we're live. Jackie, you're going to introduce us. All right, I'll start off when we're live. We're live. All right, friends. Hi, everyone. Welcome in. Thanks for joining us and watching live. And thanks for folks who have come to watch after the fact. I'm Jackie Kerner. I am the communication specialist for community residents and sustainability. And with me in the room, we have several staff members who are available to answer some of the questions. Maddie, most particularly, will try to answer most of them and then ask for some participation. We're going to take questions from YouTube and in the Zoom room. And thanks for folks who submitted the questions ahead of time. We have a list of them already. But please don't let that make you pause with asking your questions. Pop them in the chat. You also, for folks in the Zoom room, please feel the opportunity to speak. Raise your hand or do the little notation in the chat where you want to raise your hand. I'll pop that in here. And that way, you can get in the queue to speak. I'll take note of that. And please, if you would like to not verbalize your question, but you have a question, I'll do that for you. No problem. Feel free to message me directly if you'd like to ask your question privately. And I can just pose that there. And as a reminder to everyone and to myself, please speak slowly in this conversation today. We have some people with different varying experiences of English. And be mindful of that, please, if you are very comfortable speaking English or a native English speaker. And I want to acknowledge that this is a safe space and universal code of conduct and friendly spaces policy do cover this conversation. I want to invite Maggie to pop in and introduce herself. And then we'll get started with some of these questions. Hi, everybody. I am Maggie Dennis. She, her. I am the vice president of Community Resilience and Sustainability at the Foundation. This means that I oversee teams who are involved in the areas of trust and safety, which includes human rights operations, it includes disinformation, it includes trust and safety operations and enforcement, the UCOC. And I also oversee teams who work with committees, such as AFCOM, the elections committee. We meet routinely with various ARP comms. And we have had the great pleasure of supporting the MCDC through the past two years as they've been working to produce a movement charter. So I have my obligatory, I'm nervous. I always get stage fright. I don't think that's ever going to change. But having said that, I feel less nervous immediately. And I'm ready to go. So Jackie, what do you have in store? All right, Maggie, don't be nervous for all friends here. So all right. So here's our first question. There's a pre-submitted question. I voted for the UC4C members, the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee. The voting interface seems complicated. It was overwhelming. Could we do something different next year? And I'll paste this question into the chat so everyone has the comfort level of reading. Well, I have to confess that I have not yet voted. So I have not seen it and don't know how it differs from some of the previous elections that I have voted in. I do know that Secure Poll, the software we use for elections is not perfect. It has some challenges. And I don't know if there are particular challenges this year with this election. But I will say we're always open to hear how we might do it better. We worked with an elections committee who very kindly agreed to support this, despite it not being part of their primary mandate. And I don't doubt that they are also very interested in hearing ways that we can do elections in general better, including this one. So I'm interested in hearing more, more specifics, and then figuring out where we can go from there. All right, great. Thank you, Maggie. And please, there's time to vote. What's it through May 9th, everyone? So please, if you have not voted, please go ahead and vote. You may have a direct, Jackie. Yeah, Martin. Yeah, I was gonna go ahead and call on Martin. Please go ahead. Hello. I think one of the differences to board elections is the number of candidates because for board elections, there was the first phase where affiliates reduced the numbers so that during the Secure Poll, in the second phase, the number was much smaller. So now we have like 25 to 30 people and they're not sorted by alphabet. So it's a bit harder to find the candidate pages, etc. So I voted, it took me quite a while to get through all these candidates and do my own checks. That's a very helpful feedback. So the issue might not even be Secure Poll, it might simply be the fact that we're running a very large election. So factors to think about as we move into the future. Thank you, Martin. And that's, that's a very good feedback. So thank you so much, especially as we do have a number of candidates for these larger groups. So thank you for sharing that. And please, anyone else who has any thoughts or feelings about this, feel free to reach out about that. All right, Maggie, your next question. There have been concerns about the use of AI by some U4C candidates and their responses. How do we plan to address this, especially for future elections? Well, I'm going to say provocatively that there is an assumption that this is wrong in that question. And as far as I know, we have not yet reached any consensus as a movement on whether it's wrong or not. So I would say we really need to figure out as a movement how we feel about AI-assisted campaign speeches in any area and whether this is something that we are wanting to see. So if the community thinks that AI-assisted responses is a bad thing, then we'll need to make a specific rule against it and consider that in future elections of any type. But right now, I don't think that there's any policy against it unless somebody knows something I don't. Okay, I will leave some time for feedback about that. Does anybody have any thoughts on that as well? Any discussions that you're aware of in the community happening? I'm