Wikimedia Affiliates Network

The Wikimedia Affiliates Network ("WMAN") is a coalition of Wikimedia movement affiliates that unites and represents like-minded projects primarily outside the Wikimedia Foundation. This coalition works to identify then present their collective requests and opportunities to the Wikimedia Foundation and help establish deeper connections to the Wikimedia Foundation projects.

Participating organizations include, but are not necessarily limited to:

Purpose

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Wikimedia Affiliates Network unifies outside and smaller projects to improve communication and cooperation with WMF under the Wikimedia affiliation models
  • Liaison & Advocate
    • Assist projects seeking inclusion as "Thematic Organizations" or "Movement Partners" under the new Wikimedia affiliation models
    • Work with Wikimedia Foundation and chapters to assist in liaising and best practices for engagement with wikis under the scope of WMAN
    • Wikimedia Foundation grant proposals from participating project to support their WMAN eligible activities
    • Discussion on collaboration between Wikimedia projects and outside projects under the scope of WMAN
  • Resource
    • Discussion and collaboration among participating organizations
    • Sharing links to where specialist information is
    • Support and utilize proposed Ask.wikimedia.org (Q&A site) or Teahouse

Justification

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As Wikimedia expands its affiliation models to engage with outside organizations, this will provide a method for those outside entities to organize and represent their collective needs, ideas, etc. to the Wikimedia community. It is also an opportunity to help unite outside entities with projects already within the Wikimedia movement - ideally to mutually benefit each. This also helps level the playing field for projects of different sizes looking to engage with outside entities - as well as leveling the playing field in regards to representation of outside groups to Wikimedia Foundation.

Membership

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Eligibility

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If applicant organization includes a public wiki project, it must:

  • Be open for public editing
  • Operate on MediaWiki software
  • Support open-source software efforts when possible

Process

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  • Open enrollment via a subpage of the WMAN mainpage on meta wiki (presumably this page)
    • Period for commentary by existing members
    • Use Wikimedia consensus model to make determinations
  • Possible future use of Steering Committee to shepard process along

Proposed resources

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  • Wikimedia Project presence on Meta
    • Links to WMF projects that can serve as resources
    • Links to resources provided by participating projects
    • Information on useful MediaWiki resources (probably just a link/redirect or transclusion of a similar page within MW.org's 3rd party sysadmins project)
    • Links to resources provided by trusted partners of participating projects
  • Wikimedia housed listserv
  • Grants from Wikimedia Foundation for organizations qualifying under the Wikimedia affiliation models
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Interested projects

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Organization / Project Wiki / Program Contact Comments
Aequalitas Project WikiQueer Varnent (talk) - co-author and cheerleader of proposal

Chacowikis

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Chaco Culture is known for its innovation in a harsh and remote environment.

A Chacowiki (chapter content-wiki) is an independent free knowledge wiki site supported by a Wikimedia chapter, but that is not one of the Wikimedia Foundation projects.

It may focus on a specialist topic of local interest, and/or may take advantage of the hosting of materials under a more open national copyright regime.

List of Chacowiki sites
Add your chapter's!
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Proposed by

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  • Pharos (original page creation as Wikimedia Open Knowledge Network and originator of Chacowiki proposal)
  • Varnent (talk)

Proposal supporters

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Notes

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Possible alternate names

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  • Wikimedia Open Knowledge Network (possible nickname: "OKwiki")
  • Wikimedia Open Network of Knowledge
  • Wikimedia Knowledge Consortium

Possible inaugural members

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