File talk:Harassment Survey 2015 - Results Report.pdf/Archive 1

How is it possible Kalliope Tsouroupidou and user Geraki be a part of this survey about harassment when they both have been involved in a serious harassment incident to a fellow wikipedian? Is this some kind of a joke? I find the promotion of this survey at this time, to be at least unfortunate and defiant--Ανώνυμος Βικιπαιδιστής (talk) 14:34, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello @Ανώνυμος Βικιπαιδιστής: If you take a closer look at the survey and the relevant page, you will notice that it was conducted in October 2015. Several community members offered their invaluable assistance during this process, one of them being Geraki. The incident your refer to took place more than six months after the survey was conducted (and its results published, a couple months later), in June 2016. I am not sure what you mean when you say promotion of this survey, as it hasn't been promoted since the publication of its results, almost a year ago (we are currently in January 2017).I hope this clarifies any confusion about the dates. Of course, I remain at your disposal if you have further questions about the survey. Kalliope (WMF) (talk) 16:14, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Isn't it funny @Kalliope (WMF):, that you are responsible for promoting information about issues regarding Healthy Community Culture, Inclusivity, and Safe spaces, while you were involved along with user geraki in serious incidents of harassment at users of Greek wikipedia that where seriously investigated by the wikimedia foundation? Surely you can detected the irony of the matter. In other words, wikimedia foundation thought that you are the most reliable person for helping victims of harassment within wikipedia? Surely you'll agree with me that the specific timing (I found it at the main page at the notice board for 2016 December news) for promoting such survey about harassment with major contributors yourself and user geraki is at least unfortunate, while there are recorded incidents of harassment from you. How is it possible the person that harasses to be presented by the foundation as the most suitable person responsible for solving issues of harassment? --Ανώνυμος Βικιπαιδιστής (talk) 17:01, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

To avoid misunderstandings about my saying, I would like to clarify that Kalliope has been a witness to harassment incidents of users both outside and within Wikipedia even during the period that the survey was held but she kept quiet for some reason. So reasonably I wonder about the wikimedia foundation's choice of specific persons as the promoters of its campaign about Healthy Community Culture, Inclusivity, and Safe spaces.

With great regret I see that wikipedia to which bestir oneself every day and voluntarily, has become dangerous ground. I think that harassment behaviours tend to become everyday's issue, something that one can already see happening to the Greek Wikipedia. I think the employees of wmf, such as Kalliope, must give first the good example in such matters and not to mask offending behaviours of their fellows such as user geraki. When these toxic behaviours go unpunished, unfortunately legitimized and reproduced. I find the foundation's campaign about harassment extremely important but honestly think that the persons chosen to carry it, have no purpose to bring solutions something that can easily be understood by their actions. Bottom line: statistics and surveys don't solve problems, people do. --Ανώνυμος Βικιπαιδιστής (talk) 01:48, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

@Ανώνυμος Βικιπαιδιστής:: A couple comments:

• This Harassment survey is quite old at this point. It was done as part of the 2015 Consultation and the results were uploaded here on 29 January 2016 (just under 1 year ago). None of the more recent events you've mentioned happened while the survey was happening (Wikimania was all long after it was published).
• Kalliope was certainly not silent about the incident you mentioned. As a witness, however, she was not part of the investigation. That was done by other members of the Support and Safety team and then reviewed by me as the manager for Trust & Safety (and then reviewed by Legal and management above me). Kalliope was interviewed for her version of events, and that was it. I understand that you don't like our decision on that front (and i'm not likely to change your mind on that) but if you are unhappy with the results Kalliope is not the person to get angry at (I am).
• Unsurprisingly I agree that the campaign to combat harassment is incredibly important. However given #1 (that this is an old, completely unrelated, survey report talk page) this is not the place to discuss a specific incident. Because of that I'm going to archive this discussion after a couple days. If you have concerns about Kalliope specifically then the right thing to do would be to email them to me privately as her manager. If you have complaints about a specific incident then it would be to either me or my boss. I should warn you, however, that this specific incident has been reviewed by multiple levels of management as well as our legal team and given all of the information we have at this point the decision is unlikely to change. Jalexander--WMF 21:22, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

