This page contains meeting summaries for the Phase 2 Universal Code of Conduct Drafting committee.

2021

Session 1 - May 13

The drafting committee, Wikimedia Foundation staff, and the facilitator for the process came together to create a safe space to build alignment, learn about goals and processes, and start setting the stage for the committee to be able to draft guidelines for the enforcement of the Universal Code of Conduct for the Wikimedia movement.

In this first drafting session, the committee got to know each other better, learned about the work done in phase one, the research and consultations done with communities so far in phase two, but also about ongoing work. They also explored rules and expectations for their own work on the committee.

Session 2 - May 18

The drafting committee discussed and asked for final amendments to the safe space agreement for their future collaborations. As some members offered further suggestions, they will be implemented and the members will vote on those amendments again in the next meeting.

The committee members also discussed the provided reading materials that will help them to draft enforcement guidelines of the Universal Code of Conduct.

Learning intersectionality and its influence on UCoC was a large part of the second meeting. The members learned how intersectionality influences their own behavior and their behavior towards others. How challenges and privileges regarding gender identities, ___location, socio-economic status, and other factors like education connect and influence UCoC enforcement was the last part of the discussion.

Session 3 - May 27

The attending drafting committee members have unanimously agreed to the amended safe space agreement for their collaborations and also on a way on how to include those members not present in the call. The members also discussed how to prevent the violations of this agreement and what can be done in case of such violations.

The committee members discussed implicit biases and how it impacts the decision-making process as well as the Universal Code of Conduct enforcement mechanisms. They recognize that implicit biases may lead to discrimination and accepting biases does not prevent objectifying. In an interactive decision-making module, the committee members participated in experiencing how different decision-making styles operate and how they can be used in the drafting of the UCoC enforcement guidelines.

Session 4 - June 1

The drafting committee members participated in an informational session followed by a Q&A period with Maggie Dennis, the Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability. In the session, Maggie shared her thoughts about various aspects of the UCoC, gave a broad overview of the legal and professional landscape zoning in on the needs and expectations of enforcement from her professional perspective.

In the second part of the meeting, the drafting committee was introduced to different templates that can be used to help draft the enforcement guidelines and evaluation procedures. The committee members discussed various templates and made comments and suggestions on them. They were also encouraged to come up with their own suitable models as well.

Session 5 - June 10

The drafting committee members were given a broad introduction to asynchronous tasks they will perform in subgroups in the coming days. They were also informed about the expected workload and time commitment for future sessions. The committee members also discussed the scheduling of inter-member collaborations in their subgroups and what the suited platforms and tools for working together are best.

In the last part of the session, the members discussed different drafting templates in their own subgroups. After the session, they have shared their inputs with other group members and presented their preferences on different drafting templates they want to use to draft enforcement guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct.

Session 6 - June 15

Drafting committee and staff member Claudia Lo briefly presented the Targets of Harassment research to the participating committee members. She talked about the research method, the knowledge obtained from it, the privacy and transparency concerns of those who participated in the survey, and the main takeaways. She also responded to the questions and comments asked by other members.

Civvì, a member of the phase 1 drafting committee, was invited to share her experiences in the committee and talk about how their process went and work challenges. She shared how the committee started drafting the UCoC code and prepared the final draft to be presented to the community.

Based on the shared experiences from the first half of the meeting and recommendations on drafting topics from the facilitator team, the drafting committee members agreed to start drafting with their chosen topics in their own subgroups.

Session 7 - June 24

During the week the drafting committee members did some asynchronous work in subgroups, during the meeting the members started to read and comment on the work of the other groups. At the end of the meeting the members decided to merge the documents every subgroup worked on in one document and to work collectively on the draft of enforcement guidelines of the Universal Code of Conduct.

Each group shared the working method, issues and results so that the members of the other subgroups have a background about the work done in every group.

Session 8 – June 29

During the week all documents from the subgroups were merged in one document, the drafting committee members worked collectively on this merged document adding comments in the sections written by the other subgroups.

In the second part of the meeting they split up again in subgroups in order to address and discuss the comments and questions left during the collective work on the part of the document they originally worked on. Some questions or comments have to be addressed by the committee as a whole, they agreed to list them and discuss them in the next session.

Session 9 – July 8

At the beginning of the meeting, committee members discussed questions about enforcement that had come up as crucial in previous meetings and had not been resolved in the asynchronous work. This included the question of how Wikimedians can be educated about the UCoC, how a projects and its volunteers can be best protected in cases where an external body, be this a group, a government, or activists tries to influence the project and how different enforcement bodies can collaborate and what data can be exchanged between them if necessary. The committee also discussed the term local in relation to global affiliates and cross-project online collaborations.