sure we'd enjoy a link if you all have any conversations that you could point to. So this is a very interesting topic. All right, well thank you very much for that question. Let's go ahead and move on to the next question here. Not all the E4C candidates seem appropriate for this role. Okay, what happens if the group of candidates elected are not suitable for the purpose? Well, I mean, that's sort of a question you can ask for any election, but I will say in this one I have a great deal of interest in the hope that we get the right E4C. It's going to be a big job with everything that we're asking this committee to do to get them started and prepared and able to function as quickly as possible. I hope that the election process will bring us a good roster of candidates and I think that while the foundation, I mean the foundation probably would have to work with the communities if it turns out that we wind up with a E4C or a E4C member that is not appropriate to see how we can review and handle that. No, that's not extremely satisfying as a response. Sorry, but as far as I know, we don't have a we fire the committee clause in this. So I think it would be just something we would have to work on with the communities and figure out how to handle it if that happens. It would obviously show a serious flaw in the system, which sometimes you only see the flaws in the system when you test them. But if people who are not appropriate for the role are elected, either we didn't have appropriate bar for application, or we have maybe deeper issues like maybe not enough appropriate people applied by which I mean no offense to anyone who did apply because I still have not voted, as I said, and I will. I promise Martin that I will. All right, great. Well, thank you. And thank you again for the comments and discussion in the side chat here. We're trying to fill 16 seats and it's going to be complicated. It's first, we're going to be complicated. Nesma, do you have a direct on this? Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, folks. I'm Nesma from the Trust and Safety team supporting the U4C process. And I did want to provide some additional pieces that the U4C charter, for example, is up for just as the UCRC will be review, right? So when the U4C is sitting, that is a conversation. I think that is a place where eligibility requirements can be expanded, right? Because right now the eligibility requirements have obviously a set guideline. But if, for example, there are challenges that a community member has faced with an individual, you know, there are other methods that we can consider or that the U4C specifically can consider in regards to eligibility requirements to ensure, you know, moving forward that there are more guidelines potentially for eligibility. So I just wanted to share that there is an opportunity, right? If, for example, there is a need for higher requirements or, you know, specific agreements to be made beforehand, specific types of vetting, that is possible, absolutely. For those of you who are not aware, Nesma is, I'm going to get your job title totally wrong. So I'm just going to say she's in charge of the teams who do trust and safety, and also worked on trust and safety policy. So she's been closely embedded with the UCRC. I just want to voice a comment from YouTube. This person says, I can't imagine serving on a 16-member committee tasked to handle nothing but contentious issues. So I understand why the candidate quality might have suffered. So I can understand the challenges. And thanks to everyone. Let's just take a moment. I'd like to personally say thanks to everyone who's considered being on this committee because it is, you're right, it is a very serious undertaking. So thank you everyone who's put your name forward for that. And let's start this process. All right, Maggie, you ready for the next one? All right. So you lead a team that works on committee support. Does that mean you support the Global Council? Don't you think the Global Council should have independent staff? So I'm guessing that means not of the Wikimedia Foundation. I'm not sure we have clarity there. Okay. I can't imagine why anybody thinks any work we do in the movement would be contentious or difficult. Let me pause and just laugh at myself. So we would certainly support the Global Council if we were called upon to do so. It fits well within my mandate. My team supports governance committees. We support the committees that make decisions like AFCOM. We also support the committees that enforce decisions like the case review committee or the Ombuds Commission. That doesn't mean we control them.  When we have meetings with AFCOM, we don't tell AFCOM what their decisions should be. And if we are supporting the Global Council, we will endeavor to continue to be as neutral as possible in that. At the same time, I really have to say that I find it challenging at times to deal with the assumption that we are somehow not all working on the same problems and in the same issues. I do understand why this is a perception that that plagues people.  In my own, in my own work, in my own team, there are other people who work at the foundation that sometimes I have to compete with them for resources. But at the end of the day, we're all part of the same movement. And I think in terms of whether or not the Global Council should have independent staff, I think they need the staff to help them get done what they need to have done. And if that turns out to be my people, we will do the best we can to do it well. I'm not sure if that's a great answer. But that's my answer. And I welcome follow-up if I didn't, if I didn't, I mean, if independent staff didn't mean independent of the foundation, but and I don't know, Risker, I see you have your hands to know if you want to chat about that. Hi there. So I'm putting on my MCD she had here for a minute. I'll wear other hats during the course of this conversation, I'm sure. And certainly it, the MCDC has envisioned or has thought quite a lot about the cost of running an MCD, a Global