Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Reports/June Community Conversations Monthly Report
The format is a pilot - let's talk about what you like and what you don't like, and our June version can adapt.
Each of the tables below has the community feedback organized by Working Group theme. The content from the affiliates is presented to you in the raw form of the notes that have been submitted. The content from our language communities is presented in summary form with efforts not to use any analysis or interpretive lens.
We encourage you to write back to the communities- either in this document, or on your own. More context about the data, this report, and next steps are in the FAQ section. Enjoy!
FAQ
edit- What is this? Why am I here?
This report is a pilot. It is our first experiment in what it looks like to take our diverse community and share it with the Working Groups in a way that is useful, somewhat structured, and unaltered. The intention is for summaries like this- or in a differently evolved format- to be put together at the end of every month and presented to Working Groups for their consideration when drafting recommendations.
- What's with all these tables?
Each table in the document lists the feedback from affiliate groups and from within our project and language communities for the period of June, organized by Working Group. On the left most column, you can view the source of the information (affiliate/community), followed by information to contextualize the source and then the actual content.
- What have you done with the raw data?
There has been no analysis or interpretation of the content other than correcting spelling errors- it is arriving to you in the original context in which it was delivered to the Core Team. More specifically, there are two types of feedback here.
- Feedback from affiliates: volunteer Strategy Liaisons from affiliates take their own summary notes of their conversations. These notes are sent to the Core Team, cleaned for spelling, and otherwise copied directly into this document underneath the thematic category identified by the Strategy Liaison.
- Feedback from language communities: our contracted Strategy Liaisons from language communities facilitate conversations across multiple channels and using interviews. They summarize the main points of these discussions and sent reports to the Core Team, which are copied directly into this document by theme. These reports are also being translated and shared with their communities of origin, so that there is transparency and accountability regarding their accuracy. More information about this, and links to these reports direct, is available in the last tab of this document.
- Whose views are represented here?
Affiliates who have sent in notes:
- Northern Philippines & Metropolitan Manila
- Wikimedia Ghana User Group
- Wikimedia France
- Wikimedians of Cameroon User Group
+conversations in multiple language channels: Spanish, Portuguese, German, Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi
- But what about everyone else?
From the affiliates, these are the groups who have sent in notes from conversations they have held. For language communities, the notes here are from all Wikimedians who have chosen to participate. We are hopeful that the number will be even greater next month as this April summary report gains traction.
Overall, our reach is far from perfect- if you know groups of people who haven't had a chance to be involved yet, please reach out to us and help make the connection happen!
- How do we respond to the communities?
Each thematic tab sheet contains a yellow highlighted column called "Working Group response." This column is for you, if you find it useful, as a way to ask follow up questions or to offer a response to the comments from the community.
If you prefer to reach out to the community with responses directly, please do so. It would be helpful for me to know when you do so by also writing in this column, so that I may know that an affiliate or community is not left with unanswered input. If you don't like this system at all- kindly let me know and we can adapt next month.
- Why do some thematic groups have more feedback than others?
All Strategy Liaisons were encouraged to choose thematic areas that were of greatest interest or resonance with their community.
- For our volunteer Strategy Liaisons from affiliates, some of them made the selections themselves and led discussions from there, others let their affiliate members vote or choose by consensus.
- For our hired community Strategy Liaisons who lead discussions among our project-based language communities, there were broadly two approaches.
- Creating a calendar of conversation topics, with one topic as the focus of their work for a 1-2 week period. In these cases, community members always have the opportunity to comment on previous topics either on Meta-Wiki, established discussion pages, or by reaching out to the liaison directly to share their opinion.
- Creating active discussion groups and pages for all topics and to see where the community organically decides to spend its time and energy. This broadly self-selected approach is intended to continue for the duration of commuity conversations.
- What if I don't know what to do with a piece of feedback or don't find it useful?
It would be great if the communities could hear from you about what type of feedback is most useful. One way to do that is to use the "Working Group response" column to ask for more context or background information. When you have received programmatic feedback that is important but not useful, it might be appreciated to write that group a small note thanking them for their efforts and ideas and either asking clearer strategy questions or indicating the best way to address that programmatic concern.
I (Kelsi) would also love to learn more about how to guide communities in giving the type of feedback that is most useful to you - please reach out! ;)
- Overall, how are community conversations going?
Community conversations are going moderately well, though we need to continue to increase our reach and level of engagement.
Compared to the effort in 2017, we have more specific questions for the community to engage around, and our liaisons who were active in both processes feel that there is a modest but noticeable improvement in community enthusiasm and participation. The month of June, while designed to be time for soliciting feedback to the scoping documents, have in practice functioned as time to spread awareness of strategy discussions and helping community members to feel involved. We are also having our own learning curve - communities are asking for more concrete and granular discussion tools, which we are working to create, and community Strategy Liaisons are experimenting with the right balance between on-wiki and off-wiki engagement.
We are hopeful that with new tools and increased support, June will show a steady uptick on conversation feedback to share with working groups. We also encourage you to engage with communities directly on Meta-Wiki, on social media, and in any other channels where discussions are active. Community Strategy Liaisons will be posting summaries of their June reports, which were used to create this document, on wiki in their relevant languages.
- I love this!
Thank you! Strategy Liaisons (and I) worked hard to get us here. It wasn't always easy, but it is definitely worth it.
- I hate this!
This is a pilot- let's figure out together how to make something that is useful to you. I'd welcome a constructive email, chat, or 1:1 conversation. We are not at all tied to this format.
- This was a lot to read, and I haven't even seen the feedback for my group yet. Can I take a break and watch a video?
Yes. Despite the poor image quality, this has long been one of my favorites.
