Nikki: Welcome to episode 21 of WIKIMOVE. I'm Nikki Zeuner and with me is Eva Martin.
Eva: Hi, Nikki. We are recording this episode on June 18th, 2024.
Nikki: Eva and I are part of Wikimedia Deutschland's Governance and movement relations team. And in this podcast, we imagine the future of the Wikimedia movement. Eva, what are we talking about today?
Eva: In our last episode, we talked about the tech priorities of the global majority. And so today we are looking at a few projects designed and implemented by affiliates from the global majority based on the needs of their communities. There is also a global North partner in the room today with us, which also happens to be the organization Nikki and I are working for, and that's Wikimedia Deutschland. The reason for it is that Wikimedia Deutschland initiated this transnational partnership with a grant from a private foundation. Today, we invited three guests to talk about this partnership and how it can contribute to decentralizing software development in our movement. Nikki, go ahead, introduce the first guest.
Nikki: Thank you. Yeah, I'm very happy to introduce Benedict Udeh. He's a member of the Igbo Wikimedia user group and founder of the Igbo Wiki Data Hub, which is the Wikidata arm of the said user group. We'll learn more about that later, I'm sure. He's the founder and program coordinator for Wikimentor Africa as well. And he works for the Wikimedia Foundation as a movement communication specialist. But today he won't be wearing that hat, but just be speaking as a member of the Igbo Wikimedia User Group and Wikimentor Africa. So Benedict, so happy to have you. Where are you calling in from today?
Benedict: Yeah, thank you. I'm calling from Abuja, Nigeria, which is the capital of Nigeria, basically.
Nikki: Very cool.
Benedict: So yeah, happy to be here.
Eva: Happy to have you with us, Benedict. Our second guest is Raisha Abdillah.
Raisha is based in Jakarta, Indonesia, and she has been part of the Wikimedia Movement since 2016, starting as a Wikidata contributor. She has a background in computer engineering and she has organized many Wikidata related events in Indonesia, including workshops, talks, trainings and meetups. Right now, she's part of the Wikidata software collaboration team, and she will tell us in a minute what her role is in this project. But first, hi, Raisha, nice to have you with us today. Where are you calling in from?
Raisha: Hi, everyone. I'm calling from Jakarta, Indonesia. Nice to meet you.
Nikki: Thanks for being with us. And then we have from our own shop, Maria Lechner. Maria joined Wikimedia Deutschland in 2022, and she is the project manager of the project we're talking about today, Software Collaboration for Wikidata, which is funded by the Arcadia Fund. Maria manages the project resources, communicates with the stakeholders, provides support for the partners, and documents the process to ensure the whole movement can learn from this prototype of a transnational software collaboration. Hey Maria, where are you calling in from today?
Maria: Hey everybody, thank you for the invite. I'm sending my hellos from Berlin, Germany today.
Eva: Very cool. Nice. All right, so let's start with this interview. And I think before we start talking about the projects in themselves, I would love to hear about you guys and your personal motivations. Let's start maybe with you, Raisha. Can you tell us a bit more about what were your personal motivations to get involved in this project in the first place?
Raisha: So my personal motivation to get involved in this project actually comes from several aspects. So firstly, I have a desire to preserve the diverse languages that already exist in Indonesia. So Indonesia has more than 700 languages, so that's very, very big. And through my discussion with community members who speak languages in Indonesia, like Banjaris and Hokkien language, I have noticed a troubling trend. That is, there are fewer younger generations who are speaking their mother tongues. And these languages are often undocumented and also passed down orally, which makes these languages vulnerable to extinction. And that's why I want to preserve that. And the second is also because I am personally curious about the future development of technology within the Wikimedia movement. And I've always know that maintaining sister projects that we have, it has always been challenging. And in this regard, I think that the direction that we are going with Wikidata and then let's go to Vika data on Wikidata as well as wiki functions and abstract Wikipedia is a promising solution in my opinion. And I see that for me to become the backbone of this development is very, very exciting. And the last is also because this collaboration happened with Wikimedia Deutschland, I see that this is a once in a lifetime chance to learn directly from the Wikidata development team and also with the institutional knowledge that Wikimedia Deutschland have. So yeah, that's why I decided like very, very eagerly to join this project.
Eva: Thanks, Raisha. You're already teasing us about the content of the project. But before we start diving right in it, Benedict, what were your motivations to join this project?
Benedict: Yeah, for me, my motivation is quite, it's so many. But I could think of just picking one, which is my extreme passion for community groups. I say this because looking at one thing I love doing is teaching what I know and creating the platform. And I think one of what's this project and we'll talk more about it as we go down. But thinking about the project CRETE was more about creating a space that doesn't just allow only me to teach what I know, but other people as well to teach what they know. And in this case, it's also just growing this community, particularly for our African communities as well. Again, just keying into what Raisha just said. For me, it's more on Ebo on Africa, seeing how we can elevate our capacity, improve the capacity we have currently, being that we don't have so much capacity, particularly in the Wikimedia technical world, and trying to bring more Africans into it. It's what really motivates me in all of this.
