Movement Strategy/About/Transition/Reports/Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia

Part 1 of 2 - General Information

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Field Information
Name of your group Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia
Time and date of the event 6–16 November 2020
Who attended? 10 participants
Who facilitated? Chongkian
Who took notes? Chongkian

Part 2 of 2 - Prioritization

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Q1. Which recommendations will respond to your community’s needs?[1]

Choose Your Top Priorities   Why is it prioritized?
Example: recommendation 2, improve user experience Example: Having a more engaging interface will excite more people from our community to want to contribute to Wikimedia projects.
Example, knowledge management is important for the global movement (recommendation 7) Example: As a movement, we need to better document our work to create opportunities for learning.
1. Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement (recommendation 1) We wish to make a broader outreach to reach various types of communities (especially the underrepresented ones) so that they can further enrich Wikimedia projects content.
2. Invest in Skills and Leadership Development (recommendation 6) Wikimedia is an always-changing platform in which we should always equip and update ourselves to be able to maintain and grow this movement.
3. Innovate in Free Knowledge (recommendation 9) The world we are living in right now is undergoing fast changing every single day, thus we should always remain relevant to be able to survive for the next few decades.

Q2.From the recommendations, which specific actions and changes would you want prioritized in 2021?[2]

Choose Your Top Priorities   Why is it prioritized?
Example: recommendation 2, improve user experience Example: Having a more engaging interface will excite more people from our community to want to contribute to Wikimedia projects.
Example: under allocation of resources  (recommendation 4), we are interested in “the Movement should play a guiding role in resource allocation.” Example: A flexible resource allocation framework will allow us to respond to our needs and be able to lead work relating to movement strategy.
1. Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement (recommendation 1)


2. Funding for underrepresented communities
3. Increased awareness about the Wikimedia Movement
7. Revenue generation for the Movement

We need to further spread the awareness of Wikimedia to those underrepresented communities so that it will enrich the content of the project and let more people from various groups to know about it.
2. Invest in Skills and Leadership Development (recommendation 6)


31. Global approach for local skill development - gathering data, matching peers, mentorship, recognition
32. Leadership development plan
33. Skill development infrastructure

We have always been decentralize=ing our movement so that each active member can further continue and spread the movement within their own local communities.
3. Innovate in Free Knowledge (recommendation 9)


39. Identifying policies that hinder knowledge equity
40. Policies for experimentation with projects for knowledge equity
41. Continuous experimentation, technology, and partnerships for content, formats, and devices

The world is changing fast, thus Wikimedia need to be ready to innovate itself to match the current needs or trends on what the general public have to find a win-win situation between maintaining our existence and public's expectation.
4. Improve User Experience (recommendation 2)


11. Resources for newcomers
12. Peer-to-peer spaces
14. Cross-project tool development and reuse

Wikimedia projects interface/coding are still too non-friendly to newcomers where they need to understand various stacks of coding to do edit within the projects. The existence of unsupportive admins are also the big stumbling blocks for newcomers to be loyal editors in the movement.
5. Identify Topics for Impact (recommendation 8)


36. Identify the impact of Wikimedia projects & content
37. Bridging content gaps
38. Content initiatives in underrepresented communities

Wikimedia is still not fully inclusive in the sense that it still more-or-less follow the 'hot' and 'popular' contemporary topics. We need to focus also on those never-been-popular topics at all time.

Q3. What human capacity and / or financial resources do you need to work on implementation?

Think of your existing resources, the movement’s vast resources, and the support infrastructure you may need for moving ideas forward.

In Malaysia, at this moment of time, we need way more loyal and active editors from more states in the country to contribute more to the project contents. Our active member is still way too low to continue this movement in a sustainable way. We can do this by revolutionized ourselves to be a much more friendly to newcomers and not to scrutinize them a lot if they make any mistake in their editing. Nowadays, we are facing competitions from Facebook, Instagram and YouTube content creation where people get paid for what they contribute (and very rarely they will get scrutinized by the admins in those platforms), while in Wikimedia Foundation by default we do not make any monetary incentives to them and yet we still scrutinize them a lot on their very small editing mistakes, this will heavily discourage those newcomers. We should really understand our bargaining position. We have actually conducted 20-30 meetups around the country in various states with many different institutions, yet only 1-2% maximum of them remain and keep continue editing Wikimedia projects, the rest only came to the meetup once and never show up (or follow up) anymore.

Q4. Which initiatives do you think should be the top focus for global coordination?

Think global, movement-wide changes needed.

We should treat new and senior editors equally for their inputs. Whatever we talk/discuss in the movement, we should always include (and take into consideration) the newcomer editors at all time, so that we are always preparing for the regeneration of Wikimedia editors for the next coming decades. Always put in mind that there are always new editors who may not understand some terminologies in Wikimedia projects.

Notes

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  1. There are 10 recommendations to choose from. Think of the work you’re already doing in your community and what else you want to do. At the same time, think of the whole Wikimedia movement and what we should prioritize globally to face the future.
  2. Think about the initiatives that will respond to your community’s needs. Each of the 10 recommendations has multiple changes and actions or initiatives. There are 45 all together.