Talk:Wikimedia LGBT+/Archive 1

An LGBT chapter to support LGBT interests

These issues are very important to me and I think that having a chapter would be a huge help in addressing them:

1. The response to some health risks is education. I think that an LGBT chapter could advocate for public health organizations to develop articles on topics like HIV and AIDS, whereas individuals or a wikiproject could not.
2. Every region has a unique LGBT culture and history. Practically all major cities in the world have an LGBT cultural organization which keeps archives on LGBT issues for that city, yet there are not localized LGBT history articles on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the ideal place to collect all existing publications on local LGBT history topics and present an encyclopedic overview. A chapter could advocate for this to cultural organizations whereas it would be hard for unaffiliated individuals to do this.
3. Harassment and discrimination exists on Wikimedia projects and few communities have experience responding to harassment like the LGBT community does. Best practices created by LGBT organizations ought to be put in place on Wikimedia projects since they are already developed and tested. It is more appropriate for a chapter to organize this than a group of individuals.

Thoughts? Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:36, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Miscellaneous LGBT links

I am not sure where to put this but it is worth remembering.

• WikiConference India 2011/Submissions/Documenting Indian LGBT space

Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:47, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

The scope of this project

I have some serious concerns about the purpose and scope of this endeavor.

• Is the response to on-wiki harassment of LGBT editors somehow insufficient today? It seems to me at least on EN that the community and administrators have a very low tolerance for such things.
• I very highly doubt the community would accept an extra step in dispute resolution to request a gay mediator or arbitrator. And echoing my first point, I don't think there is systematic bias against LGBT in our dispute resolution to start with.
• Similarly, a "gay OTRS" seems unnecessary and divisive to me. How would "gay OTRS" handle tickets differently from the normal OTRS?
• You can start an IRC channel if there isn't one already, just do it. It doesn't require funding or blessing from WMF. If you need help doing it, I'm Gigs on freenode, msg me.
• What is an "educator of LGBT populations"? Is there a gay-only school somewhere I'm not aware of?

Gigs (talk) 15:40, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

1. Yes, the response to on-wiki harassment of LGBT editors is insufficient on :en to meet community needs.
2. The broader Wikipedia community does not need to accept any extra steps in dispute resolution; the LGBT resources would be managed by this group. Historically, LGBT communities have organized within themselves to advocate for protection of members of the community. The systemic bias is society's treatment of minorities and perhaps the on-wiki community is relatively enlightened as compared to society in general. Still on-wiki LGBT discrimination happens much more than discrimination against people for non-LGBT status.
3. The "gay OTRS" is useful because the societal precedent is that LGBT persons get a more understanding and effective response from other people who have experienced the same kind of discrimination. OTRS is needed because there needs to be a private complaint channel to protect the complainant. This would be divisive - I actually think that there should be a discrimination channel for all private complaints and not just LGBT, just as any brick and mortar organization's human resources department would provide for its employees and volunteers.
4. The IRC channel exists already. #wikimedia-lgbt^connect
5. LGBT persons have educational needs specific to the community. One common item is that LGBT populations have a higher health risk of infection by HIV than non-LGBT persons. Besides that, most major cities in the world have LGBT community centers which provide a range of population-specific concerns just like any cultural center would. I would call these LGBT schools. I encourage you to spend an afternoon visiting one in person in your area - anyone there would be happy to share coffee with you and have a chat, and they would appreciate your interest a lot.

Blue Rasberry (talk) 03:58, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

• Probably off-topic, but the best known "gay school" is Harvey Milk High School. Cheers --Fæ (talk) 04:30, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I would emphasise that the dispute resolution stuff is secondary to institutional and community outreach. All that stuff can and should follow later if and when necessary to support outreach projects. —Tom Morris (talk) 22:02, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies guys. I have to admit that these proposals mainly scare me because of the potential negative press and community reception of the ideas. I agree that it may be sufficient to change the primary emphasis of the project to make it clear that you are in line with the Wikimedia mission. Tell the reader why these goals are furthering the mission, and emphasize the parts that are going to be least controversial. Consider people like me who aren't aware of the LGBT educational infrastructure that is out there when you are writing your goals, and consider how the community would react to some of these proposals. I've worked in dispute resolution a while on EN and I think the idea of special LGBT dispute resolution is going to go over like a lead balloon. Consider where the most value can be gained with the least resistance. Gigs (talk) 15:53, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Dispute resolution might be a bit too strong a term. I certainly think that there are issues on Wikipedia (and other wikis, not all wikis are en.wp) where people can be a bit over-rowdy and where someone who is of a more delicate composition might struggle without handholding. I'd say that "gay OTRS" might be a bit of a stretch, but having certain people in the community who people who feel aggrieved can get advice and a sympathetic ear from is no bad thing. There are a number of people who I know who do feel like they have been the subject of homophobic or transphobic behaviour by editors. Certainly with the gendergap, there have been negative situations which have only been resolved by people having a quiet chat off-wiki with someone who is experienced in both what it's like to be a victim of sexism and how the Wikipedia community works.

Formalising this kind of thing is well-worth doing eventually.

As for negative press? Sure, that's a possibility. A few recent incidents in wiki-land have come from people not quite grasping the full potential of bad press. That's definitely something to worry about.

This is why I think if we're gonna have an functional LGBT Outreach Project, it needs to start with institutional outreach first, learn from that and then (gasp, buzzword alert:) iterate. —Tom Morris (talk) 17:37, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Tom that doing institutional outreach and getting institutional support is the priority. I would be going further than him in saying that I think talking with organizations will often need to include telling them what should happen if they encourage anyone to edit Wikipedia and then the person they send faces harassment. This is much more likely to happen to someone involved in LGBT issues than many other types of Wikipedia article development.

I replied more in a section below. I do not think that this is "special LGBT dispute resolution" but rather a continuation of established practices in all communities which host LGBT populations. I think of this more as the establishment of an online community center than of doing anything new or different. Setting up another OTRS queue would be a very transparent option for doing this and not a big deal at all, and if someone from this group did not pick up the queue then those emails could just go for general sorting by anyone else. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:49, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Supporting people who complain of harassment

I and others have proposed that this organization seek to become involved in one kind of conduct problem - a claim that a Wikipedia editor is targeted for harassment on the basis of LGBT status or interest in LGBT topics. The proposal is that whenever anyone would like to make a complaint about LGBT discrimination, they may do as they like, but one of their options will be to direct the complaint here. Additionally, this group will encourage anyone who wishes to do so that if they see a complaint about LGBT discrimination, they can refer the complainant here.