@Jalexander-WMF: thank you for the reply and for the details. First of all let my say that I'm not in any case angry but rather troubled. I think I was clear with my answer above, about how my complaint was not referring in the time of the survey was being held or published and please do not focus on that specific part. I repeat that I came across this survey through the home page of meta under December 2016 news about Statement on Healthy Community Culture, Inclusivity, and Safe Spaces, where this survey is used as a reference. When I talked about harassment incidents (plural) that Kalliope is aware I was not referring only to this, but also this harassment incident which held for days to @ManosHacker: (as you can see herself commented to a following topic under the contentious debate, so she knew about the actions and sayings of user geraki) causing the massive reaction of the all Greek community against user geraki, and which chronologically happend before and during this survey. So Kalliope and user geraki were being involved in more than one harassment incidents with more then one users. I would also like to inform you that the harassment incident that continues up to this date, have caused ManosHacker a serious health problem (I think that he can provide you more details about that if you like). My question is therefore reasonable, how is it possible that the person who is responsible about community health in Greek Wikipedia and has not intervened repeatedly in cases of severe harassment incidents, is the WMF person about community health issues? How is it possible that the WMF employee and user that contact surveys about harassment are themselves involved in serious harassment incidents? Isn' t that oxymoron? So the question is not whether I like or not the decision taken by your legal department from the moment that the situation is deteriorating daily rather than being improved in Greek Wikipedia causing great problems to the work and health of its active users. You have been clear about your intention to archive this conversation and it is fully understandable. But you also have to understand that the problems in the Greek community remain and continues to employ volunteers like me, who work daily without being paid, promoting with their work the Wikimedia Foundation with real actions like this (also here), about serious issues such as bullying. And it is my turn to warn you that from my part this will not change. Therefore I think that I have every right as an active user of wikipedia to express any concern. So I urge you not just inform your boss with a ping about this conversation but for a change do something about these incidents to stop which continous up to this date. If you need more details about myself, and my experience with wikipedia please feel free to contact me personally to discuss any questions you my have. Thank you.--Ανώνυμος Βικιπαιδιστής (talk) 11:40, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello, Ανώνυμος Βικιπαιδιστής. I think there may be some confusion as to what Kalliope's role is at the Wikimedia Foundation and on the Greek project - what her rights and responsibilities are. I believe it will be helpful for me to clarify this. Kalli is not responsible for community health in Greek Wikipedia. It is not her job to monitor the Greek community. She may be asked to join specific conversations where she has information, and she is always happy to help the community when they reach with questions for or about the Wikimedia Foundation, but she is not expected to read everything, even on a given page, and she is not even permitted to intervene in community governance matters except in certain circumstances. In almost all situations, the Wikimedia communities are autonomous, with the Wikimedia Foundation only stepping in in certain cases - and generally only by invitation. We reserve the right to act independently if we become aware of egregious instances, but we cannot guarantee that we will be aware of such instances, given the scale of our project and the scale of our staff against hundreds of projects with many thousands of contributors and conversations happening, unless contacted directly. Beyond this, what constitutes an "egregious instance" such that we may intervene is pretty extreme. We have taken action in only a few dozen cases over the years that we have conducted this work. Generally, in respect for community independence and also due to the challenges of scale, we must rely on existing community governance bodies and processes to de-escalate issues and to take appropriate action against individuals who are disruptive.

Beyond this, you characterize Kalliope above as having been involved in severe harassment incidents. This may be a linguistics issue, but such language can be misleading, particularly when referring to a conversation that you presume she must have read because it was on a page wherein she later became involved in another conversation. While a bystander to an incident such as that in your other link is quite likely is in some manner involved, all of the contributors to the online discussion who were not participants in the conversation cannot really be presumed to be involved in it. As a long-time volunteer myself, I have avoided long and complicated discussions when I have little time to zero in on other areas of interest. Even if broadly aware, I may not have read through, and I should not like to think of myself as “involved” in every discussion going on around me, whether I am paying attention to it or not. :)

When you say that Kalliope was a witness to harassment but kept quiet, I am unsure of what you speak. That Kalliope kept quiet at the incident of which I am aware is contradicted by the statements offered by other individuals involved. As you no doubt are aware, people can experience and remember even the same incident very differently. Kalliope had little authority during the event in question - it did not take place at the venue, so she would have been unable to eject anyone from the location; even had she witnessed some form of assault, her only option at the time would have been to summon authorities. Beyond encouraging calm, which she and others say she did, there was nothing at the time that she could do. Subsequently, she cooperated fully as a witness in the investigation once we were asked to investigate. She did not conduct the investigation because of her role as witness. I believe you are aware that the Wikimedia Foundation's investigation did not find harassment that required or even permitted our intervention. I understand that based on what you know of the incident you feel you would have determined differently, but I have reviewed the report, as has our legal team and other executive staff, and I feel the conclusion was correct under the parameters of our role. I am not saying the situation was a good one. I wouldn’t have liked to have experienced or witnessed it myself. But that is not enough for us at the Wikimedia Foundation to take action.

That doesn't mean that the Greek community cannot and should not have policies regarding expected behavior of people towards each other and cannot enforce these policies independently. We actively encourage it. It is our hope to work with people in the projects generally to increase respectful behavior and to create more consistent enforcement across all the projects. While there will be opportunities going forward to talk about the Foundation's role in this, it is not our expectation that we will ever serve as the first line of response to aggressive behavior. I believe it is more efficient and more respectful to communities for them to be able to evaluate behavior on their own projects and to work with one another to solve disagreements. The harassment survey of which we currently speak is part of the early work of figuring out how different communities and individuals experience these problems and how effective resolution has been. We are only at the start of a multiyear effort to improve this across projects, with better technical tools, better training and more consistent policies all among areas we hope to explore. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 03:44, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

I strongly suggest to archive this conversation in good faith towards Kalliope, according to Maggie Dennis (WMF) and Jalexander. I am better with my health. I will seek help from experts to have moral harassment find its way properly in our community's behavioral guidelines.--ManosHacker (talk) 19:24, 15 January 2017 (UTC)