In the second part of the meeting the committee members started to work on the merged document, resolving comments and moving text into a new structure. It was decided that one member of the group would create a new document without comments and additional material, in which committee members could highlight those areas, where the group has consent already, those that need more discussion as well as gaps that need to be filled.

Session 10 – July 13

In the first part of the meeting the members of the drafting committee organized their participation in the following steps of the process deciding who is going to take care of different activities in order to have a draft ready for community review.

The rest of the meeting was spent addressing some parts of the document which need some more discussion. One important point is the level of “universality” of the enforcement and how different communities could or should deal with violations of the code of conduct.

Session 11 – July 22

The members of the committee went in detail through the text of the draft, facilitators highlighted in different colors parts which need more discussion and parts which seem more complete, the parts with higher priority were discussed thoroughly.

Another theme of the meeting concerned the best ways to seek community feedback and how to organize the phases of collecting and summarizing the feedback and incorporating it into the enforcement draft.

Session 12 – July 27

The main part of the meeting was spent addressing some last questions and resolving some controversial and complex issues.

The committee started to list some specific questions which they think should be discussed by the community. The members agreed to meet again during the week for some additional group work in order to complete the draft for community revision.

Session 13 – August 5

The drafting committee spent the whole meeting resolving the last comments in the document, looking for better wording in parts which they did not consider clear enough and adding details to some difficult sentences.

They also discussed and reorganized the questions to leave open for community discussion and how to better incorporate community feedback into the draft.

Session 14 – October 19

The members of the Drafting Committee met again after the break, the first part of the meeting was spent updating the committee with explanations about the process, mainly the timelines. After this members were asked how much they are up to date with the digests of the feedback coming from the different parts of the Movement.

The second part of the meeting was dedicated to list and describe the different parts of the draft which need to be revised, to divide the groups who will take care of the revision and update and to discuss the possible ways to approach this activity.

Session 15 - October 28

The members went through the weekly work, the roles of the U4C, arbcoms and other global roles were discussed and different forms of possible cross project arbcom were discussed.

The role of the U4C and the relation with affcom and in the conflict resolution between affiliates as well as the relation with existing arbcoms were also discussed.

Some changes to the document were discussed and made.

Session 16 - November 2

During this session the committee discussed some of the open questions and the feedback received during the community feedback round.

The definition of “small wiki” and the vulnerabilities of those projects were discussed, the ways these projects can be helped and assisted. They ways how U4C interacts with communities and some procedures were also discussed.

In the second part of this session the committee made some changes and corrections to the language within the document.

Session 17 - November 11

During this session the members of the drafting committee discussed the appeal process, how much of the process should be moved locally. The interactions between local policies, existing and new ones the projects may create, and the UCoC were also discussed.

The committee decided that in some parts the language of the document is very technical and that for some parts of it summaries should be created.

Session 18 - November 16

In the first part of the meeting, the drafting committee members discussed the updates about initiating the ratification process and editing of the final draft.

In the second part of the meeting, the drafting committee members took cognizance of various high priority issues and reached consensus on a few of them. Members volunteered to work on refining the language for the draft.

Session 19 - November 25

In the first part of the meeting, the drafting committee members focused on resolving low priority comments in the draft guildelines. In the second part, questions about ratification were discussed as well as the idea of an abstract and how it could best be created.

Session 20 - November 30

The drafting committee members discussed the options of the ratification process and voiced their opinions. Some time was spent in deciding the final editing process of the draft.

Session 21 - December 9

In the first part of the meeting, the process for finishing the enforcement guidelines and the timeline were discussed. The committee raised the question of another timeline extension. After that, the committee members worked through low to middle and high priority comments. The committee reviewed and accepted comments, as well as made some changes to wordings to make sure that it sounds like one voice. They also identified the last urgent topics that will need to be discussed in the last meeting, and referred some lower priority issues around wording to the editor group.

Session 22 - December 14

In the first part of the meeting, an extension of the timeline until early January was announced and next steps for closing the last discussions on content were organized. After that, the committee members worked through the remaining open comments, closed as many as possible and made several decisions on the last remaining urgent topics.

Session 23 - December 23

In the first part of the meeting, Maggie Dennis joined the team to give a “Thank You” speech to the committee members. The members worked on closing open comments. In the second part of the session, the members agreed on the Building Committee, among other points that were discussed and agreed upon. They also created a document where suggestions were kept for the Building Committee to consider.

2022

Session 24 - January 6

In the final meeting of the drafting committee, the suggestions following a legal department review were discussed and integrated. The committee also resolved all remaining open questions within the document. The updated guidelines will be translated and presented to the community by the end of January 2022.

Universal Code of Conduct/Drafting committee/Phase 2 meeting summaries

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