NDEC Wikipedia Editorial and Research Team/Events/Movement Charter Discourses

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The NDEC Wikipedia Editorial and Research Team held "'Movement Charter discourses"' as part of the Movement Charter Ambassadors Program, with the goal of voicing our concerns regarding the drafted movement charter from the lens of a non-affiliate organized group. Due to the legal complexities of money transfer and complex social dynamics in the local movement, these discourses are not being supported by any Movement Strategy grant. Every arrangement has been made and every expense has been paid by Notre Dame English Club for this in-person feedback discussion.

Program details

Translations

No translation was done as the NDEC WERT members are comfortable using English.

Meetings

General Information

Feedback channels: Social media and live meetings

Number of participants: Approximately 10 people

The central part of the Ambassador program is to have conversations with our community and have their voices heard. As such, several in-person meetings have been done at Notre Dame College, Dhaka, including those with the program facilitator and advisor. Iftekhar Hossain Iftee facilitated the whole conversation.

Various online meetings consisting of the members of NDEC WERT, the facilitator being Iftekhar Hossain Iftee.

9 December 2022, an in-person meeting consisting of the members of NDEC WERT, along with Mrb Rafi, an MC Ambassador.

An online meeting is currently being discussed.

Another NDEC WERT MC feedback meeting is to be scheduled in December.

Leads

The intracommunity discourses were led by Iftekhar Hossain Iftee. The research related to the current and future legal issues is done by Mrb Rafi, and ShahajadaSJ7. Wasiul Bahar is currently one of the advisors for the discourses.

Outcomes and learnings

The team kept the Constitution of Bangladesh as a reference legal doc to get an idea of what similar legal works look like and tried to discuss what should be in the movement charter.

Preamble

The Charter exists with the agreement of the communities governed by it, through a formal ratification process. The Movement Charter applies to all members, entities and technical spaces within the Wikimedia movement, including but not limited to content contributors, projects, affiliates, and the Wikimedia Foundation.

After the ratification, are all Wikimedia entities(including the existing and future entities) bound to obey this? What if any rule of the local community or the UCoC itself goes against the values depicted in the charter? What if any entity (community or affiliate) decides to opt out of it? There can be several reasons for doing so, maybe they have logical reasons to opt out; or maybe, the entity is being monopolized (which we are already experiencing in a lot of situations) and the charter is preventing them from doing so. Our concern is, forcing everyone may reduce the degree of freedom of the entities and the value of people-centredness of the movement when not forcing everyone may lead to monopoly and the systemic failures caused by the organically developed current Wikimedia system. The "ratification" part is crucial and there is no clear information about it in the relevant docs yet. We will have to find a solution between these two extreme situations. In the case of a country, it is still possible to preserve freedom and people-centredness while forcing everyone to follow the constitution.

Particularly about UCoC, would the charter always take precedence over the UCoC (and other local rules)?? As the local rules that conflict with the UCoC should be revised according to the UCoC itself, if the charter takes precedence over the UCoC, the charter will automatically take precedence over any of the local rules. The Constitution of Bangladesh, clauses 7(1) and 7(2) state, "All powers in the Republic belong to the people, and their exercise on behalf of the people shall be effected only under, and by the authority of, this Constitution.", "This Constitution is, as the solemn expression of the will of the people, the supreme law of the Republic, and if any other law is inconsistent with this Constitution that other law shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be void." As the UCoC will keep evolving over time with the movement's dynamic social structure, what will be done if, somehow, any part of the UCoC goes against any of the core values of the charter?

To achieve our focus, the movement has developed a wide range of knowledge repositories ... ...

Who do "we" and "our" and other similar first person pronouns used in the whole document including the preamble refer to? Do they refer to the entities discussed in the phrases "The Movement Charter applies to all members, entities and technical spaces within the Wikimedia movement, including but not limited to content contributors, projects, affiliates, and the Wikimedia Foundation."? Or do they refer to the entities listed under the "Roles and responsibilities"? Are the readers, teachers using any movement content in their classroom, Wikimedia researchers, organizers, or any singular or collective entity aligned to the "Values and Principles" part included in "us"? Are the "we" and the "stakeholders" from the movement strategy glossary same?

To achieve our focus, the movement has developed a wide range of mostly MediaWiki powered knowledge repositories (“the projects”) in multiple languages with different focuses.

Since the Wikimedia movement started with the UseModWiki (Jan 2001 to June 2002) and later moved to MediaWiki (July 2002), the word "MediaWiki" or only "wiki" should be mentioned at least once. Maybe in the future, we'll find newer and more user-friendly software like we moved to MediaWiki from UseModWiki, the "wiki software" deserves to be mentioned at least once.

Values & Principles

Inclusivity: Openness, inclusion, welcoming nature - all of these values should be strongly addressed in this part. Specially, a welcoming and open environment for newcomers should be addressed exclusively. any entity aligning with the goals and values of the movement can be a part of it can be added to reinforce the openness of the movement.

Wikipedia principles: As the movement evolved from English Wikipedia and en:Wikipedia:Principles are the core set of principles inherited to almost every wikimedia project from enwiki, these principles are strongly recommended to be included. Specially, en:Wikipedia:Assume good faith is one of the core principles that makes Wikipedia and Wikimedia communities different from any other community in the world. WP:GF is one of the main reasons the movement still maintains collaborative and welcoming nature.

Roles & Responsibilities

Are the non-Affiliate Organized Groups going to be included in the roles and responsibilities chapter? NDEC WERT experienced some systemic faults which led the local movement being monopoly by some of the recognized entities in the movement which goes against the values of the movement itself. As the non-affiliate organized groups are completely independent and are not bound to any agreement in comparison to the affiliates which empowers them to add diversity and freedom to the movement to a great extent. They can serve as a watchdog of the globally underrepresented local movement and so, defining their roles, responsibilities and their position in the Wikimedia system is crucial.

Miscellaneous feedback

The charter should have a chapter regarding the revenue and resource distribution of the movement and it needs to address paid contributions.
Translation: There should be clear instructions in the movement charter regarding the translations of it. As the charter is a legal document and translating legal documents needs some extra degree of professionalism and at the same time, they are prone to change in the meaning, this issue should be addressed in the charter itself. Similar issue has been addressed in the Constitution of Bangladesh in Part XI (MISCELLANEOUS), 153(3), "... ... in the event of conflict between the Bengali and the English text, the Bengali text shall prevail.".