Feedback by Working Group area
editAdvocacy
edit| Source | Context | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Women editors | perspectives from formal and informal consultations from women editors in various countries |
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| WMDE | Group interview with 2-3 staff members | Please see the interview transcript posted on meta: Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Advocacy |
| Portuguese community-at-large | Telegram channel with 4-5 users | Prior to defending Wikimedia, users should actually know that Wikimedia exists. It remains important to hold talks or virtual presentations, videos that will inform people about what Wikimedia Movement is. That is not known by the majority of users, that won’t advocate to what they don’t know. |
| Hindi community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from 11 total 1:1 interviews | External frameworks we should support and/or change to further ground contribution and access in free speech and free knowledge (e.g. legal frameworks or government departments):
Legal framework For advocacy, the first step should be increased in awareness about the Wikimedia with the government bodies. Agenda setting How we can make a strategy together with other open movement organizations so that the allied organizations can take the open movement forward and the restrictions on Wikimedia in countries such as Turkey, China should not be replicated in other countries that currently support the movement. For that, we need to form a partnership such as with Creative Commons and European Union, where there is freedom of panorama to push the policies legally in the favor of free knowledge and promote it. |
| Arabic community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from various 1:1 interviews | WMF should try to foster their relations with human rights defenders in every country, as well as with a group of lawyers in every country, so that they are ready to help in case of a problem for a user in that country.
This can be done with the support of the local affiliate. WMF must be aware that there exist people that encounter risks in their countries by being involved in the movement. WMF should provide basic legal counseling for members in their local affiliates. WMF should have a contract with local lawyers in each country to be available to defend/being consulted by users in case of need. WMF should strive to have more alliances and join powerful groups defending free knowledge. Encourage local affiliates to collaborate with partners (example of Amnesty International with Wikimedia Algeria), on some specific days. However this should be clearly defined and scope clarified (even signature of contract) - overlaps with Partnerships. WMF and its affiliates should seek more partnerships such as Wikigap as it advocates Wikimedia and Women rights and gives good relations with states. Should WMF work on advocacy depending on the “weight” of the country in the Internet world? Some countries are very powerful and influential in shaping online laws (EU, USA) while others barely have discussions on international level. Should the advocates target these countries when lobbying? And not consider the others at all? WMF should have more (and better) relations with Media worldwide so that its image is more communicated Invite affiliates to appear more on media if they can. WMF should have regular interviews with media and do more outreach. WMF should hire “journalists” who can represent the encyclopedia and work professionally with Media instead of leaving this work to volunteers in their own countries. WMF’s mission is advocacy, it should own the process Volunteers can support, but the strategy and guidelines should be decided by WMF. WMF should create a department about advocacy/marketing. Only some countries are targeted by WMF advocacy campaigns (in Africa it is only Nigeria and Egypt) What is the hinder preventing having this in all the countries (because it should be the case), is it resources? WMF should implement a strategy clustered by countries/regions (for example MENA countries have the same situation - same for sub-Saharan). In some countries, governments and states are not willing/interested in Wikimedia advocates. How can this be changed? Organizing conferences in a given country helps in advocating Wikimedia in that country and boost its community. Conferences should be encouraged as much as possible. There should be more events such as Wikigap but for other items (such as organizing events in universities where student volunteers make presentations for professors to make wikimiedia’s image better) |
| Survey: 5 participants - 4 options - Multiple votes |
|
Capacity Building
edit| Source | Context | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Women editors | perspectives from formal and informal consultations from women editors in various countries |
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| Arabic community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from various 1:1 interviews | There should be a harmonization and organization of the on-boarding process in local affiliates (WMF should make sure that the same process is followed in all the countries)
One “trusted” person in the affiliate should be responsible for this process. There should be a standard training for new users and explain to them that the reason to join the movement is Free knowledge and not free trips for instance. There should be more reporting and accountability in affiliates Sometimes there is competition about Wikimedians who do not help each other, they want to be the only ones who know (to attend conferences, be the only expert) - Overlaps with community health. WMF should bring experts to given countries/regions to train people about missing capacities (Wiki Data/ media Wiki) WMF should help/tain affiliates about conflict resolution and management skills First by providing training for the group boards in management skills such as conflict resolution and communication. Second by providing an escalation path that the groups can use in case of problems. |
| Hindi community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from 11 total 1:1 interviews | Processes or systems will support effective capacity building{{Recruiting}} {{Sustainability}} For basic retention, bringing editors in the movement and encourage existing editors is important to develop their capacity. The outreach we do is at a very basic level and the communities are not growing in proportion to their activities (edit-a-thons, training workshops) etc.
Numbers are not proper criteria for determining the community growth by outreach activities. For example, number of bytes added, number of people attended etc, such criterias don't efficiently analyze how much the community growth, the success outcome can be done on the basis of a whole project, how many people continuously edit on a daily basis instead of stats of a one-day workshop. We should engage the editors continuously by involving them in projects and retaining them with follow ups. Consistent project effort instead of workshop effort is required to truly grow the communities. {{Organizational Development}} We need to expand the communities - currently, the community health is toxic. To bring neutrality and decentralizing of existing power, new editors are needed in the movement to ensure the community health also remains positive and sustainability is maintained. Time, efforts and funds need to be invested often for capacity development. Grants:Metrics should be calculated not in terms of numbers of participating editors and bytes added in edit-a-thons but how many editors were sustained after 6 months and this is how grants should be dispersed. The grant proposals showing the momentary growth during the event alone should be discouraged. Over a period, when they start encouraging this policy, over the next 3-4 years, we will see a change. Communications in capacity building system, and integrating with a movement-wide approach to communication:For communications, projects such as inspire campaigns have worked well. {{Organizational development}} The inter-communication between different international communities is missing. The communities are disconnected with each other due to which they have gap in their knowledge about the projects going on and new tools developed and in use by different communities. Such gap can be dispersed by inter-collaboration projects between different communities. Also, a peer to peer buddy system can be established for all grantees, new and old, for them to guide each other from their previous learnings to the new grantees applying for similar grants. This is how that knowledge can be effectively shared with other communities with proactive communication. For example, Wikimedian-in-residence exchange network can help other new WIRs for their projects. |
| WMDE | Group interview with 2-3 staff members | Please see the interview transcript posted on meta: Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Capacity_Building#Wikimedia_Deutschland_staff_perspective |
| WMAT (Wikimedia Austria) | Content from discussions posted on meta: Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Capacity_Building | The current structures and bodies put a heavy emphasis on the due diligence side that the WMF needs to justify how they spend funds in the first place. This necessity leads to a lot of paperwork and a funding model that values the justification of spending money more than the time of the volunteers and paid staff involved in writing this documentation in the first place. Effective capacity building surely should not work like that. The future relationship between the body that supplies resources (money, staff or otherwise) and the entities establishing themselves should take into account that we are all in this together. That we have the luxury of funding ambitious and unorthodox programs and ideas. And that we have the means to keep ourselves honest and learn from those mistakes in order to improve ourselves and the movement as a whole by sharing those experiences with each other.
