Wikimedia LGBT Community Wikimedian

Thanks to everyone for comments and suggestions. We have now circulated to the Affiliates Chair list and to EDs. Lucy Crompton-Reid will be coordinating a meeting of chapters interested in hosting, either by conference call or f2f at Wikimania.

Wikimedia LGBT+
Communications
Talk page Telegram: @wmlgbt LGBTlists.wikimedia.org Twitter: @WikiLGBT Mastodon: @wmlgbt@tech.lgbt Bluesky: @wmlgbt.org Wiki99: Wiki99/LGBT+
Other links
Wikimedia thematic organizations Wikimedia user groups

Proposal

We propose an LGBT+ Community Wikimedian to serve the needs of the dispersed, thematic LGBT+ User Group.

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

The Wikimedia Foundations and Affiliates are committed to community diversity, and increasing representation of marginalised communities. The movement as a whole needs to be seen to be actively engaging with LGBT+ issues and championing members and projects in order to support and retain existing LGBT+ members and attract new members.

Many Wikimedia community members develop LGBT+ content and want to engage in positive LGBT+ editing outreach but fail to communicate or get sufficient credit for their work. Wikimedia chapters can provide administrative support for their local projects to raise the profile and demonstrate positive impact, the LGBT+ community has global distribution and can only organize online across cultural, linguistic, timezone, and legal boundaries. If there were an administrative point of contact who could reliably receive and process reports of LGBT+ community events, programs, media collection uploads, and campaigns, then all of the volunteer activities which are happening but going unreported could be better coordinated to the mutual benefit of the global LGBT+ community and stakeholders in this content.

The LGBT+ community has some presence across the projects and a user group has existed since 2014. While there have been a range of LGBT+ activities and related projects undertaken, the growth of this section of the community has been slow paced. Events and activities are not consistently documented and information does not always reach existing community members. The amount and quality of LGBT+ content across all Wikimedia’s projects can be improved, and existing community members report issues in relation to prejudice and discrimination in existing content and community interactions.

What is your solution?

This proposal seeks to strengthen the support given to individuals and groups at local level by piloting a two year support role which cuts across affiliate groups, providing a coordination, documentation, communication and facilitation function to the movement with respect to LGBT+ issues.

Administrative support for this community would relieve the burden of overcoming the barriers of coordination which naturally exist in a multi-region, multilingual community which rarely or never meets outside of the Wikimedia platform or global Wikimedia gatherings (Wikimania, Wikimedia Summit, etc.).

This is a coordination and communication role. However, the LGBT+ affiliate group is immature. The role therefore requires promoting events and opportunities to participate in Wikimedia LGBT+ activities, providing an administrative function supporting meetings and activities, and supporting the development of the group, for example, by undertaking a maturity review and recommending priority actions to the group.

This proposal takes a new approach to resource sharing across the movement. An LGBT+ post holder appointed to undertake a programme of work across the period of two years. This will enable use to trial this approach to shared resource and community building, and may benefit other groups or projects.

A Wikimedia affiliate organization (tbc) with the necessary infrastructure to recruit and manage the postholder will act as host organisation. The successful candidate could work remotely or at distance, with limitations on this set by the host organisation (i.e. employment laws, management preferences, access to resources, supervision arrangements).

WMUK would be keen to manage this post, and the figures below are based on UK comparative costs. These will be revised as necessary in line with the collectively agreed host country.

Project goals are below.

Project costs

Year 1: £34k for salary, National Insurance and pension Year 2: £35.5k for salary, National Insurance and pension Recruitment costs - £3K Total overheads 19/20 £12.5k Equipment costs - £800

For comparison in Austria: Salary costs, including insurance and pension: 45.000 EUR per year (for an experienced full time staff member) Equipment: 1,200 EUR Recruitment: 1,500 EUR Overheads: not provided

Travel & subsistence - £5K per year (with specific large project costs, for example Wikimania attendance, event organisation, in excess of this applied for as required)

Year 1 total costs (minus overheads): £42.8K Year 2 total costs (minus overheads): £40.5K

Interested Organisations

In this section, we are asking Wikimedia Affiliate Chairs to please indicate their support for this initiative, either in terms of supporting the chapter which eventually takes the bid forward, and/or as the prospective lead chapter. Please note - signing here will be understood as an unofficial indication of support at this stage, and a way for us to start the conversation, particularly amongst prospective lead chapters.

