Talk:Movement Charter
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Movement Charter Drafting Committee perspectives
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MCDC members Ciell and Daria Cybulska explain what the Movement Charter is
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MCDC members Anass and Ciell talk about what the Global Council is
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MCDC member Georges talks about what the Hubs are
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Recording of the MCDC open community call on April 4, 2024
Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification voting results
editHello everyone,
After carefully tallying both individual and affiliate votes, the Charter Electoral Commission is pleased to announce the final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter voting.
As communicated by the Charter Electoral Commission, we reached the quorum for both Affiliate and individual votes by the time the vote closed on July 9, 23:59 UTC. We thank all 2,451 individuals and 129 Affiliate representatives who voted in the ratification process. Your votes and comments are invaluable for the future steps in Movement Strategy.
The final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification voting held between 25 June and 9 July 2024 are as follows:
Individual vote:
Out of 2,451 individuals who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 2,446 have been accepted as valid votes. Among these, 1,710 voted “yes”; 623 voted “no”; and 113 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 73.30% voted to approve the Charter (1710/2333), while 26.70% voted to reject the Charter (623/2333).
Affiliates vote:
Out of 129 Affiliates designated voters who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 129 votes are confirmed as valid votes. Among these, 93 voted “yes”; 18 voted “no”; and 18 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 83.78% voted to approve the Charter (93/111), while 16.22% voted to reject the Charter (18/111).
Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation:
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees voted not to ratify the proposed Charter during their special Board meeting on July 8, 2024. The Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Natalia Tymkiv, shared the result of the vote, the resolution, meeting minutes and proposed next steps.
With this, the Wikimedia Movement Charter in its current revision is not ratified.
We thank you for your participation in this important moment in our movement’s governance.
The Charter Electoral Commission,
Abhinav619, Borschts, Iwuala Lucy, Tochiprecious, Der-Wir-Ing
Borschts Talk 14:55, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
- What a sad and coward outcome. Siebrand (talk) 15:22, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
- @Siebrand: Briefly and clearly, can you say why you feel this way? Make it obvious. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:52, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
- What about the comments? An essential part of the voting process was the free text comment field where voters could post comments, and I thought that comments would become public. Any schedule for that or update on the publishing process? Bluerasberry (talk) 15:52, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
- @Bluerasberry As I understand, the WMF and CEC are working to make the dump of the vote available asap: a comprehensive summary of the feedback comments will be available before Wikimania. Ciell (talk) 16:37, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
- What exactly is being meant with 'individuals'? Are these the people contributing as volunteers to the Wikimedia projects? When yes, I think it might be fair to use another label for this group, because of their special role in the movement. It would also be good to disclose a (realistic) number of now active contributors, so one gets a feeling for the percentage of people who did vote. Thanks for giving this a thought, Kevin Bouwens (talk) 18:19, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
- The meaning is those who voted as individuals, rather than on behalf of an affiliate or the WMF. As I understand it the threshold was ~2300, and that was 2% so it gives ~115 000 qualified to vote through their individual contributions. GreenReaper (talk) 13:04, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Thank you from the Movement Charter Drafting Committee
editThe Movement Charter Drafting Committee has received the results of the Movement Charter ratification process. We thank all who participated in the process of developing the Charter, and in voting on its ratification.
We thank the members of the broad and global Wikimedia community who participated in discussion and voting. Similarly, we thank the affiliates who participated in multiple rounds of review and commentary, as well as in the ratification vote. And last but not least, the liaisons of the Board of Trustees who have been continuously involved with the MCDC and charter drafting process.
