Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Late August 2024 update/mapping

Share your thoughts on the mapping exercise!

This is a discussion page for the mapping exercise of a Movement Charter. If you are interested in providing your input or have questions of clarity or understanding, please share your thoughts here. A support team for the mapping exercise is monitoring this page and will be engaging with the input and questions received. Thank you for your interest in the topic! --KVaidla (WMF) (talk) 12:02, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello @KVaidla (WMF). Could you please mark the page for translation? In what languages can contributions happen? Thanks. Joalpe (talk) 12:18, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you so much, Joalpe, for caring for accessibility in these conversations! Obrigado! I have now marked the page for translation. The contributions can be done in any language - we will figure out the translation on our side. --KVaidla (WMF) (talk) 13:15, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Question about people involved, timeline

@KVaidla (WMF) Thanks in advance for helping with this effort. A question - I saw several mentions of this mapping exercise but not who was going to do it or be involved with it, nor what the timeline is for this. Can you please clarify these points? Thank you. FULBERT (talk) 15:31, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, FULBERT, for your interest in the mapping exercise and for your clarifying questions. I am providing here an initial high level answer and, as we progress with the design and delivery plan of the mapping exercise, I will follow up soon with more detail on the content page.

Involvement

As currently stated on the content page “This work is being organised by the Governance Committee of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, in collaboration with other stakeholders who wish to remain engaged (e.g. affiliates, interested contributors, former members of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee).“

In practice this means that

• Currently the Wikimedia Foundation staff members are preparing a proposal on the scope and delivery plan of the :*mapping exercise, which will be shared here on meta for public review and for the approval of the Governance Committee.
• For the qualitative analysis part, which the mapping essentially is, there needs to be a smaller, yet representative circle of people closely involved to make the mapping itself functional while balancing interpretative bias. The proposal will include a suggestion on who should do this analysis.
• There will also be ways for anyone interested to engage, here on the talk page to provide feedback on the mapping and next steps.

Timeline

As proposed in the appendices of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees resolution on the Movement Charter ratification, there is an idea of experimenting with 3 pilots starting from January 2025. While there will be separate conversations related to the set up of these pilots, the mapping exercise is expected to inform and feed into this experimentation. As a result, the mapping exercise is expected to be completed by the end of the calendar year 2024. The proposal being worked on will include a recommended timeline for the process.

I hope you and others interested in this work find these responses helpful. As said, as soon as we have more concrete information, it will be added to the content page. --KVaidla (WMF) (talk) 20:38, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@KVaidla (WMF) Thank you for the update, and I imagine many will be eagerly following for more information as this process begins. FULBERT (talk) 21:23, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

What's a 'mapping exercise'?

There doesn't seem to be a definition of 'mapping exercise' on English Wikipedia or English Wiktionary. Could we have a better definition of what this is and why it's something that benefits the mission? TomDotGov (talk) 19:06, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I came here to write the same comment. Libcub (talk) 21:37, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

@KVaidla (WMF) Could you answer this, please? TomDotGov (talk) 04:07, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, TomDotGov and Libcub, for the clarifying question and your kind patience regarding the response!

Indeed it is somewhat complicated to find the English Wikipedia article that helps best contextualize the proposed exercise. Essentially, the reference here is to the first meaning of “mapping” in English wiktionary, i.e. “the process of making maps”. The map referred to here is a kind of cognitive map in its extended meaning. As noted in the respective article: “because of the broad use and study of cognitive maps, it has become a colloquialism for almost any mental representation or model.”

The proposed exercise will focus on a social cognitive mapping of agreements, disagreements, and inclarities related to Movement Charter and its content across the Wikimedia movement. As stated on the content page: “The final product will be a summary of agreements, disagreements, and ambiguities that will help us as a movement find a practical path forward over the next several months.” In practice, I expect this to look like a list of topics where there are agreement, a list of topics where there are disagreements, and other details.

I am available for further clarifications regarding the definition or content of the mapping exercise! --KVaidla (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@KVaidla (WMF) So, my thinking here is that by using the term "mapping exercise", what this project is trying to accomplish is being wildly obfuscated. The first definition of mapping "The process of making maps." When I look up map, we get "A visual representation of an area, whether real or imaginary, showing the relative positions of places and other features." and "A graphical or logical representation of any structure or system, showing the positions of or relationships between its components." I don't think either of those really apply here.

Reading w:cognitive map it seems like it's primarily spatial (which doesn't apply here), and while the extension applies, it sure seems like the word "mapping" is getting very far from the standard definitions her. Given that language clarity is something that's very important, especially when English is not every reader's first language, I'd like to know why such a hard-to-understand term was chosen.

(I'm honestly not sure what the difference between the 'mapping exercise' and requests for comment is. Both seem like they'd establish agreements, disagreements, and lack of clarity, but the RfC process is well defined.)

I'd hope that before this goes wider, more thought could be given to making things clear and well defined. TomDotGov (talk) 20:44, 1 September 2024 (UTC)