Movement Strategy and Governance/Newsletter

Movement Strategy and Governance News
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Welcome to the 7th issue (July-September 2022) of the Movement Strategy and Governance Newsletter! The newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the implementation of Wikimedia's Movement Strategy recommendations, other relevant topics regarding Movement governance, as well as different projects and activities supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The MSG Newsletter is delivered quarterly. However, if you are interested in frequent updates, there is the Movement Strategy Weekly, which is for Wikimedians who want to closely follow our processes. You can leave feedback or ideas for future newsletter on the talk page. You can also help us by translating the newsletter into your language/s and sharing it on your community platforms. You are also invited to subscribe to the newsletter here.

Thank you for reading and participating!

Discuss at MS Forum
  • WMF carbon footprint report published: The carbon emission of the Wikimedia Foundation decreased by 7% from previous years. This is indicated in the Wikimedia Foundation's 2021 annual environmental sustainability (carbon footprint) report. The purpose is to ensure that our work and mission supports a more sustainable world. You can read a summary of the report on Diff and the detailed reported on Wikimedia Commons (pdf).
Discuss at MS Forum
  • Improvement to Wikimedia projects desktop interface : the Web team of Wikimedia Foundation started a series of improvements as part of the Vector 2022 project. The improvements include various changes to the features of Wikimedia projects page, such as the user menu, header, and table of contents. Read more on Diff.
Discuss at MS Forum

The work on the Universal Code of Conduct continues. A Revision Committee is reviewing community feedback to make changes to the Enforcement Guidelines. The Revision Committee also published an updated timeline. You can continue to share feedback on Meta or on the new Movement Strategy Forum. You can also discuss a recently approved grant request to test peer support groups for administrators.

Discuss at MS Forum
Discuss at MS Forum
  • Helpdesk for content partnership launched : as part of its work towards creating a Content Partnerships Hub, Wikimedia Sverige has launched a Helpdesk to provide hands-on support to affiliates and volunteers who are trying to form content partnerships, especially for local communities in the underserved and underrepresented parts of the world. Read more on Diff.
Discuss at MS Forum
  • Capacity building for Brazilian community leaders : An average of 2,000 active editors are contributing to the Portuguese Wikipedia, with a significant number of them coming from Brazil; some are also organizers linked to the country's sole Wikimedia Affiliate Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB). WMB members Lucas Piantá and Adriane Batata are aiming to build a capacity building plan along with community members willing to engage further in the Wikimedia movement through their latest project, Capacitação de lideranças brasileiras ("Leadership Development Plan for the Brazilian communities").
  • Needs assessment research starting in Cape Verde : In the other side of the Atlantic, Portugal-based Wikimedian-in-Residence, Rute Correia, recently visited the African country of Cape Verde to start the ground work for an assessment needs research, with the intention to share the research findings with the community by September 2022.
Discuss at MS Forum
Discuss at MS Forum
  • High-quality videos for scientific experiments : Shared Knowledge, the Wikimedia movement affiliate in Macedonia, are continuing with their Wikiexperiments project, which aims to record high-quality videos of systematically selected physics, chemistry, and biology experiments in order to illustrate important scientific concepts and phenomenas. This project was started in 2015, in collaboration with the Institute of Physics, FNSM in Skopje.
  • New toolkit to record oral transcripts : Wikimedians Amrit Sufi and Nitesh Gill have published the Oral Culture Transcription Toolkit, which is a set of tools that gives detailed instructions on how to record oral culture, how to upload them on Wikimedia Commons, and how to create transcription and upload it on Wikisource.
Discuss at MS Forum

Other news and updates

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  • Movement Strategy Forum : in late May 2022, the MSG team launched a proposal for a Movement Strategy Forum (MS Forum), which is a Discourse-based multilingual discussion forum for all Wikimedians to ideate and discuss the implementation of the Movement Strategy initiatives. The detailed proposal has been published on Meta-wiki. The review period is until 24 July 2022 and Wikimedians are invited to give their feedback. If there is enough community consensus in support of the MS Forum, it will be launched in August 2022 before Wikimania. The MSG team publishes a weekly report that provides statistical insights into the forum.
  • 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election : the process to elect new members of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is ongoing. A total of twelve candidates will run for the two community-and-affiliate-elected seats. The representatives of Wikimedia Movement affiliates will vote in July 2022 to shortlist six candidates. The Wikimedia community at-large will vote in August 2022 to elect the final two candidates. Voters can rely on the individual candidate rankings provided by an all-volunteer Analysis Committee, the Election Compass, and the candidate's very own answers to the questions posed to them before voting.
    • Register yourself as an Election Volunteer if you want to be more involved in the Board of Trustees elections. An election volunteer will be responsible for bridging the gap between the Elections Committee, the facilitation team supporting the Board of Trustees election, and the Wikimedia community. You will help your local community members to participate in the election and contribute to shaping the future of our Movement.
  • WIKIMOVE podcast : our colleagues from the Movement Strategy and Global Relations team at Wikimedia Deutschland launched WIKIMOVE, a podcast aimed to "be a forum for open and frank conversations about topics related to Movement Strategy". The episodes are available with RSS Feed on major podcast platforms. Video version, with English subtitles, is available on YouTube. The latest episode featured a discussion about the UNLOCK Accelerator project, which was a recipient of the Movement Strategy Implementation Grants.
  • Changes to the MSG team : a small note of gratitude and good luck in their future endeavors to our departing colleagues who left the Wikimedia Foundation or moved to other team: Youngjin Ko, Yumiko Shibata, Sam Oyeyele, and Jackie Koerner. Thank you, and see you around!