Wikipedia:UCoC enforcement group for Scandinavian projects

This page describes a possible enforcement group common for Wikipedia project in Scandinavian projects (sv, no, nn, da), as a possible way and suggestion to implement the Universal Code of Conduct as decided by Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.

Background

For the Wikimedia world an Universal Code of Conduct, UCoC, is decided. Implementation and how to enforce the code has been discussed and resulted in an Enforcement draft. An refined proposal will be presented at end of November 2021, and planned to be decided upon before end of the year.

The communities on svwp and nowp have discussed (see talkpages) what this could mean for the project on sv, no and perhaps da and nn, considering these projects are only medium-sized, so it can be hard to set up a local body that can act independent on existing adm communities group and with project also being too big (to many potential issues relevant for an enforcement group) to only rely on the global enforcement group.

Initial discussion indicates a potential interest to create a common group. It could act with less resources, and be seen as more neutral to existing "power" structures in the communities.

This page is a place to keep together thoughts in how such a group can work, with an aim to see if such a group has support to be set-up.

Time plan

• General discussions on feasibility and possible setup - until end of November
• Documentation of the setup of such a group - November-December
• decision by communities to set up the group - December
• The actual set up including recruitment to group - January-February 2022

Today´s sanction processing on svwp

There exists a page KAW for discussion of administrative actions. It is mandatory to use when an established editor is involved, either before or after a sanction is being laid. It can also be used when other administrative actions are in dispute. It is open for anyone to participate in the discussion: admins, non admins and the one who´s actions are being discussed. This conflict resolution page works, but there can be rather long discussions. It would not work to discuss and decide on border cases in behavior, as will be needed to enforce UCoC

Mandate

The mandate is dependent on the global enforcement, planned to be visible in November and decided upon in December. It is also dependent on how we, the communities, want it to be set up and work. Below is an early proposal to be used in dialogue with the global groups discussing implementation of UCoC enforcement. It has a more limited scope than the general Arbitration Committee but would be able to fully uphold the demands of UCoC, a kind of limited arbcom.

To look into

The group shall, when asked for, look into potential breaches of UCoC. To analyze the occurred action, decide upon if it represents a breach (or not) and when appropriate make the decision public.

This includes looking into

• wordings and expressions in community dialogues that can be seen as Harassment or Abuse of power, privilege, or influence.
• editing of content that can be seen as Content vandalism and abuse of the projects

If a decision that the action represent a breach is in dispute, it can be nullified if a ?2/3 majority? of community users disagree

To act

For more serious offenses, the group can act to escalate an issue to WMF Trust and Safety, to WMF legal, to police or telecom providers. Also to hide inappropriate edits

It can also act with administrative actions, including issue warnings, to non-established users, or temporary action to established users.

For established users, all sanctions should be discussed by the community before an action is made (or after a temporary action been made). If the group recommend an administrative action to be made, it is needed ?a majority? of community users to disagree, for no action to be made, while the severity of the administrative action is a matter of ordinary consensus discussion and decision.

To be a contact point

The group represent a contact point to the communities from WMF T/S and UCoC global enforcement group.

Appeals

Above is described how appeals of decisions of individual cases from the group can be made within the community. If the total process of enforcement is seen to not work according to the enforcement guideline and/or this mandate description, an appeal can be made to the UCoC global enforcement group after a discussion within the community has tried to resolve the problem without succeeding.

Operations

The group shall, from input from users or by own initiative, look into possible violation of Universal Code of Conduct. Input can be onwiki as well as offwiki. If serious offences escalation could be considered to WMF Trust and Safety, the global enforcement group, telecom providers and even to authorities like the police.

Actions can then be taken in very different ways, like give feedback on user discussion page, in a relevant discussion page or on a page for general discussion page for all to discuss sanctions. Also, when applicable act to update local policies and guidelines

There shall exist a dedicated page related to the group, perhaps to have a page like the one existing for IP-checks

First year trial period

The first year of operation should be seen as a learning period, where the number of non-trivial cases should be limited to say ten per year. If this would be a actual limitation, it can be achieved by prioritization ("silly" jokes being made to newbies has higher priority than "silly" jokes between oldtimers) and direct limitation (if one user too frequently take cases to this group).

The setup of the group

Perhaps a group consisting of 2-5 persons, 1-2 from sv and no and 0-1 from da and nn.