Talk:Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee

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Please clarify acronyms (or abbreviations, or however these usages are defined)

...a co-equal body with other high-level decision making bodies (e.g. ArbComs and AffCom) A clarification of the meaning of the terms ArbComs and AffCom would enlighten this ignorant Wikipedian.—catsmoke ^talk 01:56, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Catsmoke: both terms you mentioned are clarified below in the Glossary. Hope this helps. Cheers, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 08:39, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

What does co-equal mean? -- Sleyece (talk) 15:55, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

global locks & bans?

I was just reading about the committee that will handle violations of the Universal Code of Conduct, and I was wondering about something. When the committee is fully in operation, will they be the ones to deal with appeals of global locks and global bans? 2600:1015:B12A:246:0:4D:A062:D301 14:22, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

please see Global ban and WMF global ban policy. Ghilt (talk) 16:26, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

The user was asking if U4C opinions will have the power to compel WMF to enact a Global ban. -- Sleyece (talk) 19:00, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

The IP did not ask that. Global bans, and WMF global bans (office actions) are different things. The IP asked whether the U4C would handle appeals to glocks/gbans, and they were pointed to the policies on such, which do not indicate U4C involvement. -- ferret (talk) 20:39, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

U4C Established

Dear Community,

The members of the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) have been in active discussion with each other and with the Wikimedia Foundation about what to do next. We would like to thank the community for their trust in us.

The U4C has had its first session and now has a mailing list, a private chat forum, and will soon have a private wiki. The U4C members feel that the U4C is now established. This means, per the Enforcement Guidelines and the U4C Charter, the U4C Building Committee is dissolved. The U4C members thank the U4C Building Committee members for their work. Following the rules of the U4C charter, the U4C members have decided to call a special election for the empty seats. More information about this election will be announced soon.

On behalf of the U4C, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:30, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the announcement. I am hoping you can time it a bit later or the election be made short and efficient. We only had Steward election some time ago, followed by U4C election. Now we have Voting period to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter coming up, and also 2024 Board election. U4C election was lengthy, everything from candidate pages to the lack of links to the question page didn't make it easy for the voters. All these community building activities have become so relentless that it's hard to catch a break. Quite dissatisfied with how it is going overall, and feel like we are going further and further away from original goal. BRP ^ever 23:17, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

@BRPever, thanks for this feedback. Speaking only for myself, I will say this is also something that has been on my mind in terms of community exhaustion. The question I've been wondering is if a "smaller" election, whose aim is to find at least 1 person to bring the committee above quorum, makes sense or not. Because, at least for me, the main alternative is a "bigger" process that amends things happening after the board election and I don't know that is actually better in terms of exhaustion. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:07, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

The charter itself demands: Voting is conducted by secret ballot, with voters leaving support, oppose and neutral votes for each candidate. wich effectively means secure poll. That needs some time to set up, I'd say at least 2 Weeks, probably longer. Also information to the community that there will be another election. It is unclear if these requirements have to be fullfilled by a special election, but I assume so. That means we have to go thou the whole process again that is described in Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Coordinating_Committee/Charter#2.4._Elections:

• Opening
• Call for candidates
• Question + Verification period
• Voting

Responsible would be this time ElectCom + U4C. ElectCom will probably busy with the BoT elections. (In the background there is stuff going on, right now for example choosing the best community questions.) Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 17:02, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree with what you've written - including that this would fall more on the U4C than ElectCom. But, for instance, it's not clear to me that the Question period needs to be distinct from call/voting so I think there might be ways to make this "smaller" than a full election. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:29, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree, as it is a special election it must be possible to sped things up. The time for call for candidates could be shorter, and would it not be possible to explicitly ask the ones who received 50% to stand again (by personal contacts) and skip the questions time. And also to have a short voting period, it is no big deal if there will be a limited number voting. Yger (talk) 17:57, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree with shortening/merging the question period. As a candidate, having 2 weeks of just questions was quite exhausting, especially with another 2 weeks of voting without any questions (which I think should be allowed during voting anyway, same as community open discussion and/or guides). The entire period could have been 2 weeks total, if not lesser. Soni (talk) 18:23, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

@DWI does "at least 2 Weeks, probably longer" mean that you need that time to set up the election from the moment the candidates list is closed or is this a general time needed to set up the system? And I agree, the previous election process lasted (from the start to the announcement of the results) around 88 days, the goal is definitely to make it shorter. --Civvì (talk) 18:43, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

There is a script that determines for every existing account (!) if this account is eligible to vote. That list is needed for secure poll and the script needs about 2 days to complete. But it might crash or something else might go wrong, so more then 2 days are estimated to be safe.