Nikki: Thanks, Benedict. And Maria, do you want to pitch in and say what motivates you to run this project?
Maria: Yeah, sure. To me, wanting to be part of this project was honestly kind of a no-brainer. So as soon as I learned about it, I could immediately tell it was aligning with a lot of my core interests. I have a background in linguistics, so language diversity is something really, really dear to my heart. And I do think that the question of how languages are represented in the digital sphere accelerates this question of language representation and resources allocated to communities with those kind of languages, so to say. And additionally, I have like this little streak of claimant term as social justice warrior in me. So we're really feel like I want to be very active part of this. So we want to try to do my best and bring my best to the table to support initiatives or groups who are doing this very, very important work. So yeah, I was really enamored the moment I heard about this. And I'm so, so lucky to be joining and working with those great partners on my side.
Nikki: Great. So staying with you, can you tell us a little bit about, I know you weren't there from the beginning, you took over sort of the middle of the road. Can you tell us a little bit about the genesis of the project? Why did sort of Wikimedia Deutschland start this initiative and maybe a little bit about the role we play in it? And then also I'd be super curious how we found these great partners.
Maria: Yeah, sure. So. It's an interesting story, actually, and to be quite frank, in the very, very beginning. So before Wikimedia Deutschland actually conceptualized what this project would look like and what it could mean to both the organization itself and to the movement, we at Wikimedia Deutschland were facing a problem that needed a kind of quite pragmatic approach. So our software team was spreading themselves too thin and there were too many projects at hand so that the people who were in charge at the time were thinking of a solution on how to tackle this problem. Well, one of the ideas was why aren't we looking for work packages that we can kind of isolate and then kind of hand over to a different development team somewhere else. So this was the initial problem and then idea to resolving this problem. However, as much as this sounds kind of like very matter of fact and not very idealistic at this stage, it really quickly involved in something real, yeah, of real importance and bigger impact. Because we did realize when we were looking at, OK, who could we hand over this work package? We did realize, OK, apart from Wikimedia Germany and the foundation based in San Francisco, there are hardly any teams that could, at this point in time, handle work packages like that. So there's hardly any substantial software development done apart from Germany and the US. And this was actually quite an interesting realization. And it led to a lot of questions that we kind of had to face and delve deeper into. Like who is developing software in our movement and for whom? And whose needs are being catered to when only actors from the global north develop software. And software development being one of our like backbones of the products that are crucial to the movement, we realized, okay. So who holds the power in software development and why so, so to say. So this, we realized is way, way, way bigger topic than initially thought of. And we realized this is not just like a handover of something, but a building, like a first step of building something long lasting, hopefully. And yeah, so it's not just a project, but a process in a sense that hopefully, yeah, never stops, or at least not stops in a sense that it has to stop, but in the fact that yeah, all actors are not just empowered, but like, yeah, empowered to do their thing in their software development. So it's a continuous effort in a sense. And so while it was the initial idea, sorry, I'm really, really going back into a Wikimedia Deutschland history books, so to say. Yeah, this project has changed a lot since then, but honestly, to the better. And we are still aiming for this. So we're still trying to build what we call a software hub. We're not super happy with this term, but yeah, this project is, so to say, our way for prototyping what this could mean. OK, so how can we build those partnerships as collaborations and then have teams all around the world to do their software development for the movement, so to say?
Nikki: Very cool. So I can already see your vision. So how did you find the partners? So I'm curious about that. I know that we had some problems in the beginning, right?
Maria: Right. It was not easy as far as I can tell. Again, I wasn't part of the project at that point in time because there's so many factors factoring into a decision like that. So of course, there's questions of feasibility and viability and questions of maturity of teams who might be interested in doing that, but also what are our resources, so to say. Then additionally, just especially since we're talking about language, what are language communities that are especially interesting for us? So in terms of variety of languages that a specific team might be able to cover, but also, again, which are heavily under-resourced and so forth. So this was quite challenging to align all those factors away in the notice, quote unquote, more important than others. And as far as I understood, there were different ways of actually finding our partners in the end with the EBU user group actually banding. I can probably share more of that than I do. But as far as I know. During a Wikimania session where this initiative was introduced to the Viki movement, Bandit already joined and showed interest. And so there were follow -up discussions and meetings where we together, so Wikimedia Deutschland and the EPO user group, kind of developed what this partnership could look like. And yeah, they had an amazing idea with Wikimenta Africa, which you're going to learn about later. And this is, as far as I know, how this partnership came to blossom.
Eva: Okay, I would love to hear from the partners themselves. So Benedict, do you maybe want to add something to how this partnership came to life? And how did you decide to be working with Wikimedia Deutschland? Because it's not just about how we selected the partners, right? It's a partnership. So tell us about this.
