Guidelines

This page refers to general principles and guidelines in Diff. For editorial guidelines related to publishing blog posts see Editorial guidelines.

All participants are responsible for building a community blog that is welcoming and friendly to everyone. Diff is a tool enabling knowledge sharing and movement organizing, and supporting work in communities of all sizes. It is a hub for people to connect, support one another’s work, and share the diverse perspectives that enrich Wikimedia projects and move us toward knowledge equity.

Participatory community moderation will ensure that Diff remains a safe place where everyone, regardless of who they are, feels comfortable to contribute. This moderation infrastructure means:

  • Participants can privately report spam, vandalism, code of conduct violations or otherwise inappropriate content, thereby eliminating concerns related to retaliation.
  • Moderators can warn users who are behaving inappropriately, and scale up action to silencing on the platform, and blocking for specific periods of time, or indefinitely.

Moderators will be working collectively to establish standard use of this infrastructure to best foster a constructive, civil environment.

Moderation will be upheld based on the Diff code of conduct. This code of conduct is based on the code of conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces, and outlines principles, behaviors, reporting mechanisms and implementation.

Code of Conduct

Principles

In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming community, we are committed to making Diff a respectful and harassment-free space for everyone, regardless special characteristics such as (but not limited to) gender, gender identity and expression, sex, sexual orientation, disability, neuroatypicality, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, political affiliation, or religion.

Experience and community status make no difference to the right to be respected and the obligation to respect others. Newcomers and other contributors with limited experience in our community deserve a welcoming attitude and constructive feedback. A high number of  contributions are not a justification for lower standards of behavior.

This is a living code of conduct that may evolve as new needs are identified.

Unacceptable behavior

Harassment and other types of inappropriate behavior are unacceptable in all public and private Diff communications. Examples include but are not limited to:

  • Personal attacks, violence, threats of violence, or intimidation.
  • Offensive, derogatory, or discriminatory comments.
  • Gratuitous or off-topic use of sexual language or imagery.
  • Inappropriate or unwanted public or private communication, following, or any form of stalking.
  • Public disclosure of a person’s identity or other private information without their consent. Including the sharing of private information available elsewhere. Disclosure of some identifying information is not consent to disclose other identifying information.
  • Inappropriate or unwanted publication of private communication. Reporting private communication or personally identifying information for the purposes of privately reporting harassment (as explained here) and/or in the case of whistleblowing, is acceptable.
  • Harming the discussion or community with methods such as sustained disruption, interruption, or blocking of community collaboration (i.e. trolling).
  • Discrimination, particularly against marginalized and otherwise underrepresented groups. Targeted outreach to such groups is allowed and encouraged.
  • Using the code of conduct system for purposes other than reporting genuine violations of the code of conduct (e.g., retaliating against a reporter or victim by filing a report claiming their response was harassment).
  • Attempting to circumvent a decision by Diff moderators.

Report a problem

People who experience or observe unacceptable behavior are encouraged to follow any of these steps:

  1. Ask the person who is behaving unacceptably to stop, in the Diff discussion itself. Make them aware of this Code of Conduct.
  2. Use the flag button to report confidentially to Diff moderators for evaluation and action.
  3. After confidentially flagging to moderators, click the flag button again to elaborate on the flag in a private message to the user.
  4. If you notice unacceptable behavior in Diff but do not have an account, you can also contact Diff moderators via email at diff+moderators@wikimedia.org.

Implementation of this Code of Conduct

Moderators will review posts to the Diff for violations of this code of conduct. Comments that are abusive, harassing, or otherwise inappropriate will be deleted.

The moderator team will initially consist of a fixed group of people from the Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Relations team until users attain moderator rights. 

Attribution and re-use

This Code of Conduct is adapted from the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia Technical Spaces, which was informed by the Contributor Covenant (revision 49054013), the jQuery Code of Conduct (revision 91777886), the Open Code of Conduct (v1.0), and the Citizen Code of Conduct, along with the WMF Friendly space policy.

Text from the Contributor Covenant and the jQuery Code of Conduct is used under the MIT License (Contributor Covenant has changed its license to CC-BY 4.0 now). The text from the Open Code of Conduct is used under a Creative Commons Attribution license. The text from the Citizen Code of Conduct is used under a Creative Commons Share-alike Attribution license. The overall text is under MediaWiki.org’s standard license (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Username policy

Usernames should be clear and should not be abusive, offensive or disruptive to other Diff participants. Diff usernames will be created from users’ Wikimedia usernames upon login. Wikimedia staff interacting in a professional capacity must denote their affiliation in their username. Wikimedia staff interacting in a volunteer capacity should maintain a separate, non-Foundation affiliated account. Users may change their username display preferences in line with this policy. 

Use of personal and staff accounts for Wikimedia Foundation staff

The personal account must be used only for personal uses, that is, uses where the staff member is acting in his or her personal capacity apart from work. The staff account must be used when the staff member is acting in their official role at WMF.

Posting guidelines

No signatures in posts

Posts in Diff should not contain signatures. All contributions are clearly attributable to users by design, and signatures add redundancy, clutter, and break up the flow of discussion. 

No off-topic links

All links provided in Diff discussions are expected to be relevant to the discussion in which they are posted. Diff is an ad-free medium, and anyone posting advertisements, clickbait, or otherwise promotional links will be warned by moderators and have their links removed.