Wikimedia Foundation/Legal/Community Resilience and Sustainability/Trust and Safety/Case Review Committee

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The Trust & Safety Case Review Committee reviews appeals for eligible Trust & Safety office actions. Composed of 10 experienced volunteers from the Wikimedia community, the committee will function until the Universal Code of Conduct is fully operable.

For information on how to appeal, please see the section on submitting appeals below.

Purpose

Please refer to the committee's charter for a more detailed explanation of its rights and responsibilities.

In summary, the Case Review Committee reviews eligible Trust & Safety investigations that are appealed either by those who originally requested the investigation or those who have been sanctioned by them. The function of this Case Review Committee is to protect community members from overly intrusive, overly strict, or overly lax enforcement of conduct standards by the Foundation. The committee determines whether or not cases were properly handled; it does not re-litigate cases.

The committee was established with the anticipation that it would be superseded by a permanent process by July 1, 2021. As the development timeframe of the UCoC was extended to take until December 2021, the members of the CRC agreed to continue serving on the committee until the new December deadline.

In December 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation again extended the CRC in its current form until the end of 2022, or whenever a permanent process is ready to supersede it. Five current committee members agreed to stay on the committee, and the Foundation is asking for applicants to fill the remaining committee seats.

With the community ratification of the Universal Code of Conduct Charter in early 2024, no process was included for the governing committee to review Wikimedia Foundation office actions. As a result, the Foundation decided to make the Case Review Committee a permanent volunteer committee, working with Legal and Trust & Safety.

Membership

The Case Review Committee consists of 10 experienced volunteers from the Wikimedia community. Applicants for the committee were processed and reviewed by a small subset of stewards. For their safety, committee members are anonymous, though their real identities have been disclosed to the Foundation's legal counsel.

Case eligibility

Only individuals directly involved in a case may request review, either as requester or as an individual under investigation. Only cases within the scope of Trust & Safety under the Foundation’s office action policy are eligible for review. If Trust & Safety declines to investigate a case, deferring it to community processes, it is not eligible for review under this process.

Some office cases are not eligible for review. Excluded cases are those conducted because of statutory, regulatory, employment, or legal policies as defined by Foundation attorneys. A Foundation attorney will check each case appealed before turning over case files to the committee. If a case falls under the exclusion, the attorney will explain why to the review committee and the committee will notify the review requester of the limitation. In all such cases, Foundation decisions are not subject to appeal and case files cannot be shared for review.

Submitting appeals

Appeals may be sent to the following email address:

appeals

wikimedia org

When submitting an appeal, please:

Include an explanation as to why you believe the case should have been handled differently.
Be concise with your request. Lengthy emails with unnecessary information will make it harder for the committee to process the case in a timely manner.
Include the name of the account(s) subject to office action.

The committee's role is to review the appropriateness of an office action; therefore, new evidence will not be considered in appeals. However, certain appeal outcomes—for example, if the committee sends the case back to Trust & Safety for further investigation—could then be open to new evidence.

Four individuals will have access to this email address: three Foundation staff members (the Senior Legal Manager, the Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability, and the Case Review Committee Facilitator) and the Chair of the committee.

Review process

Appealed cases will be handled in the following way:

Appeal eligibility determined: The review requester will be notified once Foundation legal counsel has determined whether or not a case is eligible for review.
Investigation: If the appealed case is eligible for review, the committee chair will assign five committee members to review the case. The committee will then review the case over a period of 14 business days.
Result: The review requester will be informed of the committee's decision. The committee does not have the authority to issue sanctions itself, but may overturn eligible Foundation office action decisions where they deem appropriate or send a case back to Trust & Safety for further investigation.