Universal Code of Conduct/Drafting committee/Revision committee meeting summaries
This page contains meeting summaries for the Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 Revision committee.
2022
Session 1 – May 11
This is the first meeting of the UCoC Phase 2 Revision Committee. This committee is composed of a mixture of committee members from first and second phase committees.
The meeting started by introducing the members to each other, then sharing the details of their involvement with the movement and their past experience, insights and expectations from the drafting of the UCoC EG. After that the committee set up some housekeeping rules.
In the second half of the session, committee members were informed about expectations and discussed their roles based on the recent Board of Trustees announcement about UCoC Enforcement Guidelines and what needs to be re-defined.
Session 2 - May 18
This session focused about building the structure of the internal decision making process. During this session, we reviewed the safe space agreement and then had an activity about how different decision making process, and how we can make collaborative decisions between colleagues that have various leadership styles.
Session 3 - May 21
In this session, Committee members had a opportunity to read the report based on comments as well as the comments itself from the ratification vote of the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines. Members started the brainstorming discussion, identified various areas of interest in the comments and needs from the Wikimedia community, especially on the topic of training. Also, the committee members have been informed about community discussions that are started in the various community venues.
Session 4 - June 1
In this session, Sydney Poore, Senior Trust and Safety Strategist, gave a presentation about the voter analysis report for the committee. Each member showed their impressions, asked their questions to T&S policy team and discussed the community insights. Members have been leaving their comments on the report asynchronously since last week, and they had time to talk about the comments written and new ideas that came to mind during the session. Some questions concerned the methodology used for the analysis. Most of the discussion centered around comments about the enforcement guidelines not respecting the volunteering aspect of the communities enough, the concept of affirmation and around translation issues.
Session 5 - June 8
In this session, members received the first digest from the ongoing community discussions. Based on that and the vote comments itself they started reviewing the “training and affirmation” sections of the current draft and started suggestions and discussions in the draft itself regarding possible changes. They also discussed additional resources they would like to have going forward and the best options for asynchronous work.
Session 6 - June 15
In this session, the committee focused on the training section. Members reviewed the comments and started revising this part of the draft. This work will be continued through this week asynchronously and decisions about part of the revisions are expected to be made in the next meeting. The committee also talked about a possible panel presentation of the EGs at Wikimania.
Session 7 - June 22
In this session, members reviewed the training section with the facilitator and reflected the revisions suggested by the members in previous weeks. They especially discussed who should be responsible for creating the training and how training could best be made available to all editors wanting to receive training. They then discussed how to subdivide the training process in detail. They also received upcoming updates that will be going on for the next few weeks.
Session 8 - June 29
The Committee members received updates on the arrangement of their working sessions and decision making process. They focused the discussion on reviewing the Guideline section on training, with particular focus on the question of structure of the training; who within the Wikimedia Movement would be required, encouraged, or recommended to take the training; and which existing Movement actor should be consulted on the development of the training. A decision was made that only members of the U4C would be required to take the training, but that all advanced rights holders would be encouraged to do so. Concluding the session, the Committee members will continue working on some issues asynchronously as well as during their own working time later in the week.
Session 9 - July 6
The Committee members received an update from and asked questions to the Foundation’s Global Data and Insights Team on the results for the first cohort of the 2022 Community Insights Survey. Following that, the members convened and deliberated privately in a breakout session to solve several outstanding questions, including on the issue of including the UCoC texts to the Foundation’s Term of Use. Some of the work will be continued asynchronously, including on finishing the revisions and reflections on the training and affirmation parts of the Guidelines.
Session 10 - July 13
The first half of the meeting was joined by members of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) team of the Wikimedia Foundation, who presented their feedback on the revised Enforcement Guidelines draft. The Committee members agreed to review the feedback. In the second half, the Committee members continued discussing several priority questions regarding privacy and anonymity, with a specific focus on the privacy vs transparency balance and the Right to Be Heard vs protection of victims and reporters question.
Session 11 - July 20
The Committee members received some update from the Policy team regarding an upcoming in-person meeting and timeline. They discussed and resolved several outstanding questions on the draft, including on the role of local functionaries and stewards on consultation of training development, acknowledgment for training completion, and several minor reviews on the subject of training modules. For the last part of the meeting, the Committee members discussed several fictitious scenarios of UCoC violations and how the current Guideline would handle it, especially in the light of the privacy vs transparency question. Committee members asked for such cases in written form and more time in the next session to discuss such model cases further.
Session 12 - July 27
The Committee members received several updates, such as on a planned roundtable in Wikimania, defining a process to review translatability and readability of the revised draft guidelines, and preparation for the in-person meeting. The session was dedicated to discuss three different scenarios of UCoC violations and its handling by a future enforcement process with a focus on the balance of privacy vs transparency. The scenarios were drawn from a diverse set of prior known behavioral cases handled either by the community or the Trust & Safety team. The committee discussed those cases looking at current processes onwiki, legal obligations to protect victims, community input, own experiences and other factors.
Session 13 - 3 August
The Committee members received updates on preparation for the upcoming Wikimania roundtable and in-person meeting. They reviewed the language of several parts of the draft Guidelines and examined several outstanding questions. For the second half of the meeting, the Committee members split into two groups and deliberated privately in breakout rooms to resolve several issues on the organization of the draft guidelines.