Benedict: Yeah, I mean, for me, it was actually something that came just right in time. And I say this because, I mean, I was pretty new to the movement first. I think I joined the movement, or I should have mentioned this, my motivation, but yeah, I joined the movement 2018, but then again became very active 2019 when I learned about Wikidata. Because in my head I was like, Wikidata is so easy to add content to, so why are people not doing this? And at the time, remember that in Africa, we didn't have a lot of people doing stuff around Wikidata. It was mostly translation on Wikipedia from English to the languages. Particularly for us in Ebo Wikipedia, it was more on you see different editor terms around translating to Ebo Wikipedia. For me, fast forward a little bit. When I learned about Wikidata, it led me to create awareness around Wikidata. So I had this different events, campaigns, around Wikidata. And when I saw the interest was more than what I initially assumed because initially I just did it for just the person, the people in my community. That's the Igbo Wikimedia user group. People who are interested were beyond the Igbo Wikimedia user group. I mean, almost everyone was interested in Wikidata. And so I had to switch to create a sort of like the hub. I call it hub for Wikidata, which is the IG Wikidata hub. That was just to, for anyone who is interested, who is in Africa, who is interested to learn about Wikidata, not necessarily contribute to Wikidata, just want to know about Wikidata, can join the hub. And then we ended up having like this WhatsApp group where we can share communications, if we're having events and all of that, which they kicked off, blossomed. Right now we have a lot of members. I'm talking about over 300 members on that group. And we moved on. Yeah. And so fast forward to, I think, 2021 or 2022. I can't remember exactly, either 2021 or early 2022. We then had this, 2021, we had this Wikidata conference. But before then, there was the Wikimedia hackathon. And remember COVID was very much in play at the time. So no global events was happening, like physical events. All events were still online. And so I participated and that was my very first hackathon, I think, participated in it. Participated also, that was also my, I think my first or second Wikidata conference that I attended. Again, it was easy to attend because it was online. So I participated in that. And one thing I observed from this participation was that we didn't have a lot of Africans in there in terms of participation, which then pricked me to ask, why is that so? Does that mean because I'm from Nigeria I know for a fact that we have a lot of technical developers in Nigeria working with like Google's and all that the tech companies So I'm wondering why don't we have people, technical developers who are interested in Wikimedia discussions or the Wikimedia ecosystem and then in I think towards the last day of the the events Maria, the other Maria, spoke about this partnership proposal that they are looking for partners to work with them on the Wikidata software collaboration. And for me, it was like immediately it was clicking with me, like how do I get our Africans to be part of this technical space? And so for me, I was looking at that and so we started off the discussion. I reached out to Maria as well as I remember reaching out to Mohammed as well. He was very, very instrumental in this because while I was like structuring how the program should work, I had to consult with Mohammed to discuss, okay, this is what I have the ambition and this is how I feel it should work in the African climate. And for me, it was more on mentorship. So, which hence the name WikiMentor Africa. It was like, I knew that it wasn't going to be the regular thing we usually do, which is just have a session and leave it. But I knew that we needed to have like an active way of actually pulling people into the technical space, but not just pull them and leave them, but sort of like guide them on what to do. So hence, we proceeded and we had this discussion. It was a back and forth discussion, trying to understand the program. And we ended up shaping the program so much well as it is today. Again, might be sharing so much about it more, but. This is how we came to be. We started off the partnership. It was awesome. So yeah, I'm going to just pause here for a while and let you explain it.
Eva: We'd love to hear from Raisha. Can you tell us what's your part of the story? How did the partnership come to life?
Raisha: Okay. So about the partnership itself, initially it began when the Wikimedia Indonesia board of executive members approached Wikimedia.com when Wikimedia Deutschland staff, so Maria Hoschke at that time, post a call for software collaboration for Wikidata and it was shared on the Wikidata mailing list. So the board of executive approached Maria and then after that they discussed about the possibility of Wikimedia Indonesia becoming part of the collaboration itself. And at that time, I'm not part of someone who makes decision making in the Wikimedia Indonesia, but since I've been a technical coordinator at Wikimedia Indonesia for nearly four years back then, and also have been working with Wikidata, the board of executive then asked me to join this collaboration initially as the product manager for the software development itself. And when I get that offer. I was very thrilled to be part of this collaboration because in my past experience working with Wikidata and also helping other researchers who have built tools for Wikidata and also other Wikimedia projects, back then we were only a part that supports them, but we haven't yet built the capacity in-house. So when I knew that this chance existed back then, I think that back then we have a collective vision to connect with others who are very passionate about language and also technology in our region and also to build the collective capacity together. And so this project is not just that. We also aim to build a software hub within the Wikimedia movement. And in the beginning, it was also very clear that Wikimedia Deutschland also have hosted multiple knowledge sharing sessions with us and sharing that this vision of understanding that the current software development is usually very global north-centric and then now we can start it here in Indonesia. But about this development, we want to start it small and we started by having an initial task to just focus on the lexicographical data and to empower the community in Indonesia by building tools for them that can help them to contribute to lexicographical data. And other than that, the initial part also of the partnership is to nurture relationship and knowledge sharing session between Wikimedia Indonesia and Wikimedia.com. So Wikimedia Indonesia can also grow as an organization. So that was the initial part of it.