Our thanks also goes to the members of the Charter Electoral Commission and the scrutineers, who ensured that the vote was conducted in a fair and inclusive manner:
- Abhinav619
- Borschts
- Iwuala Lucy
- Tochiprecious
- Der-Wir-Ing (CEC Advisor)
- Superpes15 (scrutineer)
- EPIC (scrutineer)
- Yahya (scrutineer)
- Johannnnes89 (scrutineer)
The development of the Movement Charter received significant assistance from external facilitators, interpreters, and from support staff throughout the process. Several of those support staff have moved on to other roles within the Wikimedia community. We note in particular the following, who worked with the MCDC as we finalized the draft and completed the ratification process:
- Kaarel Vaidla
- Nhu Phan
- Ramzy Muliawan
- Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (communications support)
- Aida Akhmedova (communications support)
- Joe Sutherland (SecurePoll support)
- Nahid Sultan (SecurePoll support)
The Movement Charter Drafting Committee will be reviewing the extensive number of comments received from both affiliates and individual voters in the next few weeks. These comments will be published, with a summary, prior to Wikimania Katowice in early August 2024. Following this review, the MCDC will publish an additional communication suggesting next steps.
On behalf of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee,
Risker (talk) 17:26, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
A Big Hand for all people involved in drafting!
editI hope I speak for many, the ones with doubts, with reasons to vote no, yes or neutral, that all people involved in the drafting process deserve a big hand for their work, especially the people who were acting basically on a volunteering base. --Kevin Bouwens (talk) 18:11, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Agree agreed! yes, I want to express my sincere gratitude and respect to the entire movement charter drafting commitee. they did a huge amount of work. they truly want to improve the movement and its processes, for the entire community. their work product was truly impressive. i think we can all feel some real gratitude for the huge number of ideas they provided. thanks! Sm8900 (talk) 20:56, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
Movement Charter voting feedback (unsorted comments) and ratification clarification
editHi everyone,
I’m just following up here, because it has been brought to our attention that not everyone has access to the SecurePoll data dump, and therefore are missing the feedback that was collected through the voting ballots for the recent Movement Charter ratification vote.
Voter feedback
Staff has now listed all comments (65 comments from the affiliates voters and 447 comments from the individual voters) on Meta-wiki. They are displayed in sortable tables, but since this is the raw data, especially the page with comments from individuals, it can take some time to load.
We are also still working on a summary of this feedback that will be published before we come together at Wikimania, yet we know that some of you want to prepare now and not wait for the publication of this piece, so we are publishing the comments first.
Ratification quorum, turnout and threshold (clarification)
After the publication of the results of the affiliate and individual votes, we also noticed some discussion about the participation quorum and the approval threshold of the ratification vote. We’d like to take this opportunity to clarify the process:
- The participation quorum is how many people should cast any sort of vote (yes/no/neutral). After the April 2023 feedback round, we realized, both from comments and from experience in the Universal Code of Conduct votings, a minimum % based on previous single-choice votes made sense. Initially, we were operating from the assumption that the individual voter eligibility pool would be around 60-70K individuals, similar to previous Board elections. However, when we generated the voter list, it came out to be around 117K individuals. Here, a small change made all the difference: in previous elections (that had 60-70K eligible voters), the voting criteria allowed for a duration of 6 months (in the 2022 Board elections, it was Jan 2022 - July 2022) to make 20 edits, whereas the voter criteria for this ratification vote allowed for a duration of 2 years (May 2022 to May 2024) to make 20 edits, deeming more voters to be eligible to vote. To maintain the same number of voters (>2400), we changed the percentage from 4%, to a threshold of 2% of the eligible voter pool.
- The voter turnout was lower than in WMF Board of Trustees elections, because of the topic of the vote (not everyone would have been as familiar with the concept of a Movement Charter, as they are with the bi-annually occurring Board of Trustee elections), and also largely because the extraordinary mechanism of mass-emailing all eligible voters was not used. The choice not to use this tool was a deliberate decision by the MCDC, made early on in the drafting process and in collaboration with WMF's communications department, because while very effective in getting people's attention, mass mailing is considered a rather intrusive method of communication and is only to be used in exceptional circumstances.
- The approval threshold is how many voted in support of ratification. Originally, the ratification methodology placed this as 50%+1, but after feedback from the community, it was increased to 55% (but complemented with the addition of the quorum as described in the first bullet above).
It was further agreed upon between the MCDC and CEC, and communicated to the community, that a neutral (–) vote counted as participation, but not towards the approval threshold; a neutral vote would not count in favor of or in opposition to ratification.