Session 14 - 10 August
The Committee members reviewed all sections of the draft Guidelines with emphasis on areas marked as important to make decisions on as a group and agreed on solutions, agreed on the areas that still need language review by the editing group, clarified some items and approved the order of some sections. The team recommended that a new structured workframe is needed; but a decision can be made later as community input would be valued and also due to time limitations. As the closure of the review is approaching, the members will work asynchronously during the week and will review the comments and changes made by the editing team. The last week will be dedicated to the final touches on the document.
Session 15 - 17 August
In the final meeting for this revision period, the Committee members were briefed on the update to the process timeline, which included a review from the Wikimedia Foundation’s legal team and then an open consultation by the global Wikimedia community. For much of the session, the Committee agreed on some final decisions regarding the draft, such as changing and clarifying the languages, removing some parts to the sections, and determining several contentious parts that will be left for the community to review. The project team supporting the Committee delivered its gratitude to the members for their service and dedication throughout the whole three-month revisions process.
Session 16 - 5 October
Some members met before the official restart of drafting meetings to review UCoC feedback from September. They also discussed ideal scheduling for the restart of drafting meetings.
Session 17 - 12 October
Committee members met for the restart of the drafting meeting to review the draft policy document. Different meeting days were discussed. Target dates were reviewed and confirmed. For the end of October to complete drafting, so that legal review and translations can follow in December, culminating into a community vote in early 2023. The committee has begun the work of reviewing the draft document, and prioritizing the identification of areas of the text that are generally agreed on. The need for Clarity of language, as well as addition of Local guidance during case review, were identified as themes rising from community feedback as well as that from the Board of Trustees. The committee agreed to continue text review asynchronous ahead of the next meeting.
Session 18 - 19 October
Committee members met to continue discussing revisions to the draft policy document. The goal is to complete revisions and have them ready for legal review by the end of November. The discussion centered around two major themes: how to more clearly distinguish between what is a suggestion and what is a rule, and clarifying language to make translations from English to other languages easier. This included adding translator’s notes and expanding the glossary. The committee agreed to continue reviewing the document asynchronously for the next meeting. Meetings will now occur on Thursdays.
Session 19 - 27 October
This was the first meeting to occur on a Thursday, the new weekly meeting day. Committee members discussed sections 3.1.2 through 3.3.3, in addition to section 4.2. This included preliminary discussion regarding how the U4C would handle differing cultural contexts and clarifying language on the reporting tool. The committee proposed a list of verbs understood to indicate policies and a list of verbs understood to indicate recommendations. This standardization would more clearly indicate what points in the Enforcement Guidelines are recommendations versus policies. Finally, it was proposed that a sentence mentioning the Case Review Committee should be added to section 3.3.3.
Session 20 - 3 November
Continuing the discussions from the last meeting, committee members discussed the need to be more clear around what is a recommendation in the guidelines and what is a requirement. Some language was clarified in the meeting, and other language changes will be suggested before the next meeting. The group also spent time reviewing changes proposed to the later parts of the document. A change was accepted to confirm parties will have an opportunity to give perspectives "on the issues and the evidence". The addition to confirm the work of the Case Review Committee was also accepted. Finally, a suggestion to confirm the availability of support for the translation of training material was accepted. An accepted change in the glossary confirmed that "local" can refer to affiliates and organizations. Also discussed in the meeting were appeals procedures, the selection criteria for the U4C Building Committee, as well as the amendment, socialization, and local contextualization of the UCoC policy and Enforcement guidelines.
Session 21 - 10 November
The majority of this meeting was spent reviewing suggested changes to sections 1.0 through 3.2 of the document. Many of the changes were to clarify language around what is a recommendation in the guidelines and what is a requirement. For example, in some instances, the word “should” was replaced with the word “will”. The language “where possible” was suggested for the beginning of the two bullet points under section 3.1, subheading “Transparency”. This would account for documentation practices of smaller Wikimedia projects, which might not have the capacity to maintain documentation such as noticeboard archives. The question of whether to specify who is able to make reports in the proposed reporting tool was discussed at length. Asynchronous comments were considered during the live discussion. Attendees at this November 10th meeting were against including a list of who would be able to make reports. This section will be discussed more asynchronously and at the next meetings.
Session 22 - 17 November
This session mostly involved various copy edits within the document, especially the continued clarifications surrounding verb usage as previously discussed. A number of comment threads were closed without changes being made, having been otherwise resolved. Finally, the group made note of the outstanding items that would be discussed in the upcoming final meeting.
Session 23 - 19 November
This final meeting addressed all remaining open comment threads. The meeting began with a discussion about what version of English the document should be written in. It was decided that the style of this document should be consistent with that of the Universal Code of Conduct. The committee also considered whether and how to codify a timeline for community review of the document. It was noted that the Wikimedia Foundation has already committed to reviewing the UCoC and the Enforcement Guidelines 1 year after their ratification. Committee members reviewed the document for any remaining areas that would benefit from clarifying binding requirements versus recommendations. This included adding the word “shall” to the list of binding verbs in the Glossary. The next step for this document is a legal review by the Wikimedia Foundation’s legal team.