Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

Wikimedia LGBT+/Communications/2023-07-31

< Wikimedia LGBT+‎ | Communications

This meeting is focused on the communication tasks and strategy of the LGBT+ User Group, and is intended as an opportunity for membership and organizers to discuss opportunities and challenges, and strategize about future work.

Wikimedia LGBT+
Wikimedia LGBT+
Communications
Other links

The Wikimedia Universal Code of Conduct will be followed for this meeting.

Attendees edit

Agenda edit

  • Why are we here?
  • What are our common commitments as community members? as communicators?
  • What are some of the communication needs of the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group?
  • What is the purpose of Wikimedia LGBT+'s public communication?
  • How can our communication strategy reflect our values?
  • What are the safety concerns and risks of the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group engaging in public communication? What can we do to protect ourselves?
  • What are ways to make our communication materials more accessible and multilingual, given the current limited resources of the user group?
  • What are your ideas about how Wikimedia LGBT+ can improve public communication?
  • What are your ideas about how Wikimedia LGBT+ can improve internal communication among members of the User Group?

Current Accounts edit

Notes edit

  • Attendance
    • 5 people were present for the entire meeting; 9 people attended for part.
    • We are not reporting identities of attendees
    • Multiple attendees expressed privacy concerns
  • introductions
    • experienced Wikimedia editors
    • new people to the meeting
    • Some attendees were silent anonymous observers
    • Silent anonymous people were directed to message organizers to identify them in some way for the safety of other attendees
  • Dorothy introduced the meeting
    • We have a lot of social media accounts
    • Various volunteers have set up various accounts and managed them as individuals who report back to the group
    • We have multiple accounts. The twitter account is most prominent with 37000+ subscribers
    • There are multiple things we can discuss
    • How do we manage control of the accounts
    • including who has the passwords and how they share
    • What do we post to the accounts, meaning who produces the content
    • How do we manage channel research including things like sending out surveys or reporting metics
    • (group comments on what they want to discuss)
  • Dorothy says more -
    • We have questions, but we do not have answers
    • We have accounts which have been successful for communication
    • We do not have a strategy for managing them
    • Historically we have done activities including using the accounts to showcase Wikimedia LGBT+ member activities
  • Question - What are our common commitments as community members? as communicators?
    • Working "in the open" - public documentation and open licenses on our work
    • Managing closed communication channels for managing special needs for our community
    • Difference between public broadcasting and the communication that is helpful for our network of Wikimedians interested in content, learning something within projects, educating others, etc.
    • Assisted by our various communication channels (Telegram, Wiki-related methods, etc.)
    • At the moment comms have been done "intuitively", yet there have been conflicts and there have not been policies around innappropriate conduct, handling problems when people get annoyed of each other, etc.
    • WMF foundation goals are all about growth and impact. Our values don't have to be about growth, numbers, etc. People tend to get locked into numbers, but this wasn't our objective.
    • Objective can also be about sharing amongst other groups.
  • What are some of the communication needs of the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group?
    • Clear identified and community-recognized moderators.
    • How do we choose moderators?
    • What training do we provide?
    • What multi-language support do we provide to moderators?
    • How do we manage complaints against moderators?
  • Identifying target members of Wikimedia LGBT+
    • Wikimedia LGBT+ wants authentic relationships and environments where people can easily state concerns that align with their objectives
    • Language consideration is especially important when engaging with LGBT+ community at an international scale
    • We have communities who speak minority languages who want translation support.
    • There are trade-offs between looking for funding for paid translators and using automated tools for translation, such as Google Translate
    • The group is in agreement that the non-English language needs are significant and that providing translation is a priority
    • Non-English support includes access to reporting harassment, participating in discussions about ethics and values, and simply in showcasing accomplishments
      • Trade-offs between targeting specific languages and using English to serve a wider global community
    • Using Telegram
      • We've tried experimenting in different mediums, but Telegram is not great for long-term policy making, etc. Telegram is better for micro-coordination
      • We routinely have complaints of various sorts. Complaints require a type of conversation which cannot happen in the Telegram platform, although people attempt to resolve complaints in telegram.
      • We need various platforms with various communication formats for different issues
    • We have a backlog of issues and may not be able to resolve them and new upcoming issues without hiring staff to manage them. Even if we hired staff, we need a process that people understand.
  • What is the purpose of Wikimedia LGBT+'s public communication?
    • Public communication is outwardly facing, including to the press, or to recruit people to join Wikimedia LGBT+ as editors, or to develop partnerships with other organizations such as Wikimedia user groups or LGBT+ organizations, or to participate in LGBT+ activism
    • "Our values don't have to be about growth, numbers, etc. People tend to get locked into numbers, but this wasn't our objective"
    • Impact - all the things we want to do in the world
    • Despite growth metrics and numbers not being useful for Wikimedia LGBT+ at this time, the Wikimedia Foundation obligates us to design systems for collecting them to remain in compliance, for the purpose of funding, to keep programs developing in lower and middle income countires, to meet our diversity goals
  • What is automatic reporting?
    • Recent experiments being run on automatic reporting, reports on what's changing on the different language Wikipedias.
    • Uncertainty in the public impat of the automatic reporting accounts on Twitter, Mastodon.
    • Automatic reporting accounts can be fairly easy to set up
    • Currently 12-ish Telegram channels based on public reports
    • We can create a program that looks for recent posts, requests, edits, etc. and reposts (reTweets, creates a Telegram message, etc.)
    • For instance, the Dr. Pink account @wikixyz on Twitter - Mastodon - Dr. Pink
    • "Nothing stopping us" other than writing scripts, to make more automatic reporting accounts
    • One strategy for getting reports can be a "1 post a day" rule on automatic reporting scripts
  • What are the safety concerns and risks of the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group engaging in public communication?
    • What can we do to protect ourselves?
    • We get harassment reports all the time. People come to our group and ask for protection
    • It is hard for anyone to address harassment complaints. We want to support people who report these things, but burnout is a major issue among anyone who supports volunteers who report these issues.
    • Experiencing negativity makes people leave the organization.
    • The negativity never ends. Harassment keeps coming.
    • How can we protect ourselves?
    • Protect ourselves from harassment, from bans
    • Educate ourselves before inviting others to join
    • Educate ourselves on law enforcement in our local regions
    • Abide by local laws to not put ourseves in dangers
    • Engaging with local LGBT+ organizations can increase our exposure, which can be helpful, but increase the risks of public exposure
    • We need to develop a program to educate ourselves about responding to harassment. The issues that we face are not apparent and many people have different ideas. We also need to examine the problems we have so that we can develop an education program.
  • Wikimedia Foundation does not have support for harassment
    • The Wikimedia Foundation seems to have a priority for global outreach and gender diversity, but we are unaware of the Wikimedia Foundation investing in safety support for community events. They want continuous expansion but have not yet joined conversations to discuss the years of problems which result from outreach.
    • Edit-a-thons, school Wikipedia/Wikimedia education programs create risks for participants and those registering new accounts (including minors)
    • Culture is very much "edit at your own risk" at this time..
    • Projects are resistant to hearing this kind of criticism
    • It happens that when outreach projects report harassment or complaints, then bystanders blame the event organizers for attracting harassment. The missing information is that many or most events get harassment, and that this is a systemic problem, and that it is not the fault of the organizers for recognizing that harassment.
  • What are ways to make our communication materials more accessible and multilingual, given the current limited resources of the user group?
    • Request money from the WMF to hire people to do it
    • The user group is applying for funding, and wishes to prioritize programs to support multilingual participation
    • use visuals and reduce text
    • try to create it as structured data (multilingual via Wikidata)
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