Council, and the impacts of that. We recognize that probably overall, it would be somewhere between three and five full-time equivalent staff, because people would have to move from the foundation to the Global Council. So we have this huge grant-making team now that currently is in the WMF sphere. And there's no good reason for it not to move directly to the Global Council. Just shift right over. So there wouldn't be any cost change there. There would be additional staff that are required to directly support the Global Council, helping to run elections, helping to just manage things. We also envision the possibility of sharing staff with the foundation. For example, it does not make sense for our Global Council to hire somebody to plan travel, or even to contract it out when we can make an agreement, when it can make an agreement with the WMF to have that addressed in a more economical way. We have to think about the dollars and cents too. There are several positions that would probably be required that can be shared. And there is a long history of having done that with the foundation and the endowment, for example, where some people spend some of their time with endowment and some of their time with the foundation and their salary is split between the two organizations. And there's not really a lot of conflict of interest going on there. We have to be realistic here. The Global Council is going to cost a lot of money, as one of my colleagues says, equity costs. And that is a real thing. Bringing together a Global Council will cost approximately this for an annual meeting will cost approximately the same as what we have been paying for with Wikimedia summits and affiliate global meetings, which is in the range of 600,000 to 700,000 US dollars. So that's a lot of money. So the Global Council will cost probably a minimum of a million dollars a year to run. But we do foresee that ultimately there would be a Global Council staff that reports to the Global Council. How we go about doing that, this may be something that has to be phased in, in steps. We have to worry about making sure that the staff are appropriately paid, that they're not losing money to move from one company, one organization to another, that they are representative of our global movement, that we have things like employer of record documentation in place, that we have appropriate compensation in place. So those are big picture things that are going to take a while to sort out. They won't all happen on day one of ratification. Those are going to take probably two to five years to sort out. So don't expect huge changes right away, but we do anticipate that the Global Council would have its own staffing, potentially shared with the foundation, or possibly even with some of the affiliates. There's no reason why some of the affiliates can't be employers of record in some countries too. So that's a quick answer, but it's trying to take in the big picture. And I'm happy to answer any more questions about that as well. I'm complete. This is a definitely a complicated conversation. And Martin, I just want to offer you the opportunity to speak up and share what you share in the chat. Feel free to do so or not. I think Riska has already mentioned that they take into concern one of the inputs from Wikimedia Summit, which reads as the Global Council must have directly managed staff, which must report directly to the Global Council Board. So that's one of the outcomes of the global gathering of Wikimedia affiliates in Berlin one and a half weeks ago. To be clear, we actually started collecting information on this way back at the beginning of this year. So it is not an isolated thought coming from the Wikimedia Summit. And the Wikimedia Summit had lots of outputs, and they are being added into all of the feedback that is coming in from different quarters. None of them are guaranteed. We'll see how it all works out. We still have another month and another draft to go through. And for anybody who wishes to comment on the current draft, today is the last day to do so. We will be closing comments at the end of the day today, because we have to do the next draft now. And we want to have it in a timeline that gives people a chance to see the final draft before they vote. So please, if you do have comments about the proposed charter, now is the time to do it. Today is the day. Thank you very much. I just have to say, speaking of joining a committee that's doing contentious work, Risker, thank you both for all the work that your committee has done and also for being here to talk about it. I can't say how much I appreciate your willingness to share with everybody here since I don't always know the answers. Thank you very much for those kind words. It's been a lot of work. And then also, Carl, I want to note, I should share, if anyone would like to write a mail, please send that to movementcharter at wikimedia.org. I will share that into the YouTube chat as well so that our friends there can see that. So thank you, Carl, for offering that. And thank you, Risker and Martin, for your participation on this. All right, our next question we're going to go to on the list. Several years ago, you released a statement supporting the LGBT plus community and other editors who are targeted because of identity factors. What have you done on this front? So I'll paste this into the chat for everyone to see. So, yes, one of the biggest things we've done on this front is pursuing the universal code of conduct, its enforcement guidelines, and setting up the U4C. I'm going to acknowledge this has taken longer than I wish it had. I would love to see a more robust system in place already for helping deal with challenges. I will say that in my observation, our ecosystem is becoming a more difficult place for many people, and the LGBT community are certainly among them. In addition to that, I'm trying to remember the commitments made in that letter. We were working on a peer support program. So we were at that time, we were attempting through our policy division to work with user groups to provide more direct peer support to people who've been harassed. We eventually did sunset that because we were not finding it that we were particularly affected in that role. We still strongly support the notion of peer support, but at this point, I think communities are probably better set up to support each other than the foundation is. There are so many, there are so many diverse factors to be considered. And I will say that in that respect, I really appreciated the partnership that we have had with the LGBT plus user group who have been ideal and instrumental in working with us when they encounter challenges to people in our community who, I'm trying not to reveal details, but the world, the dangers in the world for people who are LGBT can range all the way down to persecution and death.  