QW2025/Friendly Space
Introduction
[edit]The Queering Wikipedia team is committed to creating a welcoming and harassment-free space for all participants, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, appearance, age, race, ethnicity, political views, nationality, or religion. We have zero tolerance for harassment, and anyone violating these guidelines may be removed from the conference at the discretion of the organizers.
Participation guidelines
[edit]The organising team is committed to offer a great experience for all participants. Therefore, we will be particularly careful about how participants behave on the online platforms that we will monitor during the event. We strongly encourage a positive and benevolent collaboration between participants, and we are also ready to limit or cancel the participation of people who are not willing to follow these guidelines.
- Expected behaviour
- Encourage a positive and friendly atmosphere: Value each other's ideas, styles and viewpoints. Be aware that people may have different levels of knowledge, different skills and background than you. Be open to different possibilities and to being wrong. Be respectful in all interactions and communications. Be aware of your impact and how your contribution (messages, discussion, comments) may be affecting people. Before sending a message (especially a joke or criticism), take a minute to wonder if other people will feel hurt or annoyed by your message. Be direct, constructive and positive.
- Respect people’s privacy and anonymity
- Some participants use a pseudonym and keep it distinct from their real identity. Never disclose private information about a person (real name, place of residence, family situation, sexual orientation, pictures…) without their explicit consent. Don't forget that leaking information about someone's real-world identity can lead to serious consequences; some participants may be joining from jurisdictions where being LGBTQ+ is illegal. Accept that people may not want to answer private questions.
- Allow participation with audio only (without video). Use the names of the participants, which they themselves indicate in the video conference. If video and/or audio recordings are planned, all participants must be informed of this, including the intended purpose, before the start of the meeting. Still images (screenshots) may only be taken during the video conference with the express consent of all participants concerned.
- Do not record the meeting and do not publicly share the Zoom link. Do not collect any personal data of the participants in the context of the video conference. For instance, do not demand that participants send you wikimails or reply to your wikimails. In the case of written notes intended for publication, use quotations that can be individually assigned sparingly and carefully.
- Be mindful of the space you take
- During a discussion or in a working group, make sure that you're not the only one speaking or writing. Make sure that you leave enough space for others to participate, and encourage discussions rather than monologue. Actively encourage the participation of all attendees, especially from groups that may be under-represented in the crowd (for example: women and gender minorities, non-native speakers, newcomers).
- Ask for help if needed
- The conference will cover a wide range of topics involving a lot of different tools, technologies, areas of knowledge. No one knows everything, and it's perfectly OK to have questions or to need help with something. Please ask for help when needed!
- Help others
- If you have knowledge about a specific topic, or if you have this special skill of being able to find documentation even when it's well hidden, then please help others. Helping doesn't mean doing the work for them: you can point to useful documentation, answer questions, suggest workarounds.
Behaviour that will not be tolerated
[edit]The organising team will be especially careful about the following areas and can make the decision of temporarily or completely banning participants whose behaviour is considered harmful for others.
- Harassment
- This includes, among other things, offensive statements about gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance such as physique, ethnicity or belief, representations of a sexual nature, conscious intimidation, stalking, persecution, unwanted photography or recording, repeated disruption of lectures and other events, undesirable physical contact and unwanted sexual attention. People who are warned about such behaviour must stop it immediately.
- Violence and Threats of Violence are not acceptable — online or offline
- This includes incitement of violence toward any individual, including encouraging a person to commit self-harm. This also includes posting or threatening to post other people’s personally identifying information ("doxxing") online.
- Personal Attacks
- Conflicts will inevitably arise, but frustration should never turn into a personal attack. It is not okay to insult, demean or belittle others. Attacking someone for their opinions, beliefs and ideas is not acceptable.
- Unwelcome Sexual Attention
- This includes comments, jokes or imagery of a sexual nature in communications or chats, without affirmative consent.
- Unwanted content
- Posting content, pictures or links that have nothing to do with the current topic. Repeatedly posting content, pictures on link about a topic that no one asked for. Promote repeatedly a specific opinion, medium, tool or project without being asked. This also includes: asking several times the same question after other participants tried to answer, asking very general questions that are not directly related to projects people are working on, calling out people asking for their opinion about a specific topic.
Get some support/help
[edit]We will have a group of designated volunteers who will monitor the chat and discussion areas to ensure that the policy outlined here is adhered to. They will have the ability to remove those violating the policy from comment sections, pads, and any other discussion areas under the control of the conference team. They will also have the ability to permanently ban anyone who clearly and/or persistently violates the policy.
If you believe that someone else is not following this policy, you have the following options: (1) point out the terms openly and/or (2) inform only the facilitator (for example, by using the direct chat function) and/or (3) inform our Friendly Space contacts below.
If you feel uncomfortable during the event or feel that the above policies are being broken, please contact our Friendly Space team on safeqw
wmlgbt.org or contact them on Telegram:
- Fri 12 May: Claudia Garád (@ki7sun3) and Dorothy Howard (@hexatekin)
- Sun 14 May: Josh Lim (@akiestar), Peter Meyer (@econterms) and Dorothy Howard (@hexatekin)
- Wed 17 May: Claudia Garád (@ki7sun3) and Dorothy Howard (@hexatekin)