User:Barkeep49/U4CBC

Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Building Committee (U4CBC)

The U4CBC is responsible for writing the procedures and helping run the first election for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C). The U4CBC has agreed to Chatham House rules and so this blog will note work and decisions of the committee. They are not intended to be complete summaries. My goal here is to highlight certain aspects of discussions I think important. My goal is also to factually say what happened at the meetings and not my opinion about whether I agree or disagree. But of course I am displaying some editorial judgement by what I choose to summarize.

Surprise Jan 18 update

During copy editing some changes were made to the document. Most of these were fine but in 1 case it created a major misunderstanding, in 1 it would have created a misunderstanding down the road, and in a couple it seemed to make things less clear (at least in English). The major misunderstanding was identified on Meta and would have completely changed the intent of the quorum rule. I'm very appreciative to the editor who raised the concern. That's been fixed. Also changed was removing the phrase "term limit" in favor of term and making clear there is support/neutral/oppose (approval) voting. All of these are going to be fixed in English before voting starts, the quorum piece is going to be fixed in all languages before voting starts, and the other changes should happen with in a couple of days in all languages (if any change is needed after the translation).

Dec 9 update

Major decisions:

• Requires the U4C investigate any allegation of a systemic failure by a high-level decision making body or the Foundation; the U4C has discretion on whether to investigate complaints from individuals.
• Requires at least 2/3 support and 8 votes in favor in order to do a sanction for a systemic failure
• High-level decision making bodies are being defined as: NDA Arbitration Committees, Affiliations Committee, Global Council, Elections Committee, Technical Code of Conduct committee, and Stewards
• Added language to guide U4C group dynamics to keep a healthy culture

Other discussions with no change to the language:

• Changing its delegation powers
• Having clerks
• Requiring short term grants of the tool use

The next step is a final ratification vote among the entire committee (not just those who could make the long meetings). Following this, translation work will begin with the aim of having a January vote by the global community. 18:15, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Dec 2 Update

Major decisions today:

• Agreed that there will be a minimum quorum of 8 seats (out of 16)
• Decided how to handle vacancies. The committee will be able to choose to:
  • Leave the seat vacant
  • Appoint a member, if there was someone who met the % minimum in the past election who ran for that seat
  • Call a special election, especially in the cases of a vacant regional seat
• The elections committee will decide voter eligibility
• To be elected candidates must get at least 60% support (support/(support+oppose). However, the number of supports minus opposes will be used to rank the candidates who get at least 60%. The support percentage will be used as a tiebreaker.

Still left to do: a number of comments about specific provisions, whether or not the committee should have clerks. Scheduled to meet again next Saturday. 22:23, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Nov 25 update

We did a lot of copy editing. Major decisions:

• There will be no limit on how many people can come from a home wiki
• All members will be expected to tell their home wiki and the region they are from (even if they are not running for a regional seat)
• Clarifying that the Election Committee makes the final decision about whether candidates meet the requirements and they may make an exception to the requirement that someone not have an active block or community ban in the last year
• Clarifying that the U4C will oversee elections (the U4CBC for the first election) while the Election Committee will administer them
• Allowing board members of affiliates to be on the U4C but not staff/contractors of affiliates
• Candidates will not be required to submit real world identification to the WMF

We have decided we have at least 1 more long meeting in order to finish copy editing and to make major decisions around at least:

• Whether there is a quorum necessary for the committee
• How to handle it if not enough candidates get elected (especially in the first election)
• Whether or not the committee should have clerks
• How to handle resignations

17:52, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

November update

So as was pointed out to me today, I have not been updating this. Apologies for this. We are getting close to wrapping up the proposed charter after community feedback but we have a few major things left. The biggest change, not yet finalized, is around membership. As it stands right now half the seats will be based on geography and half will be elected by the community at-large. Yet to be decided is if there will be additional diversity requirements (e.g. a limit to how many people can come from one home wiki). Have questions about anything else? Put them on the talk page and I will add answers (as possible). 14:56, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Meeting 6: July 28

This was the 6th of 5 scheduled meetings. The U4CBC is using a two stage approach to internally approving sections. In the first step a consensus model (based on 1-5 gradient voting where anyone voting a 1 or 2 is a blocker) is used. For any sections which lack consensus, there will be further discusion followed by approval based on at least 2/3 of members. The committee provisionally approved (provisional because not all members were present so someone could still be a blocker) the sections on:

• Membership: topics of discussion included qualifications needed to run. A decision was made to require at least X edits and Y days/months/years, with the community to give feedback on what X & Y should be. A decision was also made to prohibit sitting board members and current Wikimedia Foundation employees. No other requirements other than the ones in the EG (not blocked, able to sign the NDA, etc). It is also likely that there will be specific seats tied to Geographic Distribution, but all qualified voters are able to vote for all seats. Ex: there will be seats for Geographic Region Foo but everyone, not just the people in Foo, will vote for who holds those seats.
• Internal procedures: The U4C can make them.
• Policy and precedent: Currently it's very similar to what is in WP:ARBPOL
• Conduct of U4C members: There was substantive discussion about whether to include language about being a "Model of UCoC behavior" (or something similar) which was not adopted and whether to require "Ethical behavior" which was adopted but is going to be phrased rather differently to make it more clear that it's universal norms (e.g. honesty) rather than specific ethics which might vary by culture.

There is still a bunch of work left to be done and so the next discussion is likely to happen as part of Wikimania, which 6 of the 8 committee members are attending (I am one of the 2 who is not).

Meeting 4: July 14

No updates the past two weeks because essentially there was nothing of note to update. Bigger discussions began to occur at this meeting. There was discussion about how the U4CBC will make decisions. There was also general agreement around having U4C members have 2 year terms. Other questions which were discussed to varying degrees:

• Should there be classes of U4C members (what ArbCom calls tranches)? If so how should it work for the initial election?
• What should the size of the committee be? 12-16 members has been discussed so far
• Should there be term limits?
• Can affiliates nominate people for election to the U4C?
• What should the seleciton method be? Approval voting has recieved the most discussion so far.
  • If it's approval voting what should the minimum support percentage be?
• Can sitting members of ArbCom and other high level decision making bodies be elected to the U4C?

If you (the reader) have thoughts about this I welcome you to express them on the talk page.

Meeting 2: June 23

Nearly the entire meeting was spent in the pairs that were developed last meeting. The pairs worked on the topics of Conduct of U4C members, recusal of U4C members, U4C relationship to the Wikimedia Foundation, and providing UCoC interpretation and advice to other movement governance structures.

Meeting 1: June 16

It was announced that most of the drafting would be done in pairs and the committee as a whole would only be weighing in at a high level. The committee then spent time analyzing the purpose and scope of the U4CEG provided by the facilitators. The meeting ended with committee members being assigned a partner with whom they are going to be working with closely.

Orientation meeting: June 1

The committee met for the first time. Members learned a little bit about each other, agreed to a committee charter, and were told the timeline for the committee's work. All work is expected to be complete after 5 or 6 meetings. Wikimania will be used as a major focus for collecting feedback with final revisions and the vote happening in September and October.