Incident Reporting System/Background
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Background edit
Communities' reporting methods for incidents, misconduct and policy violations have developed organically and are not centralised.
Each community has their way of managing things using talk pages, noticeboards, email, and private discussions on off-wiki communication channels (Discord and IRC). Hence there is no standardised way for users to file reports.
For many users, it is unclear where and to whom they should report incidents. It is also unclear what information to include in the message. How a report is processed, and the next steps are also not clear.
We have mapped out some conflict-resolution flows across wikis to understand how communities currently report incidents. Below is a visualisation of conflict-resolution on Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and on the English, French and German Wikipedias.
[FLOWCHART]
Additionally we also have the Italian Wikipedia conflict resolution flow. It has notes on opportunities for automation.
These processes are complex, and there are also privacy concerns.
The Wikimedia Foundation considered developing solutions for reporting and processing harassment in the past, and there were previous community discussions.
With the new Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC), which specifies guidelines for behaviour across all Wikimedia spaces –– online and offline, we need a reporting system for unacceptable behaviour.
Hence, this work will be part of the ongoing efforts to implement the UCoC.
FAQ edit
Q: Who will be responsible for the project?
A: The Trust and Safety Tools team.
Q: There have been attempts in the past to work on this. Will you consider previous work done?
A: The Trust and Safety Tools team is using previous research and community consultations to inform our work. That is our first step. We revisited the Community health initiative User reporting system proposal, and also the User reporting system consultation of 2019
Q: Will the PIRS involve reporting only? Or it'll include other features? What's the focus?
A: An incident reporting system is just a piece of a larger incident management ecosystem. An ecosystem can contain other set-ups like preventive work, such as managing disagreements before they escalate, incident processing, and connecting and tracking cases.
We are not building an entire ecosystem at once. However, we will study how a whole ecosystem would work, and how the individual systems within it will connect before we start building.
Q: How do I give feedback?
A: You should use the talk page.
Q: What is next?
A: Please check our Timelines page.