Question is Who should be eligible?, meaning how many edits should an account have at what given time? In theory this is easy to decide, but it is decided by committees and committees always work slowly. You need a week to find a date for a meeting, then another week till the meeting,.... And then something unexpected happens that messes everything up.

I mean: Going backwards we have 2 weeks of voting, 2 weeks questins + eligibility confirmation, 2 weeks of call for candidates, and maybe two more weeks for deciding when the call for candidates should start. That's 8 Weeks 8x7=56 days. Plus the time to confirm the results. Last time another 2 weeks. That would be 70 days. Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 19:52, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

That seems like a lot of work to probably just get the same result as last time. Is there any possibility of a poll to gauge the likelihood of a quorum at the end of this process? -- Sleyece (talk) 00:58, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

What makes you think we'll get the same result as last time? We may have entirely different candidates, some of whom may receive overwhelming support for all we know. Hey man im josh (talk) 18:41, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Overwhelming support from a handful of Admins without community involvement is what I'm afraid of. -- Sleyece (talk) 19:01, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Admins are part of the community too, incidently. Sleyece, you barely are involved in any of the projects as is. It's probably time to stop smearing the process and those involved. -- ferret (talk) 20:33, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean "smearing"? I don't appreciate this at all. You're saying I'm not active and also complaining I'm too active on Meta, which is a project.I've already been threatened by one Commons Admin/ Steward that I should shut up about saying that the U4C should seat itself because it wouldn't happen. That was literally one day before the U4C went ahead and seated itself. I feel targeted and attacked on a number of fronts for participating in good faith. I will be discriminated against in an illegal manner if this behavior continues. You are very aware of my medical conditions, and you banned me from the Discord after I raised awareness of the U4C election in there; at least one U4C member was elected after finding out about it on Discord. Please stop Administrating me across projects immediately. You are a Wikipedia Admin, and I don't want Admins to be the only members of the community deciding the remainder of the U4C because It's going to lead to Systemic Bias against certain users, including me. -- Sleyece (talk) 00:09, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

@Sleyece I see no illegal discrimination. I sympathise with your problems, but I don't see how you can justify the claim. I also note that in August your blood levels were in the normal range. Doug Weller (talk) 16:06, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

The results of the Special Election changed things. I wasn't anticipating Quorum of exactly 50% where a single no vote on the U4C would cause failure. -- Sleyece (talk) 18:09, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

As the Bot election is on until middle of September, any election-voting must start after that time, but it should be possible to end voting by early/middle of October and result ready before end of October and U4C operational by November Yger (talk) 06:26, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

That would be about 40-50 days from start to results. It would be a special election six weeks after a major election. Is any candidate likely to get 60%? -- Sleyece (talk) 14:58, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

yes Yger (talk) 15:41, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Why? Sleyece (talk) 17:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

The challenge is now known and action to get a better result can be taken. It can for example not be forbidden that key persons involved check personally with persons that could be a good candidate to step forward. A precheck by an individual checked the candidates in this election and found all but the elected ones to be substandard. It goes also the other way around, a clever initiated person can know in beforehand if a person would be elected with 60% support or not, and see to it that there are persons with that type of strength/Qualification Yger (talk) 17:42, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

In that case, I recommend the committee utilize the 3.6. Structured Support section to the extent possible. -- Sleyece (talk) 18:49, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Unless voters start voting Oppose due to exhaustion alone, I don't see why a qualified candidate would not be able to get 60%. There is no minimum quorum for voters. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (talk) 11:40, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I would imagine there is a hypothetical turnout level that could be so low as to violate 4.2.1.1. Systemic Failures if not accounted for. -- Sleyece (talk) 18:44, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

