Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
New Wikimedia Code of Conduct
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2021 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Just about ten years ago, I started a gig at the Wikimedia Foundation managing its open source volunteer stuff. I broached the topic of a tech conference anti-harassment policy with the higher-ups - as I recall, the first code of conduct for any in-person Wikimedia event. And, as I recall, the Wikimedia projects, as a whole, did not have an anti-harassment policy beyond the legal Terms of Use. We put the Friendly Space Policy into place in early 2012. And the next year, a volunteer led a session at the yearly Wikimania conference to discuss a potential online Friendly Space Policy:
"Explore what elements are essential for you in such a policy and what we can do collectively to adopt such a policy for Wikipedia and other Wikimedia websites."
And more of those efforts started and continued throughout Wikimedia spaces.
I left the Wikimedia Foundation in late 2014, but the work continued; in 2015 folks started a code of conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces that applies in both virtual and physical spaces.
Today I saw WMF's announcement that -- after a lot of research and consultation -- "The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) aims to provide a universal baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire Wikimedia movement and all its projects." The Board of Trustees has approved the new policy and now all the islands in the Wikimedia archipelago need to talk together about how to implement and enforce it.
Sometimes it's really nice to get to see your legacy.
Comments
