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Initiative to end anti-LGBT+ content on Wikimedia

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As discussed at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help_Forum#Bigoted_content_on_Wikipedias_you_don%E2%80%99t_speak_the_language_of, users of non-English projects are getting away with spreading anti-LGBT+ rhetoric in direct opposition to both Wikimedia’s UCOC and LGBT+ inclusivity initiative. I propose the creation of a project similar to Climate change portal/climate denial review to work on systematically removing this inappropriate and bigoted content. Dronebogus (talk) 10:15, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I think there are different point of views to the topic and after my understanding it is allowed that people say what they mean as long as it is not unfriedly and it hurts other people. After my understanding a encyclopedia article should offer a neutral persceptive and tell what different sources write about the topic. If a user has a infobox with a message about the own view to LGBT+ on the user page this is from my point of view not a problem. Maybe you can try to start such a project by talking to other members of the LGBT+ User Group. I am interested in understanding better what reasons are there that lead to anti-LGBT+ rhetoric.--Hogü-456 (talk) 17:19, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@Hogü-456: Someone stating they view LGBT+ people as in some way “less than” heterosexual cisgender people is inherently unfriendly and hurtful, but in any case I’m more concerned about non-English articles potentially featuring inaccurate or biased negative coverage of LGBT+M particularly in regions with strong anti-LGBT sentiment like Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Dronebogus (talk) 19:50, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

how a person may live their private life is their choice & of no concern to me. when i come to work i am focused on the job that's all that matters. at the end of the day i go home, shut the door or watch a movie on T.V. for more information on the business of human secrets & privacy see: electronic privacy information center EPIC. in the end we are all partners working for the same company. i have found that gossip is a waste of time which is unrelated to work. Davidche123 (talk) 02:49, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. Everyone is allowed to their own views as long as it doesn't affect the edits. Żyrafał (talk) 16:59, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Y Such a coordinating initiative I think could be helpful in dealing with this problem.The fact that homophobia is a problem and is unacceptable in any project is due to Universal_Code_of_Conduct#3.1_–_Harassment . Everyone is allowed to have their own views, beliefs etc. but they must not express them in a way that constitutes harassment, using insults, stereotypes or attacks based on personal characteristic "like intelligence, appearance, ethnicity, race, religion (or lack thereof), culture, caste, sexual orientation, gender, sex, disability, age, nationality, political affiliation, or other characteristics." Grudzio240 (talk) 18:39, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

•  Oppose The climate denial case is about whether or not there is a global warming. This case can be proved scientifically with a high degree of certainity. However, the legal system is not a science like physics and we cannot prove gay marriages should be equal to hetero ones. This is a philosophical issue. And it may turn out that there is no right answer.

Not always is there a right or wrong world view. It may just be different than others'. The world view of a user should be their private matter. And they should be able to write on any topic they want or on no topic at all (equality - otherwise it's going to be like censorship). Where is the borderline between accepted and unaccepted behavior? Is "I'm against selling alcohol to minors" okay? Or "I'm against advertising drugs"? Wikimedia community is a global one. This means that users may come from a completely different places where there are different traditions and world views common. And it's impossible to guarantee that our opinions will not clash. They will but we don't have to remember about it when talking to others.

Let's take the marriage: in the Western culture these are pairs of two people and adding anyone more is usually considered cheating (at least traditionally). On the other hand, there are cultures like Arabic where it's perfectly okay to have two or more wifes. Everyone of us have certain opinions. They do not have to be universally nice. I can be against my girlfriend sleeping with one more 'best friend' but that doesn't mean I won't talk to a person who is willing to live in such a complex relation.

This particular user states he is against gay marriage. This doesn't mean he believes LGBT+ people are worse than others (maybe he does so, but that's not written there). Marriage is an construct of a civil law and not a treat of Wikimedia user. Moreover, this case is very boolean: you can be for or against LGBT marriages (not diving into reasons here, but there are certainly for both options). If you are forbidden to say "i'm against" but you may say "i'm for" (hey, inclusivity), that's censorship.

Suppose I wrote "Eating meat should be forbidden". I do not disapprove of people who eat meat but I do say that they should not do so. Is this considered to be vegetarian terrorism and against inclusivity of meat-eaters?