Wiki LGBT would do two things - one, create a semi-confidential repository (perhaps through OTRS, perhaps through some other system) containing lists of complaints. The purpose of the repository would be for use in research on the nature of LGBT discrimination on Wikipedia. This research is necessary because of the demand for supporting evidence whenever anyone asserts that LGBT discrimination is a problem. At a minimum, this organization would count the number of complaints received. A second step would be considering the complaints more deeply with some intent to comfort the people who complain.

Just as in brick-and-mortar volunteer situations, it almost never is practical to police injustice done to a volunteer. But LBGT organizations have found great success in introducing community members to each other and let them talk amongst themselves about the best possible reactions to facing discrimination. If someone has a complaint I only want them to be able to get it to someone who understands. If a person complains of LGBT discrimination to someone outside the community, the response of the outsider is likely to be, "This is the first complaint I have ever heard of this type. It seems to be an isolated incident by some Internet jerk. I see no reason to use this one incident as a basis for setting new policy. I have no idea who else I should tell about this. Discrimination happens to all people at equal rates online and everyone should just expect to have to tolerate their share of it." I want to support the coordination of something more robust for people who say this is a problem.

People who say there is no problem can treat this group like they treat LGBT community centers in any city - they can stay away if it does not interest them. This would be a process organized by and for people interested in LGBT issues and should not encroach on anyone doing anything outside that domain. The Wikimedia Foundation's space policy suggests that in conferences people should be able to immediately meet with someone if they feel harassed. They based this off existing policies for meeting spaces. Wikipedia is a virtual meeting place and those protections should be modified in an appropriate way to apply here also. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:49, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Naming of Wikimedia Thematic Organizations

Hi all,

I wanted to bring to your attention a discussion here on Meta on the way thematic organizations are named. Given that the proposal would affect your group, please let us know your thoughts on the matter.

Thank you. –Bence (talk) (AffCom) 12:44, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up Bence, I hadn't spotted it. I see Blue Rasberry is on to it, good man. I am not sure how those guidelines might change the name, I personally would not be offended if we become something like "Wikimedians for LGBT knowledge" (no, on second thoughts that's terrible, someone must be able to do 400% better), but I daresay we would have a good chat about it to get test all the viewpoints before changing it. :-) --Fæ (talk) 21:31, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Il Cassero

See WM-IT's latest report: there's a talk about LGBT projects on Wikipedia in Bologna on June 26. –SJ talk  22:30, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I am impressed you picked up on it SJ. Ginevra was in touch last week and sent out a head's up on the LGBT email list. I will be very interested to read the presentation, and hopefully hear of some nice collegiate work afterwards, particularly considering that June/July are globally the key months for Gay Pride events, making this is an opportunity to encourage new volunteers who are more handy with a camera than a keyboard, to share their photos and videos of LGBT cultural activities as part of our Commons:LGBT_Free_Media_Collective. --Fæ (talk) 22:48, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Joining Wikimedia Chapters Association

For those of you who may not know, there is an organization to support Wikimedia organizations called the Wikimedia Chapters Association. Currently this organization supports all "chapters", which are defined as Wikimedia groups representing geographical areas. Wikimedia LGBT is one of a few proposed "thematic organizations", which are Wikipedia organizations for people grouped by something other than geography. I think there is a lot of confusion about what constitutes a chapter or a thematic organization, and some people who participate in the Wikimedia Chapters Association have called for a ban on including thematic organizations. A vote on this is here - Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Resolutions/11._Open_up_for_all_Wikimedia_Affiliates. I expressed that Wikimedia LGBT would like to join the chapters association. My rationale was that if we cannot join this, then we and other thematic organizations have no other organization to join for the purpose of collaborating and sharing organizational infrastructure. I hope that my expression of support is not controversial here. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:17, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for raising it. At the WCA meeting during the Wikimedia Conference in Milan, I name-dropped the proposed LGBT thematic organization as the type of organization that the WCA Council would like to join, having the same level of membership as a Chapter (i.e. voting rights). Wikimedia LGBT has yet to propose ourselves as a thematic organization to AffCom, it could well be that we start off as a User Group instead, which may work differently (possibly not having a vote, this has yet to be agreed by the WCAC); either way, my understanding is that the WCAC is keen to have non-chapter Wikimedia organizations take part in the WCA discussions and process.

My personal impression is that we are pushing on an open door, we just have to pin down the formalities (which includes ensuring LGBT related projects and outreach events are recognized and documented as having our support). --Fæ (talk) 15:09, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Page organization

I find the main Wikimedia LGBT page to be very text-heavy and difficult to digest. Can we discuss possible ways to organize the information presented? For example, the Wikimedia Cascadia page branches to separate pages for GLAM (Wikimedia Cascadia/GLAM), the Education Program (Wikimedia Cascadia/Education Program) and Events (Wikimedia Cascadia/Events). We should look at how other active groups have structured their pages. Any thoughts? --Another Believer (talk) 15:49, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree with this assessment. The page originated at Outreach and has evolved from there. I do not think anyone ever intended for it to become as overwhelming as it has. Perhaps improving it could be a group effort by folks familiar with wiki-splicing. I'll help by starting to break them up a bit using the pages I know exist - but I welcome help from others as I suspect there are better methods. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 20:00, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I have made some changes to the layout of the main page - and moved a bunch of content some subpages. Thoughts? --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 07:00, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Navbox

I went ahead and created Template:Wikimedia LGBT navbox, which can be used at the bottom of pages to direct users to other links and pages associated with the project. Yes, this duplicates some of the purpose of the Template:Wikimedia LGBT template, but I think we should discuss which links should appear in the former and which should appear in the latter. The very long, columnar Wikimedia LGBT template might not be appropriate for all pages. Thoughts? --Another Believer (talk) 16:10, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 20:00, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I made some additions and tweaks - but with the intention that someone should come along and remove some from each, both, or none - in any case - the outlines are there - be bold.  :) --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 07:37, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your work. I have made some changes, but I would still like to ask for feedback (project pages must be organized effectively and reduce redundancy).

Which links belong in the header tabs at the top?

Which links belong in the columnar nav template?

• mission, goals, strategy and outcomes --Another Believer (talk) 16:20, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
• business, history, participants and privacy --Another Believer (talk) 16:20, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
• communications --Another Believer (talk) 16:21, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Which links belong in the navbox at the bottom?

• meetings --Another Believer (talk) 16:20, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

--Another Believer (talk) 16:20, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Talk page invitation?