• I think October/November will be good. 2 weeks period for call for candidates, the Q&A period can start along with the call for candidate and end with the end of election. One week break before voting period, followed by two weeks election, and one week to come up with results. In total a six week election from start to finish is probably a good idea imo. It would be better to transclude all statements into a single page, and best to leave the candidate statements simple instead of making it into forms. Forms, contrary to what it is meant to do, makes it harder for the readers, and candidates will also have a difficult time presenting their strengths in a pre-determined format. There will be no need to open too many tabs. Also, question section for the candidate on question page can also be linked to the page with all statements. This will further ease the voters. Also, please make somewhere where people can comment on the candidates. Generally, people have no idea how someone from xy wiki that they have never ever heard about is, so the best they will do is either stay neutral or vote oppose. I think U4C and meta community is capable of keeping civilty in those areas. These are my suggestions and wishes, been really busy these past weeks so finally had some time to come up with some thoughts. Not sure if any of this will be helpful. Good luck.--BRP ^ever 13:56, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

  Please take note that there will be at late October/November elections for zhwp that will require Securepoll. The Apr zhwp elections have been postponed for a month just due to the elections being extended, which created some backlash in zhwp communities already. 1233 （T / C） 09:12, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not sure, but can there be only one secure poll event at a time? Those zh elections, are these some grouped admin elections? Der-Wir-Ing ("DWI") talk 15:49, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

  Chinese Wikipedia is primarily Administered my mainland China citizens. They do not have regional representation on the U4C, so forcing their region exclusively to have two elections at the same time is going to violate the U4C Charter even if it clears Foundation scrutiny. -- Sleyece (talk) 16:38, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

  How? Every wiki have some elections going on at given point. It's unnecessary and impossible to avoid all. If possible technically, simultaneous election should pose no problem. Unless the wiki decides that such occurrence will cause significant problem in their local election, I don't see how you came to that conclusion. -BRP ^ever 17:20, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

  Maybe I was too vague. I meant that 2.5. Voting Process is going to prevent the election from going forward if the people in one region are not able to be voted for. "Voters are able to vote for candidates from all regions." Just like you said, It's going to come down to whether that region is willing and able to manage the simultaneous elections. I did say forcing it on them for convenience would violate the charter, but I didn't mean to imply that they wouldn't be up to the task willingly. -- Sleyece (talk) 18:19, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

  I don't think it is meant that way. It simply means Voters are able to vote for candidates from all regions. Meaning, anyone voting can vote for candidates participating for any seats. BRP ^ever 12:20, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

  I respectfully disagree. I read it as all voters must be able to vote for candidates from all regions. So, if one region (which doesn't have a seat yet) can't vote because their region declares they can't handle the strain or because the Secure Poll is already tied up in their region, then I'm going to say that's a charter violation unless accommodations for them can be made.-- Sleyece (talk) 13:15, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

  With all due respect, your interpretations on U4C and UCoC have been shown to be incorrect multiple times in the last few weeks. And multiple editors have requested you to not make statements that may be construed on behalf of the already elected members of the U4C. It would be healthy for you to take a step back or five. If not, at least consider accepting that your read of the Charter and similar documents is often in the minority, and it's simpler to ask the actually elected bodies to weigh in instead. Soni (talk) 20:56, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

  BRP literally asked me how I came to my conclusion a few responses up. I was responding to a direct question. I don't think anything I've said would be construed as me speaking for the U4C. I haven't made a single statement you can link to where I made an interpretation on the U4C's behavior, so I have no idea why you would say that about me. My read of the charter on this issue is 50-50 and the U4C hasn't weighed in yet. They would likely have to vote on it and don't have a quorum. Where was my reading of the charter shown to be incorrect rather than just maybe different than another user? Have I posted anything that was like literally incorrect in terms of the wording of the Charter, or do you just mean I'm "incorrect" because I had a difference of opinion with someone? -- Sleyece (talk) 21:26, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

  I think you are incorrect in your interpretation. Your interpretation is practically impossible to achieve as it stands. Several reasons for that, including Censorship of Wikipedia. BRP ^ever 12:50, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

  Communist Party censorship means U4C can ignore Chinese Wikimedians who take a heroic risk to contribute to the Foundation? Count me skeptical. -- Sleyece (talk) 20:32, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

  It is a technical thing (if you mean setting up simultaneous securepoll elections) and had nothing to do with the CCP or whatever you want to nention. 1233 （T / C） 12:23, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  It's not just a technical thing. Simultaneous secure polls for one region will fail technically, but it also violates the Charter even if it were possible. - Sleyece (talk) 01:13, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