And there are people who come to share information on Wikipedia who may not understand how active bad actors can be at attempting to find out who's doing what and attempting to stop them from doing things they don't approve of. So it's been a very valuable partnership to understand some of the challenges. And I also want to own that addressing those challenges is by no means fast nor perfect. If I had a magic wand, for instance, we would already be in a world where every user is anonymous. That's a pretty bold thing to say. I know it goes against what some people think is the transparency value of our internet and our ecosystem. But I have seen too many people targeted by harassment and even by their own governments to feel like being in this place under your legal name is necessarily a wise choice. It's not only you who might be harmed, it might be your family. And I am so such a happy person to talk to the parties. So let me say we continue to work on this, we continue to prioritize this, the U4C, I have a lot of lot of hopes for those people, the list of things I want them to do already is about this long, and they don't do what I tell them. So I'm not sure if they're they're necessarily going to show up and want to work on all the things that are important to me right away. But we continue to prioritize it, we continue to do what we can to support. And I'm sure in many ways we continue to fall short of the mark. I am complete. Pause here for a moment to see if anybody has a follow up. And then I will share a question that is the same theme and then we will move to a question from YouTube. So person from YouTube, I did see your question. I'm just going to stay on the theme with this for a moment. So in light of that statement, how should we understand the situation in French Wikipedia? That is the follow up second part, I guess. Okay. I'm going to make the obvious leap because this has been brought to me at a number of venues that what we're talking about here is the recent conversations on French Wikipedia about the use of dead names. For those of you who are unaware, a dead name is an identity. I'm going to not know the right words for this. So please excuse me, I'm trying. A dead name is a name that was used by someone at an earlier phase in life, often before a gender transition that does not reflect who they are and the use of which feels like a violation. In our communities have had conversations about how you refer to people who've gone through transition to be respectful while also being encyclopedic in terms of if people are looking for somebody, by what name do they deserve to see them? How much do they deserve to know about who they were in the past and how do we avoid causing harms? And I will say that the foundation of course is aware of what's going on there and looking into the situation. And I think this is one of those things, the movement itself is going to have to help us to solve in terms of deciding where we put our resources. That's the wrong word where we put our influence.  The degree to which we as a central movement, like meta, our meta community, the degree to which we involve ourselves in local policies and local actions is a looming concern. I've talked in previous office hours about takeovers of communities by state actors. We are aware of challenges with even bias entering into our communities. And we currently do not have great resources for solving those in a central fashion. I don't think anybody out there wants the foundation to be imposing its morality on the world. While I like to say I know I'm probably a good person and maybe wouldn't abuse that power. I hope I wouldn't. I can't be about the person who comes behind me, and I can't support any system that just allows one body to control everybody else. So how do we get everybody in the discussion? And how do we make sure that the discussions are focused on what they need to be, which is providing a safe and secure environment for the whole world to join us in sharing knowledge? I hope the question from YouTube is an easy one. Well, sure, Maggie, maybe. So I just want to voice Martin shared in the chat, nice first job for the U4C because possible systemic failure of a local community with regard to the UCOC. So I've wondered that myself, my volunteer hats are changing hats. So the other Jackie who's a volunteer has wondered that herself. So, all right, Maggie, I can't say it's easier. So I'm sorry. So thank you person from YouTube who shared the question. I want to also voice feel free to share questions on YouTube or here in the Zoom room, raise your hand. Or if you're watching this after the fact, reach out to us at answers at wikimedia.org and we can hopefully answer those questions for you. So Maggie, which state actors pose the greatest risk, recurrent sorry, greatest threat to editors currently. And how do you recommend editors working on pertinent topics avoid their ire? Okay. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I would like to suggest that every editor should consider that their state poses a threat to them. And because I mean, I'm not going to give you a list right now of which are the most dangerous state actors, I can't because I don't honestly know. And I will tell you this that the very first human rights case I ever dealt in at the foundation came from a Western European country. And not one that I would have expected to be on the list of state actors. Therefore, if I if I hold up a sign and say, these are the obvious, it's probably going to come from where you're not looking for. So I think that it's important to remember that if you're if you're going to be editing on sensitive topics, and I wish I could tell you what those are, but they change, you know, I talked about how the landscape for LGBT editors is getting worse in many countries around the world. If you're going to be editing on sensitive topics, you might want to look into what your community's policy is for creating alternative accounts for doing that. Some communities do have policies that allow you to create authorized sock puppets to edit on topics that would be dangerous if they were connected to you. There's also digital security rest training that the human rights team has put together on meta. I hope somebody can share the link to that. Because I don't have any handy, but if not, we can follow up with it. But there are a number of things you can do to protect yourself if you want to take on big topics. And I hope you do because it's important for the world that we do, but I really hope you do it safely.  We already talked about the alternative accounts. So hopefully that satisfies and sorry that I can't give you the list. But I would say that like many people located in the U.S., when I was a little girl, I was told that my country would be safe for me, that free speech would be safe for me. And now that I am an adult and I look around and I see what the world is, I realize that is not necessarily so. So I wouldn't encourage anyone to consider themselves fully immune. Once again, I'm a lot of fun at parties. Jackie? So I just want to note here that Jack, thank you, Jack, has sent the link for that resource. And I also posted a diff series that one of our human rights folks had taken the time to create because essentially the first line of defense you have is your username and not having the private information about yourself online. And I think many of us in this room know how easy that stuff can be to obtain. Again, knowledge is power sometimes. So please take the steps to protect yourself and follow some of these guidelines if you have that accessibility. Briskard, do you have a direct here? And then I believe after this we're going to pivot back to the previous topic, Maggie. Yes, I do. And now I will put on my check user and oversight or hat and tell you that one of the inherent cultural values of the Wikimedia family of projects is radical transparency. So that means that every single edit can be attributed to an individual account, whether it's an IP address or it's a username. So, and it is hard to get rid of that information once it is there. We do regular dumps of all of the information that goes on to all of our projects. So once you have made an edit using a username that is closely associated with you, you have to consider that it's there forever. It's going to be impossible to remove it from dumps. We can't do it. It's just physically not possible. So starting right from the beginning, selecting a username is step one in personal security on Wikipedia because of our radical transparency values. And we want to make sure that people are as safe as possible. Depending on the project where you're working, it may be more or less easy to get IP block exemptions for VPN use. Stewards cover the vast majority of the projects. Thank you very much, Martin and team and colleagues. But on large projects, it is frequently handled by the check users on those projects. English is one of them. And I think there are a couple of other large projects where you're going to have to ask for it specifically. And don't hesitate to do that. We're trying to get better at this stuff and to recognize the importance of making things safe for our people. But it's still a big cultural leap for a lot of us to go from radical transparency and everybody being responsible and being able to trace every edit back to its original IP through check user or whatever to protecting the people and having to give up some of that transparency level by using VPNs by using other factors. So ask a lot of questions. Feel free to ask those questions, especially on big projects that have are set in their ways like English Wikipedia. We are set in our ways. We are working hard. Those of us who have dealt with privacy issues know how severe it can be and do understand it. But trying to persuade the rest of our community really helps to have members outside of check users and other functionaries saying these things too. We want to protect you.  Right. So I don't know if anybody knows the cat in the hab.  So thank you Risker for wearing all those hats. And thank you everyone else in this call who's worn a lot of hats in this community as well. All right, Maggie, we're going to pivot back with a question or reframe from YouTube. I shouldn't say reframe, but we're going to go back. So as a follow up, is the UCOC meant to cover the content rather than the community that is that? So excuse me, I haven't had a chance to edit this question. As a follow up, is the UCOC meant to cover the content rather than the community who is creating it? Well, I'm going to ask Nesma to help with the answer, but I'm going to start off by saying emphatically no. However, content is created by community and the UCOC does indeed cover some factors that relate to behavior that may touch upon the content that is produced by that community. Nesma, with apologies for putting you on the spot again. I know you've been closely involved in this work for some time. Is there something you could say about the UCOC, the U4C and how it dovetails between content and community? Yes, I would say that obviously the universal code of conduct is meant to provide baseline of what behaviors are expected of us collectively, right, in all ways. So I do think that sometimes it can connect with the content pieces. For