Thoughts on sending talk page invitations to Wikipedians, providing an overview of Wikimedia LGBT (including its mission and goals), request for feedback, and the option to sign the list of participants/supporters? Perhaps start with English Wikipedia / members of WikiProject LGBT studies? --Another Believer (talk) 13:57, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Meta:Requests for deletion#Friends of gays should not be allowed to edit articles

I am curious what folks think of this discussion: Meta:Requests for deletion#Friends of gays should not be allowed to edit articles --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 15:37, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Hatnote

Resolved.

Regarding this edit, I think the hatnote looks ridiculous. I would rather give up the GAY shortcut than have that appearing at the top of the page. People visiting Wikimedia LGBT don't need to see that... Thoughts? --Another Believer (talk) 21:56, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Yeah - I think it is ridiculous that the Wikimedia LGBT mainpage would link to a page that is arguably offensive to LGBT people (especially while its offensive level is being debated) - nor do I think it means we have to give up the shortcut. If there were a dozen articles using that shortcut regularly - fine - but right now no pages link to that shortcut. A hatnote is unnecessary - especially since the place it is pointing to is a humor article that contributes very little (arguably if anything) to Meta work. I disagree completely that anyone logically typing GAY in would anticipate that humor article versus say something about gays within Wikimedia. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 04:10, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, many people would logically anticipate that because GAY has been a functioning redirect for... about eight years, it looks like. The essay is from 2004, its early page history includes some of the founding members of the Wikimedia Foundation, and it's heavily cited on Wikimedia wikis (e.g., the English Wikipedia). You can't simply banish pointers to the essay because you disagree with its existence. If you hijack the redirect (or redirects, it seems you went after many), it's only fair to visitors to leave a pointer (in the form of a hatnote, in this case). --MZMcBride (talk) 04:17, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Again, I would agree with you if the shortcut was frequently used. It was not being used - no one else objected to the change - and I still do not think you have made any argument as to why anyone would logically think that the GAY shortcut would point to a humor article vs. an actual active project page. I don't know how the history of its origin article matters. I too can read history pages and know the usernames of people with impressive backgrounds - it did not seem relevant to this shortcut. If anything, does that speak to how obviously misplaced that shortcut was since in all that history it never took off? Your whole argument seems better fitted for the discussion on the deletion of the page itself - which I tend to agree with - it should be kept - renamed - but kept. However, the argument that GAY is more logical for that humor piece than this project page still seems weak. You have not explained how that shortcut is a better fit for that humor page than this project page. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 04:48, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Some notes:

• There is a logic issue: a sample example is not a generality. You say « heavily cited on Wikimedia wikis » and only give ONE example…
• I don't understand what the fact some WMF founding members wrote on this page has to do with an URL question.
• I really share the MZMcBride concern for continuity of URL, see the W3C recommendation Cool URIs don't change for arguments.
• If you don't want to see an hat on this page (and personally I don't want to see that), transforms the GAY redirect into an homonyms pages (a disambiguation page, as you said on English projects). --Dereckson (talk) 11:35, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

How many examples would you like? A simple search is easy enough to perform.

When evaluating redirects, their age and history can be a factor. If this redirect were a few days old, it would be different. However, it's several years old. And Varnent was making the case nobody would ever logically anticipate this redirect leading to where it does, while this is simply untrue.

A disambiguation page seems like a fine idea to me. --MZMcBride (talk) 13:15, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree a disambig meets all the arguments made - I think it is an excellent suggestion. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 15:53, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Just in case you need a specific example of a link to the "GAY" shortcut, here you go: w:en:User:Ollie. Looking at local Special:WhatLinksHere can be misleading. --MZMcBride (talk) 13:21, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I do not personally find userpages or old archived discussions (I found only a couple - speaking to the shortcut not the page itself) that use it as a good enough example that it is actively used - and it redirecting to a humor article has more value than a project page. However, it seems moot now, the suggestion for a disambig page seems to serve both our purposes - and as much as I enjoy these debates - I do not think either of us is likely to convince the other. Unless you think the disambig solution doesn't work (although I would be very curious why) - I think we can consider this resolved. And, as always, while I do not fully agree with you on this, I too appreciate that you pointed it out and am pleased that a compromise could be found. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 16:08, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Even if you don't find ONE use, you can't change an URL: nothing warranties there isn't somewhere a printed work with the link on a page. This is the essence of Cool URIs don't change. --Dereckson (talk) 21:55, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I am not going to comment on the gay/humor page, but I think that if there are multiple purposes for the GAY shortcut, just create a disambiguation page (like Dereckson suggested). I appreciate MZMcBride's argument, but the hatnote really is absurd... --Another Believer (talk) 15:12, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Prepare a program of actions

Hi all,

Could we have a meeting on IRC (Freenode #wikimedia-lgbt) or Mumble (if we need audio discussion, and to avoid to block the amount of participants, like it happens every time on Hangout // Yes, I've a server prepared for that) to discuss a program of concrete actions we can do in Wikimedia LGBT? --Dereckson (talk) 11:10, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Some ideas to explore

Add here your ideas.

• To explore this resolution idea to have a LGBT point of contact in each project to offer support if a problem occurs.
• To brainstorm ideas about how to present Wikimedia projects to local LGBT organizations (Dereckson for example would like to give talks to Belgian LGBT organizations) to get more contributors to write about the history of social rights and LGBT topics.

Context: my personal story of an effort to be a participant

In June 2012, at Wikimedia LGBT launch, I express the following statement:

“If I can do something concrete whether in Belgium, whether on the French Wikipedia, whether on Wikimedia Commons, I will be happy to participate actively. Meanwhile, I already support the effort. --Dereckson (talk) 23:26, 11 June 2012 (UTC)”

It's a bit frustrating when you say “I want to participate.” but nobody is even bothering to say you hello.

In September 2013, I note:

• I were unable to identify opportunities related to Belgium ;
• I were unable to identify real opportunities related to the French Wikipedia (I've identify one case of a contributor who contributes to LGBT-related articles, but is carefully not to disclose his orientation by fear to give an automatic POV argument to other POV-centric contributors, but I'm not sure this is in scope) ;
• The only Commons stuff were an important DR question, but not handled coldly and objectively.

Then I asked myself “Is this only a club for en. people? Or a club for Fae to complain about Commons policies when one incident occurs and about the lack of a WMF resolution?”