Nikki: Thanks, Raisha. So there's, I feel like we're, it's that elephant picture that Mariana had, we're looking at all the different parts of the elephant body and learning more about what was going on. Very cool. So let's talk a little bit what you guys actually have been doing since this whole thing started. Maybe we'll go back to Benedict. So what has happened since the beginning of the project? What is it actually about? Maybe in a few words, what are you building? And what's your role in the project?
Benedict: Yeah, thank you. Again, the project itself, Wikimental Africa. What is it about? Wikimental Africa, I mean, if you've been guessing since now this is it. It is about bringing Africans into the technical space of Wikimedia. But it's not just that, it's also creating sustainability for Wikimedia tools. And how does this work? We believe that by bringing more Africans into the technical space, we're not just bringing more Africans, we're bringing more hands, more people to come and learn about the Wikimedia technical space, which means that more people will now know how to do or help fix bugs that are plaguing existing tools, as well as even create tools that are related to African needs and issues. But yes, this is what the project is about, bringing more Africans into the technical space.
Eva: A follow up question, Benedict, for the people listening to us who may not be part of the tech community. Can you maybe give just one concrete example? So what could be a tool that would serve the need of the African communities?
Benedict: Yes, this would also come to the question which was what has happened so far. Again, what we usually do is that every month we have this. So our approach is that every month we have these events that last for two to three days. Again, when you hear two to three days, it's not the full day. That's just like a one-on-hour each day. Again, for these events, we invite people who are experienced in tool creation or the technical spaces of Wikimedia a tool creator or a technical document documentation writer, we invite you to the platform for the event. And then we give you this platform where you would like to use the word pitch, where you pitch a technical topic. Again, the reason why we don't use the word teach in this is because we don't believe that you can actually teach within the two days event or let's call it two hours or four hours event, you can really teach a technical thing per se. And so what we do is in this, we invite you to come pitch this event, pitch this topic. So it could be like a tool you're creating or you want to create or a tool you created before or it's basically a technical topic you want to just talk about. Now, what this allows is that once you come and talk to participants, Africans about this what motivates you, maybe the issue you are currently seeing and you feel like you need to create a tool to solve this. Once you have this conversation, you're likely going to pick interest from Africans who would either prefer solution or just generally interested to learn how to do such a thing. Or if it's a tool you've created, want to learn how to help maintain that tool. And so after the events, these interested participants then reach out to us requesting for your mentorship. And once they reach out, we'll give you the list of persons who are interested for your mentorship. You pick the number of persons you want to pick. Ideally, we'll tell you that we don't want you to pick more than five persons. Again, the reason is because we don't want you to be overwhelmed. And now when I say no more than five person, you're wondering how many persons do we usually have in this event? And yes, to tell you the number of interest we have for every event we have, again, remember, I would do this every month. We average over 150 persons per event. So that's to tell you the number of people who are interested. The number keeps growing even more. I think the last one we had, we have over 300 persons who joined. I'm not talking about the cumulative sum I'm talking about for a particular session. Imagine watching your Zoom, having a Zoom meeting and you have over 300 persons who are tuning in to learn about a particular topic. So we have this interest. In terms of what have happened in terms of like the example you were asking of. We had our very first hackathon recently, earlier this year in January. We had this hackathon where we focused on one tool. And what was this tool? So the thing was the ISA tool, ISA tool. Some of you might be familiar with the tool. If you've ever participated in the WikiLove Africa contest, you probably must have seen this tool or used this tool yourself. The tool in itself is arguably one of Africa's largest tool in terms of media images. And so the tool was having issue prior to the hackathon. Some little bug issues here and there, and it wasn't allowing the organizers of the campaign to use the tool. And so when they reached out to us in Wikimedia Africa asking for help, if we can help fix the tool, we said, why not? So we had this hackathon and we said, okay, let's have this hackathon, which was going to be our very first hackathon by the way. And the hackathon, unlike every other hackathon, the hackathon was structured to be very beginner's friendly, such that anyone who just you're interested, you don't know how to come on board and do this. You come to the hackathon, you will learn everything you need to learn to contribute to that tool. And so we ended up fixing the tool, at least not completely fix the tool, but fixing it such that it is now currently being used for this year's campaign as well. So which is awesome. I mean, 90 % of the persons who joined the hackathon was their first time ever attending any hackathon, not even Wikimedia hackathon, but any hackathon. So for us, it was one milestone that we really crossed and it was so exciting to see that we were able to solve that issue. But yeah, we have other tools, but because I've been talking for so long, I don't want to take up the whole space. So I'm going to pass here.
