By Partnerships, we mean here collaboration happening between organizations or individuals in the WIkimedia movement and an external entity. Such partnerships can be based on a shared vision or strategy, common goal or collective impact. Partnerships happen at different levels of the movement including local, national and global partnerships. They can also take the shape of coalitions - partnerships between multiple partners. 우리는 운동 내 파트너십(예: 위키미디어 가맹단체 간)과 달리 외부 단체와의 파트너십으로 작업을 제한하고 있습니다. 우리는 성공적인 외부 파트너십이 종종 내부 협력과 운동 내에서 필요하다는 것을 알고 있습니다. We believe it is critical for Wikimedia to partner in order to advance in our Strategic Direction (By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us). This may require wider structural changes, which will be included in our enquiry. Through partnerships, we will “welcome people from every background” to help us both “build strong and diverse communities” and “break down the social, political, and technical barriers preventing people from accessing and contributing to knowledge.” We simply believe we can’t achieve this goal without successful partnerships. The scope of our inquiry will cover the following elements:
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오늘날, 파트너십을 구축하고 외부 파트너와 협력하기 위해 위키미디어 운동 주체의 능력을 향상시킬 여지가 있습니다. 현재의 많은 파트너십은 임시적이고 프로젝트 기반이며 영향에 대한 충분한 반영 없이 구축되었습니다. 파트너십은 보다 전략적이고 영향력에 초점을 맞춰야 합니다. Convening partnerships The Wikimedia movement today lacks a strategic framework that would help to align partners and build a “Big Open” Movement. Current approach sees partnerships mostly as means towards specific ends - we believe that partnerships should be goals in themselves, or at least be a pathway for achieving strategic movement goals. Communicating our mission, work and impact. Wikipedia has become a household name in much of the connected world, but the Wikimedia movement doesn’t do a good enough job articulating its vision, its work and its impact. Good stories are necessary for potential partners and allies to see a space for themselves to join. We also need to explain the purposes of partnerships to movement members. Technical capacity Currently the technical environment supporting partnerships is hacky at best, in many cases non-existent. Crucial tools do not receive consistent or centralized support. Partner institutions encounter a frustrating, un-professional level of service when trying to contribute content and data, and find it difficult to maintain and evaluate the impact of those contributions once there. Wikimedian organizers are distracted from their core work and forced to develop own solutions for infrastructure gaps. These challenges are especially stark for emerging communities. Community capacity for partnerships Many people doing amazing work on partnerships find it very difficult to make their work sustainable, including finding funding for their efforts. People burn out. There is limited investment in the skills people need to run partnerships. Partnerships over-emphasize big, global north institutions. We are not connected to enough smaller institutions and institutions from non-Western countries. Knowledge sharing There isn’t a shared, inclusive movement-wide culture of sharing knowledge, skills, and practices in support of partnership work. Pockets of motivation occur but tend to exhaust themselves. At the same time, success of many partnerships depends on individual energy, motivation and competences of Wikimedia Movement members. |
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The 2030 strategic direction envisions Wikimedia becoming “the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”, and that “anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us.” This places partnership, and collaboration with actors external to our movement, at the heart of our future, acknowledging that we cannot build the knowledge commons on our own. This acknowledgement requires us to do a thorough evaluation of the current Wikimedia partnerships landscape, and to formulate a bold vision for scaling and diversifying the way we partner. It requires us to examine what sorts of partnerships have happened to date, in which conditions, and between what actors. It also requires us to ask who has been excluded from partnership: which sorts of partners, but also which communities, geographies, and individuals. It also requires us to examine the structural and cultural barriers in the Wikimedia environment that have prevented partnerships from happening, both on a one-to-one level (e.g. between an affiliate and an institution) and at the level of networks and coalitions. There has long been discussion of the possibilities for a broader “Big Open” movement uniting Wikimedia with aligned players like Creative Commons, Mozilla, and other Open Movement / Access to Knowledge organizations, in pursuit of a shared agenda of internet health and access to knowledge. We believe that Wikimedia’s 2030 strategy must include a vision for turning this general notion of the “Big Open” into a practical reality. Our working group believes this “Big Open” vision to be not only an opportunity for Wikimedia, but — as a central piece of internet infrastructure, and one that aspires to remain central in the next ten years and beyond — a responsibility. |
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