Wikimedia LGBT+ Conflict Transformation Assessment and Conflict Management Workshop
Funding Area: Community governance / Gobernanza comunitaria
Problem Statement: Wikimedia LGBT+ is a Wikimedia Movement Affiliate and international, multilingual community that organizes to improve open information on LGBT+ topics on Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects. WMLGBT+ organizes communication channels, campaigns, and events, participates in Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia policy discussions, and offers safe space support for LGBT+ Wikimedians. ( https://w.wiki/WLR) Organizers frequently receive requests to respond to safe space concerns and potential violations of the Wikimedia Universal Code of Conduct, but our community lacks a holistic understanding of the source of the problems and the ad-hoc practices that often take place to resolve conflicts. We do not have the capacity to compassionately and ethically respond to all the safe space requests we receive; volunteer energy often focuses on “putting out fires” rather than long-term planning. (https://w.wiki/6tW3) Disagreements are a natural part of Wikimedians coming together to organize. Yet it can be difficult for organizers to surmise the difference between healthy debate and rude or uncivil behavior when they are asked to mediate. Cultural differences and language barriers are sewn into the fabric of communication at scale. This can make assessments about good faith versus bad faith actions challenging for moderators. We lack the resources to train organizers in the nuances of mediation, conflict management.
Proposed Activities: *CONFLICT + MEDIATION ASSESSMENT PHASE 1: DEVELOPING A BASELINE (3 months) Wikimedia LGBT+ organizers have identified 2 Conflict Transformation Specialist Consultants who have experience working with nonprofit organizations and community groups to assess conflict within diverse communities with complex sociotechnical needs. The Conflict Transformation Specialists will work with the Wikimedia LGBT+ Governance Committee to spend time understanding Wikimedia LGBT’s structure, culture, and specific conflicted-related challenges. We propose to do this in the following ways: Interview Wikimedia LGBT+ Governance Committee members Organize a focus Group of members of Wikimedia LGBT+ Identify and systematically examine Wikimedia LGBT+ documentation and communication channels PHASE 2: SURVEY (3 months) A survey will be co-developed by project leads and translated into Spanish. The survey will be designed to gather additional feedback from the community about the specific findings from the Phase 1 baseline assessment. The survey will also be designed to gain insight about the particular forms of conflict faced by community members, and to solicit ideas for best practices and solutions. The survey will be distributed to Wikimedia LGBT+ members in a number of channels, such as our mailing list, Wikipedia talk page notices and the Wikimedia LGBT+ Telegram group. PHASE 3: CREATING AND SHARING A REPORT (3 months) From the information gathered in Phase 1 and Phase 2, Conflict Transformation Specialists will create a report that can be shared out to the community. It will include findings, analysis and recommendations for organizational processes with a goal of mitigating conflict. Various conflict analysis frameworks will be used to analyze the assessment data and provide recommendations. The report will be translated into Spanish, published in an open format, and distributed widely. *METHODS OF CONFLICT MANAGEMENT WORKSHOP (3 months) This component of this proposal targets increasing Wiki LGBT+’s ability to bridge communication gaps by strengthening trust and relationships through dialogue, conflict coaching, and transformational justice education. The Conflict Transformation Specialists will plan a 90-minute Zoom workshop for Wikimedia LGBT+ members around conflict management skills, such as Conflict Styles, Active Listening, and Reflection. Conflict coaching allows facilitators to work individually with participants to see how they view conflict and themselves in a particular conflict situation. The focus of this work is to provide a safe space to explore the tension between “how things are done” and “how things are communicated.” This workshop will not be recorded in order to honor privacy.
Openness: This project will align with Wikimedia community norms for openness including compliance with the WMF Open access policy (see: https://w.wiki/7APQ). Our organisers document activities in public formats on Wikimedia platforms whenever possible, and we publish notes on Wikimedia pages (https://wmlgbt.org). Documenting our activities requires we balance our commitments to openness with protecting the privacy of global Wikimedia editors who may face serious personal risks in associating with our organization. To do this, we default to anonymizing participants lists unless explicit consent is provided by participants opting in to have their names or identities revealed in public formats. We take the privacy of our membership very seriously, and will plan to secure any de-anonymized data generated from the assessment and survey in a secure, password protected Drive only accessible to project managers. We plan to develop and publish a data management plan that might additionally be reused for future initiatives. To share the results of this proposed project openly, we will document our workflows, reports, and outcomes in open formats on our project pages on Wikimedia. We will seek out opportunities to promote our workflows for organizing and accomplishing this planned Assessment and Workshop. Avenues of sharing this work include Wikipedia meetups and conferences: WikiConference North America, WikiConference India, and Wikimania 2024.