How do we make capacity building inclusive and equitable? Peer to Peer learning in marginalised groups, instead of people from the outside stepping in Support efforts for self-empowerment, highlight people from marginalised groups with the skills and passion to help others Be critical of oneself and open up and learn from other groups. Promote self-assessment, be honest instead of trying to present a perfect facade on an international level -> Create channels where affiliates can ask for help without making it public if they do not wish to. |
| Spanish speaking community-at-large | 1:1 interviews |
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Community Health
edit| Source | Context | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Women editors | perspectives from formal and informal consultations from women editors in various countries |
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| WMDE | Group interview with 2-3 staff members | Please see the interview transcript posted on meta: Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Community_Health#Wikimedia_Deutschland_staff_perspective |
| Arabic community-at-large | Broad community input | There should be research and statistics investigating the reasons of low participation in certain communities. The reasons differ from one region to another (in terms of culture and specifics), so each region and area should have a specific targeted research and strategy.
WMF should not communicate in the same way (or give directions/strategies) with all the communities/affiliates. Each culture has its red lines and prohibitions. The approach to advocate some themes should take into consideration these limitations and should be more gentle to encourage the communities to integrate these concepts gradually. Elements from local culture can be used for example to make the ideas closer to the community, instead of one “western” way of advocating and marketing ideas. Pushing hard to integrate some ideas/themes results on making even experienced members of the community wanting to leave the movement, which is of course not the result that is sought. Onboarding of new members should be done in a better way, by trying to involve them in the less controversial articles, so that they can learn “comfortably” and not be exposed to edit wars that will not make them appreciate continuing this adventure. There should be more efforts to encourage physical meetings between members, as it helps to melt the ice, improves relations and enhances cooperation (either in the same country or internationally) Organize more conferences, especially in areas lacking them now. WMF should make it clear that the behaviour of some Wikimedians should not be interpreted as representative of the movement. How can this be done? |
| Arabic community-at-large | 37 participants - 5 options - Multiple votes |
There should be a legal consequence of harassment in the Wikimedia projects (4 people - 11 %).
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| Arabic community-at-large | 1:1 individual interviews |
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| Portuguese community-at-large | One user on Telegram | A user believe that community should improve itself somehow on enforcing users bans to make sure banned user won’t keep editing.
Another user agree with previous comments that it’s important that new users have a better understanding of Wikipedia before editing. Editing is too much easy and they start editing before having any basic knowledge about rules, which causes frustration, editing errors. (#Platform) |
| One female user on-wiki | She believes that, in order to surpass technical and social challenges and improve the communities capacity to govern themselves, it is required technical training about administrative routine tasks and more explanation about what Wikipedia and WIkimedia are. (#Organizational development)
She defends a less rigorous evaluation when deciding on deleting or not articles under construction. Instead of repelling contributions of new users, they should be instructed on how to improve their edits. (#Inclusion) Provide orientation to users so they can avoid being too judgmental with others’ edits and respect what others do. It has been common to observe offensive words to describe the work of good faith users with repetitive actions to discourage them. (#Burnout) | |
| Hindi community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from 11 total 1:1 interviews | What are the social and technical challenges within the current administrative and decision-making systems that hinder the creation and maintenance of community health?Communication of communities- Most of the communities discuss and make decisions on unofficial social media channels instead of doing them on-wiki. Wikimedians generally should use such chat groups for doubts and . But instead, they discuss important things like grants, policy making and make conclusions based on such discussions. For bringing more inclusion and transparency, such social media channels need to be regulated.