example, if there is a level of like malintention or repeated behavior that could be deemed harassment and that can also sometimes connect to the content. I do know it's hard sometimes to figure out where the actual line is, but it is predominantly focused on behaviors, online and offline for example, in our community spaces. So I hope that answers the question. You are now also hearing my nephew scream basketball. Apologies for that. I'll just elaborate a little further and say in terms of content, for example, English Wikipedia's arbitration committee some years ago, I remember, handled a situation where a suite of articles was allegedly being manipulated by a group of contributors who were working together outside of Wikipedia, outside of the consensus process. They were talking to each other in private channels and communications and they were showing up in ways that were meant to interfere with the regular editing process. That was the allegation and this is the kind of situation where you see a connection between content and community behavior where people are deliberately subverting the ways that Wikimedia is supposed to work, the ways that our projects are supposed to evolve and somebody can look at those situations and determine if that's actually happening. The foundation, as it currently stands, the foundation actually does have the ability to globally ban people who are discovered to be doing this under certain circumstances, usually the most egregious, but it is far better to have community processes that can do this. As I said, I like to think that I and my team are good people and would not impose our own perspectives on this, but a democratically sourced body from multiple communities will be much better for the long-term health of our movement to have oversight on such things. I am complete. We seem to have a question in the Zoom chat person. Would you like to voice this question or shall I read it out? I'll give you a moment to unmute if you wish to speak. Either is fine. I'd like to remind people who are in the Zoom call that you can come on camera if you want to, but you don't have to. Absolutely, yeah. So, okay, well, would you wish to? Please go ahead. Thank you. Okay, so my question is, given the past experiences where CPR violations involving local media chapters were not adequately addressed, and particularly in the position when there is a power imbalance and also when these chapters had significant legal and also resource advantages for local issues which they created, how does the U4C plan to ensure fair and effective enforcement of the UCOC in such scenarios? And specifically, what mechanisms are in place to prevent the chapters or maybe those bigger actors within the movement from using their own resources to influence or affect the UCOC enforcement actions? Well, I will say I don't know what plans may evolve, but there are no plans yet because the U4C is still being elected. So, when the U4C and Nesma, guess what? Your nephew's basketball notwithstanding, I probably will need your help again. When the U4C is constituted, one of the first things you're going to have to do is work with them on training on what their accountabilities are based on the UCOC and the UCOC enforcement guidelines. And I imagine this is going to be a busy committee. As was already suggested in this call, they're going to have some things to look at when they first get started. But those kinds of how those processes are going to work is something that we will have to develop with them and that they will undoubtedly be documented publicly because the U4C is meant to be transparent. So, I will have to say this remains to be seen, but it should be evolving over the next few months as the committee actually is created. Magyna, I will follow up to states that, for example, in situations as you're surfacing, it might be, for example, U4C working with AFCOM and working with other members, other committees as well, which is what, as Magyna shared, we are obviously in the process of electing. And so, I do think the clarity around the types of cases are actually going to be provided as time passes alongside obviously the enforcement guidelines, the U4C charter and also the relationship that U4C will actually have with other committees as well that provide that additional support for the movement. So, I do think it is going to be a lot of a cross-functional approach. All right, great. Thank you so much, Magy and Nesma. Okay, this next question is quite long, so let me go ahead and copy and put it in the chat so everyone can read along as well. And I will work on the YouTube in just a moment. So, the vote of the summit participant seems way more concerned with getting power for affiliates than it is represented, or representation for all movement members and diverse contributors. I note that hubs and affiliates must have a right to participate in developing core technology. Got 78 supports versus 12 opposers. By contrast, processes must ensure that unorganized volunteers are significantly represented in regional batches of seeds, got more than twice as many opposers, and 31. And processes must ensure that at least 40% of global council assembly seeds aren't occupied by non-male members, got over three times as many opposers, 38. Why didn't you and other foundation staff even participate in that poll? And I don't know, Martin, do you have the link to the poll handy? I know you shared it earlier. Otherwise, I can grab it for a moment. Martin has all links always. I'm convinced. Well, it was the affiliate summit and we were there as guests. We had a commitment to be a voice not vote, so we did not vote. We were not part of coming up with proposals, and we didn't vote on them. We were just there to share what our experiences were. So I'm reading the question again, because it was quite long, and it's fortunately right here. And I will say that I think the core of the question is more to do with the substance than why foundation staff didn't participate in the poll. I would say I think it's a little difficult to