Movement Charter/Community Consultations/2022/Odia Language

The “Odia Wikimedians User Group” participated in Movement Charter ongoing discussions in December 2022. To let the community understand the current workflow of the Movement Charter Committee and the progress of drafted chapters so far, the community ambassadors Sangram Keshari Senapati - User:Ssgapu22 and User:Chinmayee Mishra took the responsibility of organizing and conducting meet-ups both online and offline. Active contributors from the Odia and the Santali community participated in the conversation and gave their feedback.

Program details

Online Meetup with community: 18 December, 2022
Offline Meetup with community: 18 December, 2022
Documentation and follow-up: 28 December, 2022
Report: 8 January, 2023
Feedback channels: Online-Offline meetings, One to one calls for few Wikimedians
Number of participants: 17

Translated Pages for community understanding

Learnings

Coming across the consultation process, the community members and the ambassadors got some important insights.

Contributors are actively involved in several projects and working with different communities. They have a great knowledge and interest about the on-wiki work, projects but not that much awareness of the strategic progress in the movement and related operations.
Under the above circumstance, it was a bit of a time taking process to let the Wikimedians know the importance of such community consultations and events, but it was definitely worth sparing more time for.
Our sincere gratitude for Aaqib Anjum Aafi and Dr. Manavpreet Kaur who supported us during the discussion.
For this particular meeting, coordinating with both the Santali and Odia community was a bit challenging because of the time-constraint. Researching, resource preparation, offline meet-up arrangements, matching everyone’s suitable time slot with a short notice was a little difficult for us.
To draw the essence of the drafted chapters into simple yet useful summary in the regional language was also a challenge. But it kind of encouraged us to do more research on our side and was extremely helpful on our individual level to know more about movement charter and the open knowledge movement.
The timeline given for the ambassadors onboarding, felicitation and feedback collection was shorter than the expected timeline which is generally given for such community facing activities.
Delay in the processing of grant funds was another addition to the bucket which made us learn that we should be prepared for such unexpected adversities too.

Gallery

Consultation MSIG Odia
Discussion and brainstorming goin on during MSIG odia
Group picture MSIG Odia
Prasant sharing his learning and feedbacks on the event
Online discussion
Gyana Ranjan Sahu at MSIG Odia
Sailesh Patnaik at MSIG Odia
Ramjit Tudu at MSIG Odia
Mrutyunjay Kar at MSIG Odia
Sangram Keshari Senapati at the venue MSIG Odia
Sitikantha Dash at MSIG Odia in December 2022
Prasanta Hembram, R Aswani Bhanjan Murmu, Mrutyunjaya Kar, Ramjit Tudu, Sangram Keshari Senapati

MSIG Odia - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:MSIG_Odia

Feedback

Preamble

Scope of this chapter is very precise and well defined.
Specific terminologies from this chapter like “comprehensive infrastructure”, “knowledge repository”, “retention of knowledge”, “regulatory environments” etc were the highlights during the offline meeting. These were explained to a satisfactory extent and inclusion of such sections were appreciated by both the communities.
It would be helpful if the content can have some details of channels where and how to address the technical (UI/UX, tools, templates, changes in the interface etc.) & non-technical (financial, collaboration, program design etc.) needs as per the requirement of a certain user group or any specific community. This suggestion was given to maintain a detailed and transparent platform, to avoid any future confusion for the users, readers, researchers and wikimedians.
What are the limitations of movement’s values and resources?

Values & Principles

The pronoun “we” used in this chapter is not very clearly defined. Whom does it refer to?
If possible, elaborated content with proper example, is requested for the content under “subsidiarity”, especially the term “organizational governance”. Because, not everybody in the movement will be familiar with such concepts.
How do the movement aims to carry forward cultural sustainability ? What are the thought processes behind this idea so far ?

Roles & Responsibilities

Intention of this chapter is well explained and the content is also helpful to understand the importance of different roles in the movement and the relevant responsibilities too.
More details about the concepts like Hubs, councils, stakeholders and their engagements, scopes & restrictions of the engagements etc. are requested. These can be added as the references or in any other format but on the same page like a sub heading or footnote.

Miscellaneous feedback

At times we have seen local media houses, digital marketers, commercial applications, PR agencies and news channels etc. using contents from the wikimedia projects. At the time of their use they do not give any credit to the project or people associated with it, rather they keep on saying that it’s for free, anybody can edit and use it etc. But when some vandalism occurs on some wiki projects or some mis-informations goes on-wiki, be it intentionally or unintentionally, the concerned organizations start highlighting it in a demeaning way. What should be done in such a situation from a wikimedian’s point of view or from the organizational perspective? Similar conditions appear on social media and personal emails, at times. In this digital era, considering the cyberspace threats, should any safety or activity policies be included in any of the chapters?
Now that the Movement charter team has already defined and started drafting the chapters, is the team asking feedback only on the contents published on meta? If there are any other sections left and the addressable issues come under a different section all together, will it be considered as one additional chapter or not ?
Even after the drafting phase is over, will it be considered as a fixed set of rules or constitution kind of thing ? Or will it be flexible and updated at regular intervals ?
We need to align our local community goals with the global open movement goals. The user group work plan and future activities related to MCDC goals should be moving in parallel. Reliable persons should be in charge of the related activities.
Understanding the areas and scopes covered under the outline of Movement Charter contents, there is a thought that the consultation process will not end at this stage only. If that is the correct understanding as of now, what is/are the communication channels available if somebody wants to give feedback anonymously? How secure the channels are and Who will ensure that our voices are not getting suppressed?
More time is required for the qualitative translation of content and other relevant pages for the better understanding of the readers in the regional languages.