Such channels are also source of conflict. Because they are not regulated, people feel free to speak in abusive language, not respecting boundaries within the friendly space policy. How can the ability of communities to govern themselves within the broad framework of the Foundation’s Terms of Use be improved while also respecting the dignity of everyone involved and their contributions towards our shared goals?Although such change cannot be implemented on global level in all communities, but we can start with pilots in some emerging communities - assisting them to build governing structures where they can manage policy making and conflict management within the group rather than depending on Foundation completely for solving every single thing. A good structure needs to be designed for organization governance - this can be a training done by WMF, initially for a few focal communities or groups for a year and by mentoring them thoroughly, next year, there can be an analysis of how well that affiliate is running after receiving such training. Community growth should be consistent for good health. The limited number of old editors can create a conflicting environment for both existing and new editors so the capacity growth of the community need to be continuous for neutrality. How can structures create, support and reinforce universally acceptable behavior across our communities?Affcom committee approving user groups, one of their requirements can be that the user group should have by-laws and code of conduct document for their user group. To ensure this is followed up when the license of user group should be done after Affcom makes sure they are accountable to their code of conduct policies. Every Wikipedia village pump and meta wiki should have a document of code of conduct, and on that page, people can comment on what is relevant to their communities. |
| German community-at-large | On-wiki community | The state of the health of the German language Wikipedia community was seen as bad by some and not so bad by others. The ones who regarded it as bad gave the following reasons and solutions:
Most administrators are not interested in the health of the community Administrators should be schooled in social skills Since the system we have now did not work to establish health in the community, WMF has to step in. A reason for the bad mood is that the percentage of users who really create content is decreasing and the percentage of users who focus on technicalities is increasing. There are too many users who mainly discuss policy instead of writing articles. A culture of zero tolerance was rejected. Anyone can make mistakes. Community members find that the main problem of “current administrative and decision-making systems that hinder the creation and maintenance of community health” is the irregular behaviour of the WMF Trust & Safety team. This team poisons the atmosphere in the larger Wikimedia projects by making decisions without communication their reason, making their decisions unverifiable. Not allowing any objections to the ruling is something that cannot be in any civilized society and then when objections come decide on the objections themselves is a no-go. This has nothing to do with victim protection. A WMF Committee_of_Public_Safety is not acceptable. One community member remarked that Trust & Safety had no other choice than acting the way they did. WMD does not often use their power for taking drastic measures. It was doubted though that Trust & Safety has the necessary background information for dealing with local cases. As with Superprotect WMF has shown again that they overreact due to their lack of knowledge of the background of local communities. People who edit a lot might get the same health problems as people who work for companies. They should have a sense of their own health, about the amount of daily work, the balance of sitting and standing positions. The community should be taught salutogenesis. Context from the German Strategy Liaison: For community members it looks like the actions of Trust & Safety regarding Fram has made the community less healthy. While they see that WMF sometimes has to step they complain about the transparency and communication of WMF actions. |
| WMUK AGM | In-person meeting of 12-15 people, about 50/50 women/men. | There is a group in the strategic direction on behavioural issues
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| WMAT (Wikimedia Austria) | Content from conclusions posted on meta: Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Community_Health | We appreciate it that you tried to address critical issues. Consider also including thoughts about what runs well now and what can be built on. This could help strategically: when community is concerned, we can only work towards improvement and not reinvention. Besides it might be more inviting for community members to participate in this discussion if the descriptions of the status-quo don’t only include their perceived wrong-doings.
You focus on collaboration in a strict sense. Since a great deal of our communities’ achievements for free knowledge has to do with “unsocial”, secluded working environments, this aspect (and its enabling) could be labelled as equally important for a thriving community in our context. While you have clear thoughts about certain main topics, it remains unclear what we should consider as a “healthy community” in general. Is it a community that grows? Is it a community that is stable in its composition or a community which is a able to “reproduce” itself permanently? Is it a community which is open to everyone or which is able to replace “bad” with “good” elements? Is it a community that wants to attract the most suitable members in terms of skills or the most diverse and as many as possible members? The perception that low participation in “community decision making processes … is due to poor culture that exists in our community” neglects that being an integral part of our communities doesn’t require to take part in these decision making processes. While no one with good faith should be excluded, using a higher amount of volunteer time for these activities is a goal which shouldn’t be pursued at the expense of the creation and sharing of free knowledge. We agree with your thoughtful and detailed observation that the impact of existing guidelines is often hindered by slack enforcement and a lack of general awareness. To specify and amend these guidelines on a global level isn’t a good idea, however. As our experience with friendly space policies has shown, there are some major and contradictory differences about what is regarded as unacceptable behavior even between America and Europe, although they are culturally close world regions. Imposing detailed behavioral guidelines which are not suitable for the given cultural context could create new social barriers instead of removing them. “The Wikimedia movement suffers from an over-reliance on insufficiently trained and resourced volunteer leadership:” Thank you for mentioning the important idea to offer more and better trainings and resources. Please make clear that you don’t wish to scrutinize the leadership by volunteers in our projects or bring forward some arguments why we should discuss paid staff for these roles. The inclusion of “marginalised”, or perhaps better “missing voices” is an important issue, thank for considering this as crucial for a thriving community. The perspective of us in the center and the others at the margins carries the risk of drifting to a paternalistic, neocolonial attitude. So far you have mentioned examples in which we “act” and the marginalised groups “receive”. It could be beneficial to at least keep a blank space in mind, for input which derives from the voices unheard so far. Similar to our feedback for diversity, we would also encourage to explicitly include staff in considerations around community health: Some staff are very exposed members of our community, they have to be present on the projects under their real names and do not have the liberty to take breaks when things get to heated. From an employer perspective, we have to make sure, that we can protect them from toxic behaviour and harassment on- and offline. Trust and Safety is an important step into the right direction, but probably needs more resources and quicker ways to act. |
| Spanish community-at-large | Telegram Channel. 80 participants, one week |
Context: 1to1 interviews.
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Diversity
edit| Source | Context | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Women editors | perspectives from formal and informal consultations from women editors in various countries |
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| Arabic community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from various 1:1 interviews |
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| Portuguese community-at-large | Viewpoints of one female user on-wiki |
As an answer to the question 1, that asks if local projects should build codes of conduct, she replied that yes, they should. For those that do not follow the code, it should be reported to an independent system that could decide about it with impartiality and also store this information as a background of users involved for any possible future need. Projects should improve according to accessibility guidelines (#Reach) It was suggested that only editors with an expertise on specific topics, could provide their opinions when discussing about articles. That would avoid that the article decision is centered on the same group of users with less technical argumentation. Any incentive should be given to non-priviledged users as regular editors can obtain support other ways. That would help bringing more diversity to the projects by making it easier for minority groups to participate. (#Inclusion) |
| Hindi community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from 11 total 1:1 interviews | Steps stakeholders should take to ensure language diversity across various platforms (languages, technology, interfaces and organisations for research, oral and visual technologies) to provide support to ensure the broadest possible representation of various languages as well as those with physical and cognitive challenges to participate in our movement:New readers program is very good - build readership, editor retention. You tell them to start with readership - how to use Wikipedia and all projects.