I also wondered “Can we also do concrete work? Can we have meeting to plan actions?” and it's when I had the two ideas noted supra. --Dereckson (talk) 11:03, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Nice name-check. Happy to take the hint and not attend. --Fæ (talk) 11:18, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Might I suggest that anytime a meeting is held, an agenda is created and notes are taken. Transparency is very important here, especially as this group starts to grow and formalize. Once a date is set, I would recommend starting a page like "Wikimedia LGBT/DD Month YEAR"... --Another Believer (talk) 15:15, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Dates of the meeting

Is Wednesday 2 at 13:00 PST / 16:00 EST / 20:00 UTC / 21:00 GMT / 22:00 CEST on #wikimedia-lgbt ok for everyone? --Dereckson (talk) 11:14, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

• I'll be thereAmir (talk) 13:52, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Did this meeting take place? --Another Believer (talk) 04:11, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

• No. --Fæ (talk) 16:22, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Bummer. I imagine it will be difficult to find times that work, considering this group's global reach. Is there a specific topic or goal for this group that we can discuss in detail here on the talk page? --Another Believer (talk) 19:05, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Anonymity and membership

Though not an immediate concern, this thread re: the withdrawal of Wiki Education Foundation's application for thematic organization status due to anonymity and membership, might be worth referring to in the future. This group might face a similar situation at some point. --Another Believer (talk) 00:04, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this will be an interesting challenge. I think our priority is to establish a track record of useful projects before anything else, though if we do wish to 'incorporate' later then we should get some good advice on handling membership; personally I think we can model other organizations that do similar things and find a solution that fits the needs of our people.

Certainly in the UK, though an incorporated organization may need to provide access to its registered list of members and directors would need to be verified due to money laundering concerns, the names of members may actually be pseudonyms (it is not unlawful, identity in the UK is a malleable topic) and we might be able to incorporate in a country where there are friendly systems for handling privacy of members who may fear discrimination were they publicly identified as members, or in a country where we are legally allowed to have members who are published and a different status for members who are not prepared to be public. --Fæ (talk) 06:16, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I think making a good privacy protocol will solve this issue Amir (talk) 17:21, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree that having a good privacy protocol will be necessary, but I hate to burden this group with creating something so complicated from nothing. I think that the WMF and whatever kind of international chapters group exists should make it, or perhaps even this should be modeled after what some other organization does. Wiki Project Med is similarly halting in getting affiliation from AffCom for the same reasons that Wiki Education Foundation is, so right now, it seems like there are three organizations all having the same problem. At least we have good company. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:06, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia LGBT/Interwiki

I created separate sections at Wikimedia LGBT/Interwiki to allow for expansion of potential and ongoing interwiki collaborations. In addition, I sent invitations to the LGBT Portal at Wikinews, the Free Media Collective at Wikimedia Commons and the LGBT Expedition at Wikivoyage to come expand these sections with details of their projects, including goals and possible ways to collaborate. It will be nice to see this page more fully fleshed out, so please contribute if interested. --Another Believer (talk) 23:32, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK members survey - question on gender identity

Hi all -

Fæ suggested I raise an issue we are discussing in the UK chapter with a section of a membership survey.

I have suggested we should monitor demographic characteristics. The questions would be completely anonymous and all questions would be optional i.e. a respondee could answer all questions, some or none.

I want to include a question on gender, and I believe it ought to be broad enough to invite responses on gender identity beyond 'Male/Female' but I am getting pushback on the basis that the questions risk being intrusive or pointless.

For clarification - I want to monitor gender because I believe the membership of Wikimedia UK (around 225 currently) is heavily biased in terms of male membership. I would like to have data to confirm this and inform work we do as a chapter to increase membership and make it more diverse across this and a range of other characteristics (ethnicity and age are two other key areas) The exact nature of how we recruit a more diverse membership will be somewhat determined by the survey results. It is an important thing to do, as our board of trustees are drawn from our membership pool and in many ways a more diverse and representative membership could have a positive influence on the life of the chapter.

You can read the concerns raised by Fae and at least one other member here and my responses. I also sent an email to the Wikimedia UK community mailing list which you can view here.

I would value contributions from anyone, but especially transgender individuals who could let me know what sort of questions they would appreciate having in a survey - this might include 'none at all'! I will watchlist this page, and you can of course always come back to me on either my meta or WMUK wiki talk page, or indeed add to the discussion I have already had with Fae and others on the survey talk page. Finally, if you wish to express your thoughts to me privately my email is katherine.bavage@wikimedia.org.uk.

What I would like to achieve is not only clarity for the UK chapter survey, but something we could share on meta or outreach to guide other chapters or thorgs to use in surveying. Its a delicate balance; ensuring different groups are not denied the opportunity to identify in surveys versus causing potential embarrassment or harm.

Thanks all Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 11:21, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Did anyone get back to Katherine? I have not noticed any comments on the WMUK website. --Fæ (talk) 18:02, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I have not had time to look into this. The above link does not work. Perhaps I am just too late? --Another Believer (talk) 17:04, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Not too late, the link https://wiki.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Talk:WMUK_membership_survey_2013/Survey_draft#Gender_questions works for me, though I do have an account. Feel free to add any thoughts to wiki talk page, at the WMUK site we would not care if you use a one-off account if you want to do this with reasonable anonymity. --Fæ (talk) 17:25, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Chapter outreach?

We have discussed the need for outreach in order to increase activity and the number of participants/supporters. However, there seemed to be little interest in sending invitations at English Wikipedia to members of WikiProject LGBT studies (not because we seek exclusively, but because we need to have a strong framework before sending mass invitations). What do we think about sending invitations to chapters here at Meta? We might gain support from some active Wikimedians and even get some assistance with page translations. --Another Believer (talk) 20:15, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Agree. I suggest send you invitation to other affiliations too (like user groups, thematic organizations) Amir (talk) 16:36, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps something like the following?

		Wikimedia LGBT+
		Wikimedia LGBT+ is a proposed thematic organization that seeks to promote the development of content on Wikimedia projects which is of interest to LGBT+ communities. Proposed activities include outreach at LGBT events, Wikimania and other Wikimedia events, an international campaign called Wiki Loves Pride, and work on safe space policies, among other collaborations and interwiki projects. Active Wikimedians are welcome to join this cause! Please consider adding your name as a participant/supporter. Current tasks include translating pages, building a strong framework here at Meta, and achieving user group status (with the eventual goal of becoming a thematic organization). Your feedback is welcome on the discussion page.