We should not hurt people by saying something but also we cannot hurt people by preventing them to be themselves. Msz2001 (talk) 18:45, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• • While your argument is fair on the surface, I think it’s broadly scientific accepted that sexual orientation and gender identity are not behaviors (like alcohol selling or eating meat) but rather innate traits. So if joe wikipedian says gay people can’t marry, he isn’t really saying he’s opposed to the action itself but saying that either gay people can stop being gay so they can get a straight marriage (which is scientifically false) or that gay people exist but don’t deserve to marry (which is clearly discriminatory). Dronebogus (talk) 18:54, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  I disagree with the conclusions you make. Infoboxes expressing opposition to gay marriage rights are just as inappropriate as other hypotheticals supporting discrimination userbox texes:

  "This user opposes interracial marriage the adoption of children by such couples." - racism , "This user opposes voting rights for women." - Sexism , "This user supports whites-only beaches" - racism etc. Grudzio240 (talk) 22:19, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  I support a policy of Zero Censorship. My view is that half of us are sub-par in some aspects and above par in other aspects. Regardless, all points of view should be acknowledged if not acceded to.

  I do contend that an editorial standard be maintained.

  That is; for any discrete point of view; one entry/page/document becomes established with relevant links to associated pages. Such a document to which any who find themselves in support, may be contributed to upon passing editorial review of a moderator aligned with that point of view.

  Contribution to the aligned document is deemed acceptable considering over-arching standards of community civility and a basic standard of grammatical composition.

  Thereby contributing but not creating another document with a congruent point of view; that is, in no sense should this become a plebiscite or tally of supporters for any point of view, merely the exploration of all supported points of view regardless of the number of those in support.

  I recognize that there will be a need for some point-of-view specific overhead regarding processor time, mental labor and moderator management of each diverging point of view and an over-all supervision of things like composition and translation.

  I do not agree that any point of view be discarded regardless of the degree to which it is benighted, unreasoned, neurotic, or potentially sociopathic.

  The more each of us reads the better each one becomes at recognizing the product ( wheat ) from the dross ( chaff ). HHabilisPanoptes (talk) 04:45, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

  we cannot hurt people by preventing them to be themselves You can, actually. Vexations (talk) 16:42, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

• Not that such userboxes or user statements should be ignored, but is there any evidence this is affecting article content? DGG (talk) 03:09, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No but they create a hostile environment for the user groups they disparage. Dronebogus (talk) 19:21, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
    • Wouldn't users still be able to express same text on their user page through text even if userboxes are removed? C933103 (talk) 10:13, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
• Strong oppose seriously it’s just a userbox on a user page. Don’t you folks have better things to do in life? For example worrying about the quality of content pages. -📜GIFNK📖DLM💻MMXX🏰 (TALK🎙 | CONTRIBS) 11:47, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
•  Support Even though these are just userboxes, I strongly support the initiative. This is a definitely a small start, but at least it's something. —CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ]  [ CONT ]} 05:21, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
•  Support - Creating non-toxic environments is crucial to work, be that online or IRL and, theoretically speaking, the more we have global initiatives like this, the better. As it has been expressed above, (using an extreme slippery slope to get to the point fast), if we are to agree on allowing that, then in the near future we may be forced to also agree on things like "This user thinks slavery is profitable and should be returned", "This user is pro animal torture", etc. The only gray part I find on this (which is why I'm supporting instead of strong supporting) is that this matter is also gray in the global aspect when it comes to the law part. Abortion matters and capital punishments are also similar subjects which we generally still consider as normal subjects which someone can be pro or against them. - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:59, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Leadership Development Working Group: Reminder to apply by 10 April 2022

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Hello everyone,

The Community Development team at the Wikimedia Foundation is supporting the creation of a global, community-driven Leadership Development Working Group. The purpose of the working group is to advise leadership development work. Feedback was collected in February 2022 and a summary of the feedback is on Meta-wiki. The application period to join the Working Group is now open and is closing soon on April 10, 2022. Please review the information about the working group, share with community members who might be interested, and apply if you are interested.