{{allyship}} For art students, we can teach them to use images with copyrighted Google directories, teach them how to use free images in their work. There are a lot of data sciences - we can show how to use Wikidata, how its data can be used. Instead of one project, readership should be encouraged all projects. How internet add value to their work. In terms of content, one of the problems in Wikipedia is that other language editors translate from English to their local languages via machine translation. No neutral point of view, references are used. Without actual research, machine translation is being done. |
| WMDE | Group interview with 2-3 staff members | Please see the interview transcript posted on meta: Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Diversity#Wikimedia_Deutschland_staff_perspective |
| WMAT (Wikimedia Austria) | Posted on meta by WMAT: Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Diversity | Disclaimer: we are aware that the following “mountainous regions” in Austria are still way more developed than other parts of the world. The detail of the scoping questions appears to be a bit too detailed for these early stages and are difficult to give feedback to without including a global context. Recommendations for this working group should - in our view - differentiate based on the regional or local context.
We welcome the emphasis in form of a scoping question concerning the diversity of languages on various platforms. It is an issue that the Austrian community has had to deal with since the beginnings of the German speaking language, often having to overcome ignorance and belittling comments when pointing out the pluricentric nature of the German language. It is our belief that establishing guidelines for platforms to acknowledge and nurture pluricentric languages will enrich those languages and the people who use those platforms. We also concur with the scoping questions in that raising awareness and use of our platforms in “low awareness regions” like the rural regions of Austria is only possible when acknowledging the demographic challenges (i.e. an aging society with a deteriorating infrastructure) we have to overcome in those regions. Anyone already on the Internet already knows about Wikipedia - the challenge will be how we also integrate those who have been left out in our information age. It is not clear from the document, whether and how the work of this group is also directed at the organized part of our movement (WMF and affiliates), particularly Wikimedia as an employer. Diversity and inclusion need to be addressed in a more systematic fashion here as well: E.g. How can we make sure that females* and people of colour have equal access to leadership positions and how can we avoid a gender pay gap? Wikimedia Austria believes that Diversity&Inclusion should be reflected in the structures and public appearance of movement entities and so they become the welcoming spaces that the Wikimedia projects often can’t be. Hence, we use inclusive language in all our official documents (e.g. bylaws), made sure the bylaws also represent and support the principles laid out in our friendly space policy and made efforts for better gender representation in our committees and expert groups. We hope that the strategy process will result in recommendations for affiliates which make less of an exception and more of a rule in the movement. |
| Spanish speaking community at large | 1:1 interviews |
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Partnerships
edit| Source | Context | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Women editors | perspectives from formal and informal consultations from women editors in various countries |
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| WMDE | Group interview with 2-3 staff members | Please see the interview transcript posted on meta: Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Partnerships#Wikimedia_Deutschland_staff_perspective |
| Arabic community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from various 1:1 interviews |
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| Portuguese community-at-large | Telegram discussion of 4-5 people | Establishing partnerships with feminist and minorities’ representant groups is essential to diminish content gaps. (#Bridging the gaps)
Partners should also worry about maintaining a neutral point of view on their participation. Wikimedia members have to select partners that agree with that and work with projects’ rules and criteria for enforcing that. (#Allyship) |
| Hindi community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from 11 total 1:1 interviews | How might we build Wikimedia into an effective convenor of impactful partnerships, coalitions, and collective action based on a shared vision of open knowledge and the “Big Open” Movement?The biggest issue is that we are exclusive to our own communities and not connected with other open organizations such as mozilla and creative commons chapters and their communities. Their goals are common but as a community we are completely disconnected from them. Maybe at hierarchy, Wikimedia Foundation maybe an official partner for CC but on ground level, as Wikimedians we are disconnected with other open organization communities.
How do we develop technical infrastructure, capacities and support do we need in order to be an effective partner to share ‘the sum of all knowledge” and fulfill the vision of knowledge as a service for our partners?Currently, just like we have formed the space Wikimedia, there can be some portal or platform where all the players of big open movement can plan together and do something. The current platforms of communications are all with Wikimedians, but a common platform can be started to bring together all of them (open movement partners and their communities) and form collaborations and partnerships directly. How can we empower people and organizations working on partnerships get the support they need to fulfill our potential to carry out diverse, sustainable, effective and impactful partnerships?Volunteers don't have any support from local partner and WMF, to endorse officially so they can partner with GLAM institutes and entities, for example, official email ID. WMF cannot build such resources for volunteers in each country. In every country has organization working in this area. For example, every country has some associations, such as Indian Library Association, Indian Council of Museum, etc. We can reach out to such organization, and say we are building resources and we need inputs from you and we are building these resources, then later partnerships can easily developed from there. How might we build Wikimedia into an effective convenor of impactful partnerships, coalitions, and collective action based on a shared vision of open knowledge and the “Big Open” Movement?First of all, we have to analyze in different contexts, what are the possibilities. Which things are missing. Which thing we would need to do advocacy for. For example, for partnerships in India, advocacy should be done with different govt bodies before starting a partnership. For instance, national library of India which has two copies of each book that was ever printed in India so their archive is really big. But the bureaucracy is very high and the advocacy is needed to form a partnership. So, clearly and very openly, a demonstration should be done by Wikimedians and thematic organizations already doing