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Wikimedia LGBT/2023-11-29

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Wikimedia LGBT+
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This online video conference is open to all participants of the LGBT+ User Group, and is intended as an opportunity to discuss shared interests, opportunities, and challenges. The meeting will include User Group administrative and governance updates, community discussion, and open presentations.

The meeting will have an entry lobby, please reach out on the Telegram group if you are left waiting. The Wikimedia Universal Code of Conduct will be followed for this meeting.

Expected attendees

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RSVP here!

Agenda

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  • Events and announcements
    • Wiki Loves Pride updates from anyone organizing an event or related campaign
    • Anyone have other events to promote/announce?
      • Put yours here or come ready to say something about your event

User Group Administrative/Governance Updates

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Community discussion

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  • Transphobic PUSHing on the English Wikipedia and elsewhere
    • There is a handful of editors PUSHing transphobic content and suppressing trans-inclusive content on enwiki; there has been for some time. How do we address it?
  • Wikimedia Foundation events in anti-LGBT+ jurisdictions
    • It is a recurring issue for Wikimedia LGBT+ to be asked to support WMF events in anti-LGBT+ spaces.
    • What should our position on this be? We do not have time to discuss and create a plan of action as a group now. Will revisit in 2024
    • We requested WMF funding to organize discussion on this in February 2022 and September 2022. WMF did not select for funding at that time. We are invited to submit again in 2024.
    • Anyone who has volunteer capacity to organize discussion or draft position comments may do so. This is a complicated issue.
  • Queering Wikipedia 2024 Continuing Discussion
    • WMF has recommended we do a planning meeting/leadership training event this year, and host conferences every other year
    • Continue discussion reflecting on our goals and capacities to host Queering Wikipedia going forward

Share + Discuss Ideas and Proposals

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(please add any specific Wikimedia projects/events/activities topics you'd like to share with the group as a lightning talk or open for discussion)

  • -
  • -

Chai Time! (After-meeting informal chats)

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Tea, Turkish style
A tea cabin in Sreemangal, Bangladesh

Getting to know each other and having fun is an important part of why we exist! Following the meeting, there will be a half hour of unstructured time, where the meeting room will stay open for people to chat and form any proposed breakout rooms.

Actual attendees

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  1. Owen Blacker user:Owen Blacker, editing English, French, and Welsh Wikipedias also Commons and Wikidata. I do some financial administration
  2. Lane - user:bluerasberry, taking these notes. Anyone can contribute to the notes. I am also currently organizing the Wikimedia LGBT+ trustee elections, which we discuss later in this meeting.
  3. Dorothy user:Hexatekin, helping to organize administrative aspects of Wikimedia LGBT+ including these meetings and some grant writing
  4. user:LastChapter - I am a librarian and edit about LGBT issues
  5. Pax user:FunCrunch. I have been editing English Wikipedia for over 15 years, including biographies of trans and non-binary folks. Also photos in San Francisco
  6. user:Samthony, code developer and translator from Spain contributing mostly to wikidata, the spanish and english wiki :)
  7. RXerself - admin in Indonesian Wikipedia, edit and watching edits for LGBT-related articles
  8. others who choose to not share names