Thoughts? Feel free to discuss below or make changes directly to the draft invitation. I will not send these without feedback from current project supporters, so please offer your two cents at your earliest convenience! --Another Believer (talk) 17:47, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Support You put the text of this here on this page; I made this into a template so that it could be centrally updated if need be. The template is at Template:WMLGBT invitation. I support the use of this template as an outreach tool. This could also be copied to Wikipedia and used there, but maybe checking people's reactions on meta first would be a good idea. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:08, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for creating a template version. Yes, this could certainly be used for wider audiences, but I plan to start here at Meta for feedback. --Another Believer (talk) 18:10, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Update: I distributed invitations to the talk pages of all established and proposed chapters, thematic organizations and user groups. The only thing I have noticed so far is that my edit to Wikimedia Ukraine was reverted. I also added an invitation to the talk page of WikiProject LGBT studies at English Wikipedia. --Another Believer (talk) 18:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

When asked why the invitation was reverted, spam was given as the reason. --Another Believer (talk) 22:18, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I have offered a welcoming hand and an ear if there are any concerns. I would also like to congratulate Another Believer for taking the initiative to do this nice and friendly bit of outreach which I definitely support. Cheers --Fæ (talk) 23:06, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Fæ. I am pleased to see a few people indicate their support the past few days, and I hope more continue to join in the near future. --Another Believer (talk) 02:50, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Outreach to WikiProject LGBT studies participants

Unless project members object for any reason, I think we should consider sending invitations to current and inactive members of WikiProject LGBT studies at English Wikipedia. Some here have vocalized concerns about this group supporting primarily English speakers. I think we can all agree that we wish for diversity. I am simply reaching out to speakers of my native language at my home Wikipedia (EN). I welcome others to draft similar invitations for other languages. I have been sending numerous requests to people who have translated pages here at Meta-Wiki and Wikimedia Outreach, asking that they consider translating pages for Wikimedia LGBT.

Please consider the following:

• Are there any changes that should be made to the above invitation before being sent to members of WikiProject LGBT studies?
  • (of course, we will amend references to "here" at Meta, since these will be distributed elsewhere)
• Are there any organizational/framework changes we should consider before inviting hundreds of people to view Wikimedia LGBT? We want to make a good first impression!

Please respond with your thoughts. Once the timing and wording of the invitation is determined, I assume a request can be submitted for delivery via EdwardsBot. --Another Believer (talk) 23:53, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I think before we send out mass invitations that we should clearly ask people to do something when they get here, and maybe multiple things. Registering interest is one thing, and then also ask for some moderately deeper commitment (develop some LGBT content in some way), and then some really deep commitment (organize a Wiki Loves Pride event or whatever). I think we should also advertise that we do a meetup at Wikimania every year and to encourage people to apply for scholarships.

I see nothing wrong with posting English language notices at the other LGBT WikiProjects. Perhaps it would not be appropriate to send their individual members notices, but the other WikiProjects should be informed. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:11, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Great ideas. And thanks for the wikidata link to other LGBT projects--I had not seen this list before. This will be helpful. I'd be happy to post English-language invitations on those projects, once an invitation template is confirmed. Any thoughts on possible action items for new participants? --Another Believer (talk) 17:51, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

1. Easy items - Sign up, start watching their local LGBT studies WikiProject page, contact someone on Wikipedia and collaborate with them on anything
2. More difficult - Participate in WikiProject LGBT Studies, commit to be in email contact with 1 new Wikipedia friend that they meet online, read the meta WM LGBT page
3. Most involved - go to a local Wikipedia meetup, apply for a scholarship to attend Wikimania, organize an outreach event (any of the established ones), join the mailing list, apply for a small grant through Idea Lab

I will think about this and propose more sometime later. It can be a continually updated list. I think we already have something somewhere. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:12, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Category sorting?

Resolved.

I noticed some pages in Category:Wikimedia LGBT sorted by language abbreviation, rather than by the content of the page itself. For example, Wikimedia LGBT/Activities/zh is under Z instead of A. Is this normal? --Another Believer (talk) 18:14, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

This is not the place for that kind of question. Good luck finding your multilingual equivalent in categorization; I would not even know where to ask about that kind of best practice.

If that is normal then it still does not seem intuitive. I am not sure how translations on meta work. Maybe that is the team to ask -Talk:Translation requests. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:07, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I submitted a request for page translations and also directed readers to this section for discussion. --Another Believer (talk) 17:48, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Meta talk:Babylon is a lot more active. PiRSquared17 (talk) 00:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I asked the same question there as well. --Another Believer (talk) 16:59, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Not done Placing this here as a reminder. I do not know how to fix this issue, but it sure makes the Wikimedia LGBT category look messy. --Another Believer (talk) 16:42, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• Done Update: The category now sorts properly. Many thanks to PiRSquared17 for assisting. --Another Believer (talk) 20:26, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

LGBT Organizations in New York

This organization has 110% of my support and I will pass along the information. There are a few LGBT organizations in New York that I've been trying to get interested in Wikipedia that may take to this. The w:Lesbian Herstory Archives and also the w:Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center. I will list more as they come. OR drohowa (talk) 16:35, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the information and for your support. --Another Believer (talk) 17:09, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Blog

I think It would be very good if we make a blog post in Wikimedia Blog for reaching out. I wrote some posts in that blog before and I would be happy to write another. I suggested that in the mailing list and I'm told to tell it here, If there is no objection about this I'll start writing it after Nov 6th. BestAmir (talk) 17:14, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Great! Would this just be a general introduction of the group and a call for participation? I assume this would be the first time WMLGBT is featured on the blog? --Another Believer (talk) 17:20, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes It would be, I'll add a request for It gets better project video and I want to ask people to send their videos of personal messages about bullying in order to make the official video (I'll work on the video) Amir (talk) 14:30, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Wonderful, please keep us updated! --Another Believer (talk) 16:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I made this draft and because I'm not native I think this draft needs to be worked on, so please feel free to change it mercilessly. Amir (talk) 10:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I shared the following thoughts on the email list, but since you mentioned the draft here as well, I will re-post for others to respond to as well.

Thanks for sharing this draft.

Wikimedia LGBT should have an internal conversation about how "activist" the group should be. I understand the importance of safe space and anti-discrimination policies, which have real-life impact, but I think we should be careful about making activism a primary focus of the group. The purpose of Wikipedia is to offer accurate information from a neutral point of view. The goal of Wikimedia LGBT should be similar -- to improve coverage of LGBT-related subjects from a neutral point of view. I am not sure an anti-bullying introduction to WMLGBT best expresses the goals and purpose of the group, but perhaps others would disagree?