partnerships about the importance and the need of partnerships. How we can form national association with some international organizations of libraries such as ISLA, central international citation of libraries for Wikimedia partnerships?How do we develop technical infrastructure, capacities and support do we need in order to be an effective partner to share ‘the sum of all knowledge” and fulfill the vision of knowledge as a service for our partners?The basic infrastructure is missing, whether is it content partnership, there is no proper documentation for ways to integrate the data in Wikimedia projects. To hire people for such projects is also difficult. There should be a simple process of how do a partnership and how we release the content and integrate with minimum expertise. There is no ease of access of tools for integration of data. The current hacks are the ones developed by volunteers and they have no proper debugging or documents that are volunteer led hack but haven’t been grown by the Foundation on movement level. The manpower and funding is insufficient for emerging communities. There is no reliable organizational structure that can be used to manage such partnerships, manpower and the funding. How can we empower people and organizations working on partnerships get the support they need to fulfill our potential to carry out diverse, sustainable, effective and impactful partnerships?There are no regional level affiliates at some geographical areas so most of this work is done by the volunteers without any financial or human resources support from Foundation. Before providing support, there should be a survey and research on the types of partnerships done in America, Asia and other regions. Depending on the data analysis, there should be a structural support provided on the basis of need, requirement and the resources needed by those communities. For that, a plan can be created in collaboration with chapters, thematic organizations and movement partners in different regions. How do we create an inclusive, movement-wide culture of sharing knowledge, skills, and practices on collaborations and partnerships - so that everyone in the movement can participate in and benefit from them?Before sharing, documentation of existing partnerships in different regions should be created. A catalogue of all partnerships and all the associated skills, resources and techniques, reports and learnings should be properly created. With study, we can determine which affiliate is involved in which partnership and which regions never had any partnerships, so we can determine what kind of GLAM partnerships or collaborations should be started in that region. Storytelling of the previous successful collaborations can be a learning curve and an awareness channel for those regional affiliates. |
| German community-at-large | One 1:1 interview | A partnership is always a mutual affair.
In Germany, Austria and Switzerland we normally visit institutes and lobby for Free Knowledge. But when we visit the institutes we should listen to them as well. We’re not the only ones with knowledge and the truth. We should listen to them and understand them. We are living in our bubble and they are living in their bubble. Only when we listen to each other the bubbles can merge. There are many who would like to share their knowledge and culture with us, many who are interested in us. This works well in Wikimedian in Residence projects. WiR projects are designed with certain duration, closeness and mutual collaboration. And in these projects listening to each other and understanding each other works well. At English speaking Wikimedia projects there are many WiR projects, way more than in the German speaking projects, so in the English speaking world an understanding of our projects can be developed better. There is limited expertise for this in Germany. We mainly have short-term collaborations. Germany has good initiatives, but these should be longer-termed. Regarding collaborative relationships we should look at and cooperate with small potential partners. For a mutual understanding we need a regular exchange. One affiliate with many and very good materials and sources is the Wiki Education Foundation. We should neither think nor strive to become the essential centre of free knowledge. Not everyone has to gather around us. This would not be called partnership. Other entities should not define themselves as Wikimedia, they should rather be equal partners. And we should not forget that Wikipedia is our core project. |
Product & Technology
edit| Source | Context | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Women editors | perspectives from formal and informal consultations from women editors in various countries |
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| Arabic community-at-large | Broad community input | Wikimedia Foundation should already consider new policies and guidelines to be adopted and aligned with the new technologies.
The example of the monkey selfie copyright dispute is a good reference to areas that should be anticipated. Wikimedia Foundation should use more technologies in explaining the rules, guidelines and policies, or WMF governance structure for the community members Currently most of the rules and policies are very long texts in Meta (mostly in Enlgish) that the large majority of the community does not/not want to read. Making these policies in a more interactive way, using new technologies will certainly make this information more spread, and seen and understood by far more people than today. |
| Arabic community-at-large | 12 participants - 2 options - Multiple votes |
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| Arabic community-at-large | 1:1 community interviews |
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| Portuguese community-at-large | Telegram discussion of 4-5 people | Improving basic technical skills is essential for the projects. It is harder to start working on the tech area, but, with a little help for beginners and support for them to keep working on their own afterwards, we may improve on that regard. (#Recruiting)
Projects shouldn’t need to much technical expertise from volunteers to work. Visual Editor is a good example that helped editors with less technical background, but working with templates for instance is still complicated to many. (#Platform) Having a list of technical tasks organized by priority and community preference with tech community agreement may help as an invitation to more technical contributors. (#Software development) People like to be with their peers and to have an environment where some can find tasks on which to work on, places to discuss and others like them to talk about things in common. (#Allyship) |
| Hindi community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from 11 total 1:1 interviews | How can we better attract, support and retain diverse technical contributors particularly: building and supporting local developer communities and prioritizing projects which will engage technical contributors?For engineering students to volunteer in media wiki, one of the approaches can be to have final year project research can be a Wikimedia bot or a tool. The educational institutions are welcoming to partner with Wikimedia for such collaborations because of its brand name. This can also be a good outreach for recruiting volunteer developers community at a right stage where the students can get a chance to join the movement early on.