Thank you,

From the Community Development team

The Community Development team Cassie Casares (talk) 18:39, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines ratification voting is now closed

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Greetings,

The ratification voting process for the revised enforcement guidelines of the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) came to a close on 21 March 2022. Over 2300 Wikimedians voted across different regions of our movement. Thank you to everyone who participated in this process! The scrutinizing group is now reviewing the vote for accuracy, so please allow up to two weeks from the close of voting for them to finish their work.

The final results from the voting process will be announced here, along with the relevant statistics and a summary of comments as soon as they are available. Please check out the voter information page to learn about the next steps. You can comment on the project talk page on Meta-wiki in any language. You may also contact the UCoC project team by email: ucocprojectwikimedia.org

Best regards,

Movement Strategy and Governance
Xeno (WMF) (talk) 01:25, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Results from the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines ratification vote published

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The Trust and Safety Policy team published the results of the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines ratification vote. The vote ended 21 March 2022. See the results and read more on Meta-wiki.

Xeno (WMF) (talk) 03:57, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Problems with unique central log in for all WMF projects

In the last few days (ok last 1 week), I faced a problem with unique central log in for WMF projects. For example, when I am log in English Wikipedia, and I jumped on to Commons, I got automatically logged out. And again log in and jumped on to Metawiki, I was automatically logged out. When tried to log in, my username was already written in the writing space but I need to enter my password. Do other Wikimedians face the similar conditions? And how shall I solve this issue? Haoreima (talk) 05:48, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Haoreima: Perhaps a silly question, yet you clicked "keep me automatically logged in"? Xeno (WMF) (talk) 03:58, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Xeno (WMF) oh I didn't clicked that! :-) --Haoreima (talk) 04:00, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

What Wikipedia means in different projects

Hello everyone! I wanted to draw attention or at least have a discussion about something that has been worrying me for quite a bit. I've been involved with Wikimedia for around a decade now and during that time I've noticed that for many projects Wikipedia is a different thing than what it is for the English one. Multiculturalism and diversification are good factors to look for but this is not what I'm talking about here. What I mean is that some projects may understand Wikipedia as a kind of institution and operate it like one, some may treat it as a certain language glossary, some may consider it a kind of archive, some like a national social forum and some others as a place for an alternative national history. This mostly happens with small wikis I may dare say because of the small number of users they have. I can provide further details on this matter if so needed.

I've recently been reading a lot about the global leadership initiative and in it, many, many times we ask the question "what does 'leader' mean". Now, I know we have a page like this in EnWiki but other than that have there been more discussions or writings in regard to this aspect in a global scale? Should there be? - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:07, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

The WP:NOT page exists in many other languages: d:Q4345841; perhaps a comparison could be done across the projects to see what are the shared and divergent views. –xeno 12:50, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

@Xeno, how would such a comparison be done in very rough sketches? Are you talking about comparing WP:NOTs content globally? I believe that wouldn't be very "organic" as many projects, especially small ones, just translate policies ad verbatim from EnWiki without giving much thought or discussion to them just so they can "have a law to show" in article deletion rationales. I know because unfortunately that's what we've been doing for years at my homewiki (SqWiki). Sometimes translations are not even full translations. Sometimes there aren't translations at all. Some of our policies just straight up interlink to the EnWiki's policies because our translated versions would fall quickly behind in terms of updating content. (A quick example. Try following the links.) - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:14, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Klein Muçi: (had to switch accounts - ) as I was listening, Movement Strategy/Global Approach for Local Skill Development came to mind (which is a prioritized initiative). Either assessing needs or creating a learning resource around this is something a movement strategy implementation grant might apply to, if that would help. Is that an idea you'd be interested in moving forward? (Feel free to reach out by email or my talk page to discuss further) Xeno (WMF) (talk) 02:17, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

@Xeno (WMF), I'm a bit confused. Do you mean to "assess needs or create a learning resource" about What Wikipedia means in different projects or is that an unrelated offer? - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:52, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

