Post
by CrowsNest » Wed Jul 03, 2019 12:41 pm
Let us count the ways the pooch has been screwed.......
Staff morale
Does anyone in the WMF staff, particularly T&S, have any incentive to go into work now? Being a paid employee doesn't suddenly make you unaware as to when you're being thrown under a bus for what are clearly high level management errors in the eyes of the Board. For so absolutely and shamelessly backing utter assholes (who didn't even like him until this drama), over his paid employees, Jimmy Wales specifically has the responsibility for future resignations on his hands.
Strategy
As impossible as it will be separate this from the issue of morale, consider how it must look to staff, to be told on the one hand they have a good record handling difficult cases, and to know everything they did was backed by management working off of a clear strategy, but on the other to be told to stop working until the policies giving force to the strategy, are completely rewritten. It is clearly widespread and powerful volunteer driven opposition to the strategic goal of detoxification and inclusivity, that is the root of the problem.
Roles and responsibilities
It used to be pretty clear who was responsible for what. Now, who the fuck knows what the Board is for, what the ED does, what WMF staff are for, and what volunteers are for? All are supposedly partners now, each in everyone's business. We now have the chief executive talking only about vague strategy, a Board issuing executive directions, and a Life President acting as a shop steward but only for non-employees. Who has final authority to approve, enact and even repeal office actions? It is a very simple question, one that a corporate entity must be able to answer clearly.
Movement integrity
Beyond specific roles and responsibilities, is the sheer blurring of the lines in this statement between the global movement (which includes staff), the collective of communities, and the one big community that is the instigator of this problem. A clear aim of the rebels was to reassert the supremacy of en.wiki over the movement and all other communities. They appear to have succeeed. Certainly the planned rebranding exercise, pitching everything they do as being by or from Wikipedia, has taken on a whole new dimension. Harassment, by Wikipedia. Toxicity, from Wikipedia. Has a ring of truth to it.
Trust and safety
Is it now easier or harder for people who want to submit anonymous complaints of serious harassment directly to the website owner, to really trust that their safety is assured? Harassment can rise to legal liability well before it reaches threats of violence or cross-wiki abuse. The only concrete outcome of the Board's intervention is that an irrevocable ban that was obviously for serious harassment can now be revoked on the singular authority of the volunteer body that so spectacularly and repeatedly failed to see there was any need for it in the first place.
I will repeat, because it is indisputable fact the Board should have been briefed on, ArbCom were not blindsided by FRAMBAN or unaware of the existence of multiple concerns and complaints before it happened. Yet they have been given the authority to review that ban, before anyone else has been reassured all of the required lessons that are implied in the statement, have been learned by individual Arbitrators.
Nobody on the wrong end of harassment has any reason to trust the WMF now. Everyone who has insisted without any factual basis whatsoever, that there is nothing about what Fram did that can be remotely classed as harassment under WP:HARASS, have been totally reassured that bullshit works. ArbCom are now going to bombarded with that bullshit until they too capitulate, which they will, because they surely rather like being seen as the friend of the community against a common foe, and several of their quorum clearly even believe the bullshit is actual truth.
I know people who harass Wikipedians of all stripes as a sport, just literally for the fun of inducing fear, usually as a biblical act of revenge. I know their methods and their deep knowledge of what they could and could not previously get away with before they will be faced with anything that even remotely makes them think it might not be the wisest hobby. There is nothing in this statement that tells them to start worrying their sport is no longer a risky endeavour, indeed quite the reverse. It exposes weaknesses, structural vulnerabilities that are ripe for exploitation.
I will repeat for the more normal Wikipedians, if you don't like feeling afraid or even unsafe, you might as well leave now. Don't wait for reassurances or clarifications that are not going to come, and don't be fooled into thinking there is any concrete policy coming down the line any time soon, or that it if does it would ever be enforced. See the offer of training for what it is for people in your situation, namely nothing but a folly.