Nikki: We can hear your passion for sure. And it made it come to life a little more concretely. What's going on there? I mean, I'm also thinking, I always, whenever I'm in Africa or I'm in touch with African communities, I see this enthusiasm for learning and for sharing and for, you know, and I love that you guys are doing it through mentoring, that the Wikimedia movement has taken on a whole other role in people's lives, which is, you know, advance them professionally and in their skills and all those things, which is not necessarily what some of the northern bigger organizations think of as an appropriate motivation to join the movement, but I think it's just wonderful. But we need to move to Raisha, right? So what have you guys been doing? What has your role been? Just tell us a little bit the next part of the story from your end.
Raisha: Okay, so since the beginning of the project, a lot of things has happened. Firstly, at the initial stage of the project, it was only me, but now we have a team consisting of product designer and then product owner and also com com staff. And also this team has been with me since our time in Wikimedia Indonesia. And we have conducted research on the Wikidata community in Indonesia and also gathering insights into the user profiles of Wikidata contributors in Indonesia and also developing the prototype of the software that we are building. And other than that, we also have organized events related to riskographical data. However, we also learned that sometimes what we planned at the beginning didn't go as smoothly as we expected. So in September 2023, Wikimedia Indonesia Board of Executives decided to withdraw from the project completely despite numerous efforts from the software collaboration team to discuss and build the capacity together and also efforts and numerous supports from Wikimedia Deutschland towards them. And at this part, at the initial stage of the project, you know, we didn't expect that governance is actually would be our biggest hurdle because as we progress, we saw that there is a significant differences in how we feel governance, how we feel organizational leadership, and then also transparency, accountability, especially when we are developing a software hub in our region. When we talk about software, sometimes we only think that, okay, it has to be tech, but we also need to actually think deeper about it, that there are people behind that. And if the software is going to be developed in bodies or affiliates, then we also need to learn more about the situation within that affiliates. And we learn about this through this project. And during this project, we also learned about the importance of having feedback and also bottom-up approach when we are going to make decisions. And even though this withdrawal certainly put us in shock at first, however, I am actually beyond thankful that despite all the hardships, our team still stays in this project and we share the same vision and also our wonderful community also still believes in the vision that we share together. And on top of that, we are also very grateful that Wikimedia Deutschland also continue to trust us as the partner in this and to continue developing this project. Now, for the state of this project itself, we are still continue developing the tools. And just at the beginning of this month, we have on boarded the engineers. For the tools that we are going to develop, it is going to address our findings with lexicographical data. So first, we understand that there is a high barrier of entry for the newcomers to edit on lexicographical data. And then second, there is a limited mobile accessibility, which usually requires users to switch to desktop mode whenever they want to edit from their mobile phone. And then third, we also understand that there is a knowledge gap that exists in the technical terms and also documentation between the newcomers and also the already existing long-timer lexicographical data community which might lead to mistakes from the newcomers despite that they have good intentions in contributing to that. So we aim to minimize this issue, which is why we developed a tool called Lexica. So Lexica is a web-based tool which we designed to facilitate micro-contribution to Lexicographica data on Wikidata. And for Lexica itself, we are very focused to make it mobile-friendly and also focus on one-time activity at a time because we understand that when people edit on-script data, they might become intimidated and they may also become confused about which lexeme should I add first. And we want to minimize that confusion by making sure that with Lexica, at the initial iteration, we want to make it easy for the contributors to link existing lexemes. So already existing lexemes that hasn't yet linked to Wikidata item so that they can directly pick Wikidata item that should be linked to that like seems. So just one simple activity. And then after that, in the future, we also plan to include additional activity that is possible for like seems like adding audio pronunciations and also adding image for like seems and so on.
Eva: Thanks for sharing this, Raisha. And thanks to you, Benedict as well. Now I feel like everything is even more tangible. And I find it very impressive like to hear about all the work that you've been doing with your with your local communities. Now, I think I would like to look a bit at the big picture and how the work that you're doing in your local communities actually contributes to building the Wikimedia movement, right? And like gets us closer to our strategic vision. And I would like to hear from you, Benedict, can you say maybe in a few words, how do you think that the movement benefits from those initiatives that contribute to decentralizing the way we develop software in the movement?