assume from a vote, particularly a vote that was taken that way, what people's real priorities are. That is to say, it wasn't a ranked voting where people said this or that. You can have a voting where people choose between things, like if you have this value and that value, what matters to you most. It was really just a, I think, and in fact, if I remember correctly, those were blockers. So somebody said, would this have to be in the charter for me to approve or would it not? So it's possible that some of the people who opposed these as blockers might have had different things in mind, even so far as like maybe they thought 40% being non-male isn't enough. We don't know. So it's difficult to draw conclusions on what people were thinking in that respect, I think. Although if anybody wants to say anything else, I certainly welcome that, but that's my conclusion there. Martin, please go ahead. Yeah, hi, Martin from the Wikimedia-USU user group. They said no, who participated in the Wikimedia summit as an affiliate. And I really want to stress that this was an event for affiliates. So all the feedback that was gathered there in a very extensive way, and I'll share through the link, is coming from affiliates. So it was not a gathering of community. Of course, some people have both these hats, but community was invited to give feedback on the talk page to the movement charter, as well as other places like similar calls. And for me, this was the last summit of its kind, the gathering of affiliates. And for me, who is coming from community and very much based in community, I think it's good to open the audience for more community, to have conversations not only among affiliates and staff members, but also with community members. So something maybe the Global Council assembly will serve in the future, which will likely be composed of community members and affiliate members and maybe even staff members, so that more voices are heard. So more diversity in our governance summits and conferences is also something that will hopefully follow after the last summit of its kind. Thank you, Martin. Please go ahead. Good. Yes, well, I can add to Martin's explanation that at the summit, the foundation staff was not even allowed to vote. It was explicitly announced during the voting process. So thank you for that clarification. And I don't mean to point out, but Carl, are you still in the room? I don't know if you want to mention, so you've been deeply involved with a lot of the movement processes. Yeah, thank you, Jackie. I think most of the points have been already made. Also, the important part here is to look at the context of the questions. So basically, regarding the first part, the question is whether we should have distribution regionally for the people engaged in projects. And as this is language-based, like there are different approaches there. And that was presented as like what is the deal, is it a deal breaker to ratify the charter? So also, one needs to look at the context of how the questions were really presented. And essentially, the bottom line is like, probably just refers that there might need to be further discussion around how the online project contributors need to be involved and whether the regional approach actually makes sense or not. So I just wanted to add that piece to the question. I'm complete. All right, great. All right. Thank you so much, everyone. I just want to note we are nearing the end of time. So if you have a question you would like to share, please feel free to post in the chat. Feel free to raise your hand. Folks on YouTube, please feel free to put that question in the chat and I can grab that. All right, we'll go ahead and move on to the next pre-submitted question that we have here and hope that we have some more live questions come in. And friends, feel free again. Like Maggie said, if you don't want to voice your question, I'll gladly voice that to you. We want to make sure that everyone's comfort level is recognized. All right, Maggie. At the recent CAC call, you spoke to an attendee about your disinformation team. There's been a lot of recent press about potential censorship on Wikipedia before the U.S. election in 2020. What does that team do? Do you think what you do is enough and do you think what you do is too much? I'm guessing that's what that question means. I'll share it in the chat as well. All right, rereading it. So what does a team do? The disinformation team in some ways works similarly to the trust and safety operations team, which is concerns are raised about whether disinformation campaigns are happening. And I think it's important to note that by disinformation campaigns, what we're talking about is an organized effort to mislead. We're not talking about bias in an ordinary way. We're not talking about factual errors. We're talking about a group of people who are attempting to bypass regular community processes to make content deliberately misleading. So when a concern comes in, we have a small staff who have been experienced in disinformation reviews in the past in various contexts. And what they look for is they look for signs of collaboration or coercion or other evidence that people are trying to undermine the processes. And when that is discovered, what they do is they surface it to community. As I've mentioned, we do have a limited ability to ban people.  