Google developer students club can also be a good step to do similar outreach. Since Wikimedia Foundation is partner with Google on different projects, we can try to check them out and reach out to them via Google. Current issuesFunds for technical work: For technical work, a team of developers is needed. If one person decides to work on development of a tool, then the possibility of the project incompletion gets reduced. For example, a developer working a tool may need assistance for database and individual volunteers get no assistance for hiring professionals for help in the creation of tools. More funds should be made available to technical software volunteers. A new structure should be developed in Grantmaking so that for a short term projects can be done by developer community. For instance, a volunteer who wants to create a tool by taking assistance of an additional commercial service. Software License's Keys should be provided to technical volunteer contributors. The current structure for technology are more Foundation centric. English Wikipedia gets more focus as it has major crowd but the development of tools and technology should be done keeping in mind the general movement and overall projects or something that can be applied in multiple languages. Currently, they are making very specific things (tools, better interface, etc.) focussed on English Wikipedia. Each year, some effort is made with community wishlist but it is not an efficient method to judge the needs of the community since the decisions in that are based on the number of votes different proposals get. There is no particular strategy that advances any particular project other than Wikipedia, whose success rate is measured by number of readers and editors. There is a need to have discussions with other stakeholders and analyze where is scope for more growth. For example, Wikisource has not very good infrastructure. Other platforms providing similar service have easy to edit, user friendly interface whereas in Wikisource, interface still needs a lot of work. There is difficulty in implementing visual editor in Wikisource with templates and there are problems with wikitext too. There should be a proper strategy made in the investment of software development for different projects with equity, which is our movement direction in mind. |
| Spanish speaking community-at-large | 1:1 interviews | 1- Wikipedia should became a global internet provider (Satellite?). People in countries with censorship could connect the uncensored services of Wikipedia-net. Profits would fund WMF.
2- Complete redesign of OTRS system, with several problems like lack of activity, with queues of 300-days or more. |
Resource Allocation
edit| Source | Context | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Women editors | perspectives from formal and informal consultations from women editors in various countries |
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| Arabic community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from various 1:1 interviews | WMF should ask for “guarantee” before sending grants.
Many users misuse grant money in their home countries. Some take grant money and disappear without any accountability mechanisms or tracing from WMF. American law cannot be enforced over these people, and blacklisting will not get the money back. WMF should allocate regional budgets for specific targeted areas and groups that it wants to empower. |
| Hindi community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from 11 total 1:1 interviews | How can resource allocation support structures that empower different actors within the free knowledge movement long-term? How is power connected to resource allocation and how can we utilize resource allocation to create change?In terms of money, a lot of resources are going to European communities with APG grants. For emerging communities, they are getting more rapid grants. When grant structure is observed from the bottom of the pyramid, the emerging communities are being left out.
Only 2-3% of the bigger grants such as project grant and conference grants are seen coming from emerging communities. The smaller grants should be awarded more. There should be a strategy for investment in the emerging community for equity. There should be some structure in grantmaking that helps potential proposers and the current grantees to scale up the successful project - it can be in the form of funds, staff assistance. Currently, the grants reviewing and report evaluations is very slow. For example, there should be someone from staff who identifies the small projects, for instance, rapid grant projects that have good scope and can be scaled up, proactively contact the person and assist them in getting the bigger funded grants. The APG structure currently focuses on Wikimedia affiliates. The bigger grats should also be given to some liberalization to other organizations who are also doing such work. There is a centralization of power going on right now and such grant dispersal system can help in decentralization which is essential to keep the movement healthy and balanced. The resource allocation can also be divided for different regions, or different projects, such as, Education, GLAM, Outreach. Some organizations can be identified and supported that can increase the scope of work in a particular region that can actively collaborate and work for Wikimedia movement in a particular field. Who should be the recipients of resources? How do we determine the boundaries, who or what is included?Basic grassroot level workshops should be encouraged more and for the sake of diversity alone, resources should not be wasted. For instance, reserved positions in different conferences for females that are not allocated to males even when they are no female candidates. What impact should the allocated resources create within our communities and the world. Who are we accountable to and how do we organize accountability?To ensure balance of development of movement, there needs to be more effort. For long term equity, there should be diversity in projects. For instance, same type of wiki loves projects and edit-a-thons create redundancy that in long term would reduce the growth in the movement. There should be experimentation done in new fields and projects in different parts of the world to ensure that the content and editors remain consistent instead of investment in the repetition of same projects. Time delay in Getting Grants : There is no time discipline on grants review by WMF team to its approval/rejection and then subsequently to grants disbursement. At times, grants are provided when the event is already over. Minimum Cap on Rapid Grant : Dollar may hold relatively a very high value in the Global South and the Rapid Grant may happen to be too high for several events. Low micro-grant alternative should be provided. Community Review on Reports : Community endorses the plan and then the grant is approved but no place for community review on reports. Why WMF staff the only reviewer ? Community review should have a necessary space. |
| German community-at-large | See "content" | On-wiki community:
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| WMAT (Wikimedia Austria) | Content from discussions on meta: Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Resource_Allocation | CROSS POSTED TO REVENUE STREAMS
The movement has only learned in recent years to embrace the international aspects that help us all improve our work and our understanding of who we are as an international movement. This should also be reflected in the way we approach a long-term strategy for collecting and distributing money. Every affiliate is knowledgeable in their local context, but does not necessarily have the expertise to use this to their advantage. Other affiliates have built expertise in certain areas over the last 10+ years and are able to support and advise other affiliates in those areas. This is what we need to build on in order to advance our mission until 2030. Using the expertise we already have as building blocks for a long-term strategy will help us reach further than in any other case. From our experience there is a need on the side of some donors to connect on an local / regional level: They rather donate to an Austrian organisation and want to learn more about what is done with the money in their specific country. Some of them might be interested to become members of their local affiliate or contribute in other ways. Hence, we believe that even if not every affiliate / local group raises funds, we need to work together more closely to work on our donor relations. Currently the WMF does not share any information about local affiliates, their work and events with donors, so we are missing out on important opportunities for sustainable donor relations. Revenue streams: There are clear red lines in terms of revenue streams that would endanger the foundations of our projects: Advertisement on Wikipedia and other projects should be a non-starter (and it would be helpful if the revenue streams working group