Notes

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  1. Events
    1. Does anyone have any events that they would like to announce or promote?
    2. Comment: There is a Palestine editathon this Saturday! December 2, 9PST/12EST/5pm UK/7pm Ramallah register at bit.ly/editpalestine, more info on www.instagram.com/freeknowledgepal/
  2. After elections
    1. will need to keep membership lists
    2. WMF asks us, are you practicing democracy, how do you elect the Board, etc.?
    3. Registered members should have a ballot and be able to vote now
  3. Wikimedia LGBT+ General Support Fund grant application updates
    1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Community_Fund/General_Support_Fund/Sustaining_Wikimedia_LGBT%2B
    2. Wiki LGBT+ made this application over the past few months
    3. we anticipated review and an answer around this time
    4. the response from Wikimedia Foundation grant officer Chris Shilling is that he asked us to withdraw our application
    5. the reason was that he had expectations for Wikimedia LGBT+ to have a fiscal sponsor that he approved, and that this should have happened by a certain date
    6. In short - the Wikimedia Foundation has asked us to re-apply for funds in March
    7. What does this mean for the user group?
      1. We do not have funding to offer any translation at meetings, or for anything else
      2. We had hoped to hire staff to apply for grant from non-WMF sources. We will not hire that staff, and have no grant development in the works
      3. It is disappointing because we hoped to scale things up, and this will not happen at this time.
      4. We have expenses for software which would be free if we had nonprofit status, but we do not have that status
      5. We cannot apply for nonprofit status because it is expensive and we have no money. Also it takes significant community discussion and organizing, and we do not have staff to organize those meetings or translate discussions which would be necessary.
      6. We will continue to seek opportunities to apply for funding from non-WMF sources
    8. comment:
      1. Just to clarify we have not withdrawn our grant application yet?
      2. Was the ask to withdraw made publicly? I didn’t see it on the talk page
      3. No, it's behind closed doors... I disagree that's better.
      4. Yeah it seems this should be public
      5. A public rejection would require an explanation...
      6. Not “in the spirit” of Wikimedia methinks. I respect your decision how to deal with it though
      7. We don't have to acknowledge anything unless there is a rejection.
      8. Has this happened to other user groups of similar size? Do we think this is LGBT-specific?
      9. I disagree. I'd rather get a public rejection first. This then forces the rationale to list out why.
      10. They’re not going to give us a public rejection
      11. They’ve said that they won't
      12. Then we proceed with the grant... until they do.
      13. Is there a way to get an official publicly accessible communication from them asking us to withdraw?
      14. (salt emoji)
      15. There is time within the grants window to proceed. That's why I don't seem the point in the UG publishing rejection rather ensuring the grants team spell out the problem. If the only reason for rejection is timing of confirming a fiscal sponsor, that needs to be in writing as *the only* reason for withholding funding. That puts us in a good position to ask for an interim 'capacity' rapid grant.
      16. We have limited time in this meeting to discuss this and other things on the agenda. If people want to talk more about this then we can do so on the Telegram
      17. We can set up a 'salty' telegram group. (6x users posted salty emoji)
  4. Transphobic PUSHing on the English Wikipedia and elsewhere
    1. There are editors with a pattern of anti-trans editing. There is more discussion of this in English Wikipedia than elsewhere, but we have reports of this kind of anti-trans organizing happening in various languages of Wikipedia.
    2. There are discussions about anti-trans organizing in various LGBT+ wiki community channels, including WikiProject LGBT on English ##Wikipedia, and in off-wiki communication channels like Discord and Telegram.
    3. Ironically, transphobic editors accuse non-transphobic editors of being part of a trans “cabal”
    4. It is not certain what we should do, but some people are discussing options
    5. One could be compiling a case study about anti-trans sentiment then bringing this to English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee to request enforcement of the Code of Conduct
    6. One hot article for conflict is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-critical_feminism
    7. Comment: We could share conflict-prone articles for people to put on their watchlists
    8. Comment: It worries me as well in ES Wiki
    9. Comment: I can help with that, but I cannot do it alone because I don't even know where to start from
    10. Comment: It is hard to get accusations that there is an LGBT cabal
    11. Comment: There are a few transphobic editors in English Wikipedia who are very active in advocating for extreme views
    12. Comment:We can set up an off wiki TERF list and feed that in to monitoring reports for analysis. For each account that games/pushes/tagteams, a complaint (off wiki) can be done by email without getting backlash
    13. Comments: It’s very much an issue we want to address across multiple language editions; the users I was talking with are native to enwiki, which is the only reason that enwiki is the topic of this specific conversation. But I definitely want this kind of strategy across multiple language editions
    14. Comment: Check this podcast with Funcrunch and Tamzin talking about trans issues - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WIKIMOVE/Podcast/Season2
    15. Comment you can preserve your balance of mind and avoid discussions on MOS.
    16. I don't have the mental energy to go against them most of the time, and I won't lie, I've been thinking about feeding the previous disputes to ChatGPT so it, once more, writes what we keep saying again and again
  5. Recent changes feed
    1. We could set up a feed of places where conflict is routine, and give that list to the group to monitor
    2. Can we have a log of problematic contributors per project so we can support LGBT contributors
    3. Tamzin mentioned on the podcast is that it’s not really a “neutral point of view”, it’s a “consensus point of view”. As being perfectly neutral isn’t really possible
    4. I think we should have a complaint list
    5. This issue is getting out of hand in Spanish language wiki
    6. There is a browser extension called "Shinigami eyes" which highlights advocacy, such as people who are anti-trans or people who are trans allies. This works in English but not in other languages
    7. There are wiki developers who have attempted to adapt Shinigami eyes for other wiki languages
    8. comment: Shinigami eyes requires training data so multiple people would have to tag wiki text to identify this
    9. comment: we could invite the developer of this tool to talk with the wiki community. They apparently already use content from Wikipedia for the tool.
    10. I suggest not doing this by wiki extension. You could be sanctioned for using it insome circumstances, so it should not be findable/readable by others, including admins.
    11. Shinigami eyes has not been updated since August 2021. It seems abandoned. There are 80 bug tickets and 9 pending pull requests with no reaction.
    12. https://shinigami-eyes.github.io/
    13. comment: Gosh, I'm suddenly grateful of somehow the lack of dedicated hateful users in (other language wiki)
  6. Queering Wikipedia 2024
    1. To have enough time to discuss this, we would need to establish another regular meeting dedicated to only this
    2. Perhaps we will do that
  7. How might Wikimedia LGBT+ strategize and implement effective solutions to navigate requests involving supporting WMF events situated within anti-LGBT+ spaces
    1. Might be useful for us to make a list of important considerations for WMF events
  8. annual report
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