Had we, as some proposed, counted the neutral vote anyway, the results of the votes would have been the following:
- Individual vote = 1710 “yes” votes / 2446 total votes = 69.91% approval
- Affiliate vote = 93 “yes” votes / 129 total votes = 72.09% approval
Both of the votes would still pass the approval threshold if we counted the neutral votes in the total.
We hope the information in this email provides additional clarity and context.
On behalf of the MCDC and CEC,
Movement Charter Drafting Committee: process & ratification reflections
editThis message, "Movement Charter Drafting Committee: process & ratification reflections", was sent to wikimedia-l, and is available on this page to allow for translations.
Hi everyone,
As we start to wind down our work, we – the Movement Charter Drafting Committee – are grateful for the opportunity to go on this journey with each other and with all of you. You have engaged with us on many platforms and venues – Zoom calls, Meta Talk pages, Telegram messages, and at in-person events across the world. You have shown up in different roles – notably, Advisors and Movement Charter Ambassadors. You dedicated time to reviewing drafts and offering feedback. Most recently, you participated in the ratification process. From the very beginning through to the ratification vote, your comments and suggestions have informed the thousands of hours of discussion we have had as a committee. Thank you.
This is not the last time you will hear from us – we will share out once more before we bid farewell to you as the Movement Charter Drafting Committee – but we want to take this opportunity to offer our reflections ahead of seeing some of you in Poland for the 2024 Wikimania. These reflections will focus on the journey we have been on as a committee and the recent ratification results.
Reflections on the process
editWhen we were convened in November 2021, the Movement Charter Drafting Committee consisted of 15 elected and selected members. Although each of us brought unique experiences from our respective communities, we were in this drafting process together. During the two and a half year process, some members resigned and new members joined us; and our friend and colleague User:Nosebagbear passed away shortly after Wikimania 2023. His contributions to the charter and our committee, as well as to the movement, were invaluable.
Early on, we acknowledged that creating a perfect charter was an impossible task. Instead, we focused on drafting a charter that would be "good enough" to serve the movement effectively in laying out the roles and responsibilities of different movement actors. We also differentiated between a “Movement Charter” and a “charter for the Global Council”, committing to the first one. Recognizing that both the Charter and the Global Council are experiments, we aimed to produce a Movement Charter that was “safe to try”, with the expectation that we would evaluate, iterate, and adapt with learnings over time.
The process of drafting a charter brought together people who have never met before to speak about challenges they faced, and to investigate what could be done to overcome those challenges. Many volunteers were introduced to aspects of movement governance for the first time, and felt motivated to understand better and to share with their community, in the hopes of shaping the future of the movement. The process also surfaced new problems and reiterated existing problems of participation within our movement, and at the same time highlighted the adaptability of individuals, communities, and affiliates to overcome them. The idea behind equity – mentioned in Movement Strategy Recommendation #4 Ensure Equity in Decision-Making – is to adapt the level of support to the needs of individuals in order to enable them to participate at the same level as others. We hope that throughout the charter drafting process, all movement actors felt empowered and supported in participating in these kinds of processes, that they felt that their voice was needed, and was heard. We hope that with the emphasis on convergence and compromise in our conversations and drafts, people learn that some of us need to take a step back to make room for others to step in and step up.
Our biggest challenges in drafting a charter involved stakeholder engagement and expectations management. Our movement is diverse, in size and in complexity. Our opinions are diverse, often spanning one side of the spectrum to the other. Our engagement styles are diverse: some are vocal, while others prefer to observe first. Some can engage us on any and all platforms, while others only want to speak face-to-face. We identified three main stakeholder groups: the individual contributors, the affiliates, and the WMF Board of Trustees, and their expectations towards us varied. The individual contributors wanted to solidify their rights to contribute and edit on projects, while being protected and not being hampered by bureaucracy; the affiliates wanted to expand the governance umbrella and decentralize power; and the Board wanted more incremental and concrete proposals for change. Even within each group, the perspectives were varied – was the charter to be a 2-page document that served as a high-level compass for governance or was the charter to be a 40-page detailed roadmap to navigate decision-making processes that took into consideration subsidiarity, self-organization, and organic collaboration?