If I were introducing WMLGBT to a wide audience for the first time, I might mention the percentage of LGBT people in the general population, the need to record LGBT history worldwide and in all languages, the need for Wikimedia projects to host reliable information related to LGBT studies, and the importance of reaching out to the LGBT community to foster diversity among Wikimedia project contributors. The more "activist" goals of Wikimedia LGBT are secondary to its main purpose.

Perhaps I am way off here, but I figure more Wikimedians would be inclined to support the group and participate if they feel our goals are more in line with the Wikimedia movement -- free culture, open access, quality content, etc. Will other project participants please share their thoughts as well? --Another Believer (talk) 16:21, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I would be in favor of taking a strong stance against bullying on Wikipedia. Preventing bullying in other spaces is less of a concern to me. I have heard stories from other editors about being targeted for harassment for participating in the development of LGBT content on Wikipedia. I myself have received such treatment on several occasions, and there is not advice on how users should respond. My perception was that harassment was fairly routine in English Wikipedia. I have no data, but if I had to guess, I would say that among users who average 100 contributions per month and who seem to be working in LGBT-related spaces, 20% of them will be the target of LGBT harassment in any given year, and this constitutes a problem worth addressing. If the Wikimedia LGBT took a stand to prevent harassment within Wikipedia then I think that would be a reasonable amount of activism to try initially. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:54, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Social media

Wikimedia DC plugged Wikimedia LGBT on their Facebook, which is much appreciated. Who set up the Facebook and Twitter accounts for this group? --Another Believer (talk) 16:00, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimania 2014

Is it too early to start discussing plans for Wikimania 2014? I very much hope Wikimedia LGBT and the LGBT community in general are well-represented at the conference. I created a page for the annual LGBT Meetup. Some thoughts:

• Wikimedia LGBT presentation
• Wikimedia LGBT meetup
• general LGBT meetup
• perhaps a planning session for Wiki Loves Pride

What ideas do you have for the conference? --Another Believer (talk) 16:55, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I would like to make resources for any Wikipedian to be able to go to their local LGBT community center and pitch them to host an editathon or other Wikipedia event. The Wiki Loves Pride event is scalable and communities could be archiving photos and other media on Wikipedia every year for gay pride at least and possibly also fill out other local history. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:01, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Looking for bot and tool related projects for 2014

Hi, I have been working on a (large) number of batch upload projects throughout 2013 and as 2014 wings its way towards us, I'm thinking about prioritizing projects for the coming year, including what might be a good community story for Wikimania in London. Obviously there is a big "bang for the unpaid volunteer buck" when I upload large numbers of images, so anything like an online LGBT media archive or forum with PD or CC-BY-SA materials would be fun to get on Commons, but I am also interested in any ideas for online tools that might help people find LGBT resources across our projects, or indeed identify maintenance problems with the articles and media we have. The odd tool to "gamify" contributing or supporting LGBT aspects of our projects might be fun, see this simple example. Thoughts and suggestions welcome. :-) --Fæ (talk) 17:24, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Is there a way to search Flickr streams that release all images as PD/CC-BY-SA? I am familiar with how to search for individual freely-licensed images, but not entire collections. Perhaps there are some LGBT organizations or even users with relevant images that could be mass uploaded. --Another Believer (talk) 17:29, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there is a tool we have bot tool called Flickrripper (just like Grindr, another name that sounds like a serial killer) that can gobble up massive Flickrstreams and checks the licences and another web based tool called Flickr2Commons provides an easy user interface suitable for a few hundred photos at a time. The challenge would be ensuring our community is active enough to check the categories if the source was not great at tagging the photos. If you look on Flickr for 'The Commons', some of the large organizational streams are listed there. If someone spots one that has not been sucked up, I'll happily add it to my backlog for the coming months. --Fæ (talk) 17:43, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll help but give me a list of images that you need to import them to commons (and they have free license) Amir (talk) 14:31, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Commons galleries

I hear about a lot of groups which have media collections and who want to do something with them on Wikipedia. So far as I know, there is no Commons WikiProject for curating people's Wikipedia galleries. I think that there should be one.

Such a WikiProject should give guidance on how to upload batches of pictures, put them all into a single gallery (Collection of X museum), then connect every gallery to a set of tutorials about what people can do with them. These things need to be done with any media collection:

• tagging them with categories
• inserting them into Wikipedia articles for the user's own language
• inserting them into Wikipedia articles for foreign languages, even if the user does not understand those languages

Tagging with categories is probably the most difficult of these tasks and this can only be done by people with some familiarity. The other two tasks could be done by even new users, and could be something done at an editathon to demonstrate how Wikipedia works.

Fae, you are Commons admin, right? Have you heard of a WikiProject on Commons for curating and processing people's media galleries? What do you think of this? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:52, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, though I'm rather high on the list of volunteers by contributions and uploads.

If you want to see a case study of a minority community using Commons as a public repository for their media collections, take a look at the Aircraft project where we have uploaded over 100,000 amateur photographs from enthusiast forums, gaining release on record from the photographers (we expect this to take over a year and we are about half way done). We believe this is the largest free repository of its type, and may become useful as a global reference base for all aircraft types. I could imagine a similar cooperative project for LGBT advocacy and social groups.

There are some issues, in this context put simply:

1. Commons is a great way of making freely reusable media available to all projects and the general public. For some institutions the condition that all media must be commercially reusable is a stumbling block.
2. Categories on Commons are more flexible than some other projects, so the simplest way of keeping collections from an institution or archive together is to make sure there is a category to do exactly that. For example Category:Images from norden.org uploaded by Fæ is a highly specific hidden category with over 5,000 images in it just to track the original source easily.
3. However, Commons is not a conventional archive, stuff may get deleted depending on the Community's evolving understanding of "educational purpose". Longer answer: It is a media collection for the express purpose of educational use and no image is guaranteed to be kept permanently. This means that some material may be deleted due to being unlikely to be of educational use. This would be unlikely to happen for historic or rare material, but if we wanted to archive all freely available photographs of Gay Pride in New York scraped off Flickr, then it would be likely that some small proportion would end up being deleted due to having uncertain copyright (such as photographs will video broadcasts in the background, or statues still within the creator's copyright, there being no Freedom of Panorama in the USA) or due to being unlikely to be useful due to poor quality. To some extent this is a good thing as "curation" must mean a process for selecting the material to be retained.
4. For very large or culturally significant media galleries (i.e. important to LGBT but perhaps not that important to the majority) then I suggest both putting on Commons but also on archive.org who do guarantee to keep records permanently.

