Movement Charter/Drafting Committee/Updates/Casual

Movement Charter

Supplementary documents

Project

Community Consultation

Drafting Committee

Ratification vote

FAQ

Full Drafting Committee meetings

2023

• June 11: Following their in-person working sessions in Utrecht from June 2-4, the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) held their regular bi-weekly session, where they came to an agreement on major discussion points on Global Council as well as Hubs. The Global Council Drafting Group (DG) presented a proposal regarding diversity. Another proposal for the full Committee to discuss was the election process for the Global Council members. The Hubs DG brought up a question related to thematic hubs, which was put for voting by the full Committee. The MCDC is working hard to finalize the drafts of the sections that will be presented to the Wikimedia movement for feedback in mid-July.
• May 28: The Committee met for their regular biweekly meeting. The support team provided an update on the operational and material preparation of the upcoming working sessions in Utrecht. The Committee then discussed a particular issue around distinguishing between several Wikimedia movement entities in the Hub chapter draft. For the second part of the meeting, Wikimedia Foundation General Counsel Stephen LaPorte and Vice President of Community Resilience and Sustainability Maggie Dennis joined to discuss the answers provided by the Foundation to several questions posed by the Committee on the issues around delegation of Foundation’s responsibilities to the future entities as outlined in the Movement Charter.
• May 14: The Committee met for their regular biweekly meeting. The support team briefed the Committee members on the upcoming external legal review, a revised plan for research, a preliminary agenda for the upcoming working session in Utrecht, some changes to the Committee’s meeting cadence in the next few weeks, and its activities plan for the Wikimania in Singapore. The Committee reviewed and reconciled the final outstanding questions on the draft of three chapters (Preamble, Values & Principles, and Roles & Responsibilities statement of intent). Following that, the Committee made several decisions regarding its representation in the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees meeting on June 21 and in the steering committee for the 2024 Wikimedia Summit. At the end of the meeting, the Committee approved the proposed changes to its email processing protocol.
• April 16: The Committee met for their regular biweekly meeting. The Committee members reviewed the preparation for the upcoming series of community conversations regarding the Movement Charter ratification methodology, a planned meeting with a Wikimedia movement governance committee, and the Committee’s upcoming in-person meeting in the Netherlands. They were briefed on the works and progress of the Wikimedia Endowment and the upcoming WikiConference India in Hyderabad. Following that, the members heard and discussed an option for an independent legal review of the Movement Charter presented by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department. Toward the end of the meeting, the Committee’s supporting staff presented their update regarding the changes to its own internal operations as part of the Foundation’s restructuring and consolidation of its community-facing teams; in addition, the Committee members also deliberated on a possible change to their meeting cadence and scheduling to accommodate concerns regarding the possible burnout for all people involved in the Committee’s works. At the end, several Committee members convened together to review the revised draft of the three chapters (Preamble, Values & Principles, and Roles & Responsibilities statement of intent) from the November-December 2022 community consultation phase, which will be published on Meta-wiki following the review.
• April 2: The Committee met for their regular biweekly meeting. The Committee members started by discussing several internal matters, such as planning for two virtual working sessions in April, a communication training for the Committee members, proposal for the ratification of the Charter and its upcoming community consultation, and process to revise the earlier Charter chapter drafts. In addition, the Committee also discussed the definition of some terms in a glossary document that are being prepared and was briefed about improvements and alignments from the Foundation’s support team. Each of the Committee’s Drafting Groups provided the following updates on the progress of their draft chapters:
  • The Hubs DG are discussing two outstanding questions in their work regarding the role of Hubs in fundraising and disseminating funds and the difference between the Hub system and Wikimedia’s current affiliate model;
  • Global Council DG are drafting the functions of the Global Council, based on a matrix of potential powers that the Council will hold or not hold in the future.
  • Decision Making DG are focusing on drafting different levels of movement decision making and factors that are influencing them.
  • Roles and Responsibilities DG are refining the different sections of their draft based on the feedback received from the March meeting in New York City.
• March 20: The Committee met for their regular biweekly meeting, which started with sharing and reporting from Committee members that attended the strategic meeting with the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees and staff in New York City earlier this month. The Committee then was briefed about a stakeholder engagement proposal and a staff-led evaluation of its communications practice and engagement. In addition, the Committee also discussed a procedural protocol in regard to the Committee advisors, the plan for a session submission for Wikimania 2023 in Singapore, as well as the plan to review the refined Movement Charter chapter drafts that are being worked on by the drafting groups. The Committee’s Drafting Groups provided the following updates on the progress of their work:
  • Hubs DG is in the process of collating information and decisions in regard to the several topics related to hubs, such as membership, types of hub, responsibilities of hubs. Additional topics have been identified that involve other DGs such as fundraising and Affiliate/hub approval system, and are planning for a virtual working session in April with other DGs.
  • Global Council DG are preparing a draft about the scope and powers of the Global Council.
  • Decision Making DG finished an outline that explained the “journey” of a decision within the Wikimedia movement and divided it into several categories; the “safety” decision category will be selected to have a “trial run” in the next group meeting.
  • Roles and Responsibilities DG held a working session on its draft text and matrix, and included clarifying feedback from the Wikimedia Foundation’s legal counsels.
• March 5: The first part was dedicated to sharing updates from each Drafting Group (DG) on their internal progress, challenges, and questions.
  • The Hubs DG proposed the first content outline of the Hubs chapter.  
  • Global Council DG: the work on drafting the outline is ongoing.  
  • Decision-Making DG: members making progress in drafting the outline. The current outline focuses on approaches to decision-making overall.    
  • Roles & Responsibilities DG: The DG aims to conduct “expert interviews” during the months of March and April.
  • It was agreed that all DGs’ will align with a broader timeline to propose the initial versions of chapter sections with the full Committee. The MCDC was invited to participate in the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Strategic Meeting from 9-11 March 2023 in New York City. In the second part of the meeting, members discussed their plans regarding the in-person meeting in New York City. The MCDC members also shared feedback received from the communities in the LATAM region during Iberoconf 2023 when it comes to communications and outreach to the communities.  
  • What’s coming up?:
    • The MCDC members are invited to attend communications workshops on topics such as Empathic communication; Community interaction: Clear presentation and understanding the perspectives of the audience; and Active listening, among others.
    • The MCDC is working on its response to the community feedback received during the first community consultation around the proposed three chapters of the Movement Charter.
    • MCDC is now accepting applications from individuals interested in supporting the MCDC as an advisor. For more information please read here.
• 19 February: The Committee met for their regular biweekly meeting. The Code of Conduct subcommittee briefed the whole committee on the matter of the membership status of a Committee member. The support staff then provided updates on the previous experiment with visual scribing of the Committee meeting, actions items as a follow-up for the first community consultation phase, and an upcoming meeting with a regional hub. As agreed in the previous meeting, the Committee’s drafting groups took turns for 5-7 minutes each to update the whole committee regarding their internal progress, challenges, and requests for support. In the second part of the meeting, the Committee discussed an upcoming presentation about the Movement Charter process for Iberoconf 2023, exploring a connection with Wikimedia Deutschland, and reflecting on the Committee’s previous conversation with the Wikimedia Foundation’s general counsel.
• 5 February: The Committee members worked virtually from February 3rd to 5th, 2023 on the content of four new chapters for the Charter: Global Council, Hubs, Decision Making, and Roles & Responsibilities by forming smaller drafting groups. During the full Committee meeting on February 5th, representatives from each of these drafting groups reported on the progress made during the virtual work sessions. After each presentation, there was a designated time for questions and discussions to help the drafting groups identify a clear vision for working on the chapter content in the following days. This virtual meeting was planned to utilise the time Committee members reserved for an in-person meeting that could not be arranged. The Committee was also joined by their new facilitators and the visual scribers whose presentation of the discussions will be shared in the next updates.
• 22 January: The Committee began the meeting by discussing an executive matter in relation to its internal Code of Conduct and authorized next steps to be taken to address it. Then, it discussed the plan for a working session of the drafting groups throughout the weekend of 3-5 February 2023, determined the next steps with regard to the report of feedback from the first community consultation, decided on the timing of its next in-person meeting, and reviewed an observation and suggestion report presented by new Committee facilitators. Wikimedia Foundation chief executive officer Maryana Iskander then joined the meeting to brief members of the Committee regarding recent developments within the Wikimedia Foundation and extended an invitation to all Committee members to join the Foundation Board of Trustees for an in-person meeting in New York City in March 2023.
• 9 January: The MCDC met for their first regular biweekly meeting for 2023. The Committee welcomed two new facilitators contracted to facilitate the Committee works. They then reviewed the action items from previous meetings and provided instructions for Foundation staff on several action items. The Committee discussed and gave further feedback on the proposed ratification methodology document and its outreach plan, planned for an upcoming Committee meeting with Foundation chief executive officer Maryana Iskander, heard updates and made decisions on the planned in-person Committee meetings for the next few quarters, and also discussed the preliminary results of the first community consultation on the draft Charter that was wrapped up on mid-December 2022. In addition, the Committee also reviewed a proposal regarding inviting individuals of certain expertise to advise on the Charter works.