  No it won't. For both. 1233 （T / C） 10:19, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

  There's no limit on concurrent securepoll events, but there's a limit of one language. Those are grouped admin elections. 1233 （T / C） 19:29, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

I am speaking only for myself here. A lot of work for the special election has been done behind the scenes and which will hopefully be ready for announcement soon. I think saying "Is the U4C aware of (or has the U4C considered)" is useful. Getting into a protracted discussion of what all that means is not as useful. I don't want to shut down discussion - there could very well be information the committee hasn't considered that we should consider but it feels like some bytes are being expended for things that aren't going to ultimately matter or which the committee has already thought through. I also don't want to give the appearance that this discussion is going to form the consensus for the decision. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:38, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

@1233 @BRPever @Der-Wir-Ing @Ferret @Hey man im josh @Sleyece information about the special election can be found at Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Election/2024 Special Election. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:46, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Possible U4C election problem

On Wikipediocracy, there are at least two users who have taught others how to negatively influence U4C elections.[1][2] Their suggestions are the same: Vote Oppose for every canidate, and hope that the U4C never reaches a quorum of eight members. We have no way of knowing how many people actually take that advice. Even so, I think the possibility of election sabotage should be considered if the U4C Charter gets revised. Perhaps a lower limit at >50% support would be better than one at 60%. Adrianmn1110 (talk) 00:28, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I have thoughts on the requirements for the support rate which we'd probably have a larger scale discussion when we host the annual review. I wouldn't personally call it election sabotage. People can rightfully vote oppose for every candidate if they don't want to see anyone on the committee. There are people who have serious concerns with the UCoC and how it should be applied to projects in practice, there's value in listening to them. 0xDeadbeef (talk) 05:49, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

I am only speaking for myself and have not consulted with anyone on the committee about this. I don't see a problem? Some at Wikipediaocracy have long advocated for this "vote everyone down" strategy during enwiki ArbCom elections and so far every seat has been filled in every election. Personally I think, so far, the system is working as designed: the community is evaluating each candidate on their merits, supporting some and opposing others. So some pass the threshold, others do not. Based on the current candidate pool for the special election I will be surprised if we don't get at least 1 more colleague. I think having 8, 9, or 10 people on the U4C that the community has at least a super-majority of confidence in is better than if we'd filled the committee from the candidate pool in the last election where some people would have gotten a lot of potential power without a commensurate degree of trust from the community. If we don't get at least 1 person out of this special election that would likely change my mind, but WPO is going to do their thing, most people who vote in the elections won't be aware they even exist, and only a small percentage of the ones who know it exists will read about that strategy and will find their reasoning compelling enough to do it who weren't already going to do so. I don't see a problem with any of that. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:02, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

What is the procedure to report systemic UCoC violations in a project?

Hello, I believe there is a systemic power abuse problem within the Arabic Wikipedia. The problems are not major enough to get a global community consensus on a major action, but they are micro-level systemic power abuses and they prevent healthy functioning of the project and discourage potential new contributors. Could I submit a case to be reviewed by the committee? Thanks in advance for your guidance. TheJoyfulTentmaker (talk) 16:23, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello - apologies for the delay, we are still setting up our on-wiki process for these types of allegations. I think the plan is to go live with some version within the next week, so if you could wait til then you could file the case publicly. If it can't wait you could email us, though I think the preference would be to wait til the public process is ready. – Ajraddatz (talk) 16:31, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you so much, @Ajraddatz, I can definitely wait. TheJoyfulTentmaker (talk) 17:17, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

While waiting for the process to go live, I would like to share this for some context for now: Requests for comment/threatening language and censorship by two Arabic Wikipedia admins. Unfortunately, the problem is not limited to just these examples, and there are signs that it is more systemic. This is driving away anyone who is not within the dominant political and ideological perspective there. The main reason I care about this is not that they are limiting my ability to find collaborators on a different Wikimedia project. There are much easier ways to do that. I am concerned because I honestly believe that what is happening completely contradicts the inclusive Wikimedia philosophy, with various forms of arbitrary admin actions. TheJoyfulTentmaker (talk) 18:57, 30 October 2024 (UTC)