--Fæ (talk) 16:32, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

LGBT edit-a-thons

To my knowledge, there has only been one LGBT edit-athon (see this Tom of Finland Foundation newsletter). Correct me if you know otherwise. I hope to host an LGBT-related edit-athon in Portland, Oregon at some point in the near future. Will you consider doing the same? --Another Believer (talk) 23:00, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Privacy

I attended Wikimania 2013 and one of the issues which came up was privacy. LGBT persons in various places worldwide have historically faced discrimination and in many places continue to face discrimination. For that reason, some participants in this group may wish to not reveal their identities. This group should welcome all such participants, even those who do not want to share their identities, and should make concessions to people so that they can enjoy group membership benefits even without publicly revealing themselves.

Here is a one proposed scheme for classifying members by identity -

Characteristics of members
member type	publicly uses Wikipedia name?	publicly uses real name?	privately shares Wikipedia name?	privately shares real name?
public	yes	yes	n/a	n/a
semi public 1	yes	no	n/a	yes
semi public 2	yes	no	n/a	no
semi private 1	no	no	yes	yes
semi private 2	no	no	yes	no
private	no	no	no	no

Anyone who is unable to share their Wikipedia name to this group will have to communicate through an alias or sock puppet. Many Wikipedia projects have a policy restricting the use of sock puppets so this project will have to provide guidance on making exceptions to preserve participant safety. This will need more discussion. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:35, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I like this approach - I shared some additional notes on Wikimedia LGBT/Privacy. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 18:08, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Is this for a bylaws draft for a potential thematic organization? If so, where is it being incorporated? If not, I am unclear why this is even an issue at this stage. I think most existing chapters do not have public membership information and there would be an expectation, probably legally required, regarding what can be done with the members list in terms of sharing it period. -LauraHale (talk) 16:02, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm separating the discussion of how to protect your privacy from the issue of running an group with members with aliases. Think of the section below a starting point for giving a bit of sensible advice to those worried (happy to move it somewhere else). In general, I think it is better not to layout too much guidance but encouraging using a personal contact (in whatever form) is likely to be much more helpful. --Fæ (talk) 16:29, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Fae is right to separate the privacy instructions from the talk about running a group with aliases.

LauraHale, no, this has nothing to do with bylaws, although this scheme could be adapted for that purpose later. A private membership list can be problematic for some people, and even subscribing to an Wikipedia email list can be problematic to some people. This came up because at Wikimania an attendee from a country where supporting LGBT issues was a crime expressed concern about having their Wikipedia username connected to an LGBT group, and about having their real name mentioned at all.

Besides just participating on-wiki and joining email lists, some Wikipedia participants - and especially LGBT people - may want to attend events such as the Wikimedia Diversity Conference. As an event which specifically would like LGBT persons in attendance, project participants who do not publicly state their LGBT support would have difficulty communicating to event organizers that they might wish to - for example - apply for scholarships intended for the LGBT community or be invited to present an LGBT-related talk. It is burdensome to expect the organizers of every Wikipedia event to be completely sensitive and conscious of privacy issues which are unique to the LGBT community, and it might be nice if this group could serve as a trusted broker to preserve its members' identities while relaying messages to other Wikipedia groups on behalf of project members who have a real need for privacy and cannot take great risks in losing it.

Does that clarify why this is an issue? This was not intended as an idle exercise, but rather a response and a show of concern to someone's problem. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:48, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

It sounds nice, but the group is not recognised as a thematic org by the WMF, and there is zero obligation for people to be bound by any agreement. As a user group, it is just a few people. (I could create Wikimedia Lesbians or Wikimedia Privacy Issues for instance with two or three others as a user group where we could work on specific group.) Given that, it feels like an idle exercise. It feels like something best handled by chapters and thematic orgs where there are obligations, contractual obligations, etc. I would like more information on how this user group will be protecting people's privacy and be the place of choice for thematic orgs and chapters to go to in order to handle these issues because it is unclear how this will actually be realized, who will be handling private information, why a usergroup should be trusted with private information but a chapter/thematic org should not, and that the chapter/thematic org should be obligated to go through this group. I am not seeing the practicalities here. --LauraHale (talk) 19:38, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I have my own thoughts on the ThOrg discussion, but want the group to come to its own conclusions, so I'm staying out. However, this is not a conversation I feel the same way about. Simply put, this issue must be addressed sooner rather than later. Frankly, this group continues to get interest from folks and many are just waiting for some basic issues to be resolved before engaging more. I cannot figure out with the mailing list activity does not reflect that - and I was doubting it myself - but Hong Kong was another reminder for me at least. There are participants in places where being LGBT is illegal and people living in the closet based on societal issues who are waiting for this issue to be sorted out. Saying they simply should not participate (and I am not implying anyone has said that here - to my knowledge no one here has) is in my opinion both a statement of privilege and out of line with Wikimedia community expectations - they can participate on-wiki - we should find a way to help them engage on projects. It is their decision to participate - not ours - it is our role to facilitate that participation. WMF Board has already created a fund to help participants who face legal challenges (LGBT issues being something that has since been discussed as a usage for things like Russian articles that may be seen as propaganda under their new law) - there is increasingly a sense that participation is an individual choice that we should work to support. It is something that came up repeatedly at Wikimania during Wikimedia LGBT discussions, and conversations that AffCom folks had with people about groups like Wikimedia LGBT. User groups track members as well, and their policies are as enforceable as a ThOrg (which has limited legal ability to enforce anything internationally as well). It absolutely would come up with Wikimedia Lesbians. To me, waiting until the group is some type of status is not the best thing to do as privacy for some folks interested in this project is far too serious an issue. Additionally, privacy policy of Wikimedia global is under review as a result of the NSA discussions in the USA, I think the time is right for these types of conversations as they will be active on Meta and elsewhere in the coming months. Finally, I have doubts based on the conversations I have heard that this group will be recognized in any form until this issue is resolved. The people pushing this topic were in some of those conversations as well, and I suspect is some of their motive as well - although I obviously cannot speak for them. I am abstaining from any AffCom tasks related to this group, but my hunch is they will ask about this as well. It is true that this does not typically come up with user group applications (I suppose it would depend on Wikimedia Privacy Issues' scope and concerns of potential members), but each application is different. AffCom does not consider developer tasks with a local Wikipedia group the same way it does with a MediaWiki group, and an international group does not get reviewed as much for local redundancies as a local group does. Along those lines, privacy has not been a serious concern for the participants of any user groups or ThOrgs until now - so it will certainly be a topic for this group's applications where it did not come up with other groups. The ninety minutes I spent being approached by participants at Wikimania to chat about this topic in regards to their own lives - which has not happened with other applications - implies it is a priority of interested participants and obviously AffCom and WMF Board will have to consider that. If participants of other groups presented this issue, it would be a topic there as well, and I suspect it will come up with some groups in early discussion. I personally suspect this group's model will be under extra scrutiny as the first one is usual a model for future groups. I know it has come up with some other groups, and I encourage folks to try and find if there are models used elsewhere - projects related to gender, race, religion and other topics often subject to things like workplace firings may be good places to start. IMHO, it is the top priority for leadership of this group. I say that not in any WM roles - but as someone that works offline for an org that helps victims of LGBT discrimination, harassment, and violence (I live in a place in the USA where it is legal to fire someone for being LGBT - so privacy comes up here a lot) - I would discourage some clients from engaging in a group like this until this issue was resolved and the WMF recognized its existence. All of that said, I am so out of the closet in my offline work that it is not something I can related to personally (although I was once fired for being gay), so this is mostly based on interactions with other - just to be clear. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 12:26, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Alternative accounts for privacy reasons

