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Wikimedia Foundation/Legal/Community Resilience and Sustainability/Conversation Hour 2024 10 31

< Wikimedia Foundation | Legal | Community Resilience and Sustainability

You are invited to the quarterly Conversation hour led by Maggie Dennis, Vice President of Community Resilience and Sustainability, on 31 October 2024 at 19:00 UTC.

Maggie and others from the Community Resilience and Sustainability team will discuss Trust and Safety, Committee Support, and Human Rights.

This conversation will happen on Zoom. If you are a Wikimedian in good standing (not Foundation or community banned), write to let us know you will be attending the conversation and share your questions at answers(_AT_)wikimedia.org at least one hour before the conversation. Please place “CR&S” in the subject line. Someone will follow up with the Zoom details.

If you do choose to participate in this conversation, Maggie would like to bring some expectations to your attention:

I can't and won't discuss specific Trust and Safety cases. Instead, I can discuss Trust and Safety protocols and practices and approaches as well as some of the mistakes we've made, some of the things I'm proud of, and some of the things we're hoping to do.

I will not respond to comments or questions that are disrespectful to me, to my colleagues, or to anyone in our communities. I can talk civilly about our work even if you disagree with me or I disagree with you. I won't compromise on this.

You may view the conversation on YouTube and submit questions live in Zoom and on YouTube.

The recording, notes, and answers to questions not answered live will be available after the conversation ends, usually in one week. Notes from previous conversations can be found on Meta-wiki.

