| Account
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Taylor 49 (talk • meta edits • global user summary • CA)
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| Candidate details
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- Languages: en, eo, id, sv
- Region: Northern and Western Europe
- Active wikis: wikidata, commons, sv wiktionary, id wikipedia, eo wikipedia, eo wiktionary, many others to a lesser degree
- Wikimedian since: 2016
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| Selected home wiki
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wikidata
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| Type of seat (regional; community-at-large; or both) (division of regional seats)
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both NWE seat and community-at-large seat (now permissible)
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| Candidate Introduction
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| Introductory statement / Application summary (maximum 200 words): Why are you running for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee? What would you contribute?
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The Coordinating Committee AKA U4C is something that has been missing for a long time. In 2001, English wikipedia and later a few other wikipedias were created. In 2003, the Arbitration Committee AKA ArbCom of English wikipedia was installed, and several other wikis did the same thing. Some wikis even established an ArbCom at some time but later discarded it. In 2007 the first attempt to appoint a Global arbitration committee failed. The current state is that most wikis do not have any ArbCom. The existing global bodies such as the stewards or the WMF Office usually keep out of problems on wikis lacking an ArbCom, except in selected crassest cases. Thus I consider the recent approval of the UCOC and the ongoing appointment of the U4C as major step towards a better functioning community. Belonging to a minority in several areas, I would add to the diversity of the U4C. If I was elected, I would try to do the best from the existing UCOC, as well as give relevant feedback to a possible revision committee in order to make all wikis a respectful and safe place.
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| Please describe your Wikimedia experience (such as contributions to the Wikimedia projects, memberships in Wikimedia organizations or affiliates, experience working on conduct issues in your community, activities as a Wikimedia movement organizer, or participation in building Wikimedia policies).
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- moderate technical experience (good at bots, LUA, templates, namespaces, not really expert on JS or WikimMedia core)
- wikitionary experience (3 projects in 3 languages, one running well plus 2 suffering from major trouble)
- member in UCOC drafting committee phase 2
- some experience with hunting cross-wiki spambots and LTA:s
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| Professional Experience, Skills and Education
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| Please briefly describe 3 situations that show how you worked on, or advised others on, a complex conduct or policy issue. How did you work with others to address the situations?
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- LTA (making edits that were not really destructive, they were just of notoriously poor quality, plus obsession by certain topics such as the "Swedish driving license book") with many accounts and IP addresses active on sv wiktionary (where I am and have been sysop for a long time) plus several other wikis : contacted other sysops with proposals of resolution, including agreements of how many edits the person may perform per day, no good result, single sysops continued blocking single IP:s and accounts on their own
- LTA (making edits that were not really destructive, they were just of notoriously poor quality, plus obsession by certain topics such as "pakkoruotsi" (mandatory Swedish in Finland) or loss of hair) active at eo wikipedia (where I never have been a sysop) : repeated contact with local sysops plus repeated reports to stewards resulting in many local and global blocks
- notorious problems with copyright violations on certains wikis : repeated contact with stewards and WMF legal, unfortunately without any result so far
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| Leadership Experience
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| Can you describe a policy, on wiki or off, that you helped to create or change? What did you learn from this experience?
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Member in UCOC drafting committee phase 2.
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| How have you been able to empower people to make their voices heard?
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Empowering people may be more or less crucial depending on the context. I have limited experience in this area, but pledge to do my best in the context of the Coordinating Committee.
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| Sometimes in professional situations, there are personality conflicts. Explain how you remain productive even with personality conflicts.
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As a member of a sensitive body dedicated to nothing else than resolution of severe conflicts that could not be resolved in any other way, it is of utmost importance to keep away of cases upon the slightest sign of conflict of interest. In professional situations, one has to minimize the risk that "diversity of personalities" (a positive phenomenon) evolves into a "personality conflict" (a risky situation), a or even escalates into a "personal conflict" (a major problem). It is advisable to in good time avoid or minimize engagement in situations where conflicts are expected, further delaying and minimizing reactions allowing the parties to cool down and rethink their positions and strategies, and to ask for clarifications before reacting. Also asking an uninvolved third party for advice or mediation can be a good idea.
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| Strategic Thinking
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| In your opinion, how can the U4C be a positive influence in the Wikimedia movement?
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I have believed in the positive influence of the UCOC since the earliest anouncement, and through the difficult process of approval and activation including more phases and consuming much more time than planned. The U4C is supposed to fix a "legacy fault" that has been there since the beginning: the absence of a global body that could deal with systemic failures on medium-sized and small wikis. Only the future can tell whether this becomes a success or not, but I would like to contribute to the possible positive outcome in those cases where I have not yet been involved before.
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| How would you help the Universal Code of Conduct develop and improve over time?
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A good policy does not need to be changed frequently or drastically. A good policy works on (almost) all incoming cases. If it turned out that many incoming cases "fall between the paragraphs" then one should revise the UCOC. Therefore, if elected to the U4C, I would provide the feedback as a base for discussing the detected problems and possibilites of improvement. In my humble opiniton, the number and complexity of policies governing WMF wikis should not grow too much, and maybe some optimization between the WMF TOS and UCOC could be achieved at some point in time.
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