To your idea - it seemed like you were saying that it's hard to come to agreements on smaller projects about project scope. There are less people writing procedures in the native language. A learning resource that shared knowledge between projects, with best practices in easy to translate language would be useful for contributors to adapt on smaller projects. In essence, a global approach to local skills development. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 03:01, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh, so basically to find a way to have a "more organic WP:NOT" globally. Well, I'd be interested in that of course but this differs a bit with what I had in mind when I started this discussion. I was hoping to discuss it publicly here, to be able to see if what I'm talking about has been noticed by other people in other communities or not, express how we feel about that and if it was deemed appropriate to actually take action in regard to it, have the discussion evolve in a brainstorming session in regard to the type of action that should be taken. The initiative you proposed basically starts "immediately" on the "take action" step and truth be told, I don't feel ready in that aspect given that I lack a clear perspective of what it is and what needs to be done about it, aspects which I was hoping to find along the way on the supposed discussion here. - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:20, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

On Meta-wiki, I found Wikipedia is not paper, which has a few translations. Perhaps directly inviting some of the local creators of WP:NOT pages to share about their local context could be a first step. If you are interested to know there is some research about the state of local policy generally here. That table highlighted projects that had more or less active policymaking at the time. It could be used as a starting point for inquiries into how project scope norms compare based on the development stage of local policy. –xeno 03:40, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

That's way more close to what I had in mind. If you go check for the Albanian Wikipedia, you'll see that what I mentioned above is true. Taking my word with a lot of salt, I might also add that we also have an overall "institutionalization" kind of problem in our wiki being a small one, which may be a shared thing among all small wikis. Even though the road is not blocked at all, there are only a few people who "deal with Wikipedia", around 10 people maybe, and those users start becoming more or less the official representatives of the Wikipedia nationwide in the eyes of the overall public. This road eventually starts straying further from "Wikipedia is a place everyone can edit!" and closer to "Wikipedia is an institution you can also be part of if you get accepted, applications are open!", at least in the eyes of the uninformed public.

Another problem we've had in the past, that I've been able to witness by looking at old pages in SqWiki, is that, for example, the whole Portal namespace was treated mostly as city forums, in which you could go to Portal:NameofCity and interact with other people from the said city and learn about what was going on around, news, activities and parties. I've also seen old archived discussions where Wikipedia was treated as a kind of "alternative national history", with rationales like "The XxWiki says X about us! We should put our dignity where it belongs and say X about them too! - Yes! That's what we'll do!" (The Croatian Wikipedia also comes to mind with examples like this.)

I searched for the Latin Wikipedia in that list you sent above, another small Wiki which I've interacted with organically (and still do) but I didn't find it. Again, take my words with a lot of salt but the whole community there seems more interested in the Latin language preservation and usage itself than the "Wikimedia part". Some of them go as far as "despising" edits made in the template or module namespace because they may see them as more or less as "useless", as they see any edit which is not in the mainspace or in the article talk pages.

I believe there are 2 topics which should be addressed:

1. In general, should we ratify policies from EnWiki (or Meta) or should local projects create their own policies?
2. Should we allow small wikis to crystalize their own identity gradually, which may mean that we eventually allow some Wikipedia-s that don't follow the traditional "wiki ways", or should we guide their development along the way?

Both of these topics deal directly with "What Wikipedia is" or "What Wikipedia is not", if we prefer that approach. Maybe, inspired by what you just wrote, the first step would be to directly invite communities globally to come in here (Meta) and write their own versions of WP:NOT? (Maybe we should consider writing What Wikipedia is instead [WP:IS] or would that be too constricting?) - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:39, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

A great point you raise; certainly this is different in each language. And I think our wiki model is most successful in communitie that exceed a certain size and have some connection to ideas about what it IS and IS NOT that are transformative, generative, welcoming (and rather different than the default organizations or institutions that most members are part of in the rest of their lives, online and offline). Meta pages for WP:IS and WP:NOT that at least catalog the elements that are present in different local projects, and talk about what gives things a wiki spirit, could be a fine idea. My take is: 1. There's no need to ratify central policies for all, but good reason to gather arguments for common + successful policies. and 2. we should guide development, as we collectively have long experience with models that have worked, and those that have not; and indeed there are plenty of other outlets for "non-wiki" approaches to similar goals. –SJ talk  00:31, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

@Sj, I do agree with your point of view. Do you have any idea how we could organize a global "survey" on this matter? Starting simply with questions like: What WP:IS and WP:NOT for them and then decide what can we do with that kind of data?