Notes

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  • I noticed there are three committees looking for new members. Your teams support this process. Can I apply to more than one? What if I don’t have time for more than one but would be willing to serve on any?
    • Maggie: Yes, anyone can apply for more than one. Some of the required skills overlap. I am not sure exactly what the process would be if more than one committee likes the candidate. If you do apply for more than one, be sure to write and let us know.
  • This question has two parts. English language Wikipedia is under pressure in India, two Saudi contributors to Arabic language Wikipedia are in prison, and so much else is going on. Is the world getting more dangerous for us? How can the Foundation reassure and support editors in their work in these current times?
    • Maggie: That’s a heavy question. Yes, where I sit, I see the world as more dangerous for everybody. When I joined, one of the issues was that Wikipedia wasn’t taken seriously. Now we are taken very seriously, as a result, it is more dangerous than it once was. There are plenty of opportunities to contribute less controversial content. Our Human Rights team distributes information about how to reduce the risk of editing. Informed consent matters. As a baby editor, I gained the attention of some neo-nazis for reverting some biased edits. In terms of what we can do to support editors and their work, we have a lot of different things that we do. We have the legal assistance program to help people who face legal threats due to their good-faith wiki contributions. Our Human Rights team can help people connect with local resources when they are in immediate danger due to their wiki contributions.
    • Cameran (Human Rights Lead): Indeed the situations are getting worse each year, but the good thing is that the Foundation staff is learning and adapting and able to provide more resources. Email talktohumanrights{{@}}wikimedia.org if you have any questions about safety, if you’d like to be trained or organize a community training, or want to have a conversation about what you are seeing in your community. There are also resources on our Meta-wiki page and courses on Wiki Learn.
  • When will the U4C become active? And with the U4C active, what is the purpose of the Trust & Safety team?
    • Maggie: The U4C recently got enough members to reach quorum. The U4C is organizing themselves, including the upcoming review of the policy. Trust and Safety needs to work with the U4C and all the functionaries across the globe. I see Trust and Safety as having an important role in keeping users safe. Unfortunately, sometimes people who try to govern and support the sites find themselves in a situation where it’s too dangerous to handle. There are also issues we have to handle for compliance. It will be a while before we know what the workload will look like for the U4C.
    • Nasma (Trust and Safety Senior Manager): The U4C is not yet taking cases but they are active. We are not yet sure what the workload will look like since this is a committee supporting all language communities. They are building their processes and trying to make sure they are available by the end of the year. The U4C can be reached with questions at  u4c{{@}}lists.wikimedia.org
  • Have we thought  of a delayed edits option to let vulnerable editors hide their geography?
    • Nasma: We can ask our Product and Tech team to see if they have considered this.
    • Risker: It doesn’t matter when the edit shows up, as it’ll still be linked to a specific IP and user agent. There is a concern about delayed edits being out of sync with an article. The real issue is that information will be there regardless of when the information is posted.
  • Neither the Board election nor the U4C election resulted in diverse committees. With the U4C, there are even vacant regional seats. What does the Foundation plan to do about this?
    • Maggie: I hope we continue to support the community in these elections and I hope we continue to get better at drawing people from different groups and areas to apply. I hope we continue to get better at overcoming the bias that is inherent to being human. It’s important to continue to pull different people from all walks of life into the movement and give them visibility and understand what they have to offer. The Board Governance Committee and the Election Committee consider these issues each election cycle and clearly these conversations are not finished.  
  • What are the current restrictions on people in US embargoed countries? Can Iranian and Russian citizens be involved in any sponsored projects or events, for example?
    • Maggie: Yes. I can’t say they can be involved in all, but I am unaware of any policy that prohibits them from being a part of any. People must be aware of safety as it pertains to themselves. It is possible in some regions to be declared as an enemy of your state if you are engaging with a foreign organization in a country that is regarded as hostile to your own. I am unaware of any Foundation restrictions. Our Trust and Safety team is asked to do risk profiles, and I have never heard of anything about, “This person cannot come because of where they are from.”
  • I saw you in an article on Pen America talking about disinformation. I also saw a website naming and shaming specific editors with accusations of leading disinformation in one global conflict on Wikipedia. This is alarming. This is how people get doxxed. People use accusations of ‘disinformation’ to silence disagreement. How can you protect people from this?
    • Maggie: Transparency is very important on Wikipedia. I am proud of our work and how we have all of our conversations out in the open. It holds people accountable, but it is also prone to being misused. I think that naming and shaming people outside of the community - there is a difference between whistle blowing and taking conversations outside of the community when there is disagreement that is ongoing and asking people to come be mean to the person on the other side of the conversation. Disinformation is a serious issue on our sites. I supplied the article to PenAmerica, but a lot of other people contributed to it as well, so if you read that article, it’s not all me. It’s those of us who work in the disinformation sphere. Disinformation is a serious problem but it’s not the same as bias and not the same as being incorrect. Sometimes problems escalate and make them look more nefarious than they actually are. Disinformation is a deliberate, coordinated effort to deceive. If you take an issue outside of the community and draw in consequences. This is not about whistleblowing. Please be careful what you do because these are real people. Some people disagree with you. How we protect people from doxxing, the human rights work has included helping people reach out to sites where the personal information was posted to get the information removed. Unfortunately, once it’s on the internet, it’s on there forever. We do our best to enforce the UCoC. It’s important to protect yourself and your identity.
  • Previously, you said that there would be an annual review of the UCoC. We’ve been waiting for years. When will that start?
    • Maggie: Yes, the review plan is currently being discussed. The U4C is interested in getting that moving. We should be hearing more from them soon.
  • How much disinformation have we seen around the global elections this year? What does the Foundation do about it?
    • Maggie: I don’t have anyone from Disinformation here today. We have been watching a number of global elections. Oh, Nasma said she can speak to this.
    • Nasma: I cannot state how many instances of disinformation occurred. We have been hosting Disinformation Task Force meetings. These spaces are meant to surface issues and work through the issues with the communities. Part of this Task Force is a pilot to determine how we can work alongside the communities for issues that do come up. We can do deeper investigations into coordinated attacks. This helps us to better understand the habits of coordinated attacks and share that information back to the communities.
  • How is the WMF (and/or) the U4C ensuring that the UCoC is being implemented and used across all projects and wiki platforms?
    • Maggie: It’s important for the Foundation and the U4C to become good partners. Some years ago, there was concern about the Foundation’s Trust and Safety about doing power grabs. I know we will disagree on how to do things well. I want us to get to the space where we can see that there are multiple perspectives on the problem and that we work better if we work together.
    • Nasma: This is one of the bigger problems we are going to face. There are challenges that will crop up as we are a global community with different experiences. If there are systemic issues in their communities, the U4C provides a vector to make sure the UCoC is implemented and enforced. The reason it’s important to have pathways is important because context is important. We are currently running a UCoC adherence pilot project. The need came from needing to build capacities and support mechanisms for people to support the UCoC.
  • How can we get there for capacity building for the UCoC?
    • Nasma: This is a struggle for many. You are navigating your existing processes and navigating the behavioral challenges that can come up. There are UCoC training materials and reading resources that will be rolling out soon. Those are examples of the resources and guidance for communities. The pilot for UCoC adherence will give us more information.
  • Temporary accounts are going to replace IP editing in the next few months, and overall I think this will be positive for people who experience online abuse. But I see a couple of increased vulnerabilities, I think IP range hopping will be harder to spot and if an abuser has multiple devices on the same IP they will each be treated as a different individual. Thoughts?
    • Maggie: While we do work closely with the Trust and Safety product team, they are not on the same team as the Trust and Safety that I support.
    • Nasma: Part of behavioral investigations include identifying IP addresses that the community has flagged for us. There are ways to identify in ways of writing to identify broader issues. We’ll be relying on the tips and tricks on our end.
  • Are more abuse cases going to wind up getting to a more serious level?
    • Risker: This is something we have discussed amongst the global CheckUser team. There is going to be a new permission created which allows users who are not granted access to CheckUser to view the information for the temporary accounts. We don't block accounts where there is misbehavior as often as we ought to.
  • What does a typical day look like for the Trust and Safety team?
    • Nasma: We start the day catching up with emails and Slack messages. We are working across timezones. Everyone wakes up with messages about urgent things, or questions. We currently manage multiple workflows. Trust and Safety staff spend their time balancing different workflows: working on investigations, potentially getting an emergency@ ping, supporting committees and attending their meetings. Also supporting CSAM work as needed (Child Sexual Abuse Material). Sometimes we have emergencies come through and have to drop it all while that is fixed. We go through seven to ten topic areas.
  • I see an emphasis on using VPNs. Largely VPNs are blocked across the Wikimedia world. How do you propose to handle this?
    • Cameran: This is a tough place. Users are encouraged to use their VPNs to use it for as much non-wiki content that they can. If one can reduce the risk footprint, it can put people in a safer place. VPNs can provide a measure of psychological safety. In human rights, that really counts for a lot.
    • Mike Peel: There is also the Meta-wiki process for the global IP block exemption. That might be something for people to look into.
  • Is there any way for Wikimedia to know that a contributor is contributing from a network monitored/infiltrated by a government or institutional agency? What can people do if they feel they are being monitored?
    • Cameran: It is not possible for us to tell. It’s important for you to trust your intuition. Something that is possible is to talk to the Human Rights team. There are some tell-tell signs and tricks we might be able to help with. Is a portion of your internet traffic going to a certain IP address.
  • Are you building a large internal case book to learn from and transfer knowledge?
    • The Trust and Safety team is regularly meeting with the U4C and will be coordinating with them regarding the cases to share the accumulated knowledge.
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