Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-05-31/From the editor

The Washington Post characterizes this last month as "Meltdown May", and we should all admit it's been a pretty rough month for many of us. The COVID-19 pandemic continued and last week the US recorded COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic of over 100,000 and worldwide 365,000 people have died in the same period. An African-American man was allegedly murdered by a policeman in Minneapolis just a few days ago and now cities burn across the country. But strangely the WaPo article was about pop culture and celebrities. Maybe even the rich and famous are having a hard time now. But perhaps WaPo is just taking its usual dig at everything conceivably related to Donald Trump. Atsme explores similar ideas in this month's Op-ed.

But hasn't Wikipedia had a turbulent May? Well, yes and no. Sadly, at least one Wikipedian has died from complications related to COVID-19, see Obituaries for the details.

Trump issued an executive order with the point of gaining more control over social media which threatens to reduce the legal protections Wikipedia enjoys under Section 230. The order definitely applies to Wikipedia. But it may well be the case that the order may have no effect on us and no legal effect on any social media sites. Larry Sanger published in his blog that Wikipedia has no real neutrality policy and has a strong leftist bias. But it is just a blog after all. To see more about the strange news this month, the good as well as the bad, see "In the media".

News & notes also explores the news of course, including breaking news on a French paid editing scandal. Is another paid editing scandal good news or bad? For the present, of course it is bad. But if it inspires us and the WMF to finally deal with the persistent problem of paid editing, it may well be good.

There is another persistent problem on Wikipedia and on many sites owned by the WMF: harassment. It is time that we take a hard-nosed practical view of how to deal with it. That is what the Board of Trustees has effectively said in its announcement on the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC). See News from the WMF.

I'm afraid that this call for a UCoC may cause another "Meltdown June", similar to what happened last year in the Fram case. It should be noted that the WMF announcement calls for collaboration with and input from the community and we should try to come up with solutions that do not hurt the self-governance of the community.

There are two steps in the process. By August 30 the UCoC itself is to be submitted to the Board for approval. I don't see this as the major problem. We all know the type of editor behavior we want to stop and a clear workable definition of harassment would benefit everybody.

The second step, defining the enforcement procedures, will be the sticking point. These procedures must be submitted by the end of the year. The WMF says that they want to support community enforcement rather than replace it, but we all know that the community has had difficulties in enforcing our anti-harassment rules. Under an effective policy, there will be times, however rare, when the WMF will take steps that the community can not agree on.

Let's try something different this year: assume good faith. Let's get together and come up with enforcement procedures that will have the support of the community, that will be administered in large part by the community.

The WMF has not yet defined a page where we can have this needed discussion. The Comments section below is as good a place as any. Let's start the enforcement discussion now. Please assume good faith and keep it civil and practical.