could set out some non-goals as soon as possible) and considering the setting up of a trust, this will alleviate any worries concerning funding the servers and operations. Paywalls are a similar non-starter for an open knowledge project and reducing openness in order to acquire grants or donations from certain organisations is similarly out of the question for us. In general, there should be a guide for what is acceptable as a grant and what isn’t, because even receiving an unconditional grant might create a bias towards the donor. Resource allocation: Accountability within the movement has been an issue ever since certain affiliates started fundraising themselves. We have seen in past years that there is a very diverging view on what is money well spent and what is not. Spending money needs to follow a common understanding, signed by every affiliate, that should include values like financial prudence and acting in the common interest of the stakeholders involved in our projects. This common understanding can and should be expanded on on a regional and local level to accurately reflect views, laws and ethics that only exist in that region or country. Furthermore, the working group should also take into account that internationally English is a barrier for many to access our resources right now. This puts an onus on native English speaking affiliates to explain and document their work much better than we would expect it from people who do not have this advantage. This would be an important step towards equity in terms of resource allocation. |
| Spanish speaking community-at-large | Context: Telegram Channel. 80 participants, one week |
Ideas:
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Revenue Streams
edit| Source | Context | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Women editors | perspectives from formal and informal consultations from women editors in various countries |
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| WMDE | Group interview with 2-3 staff members | Please see the interview transcript posted on meta: Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Revenue_Streams#Wikimedia_Deutschland_staff_perspectives |
| Arabic community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from various 1:1 interviews |
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| Portuguese community-at-large | Telegram discussion of 4-5 people | It was suggested a creation of a new streaming platform that would allow the discussion of articles with participation of editors, interview with specialists. That would be similar with existent platforms on which people that enjoy the content donate money while watching. (#Financing models) |
| German community-at-large | See "content" | Feedback from the on-wiki community:
Any increased revenue is not necessary. Wikimedia should start to concentrate on its key tasks and skills, meaning that money should be spent on hardware and software and most of all Wikipedia. The fundraising banners should disappear, a discrete year-round PayPal button is sufficient. The newspaper Guardian does in right in this regard. Spending money on social, copyright and education policy as well as cultural science is unnecessary and should be stopped. Answers to the key question “What are the lines that we should not cross when thinking about revenue streams while working towards our goal?” by members of Wikimedia Deutschland: Selling the work of volunteers to private companies No influence by companies and politics. Individual donations should not be higher than 24.9% of the donation volume, sum of all donations from private companies should not be higher than 49.9% of the total. Please don’t sell us. Donations from government organizations or companies should not be higher than 5% of the total, there should be no revenues from publications and no money from political parties. Data are the capital in data mining. This capitalization of knowledge shows in the donation amount. Free knowledge has to be independent from capital. We have to endure this paradox and should never give it up. No money from “Alternative for Germany” (a German political party) and companies that are harmful to the environment. No commercial donations and no donations from political parties, just private donations. Large donations must be published, just like they do it with party donations. Advertisement, product placement (= commercial interests). And if companies and countries donate they might want to delete or change articles and content that they don’t like. General context from the Strategy Liaison: After complaints about fundrasing banners WMDE was improving them with community consultation and a code of conduct regarding fundraising. It looks like this did not go far enough for some community members. |
| WMAT (Wikimedia Austria) | Content from discussions posted on meta: Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Revenue_Streams | "CROSS POSTED TO RESOURCE ALLOCATION
The movement has only learned in recent years to embrace the international aspects that help us all improve our work and our understanding of who we are as an international movement. This should also be reflected in the way we approach a long-term strategy for collecting and distributing money. Every affiliate is knowledgeable in their local context, but does not necessarily have the expertise to use this to their advantage. Other affiliates have built expertise in certain areas over the last 10+ years and are able to support and advise other affiliates in those areas. This is what we need to build on in order to advance our mission until 2030. Using the expertise we already have as building blocks for a long-term strategy will help us reach further than in any other case. From our experience there is a need on the side of some donors to connect on an local / regional level: They rather donate to an Austrian organisation and want to learn more about what is done with the money in their specific country. Some of them might be interested to become members of their local affiliate or contribute in other ways. Hence, we believe that even if not every affiliate / local group raises funds, we need to work together more closely to work on our donor relations. Currently the WMF does not share any information about local affiliates, their work and events with donors, so we are missing out on important opportunities for sustainable donor relations. Revenue streams: There are clear red lines in terms of revenue streams that would endanger the foundations of our projects: Advertisement on Wikipedia and other projects should be a non-starter (and it would be helpful if the revenue streams working group could set out some non-goals as soon as possible) and considering the setting up of a trust, this will alleviate any worries concerning funding the servers and operations. Paywalls are a similar non-starter for an open knowledge project and reducing openness in order to acquire grants or donations from certain organisations is similarly out of the question for us. In general, there should be a guide for what is acceptable as a grant and what isn’t, because even receiving an unconditional grant might create a bias towards the donor. Resource allocation: Accountability within the movement has been an issue ever since certain affiliates started fundraising themselves. We have seen in past years that there is a very diverging view on what is money well spent and what is not. Spending money needs to follow a common understanding, signed by every affiliate, that should include values like financial prudence and acting in the common interest of the stakeholders involved in our projects. This common understanding can and should be expanded on on a regional and local level to accurately reflect views, laws and ethics that only exist in that region or country. Furthermore, the working group should also take into account that internationally English is a barrier for many to access our resources right now. This puts an onus on native English speaking affiliates to explain and document their work much better than we would expect it from people who do not have this advantage. This would be an important step towards equity in terms of resource allocation. " |
| Spanish community-at-large | Context: Telegram Channel. 80 participants, one week |
Context: Personal reflection after one 1to1 interview.
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Roles and Responsibilities
edit| Source | Context | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Women editors | perspectives from formal and informal consultations from women editors in various countries |
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| WMDE | Group interview with 2-3 staff members | Please see the interview transcript posted on meta: Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Community_Conversations/Roles_&_Responsibilities#Wikimedia_Deutschland_staff_perspective |
| Arabic community-at-large | Compliation of feedback from various 1:1 interviews | Affiliates
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