wants to be referred to a certain way, please acknowledge that in good faith”. I don’t see any mention of anything specific to the American progressive movement.

So if a Thai writer identifies themself on a Talk page as a gender or orientation you aren’t familiar with, it would be polite to acknowledge them and use the pronouns they prefer.

So basically if I want to refer to someone using a pronoun, I have to first go to their profile page to look up what their preferred pronoun is?

If there’s no clear indication, I usually just refer to people I meet on the internet with “they”. If they indicate a preference for a pronoun, I use that.

But it is something so specific that it shouldn't have a place here. You could also say "respect others opinion". This tries to normalize some language practices that are kind of ridiculous in my opinion. I use pronouns out of decency, but this is extremely out of place.

While I agree in principle, in practice, most articles are entirely community-generated. Avoid the big-ticket articles and it shouldn’t affect you.

However I otherwise agree. My donations to the foundation will certainly cease now (okay, you got me, I never donated and never planned to).

What is "fair, neutral, and global" is also all debatable, especially when it comes to human interactions, and ultimately distills into arguing epistemology.

A code of conduct's purpose is to bound and define the operational environment towards facilitating and progressing the foundation's goals by minimizing distracting or otherwise negative impacts of any particular action, regardless of what those actions may be and who perpetrates them.

There is no prerequisite of objectivity to such a code, nor can anyone say what is objectively true in these situations. There's a reason juries aren't algorithmic.

You can only try to determine what is the most conducive approach to the goals of the organization in the cultural frame it operates in, which it seems they have done.

Asking for discussion: Is there a point at which imposing a specific set of left-wing American cultural values upon functionally autonomous communities elsewhere around the world becomes a form of cultural imperialism?

To leave a more positive comment, I'm glad that the scourge of deletionism is addressed in here.

Define "left-wing American cultural values". As far as I can tell, "left-wing Amerians" are in constant debate about such values amongst themselves, to a fault.

I mean, the idea of a Universal Code of Conduct, as far as I can tell, is actually an interesting new one.

However, it reads like it's been written entirely by Californian twenty somethings, and it looks like there is no input from foreign language users, only direct translations from English.

I would _love_ to see what people would come up with if this was a different process where each language came up with their own, and then there was a process of mediation.

But, AFAIK, that didn't happen, because these things always come from the top down as a way of creating and solidifying control for the educated upper class types.

> Asking for discussion: Is there a point at which imposing a specific set of left-wing American cultural values

Which "left-wing american values" are those specificly (I'm not american, i'm honestly not sure which values you think are american left wing ones)?

Whether or not its appropriate for WMF to centerally impose behavioural standards has been argued back and forth for probsbly about a decade at this point. (Not saying either side is right or "won", just that both sides have yelled at each other a lot)

> To leave a more positive comment, I'm glad that the scourge of deletionism is addressed in here.

How so? I don't see anything related to that in this document.

I'm not trying to personally nitpick any of the individual points, since there's already a process in place for that discussion, I'm just asking if it ever crosses a line into cultural imperialism, and if so, where is that line?

> Which "left-wing american values" are those specificly

Without even mentioning any specifics of the documents, I guess I'm referring to the general trend of the HR-ification of everything. There has been a huge creation of rule systems which give elites and managers more weapons to bludgeon people and groups who want to operate differently than the universal corporate structure, largely as a way of preventing the need to save face in the case of social media outrage.

One thing I have noticed from multiple real life experiences: this mentality rots organizations. The HR-minded are more concerned with creating an impossible perfect organization that crashes into the ground than creating an imperfect organization that actually produces something of tangible social value.

Re: deletionism, it includes this:

> Repeated removal of Wikimedia content without appropriate peer review or constructive feedback for improvement

Which hopefully could help address drive-by speedy deletions.

> Without even mentioning any specifics of the documents, I guess I'm referring to the general trend of the HR-ification of everything. There has been a huge creation of rule systems which give elites and managers more weapons to bludgeon people and groups who want to operate differently than the universal corporate structure, largely as a way of preventing the need to save face in the case of social media outrage.

This is such a strange trend. Organizations are adopting American style progressive ethos, but not via their explicit values but via inserted HR processes that seem to be en vogue.

> One thing I have noticed from multiple real life experiences: this mentality rots organizations. The HR-minded are more concerned with creating an impossible perfect organization that crashes into the ground than creating an imperfect organization that actually produces something of tangible social value.

It is hard not to see this as a form of entryism in that the people pushing these polices are looking for the power and control without the cost of creation. However, I think there is a far more cynical approach. A huge company can bare the cost of socially expensive HR-values but a small open source team cannot afford the toll of the policies.

> This is such a strange trend. Organizations are adopting American style progressive ethos, but not via their explicit values but via inserted HR processes that seem to be en vogue.

Exactly. I think it's obviously dangerous to allow the corporate class to take the moral high ground. Apple will gladly publicly support any progressive social program of the week - as long as there is no need for _any_ material change - but will still use slave labour to produce their products.[1] This is now 100% universal.

[1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-...

Fair enough, ossification of rules and too much beurocracy can kill a project. People already posit that rule explosion is linked to a decline in wikipedia.

> Re: deletionism, it includes this:

I think usually deletionism more implies following proper procedure and due process to delete things (including speedy deletion if the page fits the criteria). I think the code of conduct doc is more concerned with deletions as targeted abuse of power, which is a bit different. Deciding what should be deleted and should not be is something highly vested in the local community and i doubt anyone would want to try to attempt to centralize it

I mean, you can't just call any attempt to impose structure on social formations "HRification." You're ignoring social contract theory and the liberal history and philosophy of governance over the past 400 years. HR is a problem because its main job is shielding a corporation from lawsuits by entangling victims in bureaucracy, not because it tries to set rules to protect the vulnerable.

