ESEAP Hub/Meetings/14 November 2020

ESEAP Virtual General Meeting # 3

November 14, 2020 (Saturday) 02:00 UTC - 03:30 UTC

Moderator: Biyanto & Butch

Participants

Katherine Maher (WMF CEO)
Ryan Merkley (WMF Chief of Staff)
Mehrdad Pourzaki (WMF Strategy)
Kaarel Vaidla (WMF Strategy)
Srishti Sethi (WMF Developer Advocacy)
Sakti Pramudya (WMF Partnerships)
Ramzy
Biyanto
Butch
Thomas
Venus
Thang
Alex
Jojit
Bel B
Jesse
Hillun
Gnangarra
Irvin
Zaw
Johnny
Pru

Notes

Meeting with the WMF Executives and Movement Strategy Update

Movement Strategy update:

Prioritization follow-up: how are ESEAP communities / affiliates getting involved?
- Updates on participant's community consultations
- Identified priorities
- ESEAP priorities
Invitation to the Movement Strategy global event (Nov 21-22; Dec 5-6)
- What's in it for the participant
- What's in it for ESEAP
- Grant to fund language translation services

Notes

Katherine:
- We set a direction for ourselves in 2017 to take on the next 10 years of our work towards our vision.
- How will we govern ourselves, support emerging leaders, grow in new places, and continue to improve our projects
- We visited this direction again in 2018 and 2019 to develop the recommendations
- Connect with new partners and contributors through the pillars of knowledge equity and knowledge as a service
  - Knowledge equity: To uplift more communities and languages, and connect with activists, partners and organizers
  - Knowledge as a service: To continue to improve our offerings to reach more and continue to get more from the knowledge ecosystem
- Goals to uplift communities that have no always had a strong voice, through leadership and by enabling us to focus on various Wikimedia projects that have proven to have lasting power in diverse communities
- ESEAP in terms of population, diversity, cultures, religions, languages is tremendously strong and offers a model of bringing the movement together to be united by our vision, inclusive of our vision
- The ESEAP community is a model for the global community
- Appreciation and gratitude for extending this opportunity and invitation to the Wikimedia Foundation
Biyanto: The concept of hubs can strengthen the ESEAP region - skill building, language support, bringing such diversity together
Katherine: based on policy challenges and priorities that matter in this region. Things will be different in the movement. Policy is one area. Another was around capacity building and resources, and this is different from one community to another. There are tremendous geographical and language differences. You know best what the needs are - administrator cohorts, various skills, cultural understanding. Resource allocation is another big one. Grantmaking can improve, especially for smaller or newer groups with other challenges, such as evaluation and language support. The ability to move the work closer to the hubs creates the opportunity for the Foundation to define funding and resource systems best to make the work possible and thrive. policy, resources, capacity building, and more. There is also the opportunity to give voice at an international level to leaders from the region. Designing hubs will looks different in each region and it depends on ESEAP priorities to make sure the “hub” approach is successful. What are the resources to get started and get going
Ryan: A lot of this strategy that we are doing is not defined and leaves open the idea to do things different in one part to another. It’s not just about “what” we should do (skills development, hubs), but also “how.” For example, the principle of subsidiarity - communities know best what they need and if making decisions about community, those making the decisions should be close to the community. The hubs should do what you need and you should design it together. The Foundation is a resource partner and a collaborator to help you figure out what you might need. This might be different than how the Foundation worked in the past, please think of that.
Butch: Guidance is needed in the region for freedom of panorama. And translations/ interpretations don’t always transfer from one country to another. Legal language itself is difficult
Ryan: We will be happy to bring this to Public Policy and we will have a dedicated meeting to discuss this matter.
Dody: We really need to get rid of those toxic Wikipedia admins who are so cruel (literally) to any newbie or general editors (thinking that everyone has to be perfect 100.00% (not less) in order to edit Wikimedia projects). This is the very important thing to do before we can do further outreach to new communities. If not, newbies will be heavily discouraged in joining wikimedia movement. this had happened for so many times already. There is a lot of scrutiny when new edits are made and this keeps happening without ratification. We lose newbies all the time. (1) it’s not paid; and (2) I got scrutinized and my work got deleted, so no interest. Wikipedia is not “just for nerds” … we need outreach and rebranding to become well accepted. It’s not just about the product, but branding is important.
Universal Code of Conduct setting expectations high … NOT the minimum acceptable behaviour, but rather the kind of behavriou that we want to have - to be healthy and welcoming
Trust and Safety team working with the global community to understand how it affects it differently from one region or community to another
Identify knowledge gaps to make sure it’s not only content from the US and UK for example that make it
Skill development
Improving editing - Wikipedia, Commons
- The Foundation has a campaigns team and the ESEAP region would be great for partnering
Branding
- In some countries and languages, being linked to academia is appreciated, in others it’s not
- Outreach and connecting to the value of free knowledge is different - sometimes it’s serious and academic, other times it’s going to be fun and young. Sometimes it’ll be K-pop and other times it’ll be a noble laureate.
The Hong Kong situation: The community is worried - what will the Chinese government do and what is the Foundation’s stance? Free knowledge is our vision and missions, and it’s getting increasingly more difficult to do so. What will the Foundation do? The connection with the Foundation got lost as there’s no liaison for the community. Hard to achieve our goals.
- The Foundation is aware of the situation in HK, although the politics of the situation is complex. We are aware that it is becoming increasingly unstable for our communities, especially around policies in a changing environment.
- The safety of the communities is very important and this is not the first time a community has faced safety challenges. There are significant consequences to do work in an environment when freedom of expression is not possible.
- The Foundation is hiring a global expert with a background on policy issues, working with judicial remedy (in the courts), technical support. Recommendation to hold a meeting on this topic.
- Suggestion to have this as an agenda item on the next call as well.
- There are different tactics - in some, success comes from raising the profile of Wikimedians to be more visible and safer. In other countries it’s better if the Wikimedia Foundation steps away and instead the community has a strong voice. It’s about happening the right solution for HK Wikimedians. While the encyclopedia is neutral, but the work is not.
- Prioritization is not just an exercise for the global movement, but also to see what the energy is like in your communities and region.
Basic concepts of a Regional Hub & intent of ESEAP to be one
- Mandate, scope and limitations of a regional hub
- Structure of a regional hub

Campaigns & Initiatives

Mediawiki/ Tools/ Technology Capacity Building Initiatives
- Srishti Sethi, Senior Developer Advocate, Technical Engagement, WMF. Note: Srishti -> technical communities
Technical Capacity Building Initiative (Small Wiki)
Wikipedia Asian Month promotion
- Telegram chat of WAM: 1

ESEAP-only session

no notes were recorded