Once the project is better scoped (i.e. costed and the funding route identified) we will be asking for formal support for the project, and for one of the Chapters to be named as lead. Please feel free to raise with your board to get an early indication of their support or objection to this approach. Please also note we will be seeking funding from the WMF to pay for the post holder and associated costs in the first instance.

Affiliate groups which support the proposal:

• WMUK (Josie Fraser, Chair)
• WMAT (Philip Kopetzky, Vice-Chair)
• WMUS-NYC (Meg Wacha, Chair)
• WMFR (Willie Robert, Vice-chair)

Chapters interested in hosting the role:

• WMUK (Lucy Crompton-Reid, CEO)
• WMAT (Claudia Garád, CEO)
• WMSK (Matej Grochal, chair)

Organizations which can give support:

• Wikimedia Medicine
• Wikimedia New York City
• Wikimedia Cascadia
• Wikimedia DC
• Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network
• (some Wikidata community)
• (some library community)
• Wikimedia India / Wiki Loves Love
• WF Trust & Safety Committee - also key stakeholders

Main duties and responsibilities of the proposed post

• Act as a central point of contact for LGBT+ activities globally, establishing positive working relationships with Chapters, usergroups and other Wikimedia communities
• Work with affiliates, individual contributors and LGBT+ organisations to identify specific issues and support needs for LGBT people from different geographic, linguistic and cultural backgrounds and contexts
• Develop new mechanisms for coordinating communications across a wide range of cultures, languages and geographies to develop the LGBT+ community
• Engage with the existing and potential LGBT+ community by helping to organise and facilitate Wikimedia related events for members of the public, Wikimedians, researchers etc, such as workshops, editathons and meetups
• Facilitate the improvement of content by identifying gaps in LGBT+ coverage on Wikipedia and its sister projects and working with existing members of the community as well as new contributors and organisational partners to enrich the projects with resources and knowledge about LGBT+ people and issues
• Identify gaps, set targets, and organise activities to address gaps in content across different language Wikipedias
• Maintain and update pages related to the LGBT+ community on Meta-Wiki, the global community site for the Wikimedia Foundation's projects and related projects
• Ensure a high profile for the Wikimedian community in relevant global Pride events
• Coordinate content and ensure LGBT+ presence at the Wikimedia Summit, Wikimania and other relevant conferences and events
• Be an advocate for open knowledge within the LGBT+ sector, for example by providing advice on possible changes to organisational policies, systems or processes which would allow greater collaboration between Wikimedia and organisations with content relating to LGBT+ people and issues
• Create recommendations and a roadmap for future work, identifying gaps and opportunities for building the LGBT+ community and presence within the movement
• Document activities and evaluate impact and achievements, reporting on this to funders and stakeholders as required,
• Agreeing a social media strategy, contributing to or administrating social media accounts and supporting others to generate and contribute content

Job Description

Person Specification

Essential Experience, Skills and Knowledge

• An understanding of and empathy for the Wikimedia open knowledge movement
• A strong understanding of issues facing LGBT+ communities around the world
• Experience of developing collaborative events, projects or programmes
• Experience of working with volunteers
• Excellent communication skills
• Ability to work tactfully, sensitively and effectively
• A good level of oral and written English
• A strong commitment to equal opportunities and diversity
• Ability to develop and maintain reporting systems and evaluation
• Ability to prioritise workload and work under own initiative
• Familiarity with basic office IT packages
• Basic numeracy

Desirable Experience, Skills and Knowledge

• Experience of editing Wikipedia and its sister projects
• Experience of working with the Wikimedia community
• Experience of volunteer management
• Experience of working with open source software
• Understanding of issues related to copyright and open licences
• Experience of delivering training to others at events and workshops
• Experience of working effectively within an organisational structure
• Experience of developing and maintaining professional partnerships

Project impact

• Increase representation of LGBT+ Wikimedians across current and new projects, ensuring visibility of the work of the LGBT+ user group
• Increase academic and research partnerships
• Increase numbers of individuals, organisations, and events significant to the LGBT+ in the English language Wikipedia
• Support specific LGBT+ partnerships with a range of high profile organisations and institutions internationally
• Increase numbers of individuals, organisations, and events significant to the LGBT+ in a range of non-English language Wikipedias
• Provide recommendations for future activity including potential impact assessment
• Increase number of LGBT+ specific partnerships