2022

• 11 December: The MCDC met for the last time in the 2022 calendar year. Committee went through the action points from the last meeting. Then, the Committee discussed details of the in-person meeting planned to take place early 2023. The Committee has also discussed the three new Drafting Groups that are being formed, in addition to the importance of working on and sharing the glossary along with the new chapters in quarter 2 of 2023. A committee member raised a topic of simplification of language used in their writing.
• 27 November: The MCDC met for their regular biweekly meeting. The Committee reviewed and authorized the proposal that contained the methodologies to ratify the Movement Charter, discussed the creation of a new drafting group for Hubs, and approved a revision to the Charter drafting timeline. The Committee also discussed an outstanding question for a Charter FAQ currently being drafted. Internally, the Committee also adopted the proposal on requirements when inviting external guests to the full Committee and drafting group meetings.
• 13 November: The MCDC met for their regular biweekly meeting. In the first half of the meeting, the Committee resolved several topics regarding attendance in upcoming convenings in an executive session. The Committee then invited Claudia Garád to present about the state of Hubs initiatives in Europe and several ideas surrounding its development, followed by a question and answer portion. In the second half of the meeting, the Committee was joined by Chuck Roslof, the Wikimedia Foundation’s lead counsel, to discuss several outstanding points regarding the legal review of the Preamble and Values & Principles chapter drafts. Concluding the meeting, the Committee members discussed several action points from the last meeting and housekeeping details.
• 19 September: The MCDC agreed on next steps after the Summit, which will be to integrate feedback from the session notes. They also discussed several operational items, like the timeline, future communications and hiring a new facilitator.

Drafting Group meetings

Communications

2023

• February 15, 2023 : The Communications sub-committee announced a call for advisors on behalf of the MCDC. The Committee is seeking individuals with subject-specific expertise from the Wikimedia movement and those who gained knowledge and expertise from other open knowledge movements. The selected advisors will join either the Drafting Groups or the sub-committees as non-voting members. In addition to the above, the communications sub-committee in their meeting discussed the evaluation of their communications strategy and planned the upcoming communications training for the full Committee to participate.

2022

• 24 November: The first regional community conversation hour focused on Northern and Western Europe to collect feedback on the draft sections of the Movement Charter was held on November 20, 2022. During the meeting, participants had the opportunity to share their opinions on the draft content in breakout rooms. You can watch the recording of the summaries of breakout discussions here.
  • Upcoming regional meetings for this week:
    • November 25 at 17.00-18.30 UTC – Sub-Saharan Africa region, with interpretation available in French.
    • November 26 at 15.00-16.30 UTC – CEE and CA region focused, with interpretation available in Russian and Polish.
  • Please find more details here.
• 11 November: The Movement Charter Drafting Committees' members participated in the first "Ask Me Anything about Movement Charter" session focused on the Asia-Pacific region. The recordings of the presentation of this session is now accessible in Japanese and Mandarin on Commons. Should you have any questions about the presentation, feel free to ask them on this topic in any language. The next two “Ask Me Anything about Movement Charter” sessions will take place this Saturday, November 12, 2022 at 15.00-16.30 UTC. Language interpretation will be provided, please join and learn more about the Movement Charter. More information here.
• 26 October :
  • Upcoming conferences with MCDC members attending in October/November:
    • WikiArabia (28 - 30 October): Anass, Ravan, Reda will facilitate a discussion about the Movement Charter. Additional sessions include a conversation about the roles & responsibilities, and a conversation about hubs.
    • WikiIndaba (4 - 6 November): Anass will present a Movement Charter update.
    • WikiCon francophone (17 - 20 November): Anass, Georges and Reda will present a Movement Charter session.
    • WikiConNL (19 November): Ciell will present an Movement Charter update.
  • Past events:
    • Wiki Conference 2022 in Saint-Petersburg (24-25 September): Reda had presented about the MCDC in Russian.
    • 2022 CEE Meeting (14-16 October): Michal facilitated a round table, where Michal summarized the process so far and answered questions of participants.
    • Wikidata Trainings for Turkic Wikimedians in Istanbul (21-23 October): Manavpreet facilitated a session on MCDC and importance of engagement by communities.

Hubs

2023

• March 2: The Hubs Drafting Group has gathered three times for regular meetings and had a separate meeting with Yop Rwang Pam, Senior Movement Strategy Specialist at the WMF. Yop Rwang Pam briefed the MCDC about the status of hubs in each region and answered questions together with Kaarel Vaidla from the Movement Strategy and Governance team. During the full Committee's biweekly meeting on March 5, the Hubs DG shared the initial outline structure for chapters.

Preamble

Values & Principles

Roles & Responsibilities