@Xeno/@Xeno (WMF) maybe can also help. - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:01, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia editor in Belarus sentenced to 2 years of prison

Today, local court in Brest, Belarus, sentenced Wikipedia user Pavel Pernikaŭ (Pavel Pernikov) (User:Pr12402, ~84,000 edits in different languages) to 2 years of prison [1] [2] (for now, links are in Russian only). He was found guilty of "committing acts that discredit the Republic of Belarus" (article 369-1 of the Criminal Code of Belarus): "providing to the public deliberately false information about the activities of law enforcement and state bodies of the Republic of Belarus" and "delivering deliberately false information about the involvement of Belarusian authorities in the murder in October 2004 of journalist Veronika Cherkasova, as well as to torture and murdering people". According to human rights activists, only 3 edits (2 in ru-wiki and 1 in be-tarask-wiki) were mentioned by the court. — Homoatrox (talk) 18:05, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

How central were those 3 edits to the overall case presented? –SJ talk  00:31, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Movement Strategy and Governance News – Issue 6

Movement Strategy and Governance News
Issue 6, April 2022Read the full newsletter

---

Welcome to the sixth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board of trustees elections and other relevant MSG topics.

This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while the more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.

• Leadership Development - A Working Group is Forming! - The application to join the Leadership Development Working Group closed on April 10th, 2022, and up to 12 community members will be selected to participate in the working group. (continue reading)
• Universal Code of Conduct Ratification Results are out! - The global decision process on the enforcement of the UCoC via SecurePoll was held from 7 to 21 March. Over 2,300 eligible voters from at least 128 different home projects submitted their opinions and comments. (continue reading)
• Movement Discussions on Hubs - The Global Conversation event on Regional and Thematic Hubs was held on Saturday, March 12, and was attended by 84 diverse Wikimedians from across the movement. (continue reading)
• Movement Strategy Grants Remain Open! - Since the start of the year, six proposals with a total value of about $80,000 USD have been approved. Do you have a movement strategy project idea? Reachout to us! (continue reading)
• The Movement Charter Drafting Committee is All Set! - The Committee of fifteen members which was elected in October 2021, has agreed on the essential values and methods for its work, and has started to create the outline of the Movement Charter draft. (continue reading)
• Introducing Movement Strategy Weekly - Contribute and Subscribe! - The MSG team have just launched the updates portal, which is connected to the various Movement Strategy pages on Meta-wiki. Subscriber to get up-to-date news about the various ongoing projects. (continue reading)
• Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about the UCoC on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)

Nouveau chapitre de thèse

Bonjour, voici un nouveau chapitre de ma thèse que je vous invite à commenter si cela vous tente. Je décris tout le système politique du mouvement cette fois-ci. Une belle journée à tous ! Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact (Fr-N, En-3, Pt-3)} 20:04, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Let's talk about the Desktop Improvements

Hello!

Have you noticed that some wikis have a different desktop interface? Are you curious about the next steps? Maybe you have questions or ideas regarding the design or technical matters?

Join an online meeting with the team working on the Desktop Improvements! It will take place on 29 April 2022 at 13:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC on Zoom. Click here to join. Meeting ID: 88045453898. Dial by your location.

Agenda

• Update on the recent developments
• Questions and answers, discussion

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes will be taken in a Google Docs file. Olga Vasileva (the Product Manager) will be hosting this meeting. The presentation part will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, French, Italian, and Polish. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the talk page or send them to [email protected].

At this meeting, both Friendly space policy and the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces apply. Zoom is not subject to the WMF Privacy Policy.

We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Collections Available Now - April 2022

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL owl says sign up today!

The Wikipedia Library has free access to new paywalled reliable sources. You can these and dozens more collections at https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/:

• Wiley – journals, books, and research resources, covering life, health, social, and physical sciences
• OECD – OECD iLibrary, Data, and Multimedia​​ published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
• SPIE Digital Library – journals and eBooks on optics and photonics applied research

Many other sources are freely available for experienced editors, including collections which recently became accessible to all eligible editors: Cambridge University Press, BMJ, AAAS, Érudit and more.

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: log in today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 13:16, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

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