Policy talk:Event ban policy

Wikiconference 2015 DC

Could someone explain what authority the Wikiconference 2015 DC organizers had to ban someone from entering the "open" and "public" events taking place on federal property (the National Archives) in October 2015? That event was advertised as "open to anyone, regardless of their involvement with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia projects. We welcome the curious, the skeptical, and anyone wishing to engage in meaningful conversation about the Wikimedia movement in the United States, free culture and digital rights advocacy and outreach, community building, and technology." Wikimedia DC has not responded to an information request about this matter, but the National Archives has nearly completed a Freedom of Information Act request about it. - Thekohser (talk) 13:33, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
(Pinging page creators User:Kalliope (WMF) and User:Jalexander-WMF who may be able to address the question.) - Thekohser (talk) 20:40, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Happy to see this WMF + community collaboration

For years Wikimedia community volunteer organizers have been burned with too many decisions about event bans. I am glad to see Wikimedia Foundation staff present this policy back in partnership with the Wikimedia community and in response to many requests for support. I think everyone was unsure in the past about what should be done, and I also expect that the conversation will develop, but I am glad that we have this as a continuing step in the process.

I wish that when volunteers organize events, they could be supported with clear guidance on event bans. Regardless of whether the ban comes from WMF recommendation, other Wikimedia community members, or a request from an external stakeholder, I appreciate that this policy suggests that the WMF will offer central support to event organizers for communicating and managing bans. I continue to believe that volunteering to organize an event should be separate from the process of managing, communicating, mediating, and judging bans. Volunteers who want to do event organization are not equipped to deal with such things without external support. There is a tendency in the Wikimedia community to imagine that everything can be managed with volunteers; this is not the case, and when safety and people's reputations are at stake I especially appreciate trained, experienced event support.

One contributing factor to developing this policy was, I think, a community request to fund an external organization to develop a policy like this. Hexatekin was the most prominent voice that I saw in calling for increased protection for Wikimedia community members in responding to issues that required a ban. She also too often became a target for negativity for being an in-person spokesperson at wiki events where I live. At her direction, I typed a lot of suggestions on meta. Whatever I typed that did not come from her were ideas from other people, and the clever and reasonable suggestions seemed endless to me whenever I asked in any direction. Every community member who contributed anything to the effort to develop this deserves equal credit and should feel ownership in this policy to the extent that they wish to feel that it came from their efforts. I think it would be accurate to say that this policy is a consequence of not fewer than many hundreds of suggestions and requests. To represent some of the names of people who should have credit for this, I will list the names of people who signed on that "harassment reporting" project page. The people who signed there only came to that page after researching the issue and trying to find appropriate actions to take. If anyone else wishes to give credit to any group, organization, WikiProject, mailing list, or set of individuals now or at any time in the future, then I would join them in confirming all the credit that is due to the many volunteers who continue to give their time in this space. Thanks to

• @Becksguy, Econterms, Raystorm, Pundit, Lightbreather, Wordreader, and Xttina.Garnet:
• @Mssemantics, Aratrica, Goldfishbutt, Ocaasi, Catherine, and Failedprojects:
• @Siankevans, Sadads, Thepwnco, SuperHamster, Pharos, Theredproject, and Mervat Salman:
• @Netha Hussain, Mozucat, Neelix, Kayz911, Neotarf, Djembayz, and Slowking4:

and thanks to everyone else who has contributed and continues to contribute to the advancement of constructive and fair community guidance in making difficult decisions. Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:37, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Lane, you mention "constructive and fair". It has appeared to me that in more than one case, a conference team may have 9 committee members who approve of a particular person attending, but 1 member who wishes for the person to be event banned, and the one overrules the nine, and the person is banned. The person is not informed why they were banned, and the person is not allowed to know the name of their accuser. Does this resonate in your mind as a "constructive and fair" process? - Thekohser (talk) 13:10, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Relationship to Code of Conduct

It would be as well to ensure that this policy to be aligned with the work going on at mw:Code of Conduct/Draft. It is not entirely clear that they are currently consistent. It may also be worth noting that for WMF events held in countries other than the USA, local legal restrictions, on privacy for example, may make apects of this policy problematic: for example, the handling of personal information relating to individuals involved in an allegation of misconduct. No doubt the WMF legal team will have considered these complicted matters in the drafting of this policy. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:15, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for this link, Rogol Domedonfors. I agree very much that two draft policies whose domains overlap so heavily should make explicit reference to one another, and should be vetted for mutual consistency. Ideally, each policy should have a few sentences explaining how it relates to the other policy. (I can't speak to the legal aspects of your comment, but I agree that it's worthwhile for them to be carefully considered, and explicitly discussed in the policy document.) -Pete F (talk) 18:04, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Grants:IdeaLab/Community discussion on harassment reporting also seems relevant. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:56, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

This is more a CoC discussion than an Event Ban Policy discussion, since the CoC would be one of the many possible Wikimedia community policies this WMF policy could interact with. I have replied at mw:Talk:Code_of_Conduct/Draft#Explicit_connections_to_Event_Ban_Policy.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:46, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Status

Please could we clarify the status of this page? Is it a settled policy, enacted by some authority, and if so, by whom? Is it a compendium designed to summarise and unify existing policies already agreed or enacted? Is it a proposal put before the community for acceptance or rejection as it stands? Is it a draft for discussion, modification and eventual adoption by community consensus? Or what? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 08:20, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Hey Rogol, at this point this is summarizing the policy and procedures of the Wikimedia Foundation regarding Event bans which are, at this point, settled and will be required of Grantees going forward. It is placed out for the knowledge of the community and so that affiliates or other organizations can use and adapt it for their own needs if desired. It is not a proposal (in that we're not asking for modification/adoption etc), I removed the category that was erroneously placed to that effect. Obviously, as with all policies like this, I imagine we will find things that don't work out so well going forward and need adjustment based on discussion with those interested and actual implementation so it's certainly not "settled forever" but it is settled in that it is "in effect". Jalexander--WMF 05:43, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

A minor item, but is there a reason that the Wikimedia Foundation (a Florida corporation based in San Francisco) is leaning toward British English spelling in policy terms? - Thekohser (talk) 15:54, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

It's as you said: a minor item. Let's move on. -Pete F (talk) 18:52, 31 March 2016 (UTC)