Benedict: Yeah, thank you so much. I feel like, again, to respond to this, you have to look at it from the African perspective as well. So imagine, I mean, so the typical well-developed country, which is probably a country in the global north, has power, has electricity, has the basic needs, right? And now imagine another country or another region where power is still a very big discussion in terms of electrical power. We still have a very big discussion in terms of internet. Like we know Africa has like expensive internet rates. And so if you're developing one thing that wouldn't naturally come to mind, if you're developing for a product from the global nodes, you might assume everybody has internet, everybody has power. So you might end up developing a tool that has a very huge bandwidth. And so you not think about it in such a way that would someone in Africa be able to download that? Would someone in Africa be able to use that? And so I feel like one thing that projects such as ours help to do is to create that additional perspective given that. So it's not just about we working in silos, but the mentorship also affords that you'll be able to share what you know with someone else. So like this exchange of capacity has been done. So the exchange from the African to we're not just talking about the technical skills now, we've also been made aware of the challenges that other clients are facing. I will give a typical example of this and then wrap up on that. Our very first mentorship, mentor who came on board during the program, Andrea, he's someone who is very passionate about biodiversity data. And so when he came, he spoke about biodiversity data and the tool he created, which is basically a tool that takes data from iNaturalist app. I don't know if you're familiar with iNaturalist app, which is basically an app that takes that captures just like the name sounds natural, nature. So biodiversity data, I mean, data is about plants, about animals, about birds. And so what he did was he created a tool that, and this was before he came on board as a mentor, he created a tool that takes data from iNaturalist and creates a stub in Wikipedia. And again, if you don't know what stub is, stub is basically just like a skeletal, forgive my definition, skeletal article. Basically someone can go back and just fill in the article, make it bigger, make it better. So he created that. It takes this data from iNaturalist, which is a completely different app and bring it on the Wikimedia space. So not just creating the stub, but you also post the images and the data itself on Wikidata and Commons as well. When he came on board and became a mentor, now the stub view that doesn't, as I'm speaking to you now, doesn't just create stubs anymore in English. It creates stubs in Dabani, which is a language in Ghana. It creates stubs in Igbo, obviously, which is our affiliate Wikipedia. Again, it creates tabs in other language, Egalah Wikipedia as well. These are African language Wikipedias. So you can see how just through this mentorship program alone, we're able to take a tool that does just for one Wikipedia and replicates that for other Wikipedias. So imagine what it could do for other tools that exist currently. It's not just enough to create a tool, but to have people to use that tool is something else that our mentorship can help with.
Nikki: Thank you, Benedict. So moving back to Raisha, our last podcast, we talked about this global majority tech priority manifesto, lots of words strung up, but essentially a list of recommendations that various members from the global majority put together also based on some research on their needs. And so we're wondering how does this relate to what you guys are doing? So in that tech manifesto, they say that technology products and services should be designed by the global majority for the global majority, in contrast to our current approach where tech is mostly produced in the global north by the big players. So anyway, maybe you can take it from here and give us a little bit of an idea of how this relates to those recommendations.
Riasha: I personally acknowledge the Global Majority Tech Priority Manifesto initiative and then also the question that it addresses. And for me, decentralizing software development is very vital because it allows for diverse perspectives and also solutions tailored to the needs of the global majority. For example, in our case, we tried to make sure that the community is involved in the very early stage of the development itself. So before we are building, we always make sure that it always stems from the problem that the community actually face. And it's not just something that we build because it's cool, but it has to solve the already existing problems that happens in the region. And then we also understand that if we continuously engage with the communities worldwide, we can also create technology that also more inclusive and also more effective for them. For example, there are parts of the world where people are mainly editing Wikidata or other Wikimedia projects through their mobile phone and not through desktop. Right now, it was not as prioritized, for example. And then regarding this decentralization itself, for me, personally, I don't want to see this as a North versus South issue because if we keep seeing that as, okay, this is a versus versus something, I don't think that would be better for us to move forward together. Instead, I would like to see it as a chance for us to continue to develop together and then see how this collaboration could actually bridge the already existing knowledge to the other part of the world and vice versa. So the knowledge that already exists in the other part of the world also to the others. So how we can form a sustainable bridge. And this is very, very important. And we also have to acknowledge that in our approach, for example, we also have so much silos within our diverse community because this part of silos is also a problem of decentralization. How can we move together when we also want to acknowledge that there are silos within our movement? So it's important. For the very explicit approach for this, for example, in the group in Indonesia, we have multiple Wikidata groups. One is in WhatsApp and one is in Telegrams and it communicates in Indonesia. But we also know that there are like Wikidata global Telegram channel and how can we move information from these multiple channels to each other. It's actually very, very challenging and we have to acknowledge that. And then the second part is also, I think it's important for us to also reach out to other existing initiatives or initiatives that is aligned more or less with what we want to do because we see that similar initiatives tend to replicate in different times. And sometimes people jus recognize that it is similar when it was being presented or like after several years later because of the current situation of the meta Wikimedia where sometimes it's hard for people to find out something. So we need to understand that if we want to make a global initiative, we also need to make sure that we are handling the knowledge management part in our movement better.