The outcome of all these challenging questions was presented to you when we published our final text for the Movement Charter on June 10, 2024. This Charter has become a charter that describes current processes unchallenged; suggests new processes and ideas; and proposes improvements for the future where we thought certain topics were beyond our mandate or needed a more solid basis, rooted in a more extensive and targeted process to be validated.
Reflections on the ratification results
editAfter we published the final text, we ran a ratification vote on the Charter. Thank you to all those who came out to vote – affiliates and individual contributors alike. We were pleasantly surprised by your overwhelming support. Thank you to the WMF Board of Trustees for your honesty and openness. We sympathize that it was not an easy decision to make.
Reading the comments and feedback that came from the vote, this is our takeaway: you support the idea of having a Movement Charter and a Global Council, but there are concerns with the proposed text. We would like to respond to two of the recurring feedback points that we have heard about the Global Council (more than 20% of all comments concerned this topic).
Purpose of the Global Council
We were often asked what the purpose of the Global Council is and what problem it is trying to solve; we were also told that form should follow function. However, the text of Recommendation #4: Ensure Equity in Decision Making does not provide sufficient information on what type of decisions should be made by the Global Council. And without agreement amongst and between the MCDC, the WMF Board, and the other stakeholders, it proved impossible to decide what the purpose and scope of the Global Council should be. We heeded the Board liaisons’ suggestion from February 2024 to align the Global Council’s responsibilities in areas where there is a potential for greater volunteer leadership in decision-making, specifically adding grant-making and technical strategy at their request, while working with the legal department to avoid anything that would constrain the WMF from exercising its fiduciary duty. Despite extensive efforts, reconciling the differing visions proved challenging, and the proposed compromise did not meet everyone's expectations.
Set-up of the Global Council
As the form of the GC should follow its function, outlining the set-up of the Global Council was even more of a challenge because this function was not agreed upon by the stakeholders. As such, we carefully explored the possibilities to find a balance between a big enough body that could be representative of the global movement and a small enough council that could be functional and agile. We heard from many of you about the pros and cons of each model; we ourselves had repeated conversations about the size and set-up of the Global Council. Here, we noted suggestions by different stakeholders, including the Board liaisons, to start small and expand over time. Those feedback taken together is how we ended up with the Global Council and the Global Council Board, totaling 25 members to start, with the potential to grow up to 100 members over time, if approved by all stakeholders, including the WMF Board. This was also done to minimize cost, and the process would have benefited from a thorough cost analysis of different scenarios and the ability to take advantage of existing infrastructure - for example, the repurposing of resources used to support current committees, or the possibility of the Wikimedia Summit gathering evolving to become less affiliate-centric.
MCDC next steps
editWhile we are disappointed by the final result of the ratification vote, we know this is not the end of the conversation. At the time of publishing, we are on our way to Wikimania, where we hope to continue discussing with you about what’s next, not just for the Movement Charter and the Global Council, but for the Movement Strategy and the movement broadly. And after Wikimania, we will be sharing our final communication as the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, which will cover our recommendations for moving forward, including our thoughts on the three proposed pilots coming from the Board of Trustees’ ratification vote.
With kind regards,
The Movement Charter Drafting Committee
Anass Sedrati, Anne Clin, Ciell, Daria Cybulska, Georges Fodouop, Jorge Vargas, Manavpreet Kaur, Michał Buczyński, Pepe Flores, Richard Knipel, Runa Bhattacharjee; 05:52, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Comments
edit- This is a very thoughtful reflection on the process, and I agree with everything noted here - particularly that the Global Council proposal could benefit from a clearer consensus around what is needed and how it will accomplish that. I hope that as these conversations continue, we can move towards a clearly defined problem (such as a lack of meaningful community and affiliate control over movement decision-making), which will help clarify the role that the GC could serve in addressing that problem.