Challenges: This proposal is designed with the specific challenges of our organization in mind, including its diverse and international nature, which presents multiple challenges to our internal and external communication, consensus-building activities, strategic planning, and documentation. Cultural differences and language barriers contribute to some misunderstandings and miscommunications among Wikimedia LGBT+ organizers that can result in disagreements, and that sometimes make it challenging for volunteers to discern whether activities are done in good faith versus bad faith. At the same time, our limited budget for translation services makes it difficult for organizers to make decisions about what activities translators can and should prioritize. Moreover, organizers have to make difficult decisions about what languages to translate and/or localize in when resources are limited. Another challenge in the Wikimedia community is that editors sometimes make honest mistakes, but because volunteer editors lack time and resources, they may be terse with rejecting edits that don’t meet policy guidelines made by new editors. Through education and the development of best practices, we can better prepare new editors and community members for success to participate in our community. Our focus on assessing and understanding the root issues and providing education on conflict strategies in this proposal reveals our commitment to problem-solving.
Neglectedness: Core organizers have developed proposals for a number of tools and systems for harassment support and safe space facilitation over the past 10+ years as Wikimedia community organizers and open source advocates. For instance, core organizers have applied for grants from the Wikimedia Foundation for a harassment report system, and presented the matter at multiple forums, including Wikimania 2014 and 2015. WMLGBT+ has also secured recent Wikimedia Foundation grants for a number of community events, including Queering Wikipedia 2022/2023 (https://w.wiki/7APT). This funding has been vital to bringing our community together to have strategic planning discussions. Our previous efforts to secure funding for projects related to this proposal have sparked discussions and have been endorsed with hundreds of signatures on Wikimedia project proposal pages, but were not selected for Wikimedia Foundation funding. While the Foundation provides basic assurances when it comes to threats of violence and terrorism, it does not provide a centralized system for reporting conflict nor does it respond to requests for mediation. We plan to seek additional funding to support and extend this project to inform follow-ups, process design, and education related to conflict assessment and resolution. As noted, the proposed project is part of a broader effort to improve our process design, governance, and organizational sustainability.
Success: The proposed work will be successful when we complete all stages of the proposed activities and successfully document our workflows in a way that might be replicated by other Wikimedia Affiliates and organizations. An additional metric of success will be the translation of our documentation into non-English languages. We have included a translation budget for Spanish translation, but aim to solicit and encourage Wikimedia volunteers to engage in additional translation work. It is difficult to anticipate the number of participants or to generate a metric for successful participation numbers in the assessment, survey, or workshop components of this proposal. However, success can be determined in part by the active and situated engagement of a diverse pool of participants. Demographic metrics will be gathered in the assessment and survey phases, as well as in a post-workshop survey.
Total Budget: $18,000
Budget File: pdf
Affiliations: Wikimedia LGBT+
LMIE Carveout: Our project is remotely organized and international in nature, with many Wikimedia LGBT+ organizers and members who reside in LMIEs. However, we are uncertain if our proposal qualifies within the LMIE carveout category, because the listed project managers live and work in the U.S. The 2022-2023 Wikimedia LGBT+ Governance Committee and the Queering Wikipedia 2022/2023 Conference Committee include core organizers from Croatia (1), Argentina (2), and Brazil (2), in addition to the US (3) and UK (2). For QW2023, we funded regional outreach coordinators to recruit attendees and facilitate translation for Node events in: Bogotá, Colombia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Pucallpa, Perú; Montevideo, Uruguay; Lagos and Akwa-Ibom, Nigeria; Accra, Ghana; Vadodara, India; and Zagreb, Croatia.
Team Skills: *Project Manager* Dorothy Howard helped co-found the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group, and is currently serving as Wikimedia LGBT+ Administrative Executive. She is a Ph.D. Candidate at UCSD in the Dept. of Communication. *Project Manager* Lane Rasberry is Wikimedian-in-Residence at the School of Data Science at the University of Virginia. His interests include popular science, consumer protection, civic engagement, access to health information, clinical research, the Open Movement, data science, LGBT history, and Wikimedia projects. *Conflict Transformation Consultants* Michelle V. Jackson centers her work on creativity, collaboration, and conflict management. Since 2021, she has been a Teaching Associate for the MS in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution and the MS in Sustainability Management at Columbia University and Part-time Faculty at The New School teaching Green Roof Ecology. Michelle has a BA in Art History from Smith College and an MS in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution from Columbia University. Skye Roper-Moses is an Adjunct Professor at John Jay College teaching Dispute Resolution Skills and Restorative Justice. She is a conflict transformation specialist who assists the NYC Community using mediation, community conferencing, restorative circles, and conflict coaching. Skye received her BA in History from Florida A&M University and an MS in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution from Columbia University.
Submission Number: 182
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