Nikki: That's definitely that was also part of the strategy recommendations is one around getting better at our knowledge management, knowing better what everyone is doing and how we can share experiences. And then the other is putting a little plug here for capacity exchange is a project that also comes out of the Movement Strategy. It's done by Wikimedia Brazil, who's also very active in the tech sphere. And they're developing the capacity exchange, which is another way for people in the Wikimedia Movement to find each other, just to say, OK, I need to know how to do this or that in Wikidata. Or can somebody walk me through the basics of lexicographical data or something like that? And those are queries they can put into the capacity exchange and then find people, not just like a meta page, but actual people who will support them as mentors. So plug for that. So Maria, speaking of sharing learnings and sharing experience and connecting the movement and knowledge management, how have you guys thought about how to share what we learned from these partnerships and how we share that in the larger movement?
Maria: Yeah, so since these partnerships have been conceptualized as a prototype, the idea is that similar we will have additional projects like this and that also other chapters, other movement actors can build onto this and see, okay, how have you done it? How can we do it? What can we learn from you? So this idea of sharing and how important this is for all of us, not just within this collaboration, but within the whole movement was at the core, I would say, of this project from the start. So up until now, we've shared little nuggets of knowledge, I would say, so far. So at Wikimania, we have lightning talks where we update where we're at and what have been the biggest issues or struggles in the last year. However, those little nuggets only, again, are snackable info sessions. So it's not something yet really embedded in a bigger picture sense of this project.
Nikki: It's only accessible to the people who are at the conference at that point.
Maria: Exactly. Yes, absolutely. I mean, we still obviously have like a meta and the talks and so forth. But yes, what is like even more important for us to always like frame it as this is like the status quo kind of knowledge we have, because sometimes you do learn and, you know, looking back at something, how this might or might not have been the right or wrong decision or approach and so forth. So what is really important for us to continuously document this process for now internally to then have a roadmap that will be presented at large. How this will actually take shape, so apart from Wikimania and apart from, you know, a post on DIF and so forth, we are kind of still like trying to figure out this. So trying to reach as many movement actors as possible and also to make sure that there are various, we're doing this in various formats and ways. But yeah, this is still something we are kind of figuring out.
Eva: Maria, you just mentioned some of your plans for this partnership, for the future of the partnership. What are some of the next steps? You mentioned some already, right? Sharing the knowledge, going to conferences, talking about it. What else?
Maria: What else? Well, one exciting thing is that we were able to invite two additional partners to do software collaboration and building onto the Vicky DataRest API. So this gives us another two learning opportunities to be implemented in this kind of project. So this is very exciting. And then we are currently in the middle of finding ways of continuing this project. So both financially, but also conceptually understanding how can we grow, but not just for the sake of growing, but also how this can again contribute to the Wikidata community and the movement at large. And so this means obviously conceptualizing various ways, reflecting on what we have been doing so far, understanding who are other movement actors who would be interested in joining a partnership like this. So this is all very, very still in this creative process, I guess, but also, apart from this conceptualizing, it also is about the money. So we're currently looking for funding opportunities and yeah.
Eva: And make those projects sustainable?
Maria: Exactly.
Eva: So Benedict, what about you? What are the next steps in the implementation of your project?
Benedict: Yeah, I mean, for us, the next steps we're looking at is again, having, I think the major thing other than the consistent monthly events we have but we're also looking at having one other global event, which is basically going to be the second hackathon we'll be having. And this time around, we're hoping to have it a French -focused hackathon. So you will be seeing this a lot, unlike the previous one where we had all the sessions in English and then interpretation in French. For this particular one, we want to flip it. And so all the sessions will be in French and then interpretation in English. So, this is what we're looking forward to next and hopefully this should be coming at the end of the year. So yes, looking forward to that.
Eva: Sounds exciting. Yeah. Raisha, is there a particular highlight of the next steps that your project is going to take that you would like to highlight here?
Raisha: Yes. So one is obviously to continue to develop Lexica and also release it to the Wikidata community. And then next is to engage with other stakeholders and also communities within the Asia region because we know that languages within the Asia region actually transcends country and we want them to also be involved in the lexicographical data community. And then last part is to continue building the technical capacity within our region, not just in terms of us internally as a team, but also for the other people within the region who wants to contribute in the tech side of Wikimedia movement.
Eva: And looking ahead, Raisha, there is something I'd like to mention. You actually brought it up in our prep meeting. You mentioned the movement charter, which is a document that aims to, and I'm quoting from Meta, it aims to make it easier for stakeholders to collaborate with each other in a manner which fosters the Wikimedia movement vision. And I would like to ask you, Raisha, how do you think that the implementation of the movement charter if it gets ratified, how do you think that it could impact your project and similar initiatives in the future?