- That said, I think this statement almost downplays the level of support that the Movement Charter recieved from the community and affiliates. I voted against, but 70% of my peers voted for - this cannot be ignored, and I truly hope that the Board remembers that they are supposed to represent the community when considering their next steps. It is clear that there is widespread support for both a charter in general and the Global Council. While they may not feel that this version was the right version, this effort cannot be simply ignored or replaced by more WMF-selected committees to encourage community involvement in governance. We need meaningful change in how decisions are made across our movement, and who is ultimately responsible for them.
- My thanks to the drafting committee. You had years of difficult work, not made any easier by loud mouths here and there (couldn't be me ;-). I think the level of support received for this version is a testiment to how well you have bridged together various interests and perspectives. Let's all work towards 80% support and board approval for the next version, even if the MCDC isn't leading that work. – Ajraddatz (talk) 10:26, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
- Agree I want to second @Ajraddatz, on their gratitude to the Movement Charter Drafting Committee. this has been a long and arduous process. your efforts were truly admirable, and entailed huge amounts of work to refine ideas, to hear from the community, and to work with multiple stakeholders. I want to offer my sincere gratitude and respect for all your work, Sm8900 (talk) 14:06, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Report back from Wikimania session "Well, the Movement Charter"
editThursday, August 8 there was a session held at Wikimania focusing on the Movement Charter, considering the current situation, and collecting proposals from participants for next steps. It was a conversational session, yet we also took light notes, which we are now posting here as a report back to inform further conversations. Thank you User:NPhan_(WMF) for note-taking support!
- You can find the Etherpad notes here.
- Here is the list of proposals generated by session participants:
- ➼Do nothing
- ➼Resource allocation needs to be isolated from WMF
- ➼The parties (individual contributors, affiliates, WMF) need to talk to each other
- ➼Piecemeal approval and implementation of parts of the Charter, while discussing the parts that are disagreed on
- ➼Quick rounds / iterations of negotiations (WMF CEO and Board should be involved) -- honest convos about where everyone's lines are (what are our constraints? what are
- ➼Radically expand our definition of "community" to include every single person who contributes to the movement, like the donors, readers, partners, etc. -- not just the "white men"
- ➼We should strive to be inclusive, but that doesn't need we need 10000+ people drafting the charter. Analogy: everyone should have an equal opportunity to contribute and decide on the menu, but there are only a handful who will cook the food
- ➼Start discussing the WHY questions next, like why do we need a WMF? Why do we need organizations?
- ➼Draft the charter like a Wikipedia article, once the enabling constraints are clear and agreed upon (reference to [1]
Looking forward to untangling the current situation together and getting to constructive next steps! --KVaidla (WMF) (talk) 08:19, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
- Amazing. why was a session held at Wikimania? Who says there is any room here, for friendly, collaborative, non-hierarchical discussions here, in a friendly collaborative fashion, as a community? and if there is, then why oh why aren't we using the one set of forums which was specifically established for building a process like that, semi-permanently? Sm8900 (talk) 15:24, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Recommendations for next steps from the MCDC, and Farewell
edit- This message, "Recommendations for next steps from the MCDC, and Farewell", was sent to wikimedia-l, and is also available on this page to allow for translations.
Hi everyone,
This is our last communication as the Movement Charter Drafting Committee. The committee will dissolve today, August 30, 2024. We will take this opportunity to share our recommendations for the next steps concerning the Movement Charter work.
We want to start our recommendations for next steps by encouraging everyone to keep working on Recommendation #4 Ensure Equity in Decision-Making; we don’t need a “Movement Charter Drafting Committee” for this. It was clear in our conversations at Wikimania that you are passionate about governance and strategy, and you desire to move forward together. Simultaneously, we encourage the Wikimedia Foundation to take a more participatory and collaborative approach to Recommendation #4. The project contributors and the affiliates are two stakeholders in the movement; the Wikimedia Foundation is another. We need all three stakeholders to interdependently work together as equals to create a more equitable movement.
