Mailing List Archive

While I'm not opposing the idea, I have questions I didn't find
covered in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Xgg6dvg2athdb1h7.
TL;DR: I think my concerns can all be resolved with careful rewording.

Please bear with me and analyze this idea: Does the proposed amendment
imply that I'm violating the CoC the moment I help someone who runs or
supports such a website?

Or to ask the question differently: What are we banning here? The act
of helping? The act of asking for help? The fact that a person belongs
to a specific group? What a person believes? Am I supposed to check
every time I help someone to make sure they don't work for such a
website? How can I tell if a website matches the criteria?

The proposal is rather different from how the CoC and especially the
enforcement process currently works. Usually the idea is to ban people
because of their behavior. But the proposed amendment isn't about
behavior: As hinted above it doesn't make sense to ban someone just
because they ask for help. Still the proposed wording suggests that
"soliciting help" would be the same as "advocating violence or hate
speech". This doesn't seem right, especially when the person's
intention clearly isn't to advertise their website.

I think the issue here is a conflict with how a CoC works: A violation
is always a violation and must be handled as such, no matter if people
know better or not. It must be like that. Otherwise anyone could
simply claim "I didn't know" and get away. But this idea is not
compatible with the proposed wording alone. It becomes actionable only
with additional information: Either the person asking for help openly
mentions their website, or they spam our support channels. Both
actions should absolutely be covered by the CoC, sure. The question
is: Aren't they already? Is there really a gap we need to cover with
an amendment?

Unfortunately the publicly available information about the processes
of the CoC committee and how it evaluates cases is extremely sparse.
How does it decide, for example, what the "predominant activity" of a
website is? What publicly available sources does the committee use to
be sure they have a common, transparent definition of hard to define
things like what qualifies as "hate speech"? Do they consult experts?
Do they have a catalogue of words and phrases? Nobody knows.

The last significant edit to the committee's FAQ was in 2017.

Personally I would love to have a different enforcement process that –
after an initial intervention, if one is needed – then focuses on
giving people empathy, time and material to learn, to grow, to become
better, and to say sorry. Unfortunately this is – from all I know and
was able to observe – not at all how the committee operates. It's
about "protecting the space". That's all. It's the reason why – for
example – the first time a person might learn they violated the CoC
can actually be a public announcement. It's not about the person, it's
about the space.

Can we please rephrase the proposal and make it very clear that it's
not about the act of helping but about the act of consuming our
support resources? "Soliciting" is a word I find extremely hard to
understand. According to my dictionary it could seriously mean both
"asking for" as well as "offering help". Furthermore, I suggest
avoiding the word "help". "Help" shouldn't be used as if it's
something negative. For example, no doctor would deny saving someone's
life, no matter how many hate tattoos the person has.

Best
Thiemo
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