But often what we see is not quite to that level. And we have regular connections with arbitration committees. We also occasionally write to administrator groups in different projects. And generally what happens then is we just say, we have discovered evidence of what may be a disinformation campaign. Here's what we found, here's where it is. We put it in your hands to explore and decide if you think this is valid and what to do about it. The foundation doesn't go in and alter content. The only time that changes is when we have a court order. And in those cases, it's transparent about what's happening. So do I think we do too much? Do I think we do enough? Yes. As I've said, and I'm going to keep beating on this, I don't believe that any central body like the Wikimedia Foundation should be the ones who are determining when disinformation exists. I think that leads itself to danger and censorship and that it's better that we work with the communities on this, except in the most egregious instance where people are actually physically endangered. There have been cases where we've seen human rights violations. And I see one of my team members has raised her hand and probably I'm saying something wrong. So maybe I should just pause and say, Nesma? No, you're not saying anything wrong. I just wanted to add to say that we do have workflows. So there's three different types of workflows. So there's the disinformation investigations, then we have our deep guides, which is providing additional support to community based off of what they've shared with us. So for example, they don't have the capacity and we notice that there is a level of disinformation happening. We will do the digging to just make sure. And then lastly, which I think is the most important that's connected to the elections piece is the disinformation response task force. And that is actually brought in specifically for not only, at the moment, we've hyper focused on elections, but given that this year is the year of what technically is like the most elections in our history. But so for the US elections, that's already being prepared alongside other elections that are happening this year and have happened this year. And that is in direct relationship with the community. So about two to three months prior to the election beginning, they actually start the process of working with community members to understand like what issues that they've been seeing. So it is a very as much as possible collaborative approach, because just as Maggie had said, right, we, it's not it's important for us to not be the central source of like what is deemed disinformation. Because at the end of the day, people, you know, it's the context is really important. And the issues that admins are seeing and community members are seeing is actually first and foremost. So I just wanted to surface that as like there is a clear plan, especially for the US elections to have that task force, which would also work with the communities in mind. So, you know, for example, English, our comm and admins. Thank you, Nazma. Jackie, do we have time for maybe one more? Or are we done? I know it's gonna be close. This is a this is probably going to be very difficult to fit in. But we'll try to fit this one last one in. So here is our last question. And thank you everyone who's made this a lively hour. And we'll follow up with any questions that we did not get to. So thank you. So I heard from a foundation band person that he didn't have any explanation from your team why he was banned. How come and do you think that's fair? Well, there's nuance to that question. Do I think that's fair? I think fairness depends on who's who's safety and well being we're prioritizing in some cases. I know that in the band notices that we do send people who are banned, there is a little bit of information at the very least, there is a reference to the provision in the terms of use that have been violated. I know that's because our lawyers have carefully worked with us on the letters. There are some cases, particularly where people are warned where we try to give them more detail and where we try to explain to them what the issues are and what to do about it. There are occasions when people are banned where they don't receive nearly enough information to feel fair to them because we are prioritizing the well being of other people. So do I think it's fair? Depends on who's looking at it. I myself, I tend to feel bad for even the people we ban, some of whom are not the worst of all people, but they just don't get along well with others. And I want to be sure that we give as much fairness as we can to everybody. But I also realize that people who have been harassed or who have been victimized or whose safety is in danger, they take priority. So and that said, we're always looking at ways to do this better. So I'm always open to input. And if you ever are at a party with me, I tell jokes. It's not all terrible stuff. These are just heavy topics and thank you Maggie for always engaging over these heavy topics and thanks everyone for coming to talk about these heavy topics. I know that some of them will be very challenging. So please take care of yourselves and do something nice for yourself. After this call to restore any energy you need. Thanks Maggie. Thanks everyone. Thanks for attending live and thanks for catching up with us afterwards. And look forward to seeing you all soon. Thank you.


Hi, I'm Simon Crutchley and I teach practical workshops on the MA courses at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy here at SAAS. A couple of miles north of here in Highgate Cemetery is the grave of Karl Marx and written on his tombstone is my favourite quote. Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it. So the idea behind our summer guest lecture and workshop series is that you should walk away with a goodie bag of skills you can use straight away. Past graduates have gone on to write speeches for the UN Secretary General, head multi-million dollar start-ups and run big projects for NGOs in the Middle East and Africa, amongst many other things. The workshops are arranged in four broad areas, speech writing, presentations and pitching, power relations and interview skills, writing with specific references to CVs and we also look at voice and body work and how to overcome nerves. Each will be of immediate practical relevance and provide a skill base you can carry forward in your career. It's going to be a tough couple of years ahead and we want to give you a head start. You're with us because you care about the world and how it could be, thinking globally and acting globally. The skills we teach in summer school series are the tools you will need to do just that. Looking forward to seeing you this summer.