Regarding the three pilots from the Board’s resolution appendix
editIn the WMF Board’s resolution on 8 July 2024, they included three WMF-led pilot proposals that mirrored three of the functions that were assigned to the Global Council in the final text. We are encouraged by this alignment, and we view the proposal to test the functions in time-bound experiments to be a step in the right direction. However, we implore the Board to be bold and brave, and engage with and directly involve the movement to co-create and design together – affiliates and project contributors alike – in order to take these experiments forward. It is contrary to the principles of equity & empowerment and inclusivity & participation decision-making for WMF to be the sole decision-maker on how these pilots are conducted and if they are successful.
A core function of the proposed Global Council – future strategic planning for the wider movement – is not addressed by the three pilots. This should not be left behind in our changing world, and would be an appropriate field for community-led collaborations. As such, we recommend and encourage another pilot to be initiated by any interested stakeholders to fill this strategic gap.
Additional recommendations
editWe are pleased by the update from Maryana reaffirming WMF’s commitment to a charter for the movement. However, for any subsequent process to draft a Movement Charter or set up a new governance structure to succeed in the future, we believe the following things need to be resolved:
- With the WMF Board Governance Committee stepping in to support the path forward for a charter, we recommend that WMF clearly share their ideas for a movement charter – what is the purpose of a charter? Who would it serve? What should it look like?
- The initial idea of a Global Council was put forward already about 20 years ago, yet so far, there has not been a clear alignment across the movement to take this idea to action. Before the MCDC started their work, there had not been a movement-wide effort to align on what problem in our movement governance this additional structure would solve. We therefore recommend that all stakeholders – project contributors, affiliates, and WMF – clearly share whether or not they support the creation of a new governance structure and the addition of a new body like a Global Council. And if yes, their vision of it – what are the problems and needs this new body would address? Only after we have alignment can we take the next steps of deciding on its structure, responsibilities and composition.
- We recommend a review and an update to the Board liaison model to provide more clarity on what the role and responsibilities of liaisons are, how they interact with the committee they’re on, and what effectiveness looks like. This should be addressed for both committees with a limited mandate (e.g. MCDC) and committees with a continuing purpose (e.g. Affiliations Committee).
- We heard from the Board liaisons that the movement values needed to be validated by the entire Wikimedia Movement through a separate process. We therefore recommend that the WMF initiates or explicitly endorses a movement-wide process to validate the Wikimedia movement’s values.
Farewell
editAs we say farewell to you as the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, we want to leave you with this: the process of drafting a charter for, with and by the Wikimedia Movement has been an exhilarating journey. At times, we were overwhelmed by the intensity of interactions with the movement. From time to time, it felt like the feedback loops were never concluded and different stakeholders kept trying to intervene and give their feedback. Yet, this was probably the manifestation of the devotion in our movement to get things right together. Our committee was a microcosm of the larger movement: we represented different experiences and beliefs, we discussed and debated different approaches and proposals, and in the end, we made compromises to try to meet in the middle. We have learned a lot as individuals and as a committee, and we hope you too have learned something new during this process. Thank you again for your engagement and support during these past few years.
For the last time,
The Movement Charter Drafting Committee
Anass Sedrati, Anne Clin, Ciell, Daria Cybulska, George Fodouop, Jorge Vargas, Manavpreet Kaur, Michał Buczyński, Pepe Flores, Richard Knipel, Runa Bhattacharjee.
Thank you
editI am catching up relatively late to this longer exchange, but I've read over your years of documentation, updates and hard look at all governance related questions concerning the broader movement. I am sure I speak for many when I express my appreciation and admiration for all the MCDC volunteers. Shushugah (talk) 18:28, 2 September 2024 (UTC)
Thank you very much!- thank you Movement Charter Drafting Committee! your work has been an exemplary example for others to follow!! your workload was immense, and the ideas you generated were prodigious!! anyone who may have differing opinions on these goals, would be glad to meet the very high bar you have set, in how to generate ideas, collect data, balance views, and to serve the community proudly and with integrity, excellence and determination!! bravo indeed!! I am proud to be a colleague of yours in my own small way, in our community. thank you, and happy editing to all of you!! Sm8900 (talk) 14:26, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