Hey, let's be clear, you do not have to come out to help with WM-LGBT or help improve knowledge about LGBT issues on Wikimedia projects. In fact, just because you edit an article about LGBT stuff, or upload a LGBT related photo, does not mean anything about your sexual orientation or identification as these are the projects that everyone is free to edit.

If anyone reading here is worried about protecting their real life identity, it is widely accepted on Wikimedia projects that having an alternative account for privacy reasons, which is never used for any action that could be considered against project policies (such as taking part in a discussion or vote where you are using your main account), should be fine. A detailed example policy on this is available at en:Wikipedia:SOCK#Legitimate_uses and if your home wiki does not have a clear policy on legitimate accounts, you may want to refer to this policy on the English Wikipedia and discuss the issue with a local administrator you personally trust on your home wiki. If you wish to create an alternative account just to be used on this wiki (meta) that is okay too. In practice, if you use an alternative account to support the WM-LGBT project, I suggest you strictly limit its use to just this topic so that if it is reviewed in the future anyone can see that you stayed well within a common sense understanding of why someone would need a legitimate alternative account. Note, it would be easy accidentally to start writing under the wrong account if swapping between them, so a practical tip is to use it rarely, or even on a separate machine, to avoid mistakes.

There is no need to be paranoid, but be realistic. If being identified as homosexual or transgender puts you at risk at home or from the authorities in your country, think it through carefully before writing on public wikis (or any internet forum) about your LGBT experience from long term accounts or logged IP addresses that might be linked to you later on. If you are worried about being outed against your legal identity as having an interest in LGBT issues, this may constrain your involvement under a fake identity, but you can contribute as a volunteer or find it helpful and fun to take part in projects. If you would like to talk through your situation and options you can confidentially contact me by email or try hanging out on #wikimedia-LGBT^connect using a temporary name (but be prepared to hang around for several hours before anyone notices you are there or answers a question). --Fæ (talk) 16:29, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I told Greg in the Wikimania and I'm telling it here, I disagree on private and semi-private because we need someone to have real name and username of members in order to keep tracking of them in WMF projects and maybe even in the real world in case of vandalism (We need someone like a CU to our organization) Amir (talk) 14:53, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Amir, changing Wikimedia projects in this way is not the same thing as this topic. Thrashing out the 'real name' issue here is not the same thing as respecting the concerns for people who may lose their jobs, be at risk of attack or imprisonment for being identified as homosexual. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 15:01, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi! There is no need to disclose the names, I say one person, just one, has the real names to use it in cases of need. For example if my friend who lives in Russia and edits in ru.wp (and they doesn't disclose their real name) got caught by the government and It's likely to have jail punishment for editing in Wikipedia in LGBT issues, It will be an expectation of WMLGBT to provide legal help, and we need their real name. Another case: If someone joined WMLGBT just in order to vandalize, the officer can take action and prosecute that person in WMF-projects by knowing the username, or prosecute in the real world in rare cases Amir (talk) 23:36, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Whoa! I'm not okay with that, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I don't think the WMF would be either. I think it's a bad idea to even suggest that WMLGBT could provide legal support in a case like that... there's almost no chance of a user group or thematic org having the financial deep pockets that such a thing would require. If someone joins WMLGBT to vandalize, it should be dealt with in typical vandal-fighting processes, which do not require the user's real name (even assuming the vandal disclosed their actual identity in the first place - which is doubtful given that they joined to vandalize!). And I can't imagine a world in which vandalism resulted in off-wiki prosecution.... the level to which that would need to rise boggles my imagination. Is it possible? Sure, I suppose it's possible... but again, highly unlikely. I wonder how widely shared those ideas for work are? Is it the expectation of this group that WMLGBT would engage in that type of legal defense? If so, you need to be creating a very different type of organization, I suspect. That sounds more like a traditional advocacy organization, and less like one that worked in the Wikimedia universe. Posted in my personal capacity, and not as a representative of the staff or the legal team. --Philippe (talk) 08:52, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Amir is talking in their personal capacity, not for the group. In a similar way you are talking personally and not for the WMF, this being a safe space to bounce around ideas (similar but not equivalent, as you are constrained by your employment contract even when writing personally). WM-LGBT as a group has no plans to offer "legal support", neither do we expect the WMF to involve itself unless it is a matter that directly affects the projects or the Foundation. However, as a social network we can be supportive of those that run into problems in various ways. The WMF's approach of publishing resolutions and position statements on a number of issues without needing lawyers nor putting itself at risk of any sort would seem a reasonable example of how to go about it. --Fæ (talk) 10:59, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I would be upset if someone joined this group in Wiki-spirit and then used their group membership as a vehicle for attacking the other members, and I think this is a realistic concern based on the precedent of harassment of persons perceived to be LGBT allies on Wikipedia. I would not anticipate the extreme problem which Amir mentioned, but do think it would be prudent to have structures in place to discourage people from bothering members of this group. I agree with Amir that requiring members of this group to be identified could be a strategy for discouraging vandals to seek membership as a route to gain privileged information to use as a basis for attacking other members, but I also feel that having an identification process would bring a lot of other problems which no small group should consider addressing. I am glad that Amir made the proposal that he did but it is my opinion that his proposal is something to be considered long-term and not immediately. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:29, 25 November 2013 (UTC)