Raisha: Okay, so the movement charter would have significant impact in the similar initiatives and also our project by providing a solid framework for governance, transparency and also accountability within the Wikimedia movement itself. And also, since the charter also emphasizes that we're going to have an equitable resource distribution and also community empowerment for these initiatives. I think that would be important so that all of these smaller initiatives can strive and be sustainable in the future. And also with this, however, I want to highlight the aspect related to the Wikimedia Movement bodies, which is the introduction of the Global Council. I think it will be interesting to observe, especially how it's going to influence the technology advancement and also the decision-making process within our movement. I'm curious because with the global council, of course, we hope that it can give us room to make it more diverse, but also adding a layer on top of decision making related to technology that might also impose challenges regarding how to manage different needs of different stakeholders within the movement. So I think that would be very, very interesting to see. And then also the establishment of the hubs itself, I think we also play a crucial role in the tech development within the region itself. And how is this structure will continue to support a project like us and also other initiatives. We need to take a look how are we going to coordinate these different bodies and also the project itself in the future.
Nikki: Thanks, Raisha. That's a very good connection to something we've all been working on so hard. So moving on to a little bit the future and our wishes and our visions. Benedict, do you want to share maybe what are your wishes for your project and how it could be sustainable, how it could go on?
Benedict: Yeah, I mean, what would I wish but to have the project sustainable, sustained for five, 10 years to have even more models built after it. I think that is at the ground of it all. Our greatest wish is to not just even have it sustainable, but have it actually yield results that we hope it will yield. Again, for us also, part of the things we're also looking for is to also have this model replicated, not just for Africa anymore, but for even other regions and climes and communities to take up the model and replicate the same thing and do the same thing. My greatest wish is to see the different technical exchanges that will be going on within the Wikimedia world in itself. So not just the global north or the global south, but just everyone exchanging their technical capacity such that we will be setting the pace in terms of the free knowledge. And so that is my greatest wish for the project.
Nikki: That sounds beautiful. If you could have changed something in the early stages of the project, what would you, what are you hoping or what are you wishing that you would have changed in hindsight? my God, that's a lot of what I should have. And why?
Raisha: Okay. So for that, I think when we are talking about software development, sometimes there is a misconception that the software development is only a single task that we build something and then stop. However, at the initial stage, we actually have to already think about the vision of what we are doing itself and what's going to be the plan for the software's future because a software needs to be maintained. And also it means that since the beginning, we have to anticipate multiple steps ahead, understanding the long-term sustainability of the software that we built. And so this also relates with our vision. And then the second part is we also have to recognize the stakeholders that is involved, not just the development team, but also the key leaders within our communities and ensuring that everyone is on the same page. So we want to continue to make sure that we communicate what we are doing in a better way. And also making sure that when we are building something, we also discuss the governance aspects in depth and also establish a clear and Action Nobles guidelines to prevent future misalignments. And the last part, I think we need to instill a shared vision towards our improvement. For example, in terms of software development, I think we haven't yet seen what is going to be one way that we are going to go forward together. This vision needs to be shared with everyone. So when we face hurdles and challenges, then everyone can still remember what is the initial vision of this, like why we are doing this in the first place. And having that reiterate over and over again, I think it's very important.
Nikki: So famous, not last words, but famous mid-project realizations, I think it's very important stuff. So coming back to visions, if you want to ask the visionary question?
Eva: Yes, that's how we like to end our little conversations here would love to hear from you about your vision for the future of the movement, your hope. So imagine if all the cool things that work about your project could be scaled, what would the movement look like in 2030? Benedict, share your vision with us.
Benedict: Okay. Again, my vision would be, you know how we always say, imagine a world in which at this point I feel by that time, if everything works out well and skills, then we don't just imagine anymore we actually start living in a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.
Eva: That's nice. Raisha, what's your vision? If everything works perfectly, where will the movement be in 2030?
Raisha: Okay, so if everything works smoothly, the movement would be vibrant, inclusive and collaborative space where everyone can also participate and co-create. Sounds great. Maria, can you top that? What's your vision for the future of the movement?
Maria: I see it as a collaborative, cooperative, coordinated, creative and courageous project that just keeps on giving to a community that has given so much to itself.
Eva: And I think with those words, that's a wrap of the 21st episode of We Can Move. Thanks to our guests, Benedict, Raisha and Maria for talking about your project, sharing your insights, your enthusiasm. It was great learning more about your work. Thanks to everyone for listening. Nikki, read us out!
Nikki: WIKIMOVE is a production of Wikimedia Deutschland and its governance and movement relations team and is available on podcast apps and YouTube. Our music was composed and produced by Rory Gregory and it's available under CC by SA on Commons. And so are all of our episodes.
Eva: You can visit our WIKIMOVE meta page to listen to previous episodes and you can suggest topics and guests for the next ones. You can also use our Meta page to react to the podcast and continue the conversation, connect with other listeners and subscribe to always be notified of our new episode release.
Nikki: If you want to reach out to us, please do it through the WIKIMOVE Meta page or you can send us an email. All the relevant links are available in the show notes. Tchussi, ciao, au revoir. Can you say goodbye in your languages? Ibo, come on. Come on, I don't know. Thank you. Can you say goodbye in your language? Thank you everybody. Bye bye.