I don't think that's true.

I'm specifically talking about the top-down rather than democratic or collaborative imposition of moral frameworks.

Though the creation of this document was ostensibly democratic - though, without proper international participation in my opinion - it was mandated by the board, which dooms it from the start, regardless of the content (which I largely agree with, save for the focus on empathy over correctness, which I find ideological).

Why do you keep acting like these are somehow purely western standards that nobody else agrees with or cares about? Human rights are valued by the UN. I don’t think it’s wrong to believe in a universal set of values.

Ultimately even the US Constitution is an elite document written by elite people. This sort of thing is inevitable, history is a power struggle even when it results in more liberated outcomes.

I'm in the UK and am happy to report the values are not American. Ask some Aussies or Kiwis and I'm sure they'd say the same.

I'd also remark that perhaps you wouldn't be so quick to comment in such a trite way if Wiki had instead make a statement on respecting people's sexualities. Once controversial, now widely accepted as a facet of who people are, and originally a darling cause of the left. It's recognised as a human rights issue, which is to say it has outgrown reasonable politics. I look forward to gender identity doing the same.

This isn't in any way about gender identity, it's about the fact that there _isn't_ a universal values system.

You mentioned the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand - do you notice a pattern there? Throw in Canada and you've perfectly recreated the FIVEEYES international surveillance pact members. It's a culturally homogeneous group.

I think you'd get very different results if you were trying to come up with a universal conduct framework and you actually bothered including Russia, China, India, Venuzuela..

Of course, they weren't properly asked and provided no input , because this is a subtle form of upper class Western imperialism.

Of course there is not a universal value system. If you asked someone from nazi germany how they felt about jewish people editing wikipedia, they would probably respond negatively.

Does it follow that we should care? Creating Wikipedia is fundamentally a political act. It subscribes to views like information should be free, amateurs can compete with professionals in information compilation, articles should attempt to neutrally represent the facts, etc. These are all ideological views, many of them controversial. Why should we succumb to moral relativism when deciding on how wikipedians ought to collaborate, when we don't subscribe to moral relativism in other aspects of the creation of wikipedia. To put another way: being neutral in article content doesn't imply that we have to be neutral in literally every organizatiinal aspect.

You have a part about solidarity being expected as if it could be enforced. Completely ridiculous. Solidarity with whom?

So, I expect you are some high official of Wikipedia/Wikimedia?

Wikipedia was not political act to enforce behavior, it was an act to share information in good faith. And that goal is endangered by multiple interests I don't feel guarded against those with this set of rules. What about people investing money to adjust their own pages? It isn't even mentioned and perhaps one of the most immediate issues.

I was an amateur contributor 6 or 7 years ago but lost interest at some point. I don't know if you even can get bullied on Wikipedia, I am sure it is possible, but that is probably not an issue for most contributors.

No comment on the Nazi stuff, just be aware that some Jews would noticed your misplaced usage of "we" if you really want to make an argument in their name.

> You have a part about solidarity being expected as if it could be enforced. Completely ridiculous. Solidarity with whom?

Well for starters, solidarity with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Purpose (and equivalents in other langs). The page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_enc... talks extensively about how a certain baseline of alignment is needed to contribute to Wikipedia.

> So, I expect you are some high official of Wikipedia/Wikimedia?

Umm no. I've been around Wikimedia for a while and have opinions. At most, I am a contributor to the MediaWiki open source project, which may give me some clout in certain technical conversations - but this is definitely not a technical conversation. (Full disclaimer - in the past i used to be employed as a contractor by WMF to do work on MediaWiki, but haven't been for several months now. My views are purely my own)

> What about people investing money to adjust their own pages? It isn't even mentioned and perhaps one of the most immediate issues.

Why would it be mentioned in this document - its off topic and is already extensively covered by other rules and policies. Trying to cover all things in one document would probably doom it to failure.

> No comment on the Nazi stuff, just be aware that some Jews would noticed your misplaced usage of "we" if you really want to make an argument in their name.

I don't understand what you mean by this. The antecedent of "we" in my comment was Wikipedians. Note that this example wasn't purely hypothetical.

The links don't talk about solidarity. Wouldn't you agree that forcing solidarity wouldn't work?

Baseline of alignment fits exactly the arguments of Nazi against cultural participation of Jews. It is plain gatekeeping you try to enforce in my opinion. Perhaps it is a misjudgment, but I believe not.

> The links don't talk about solidarity. Wouldn't you agree that forcing solidarity wouldn't work?

They talk about solidarity of purpose.

To quote the definition of solidarity: "A bond of unity or agreement between individuals, united around a common goal..." https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/solidarity

I would also point out that "solidarity" was not my choice of wording.

Hardly upper class.

I don't really mind imposing values that promote individuals being respected and happy on countries which routinely crush difference as a matter of culture and policy. It is not a bad thing. Call it imperialism if you wish, but if you do you'll be missing the key thing about imperialism, which is that it is exploitative. Wiki having standards exploits nobody.

> I'd also remark that perhaps you wouldn't be so quick to comment in such a trite way if Wiki had instead make a statement on respecting people's sexualities. Once controversial, now widely accepted as a facet of who people are, and originally a darling cause of the left. It's recognised as a human rights issue, which is to say it has outgrown reasonable politics. I look forward to gender identity doing the same.

That's exactly the issue. This claims to be universal but it is just progressive western values. I wouldn't expect a Wahabist contributing to Wikipedia to respect sexuality or pronouns, and as long as they are civil why should they have to in order to participate in a universal project?

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