Talk:Movement Charter

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Hi all,

The Movement Charter Drafting Committee held a conversation online on July 30 to commemorate the release of two key draft chapters of the Wikimedia Movement Charter, Global Council and Hubs, to workshop some important questions, and to openly receive feedback. Around 30 Wikimedians were present on the call with more watching the livestream on YouTube.

The participants shared their thoughts about proposed limits to the Council membership, the Council’s future role in funds dissemination, and the minimum requirements for Wikimedia movement Affiliates to be involved in launching and operating a Hub. You can watch the entire session in this YouTube stream recording.

Please find the specific topic summaries for the Global Council and Hubs drafts in the respective talk pages (Global Council, Hubs).

Best, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. M. Hossaiin (talk) 18:04, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

MCDC members joined the call of affiliate EDs on August 2 for a 20-minute conversation about the new drafts of the Movement Charter, namely Global Council and Hubs. Instead of a presentation of the topics, which many of the affiliates present had already received on other calls, this meeting was focused on starting a conversation with a key movement stakeholder, the affiliates.

The EDs group inquired about the best ways to interact with the drafts (a joint letter as EDs, individual answers, as affiliates, etc). MCDC members reaffirmed that it is less about the structure and more about the content. EDs were invited to share their own feedback when they can and if there is time, capacity, and resources, to invite their community members to participate or to have wider group and community discussions to gather feedback. MCDC members also invited feedback from under-resourced communities, encouraging them to consider if the draft concepts would facilitate their growth, among other aspects.

MCDC emphasized the value of the EDs’ input given their individual experience and knowledge, as well as highlighted the importance of receiving further community input. It was clarified the end-of-August deadline is not the final cycle and that conversations will continue at thematic/regional events after Wikimania. It was agreed that content-specific conversations with the EDs group will take place in October. MCDC members were grateful for the EDs’ group for their warm welcome and collaboration. --AAkhmedova (WMF) (talk) 12:14, 7 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

On July 29, 2023, following the publication of an article on the draft on the Global Council and Hubs presented by the MCDC, a discussion on these drafts started on the talkpage of the Kurier (the Kurier is similar to the Signpost of the English Wikipedia and a central forum of the German-speaking community). In the following two weeks, 21 people participated in the discussion and posted 110 comments. For the full course of the discussion, see here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Diskussion:Kurier#Movement_Charter_-_MCDC_legt_neue_Kapitel_vor

This is a summary, provided in good faith to share the results with the MCDC. Disclaimer: the summary is not a representative collaborative text. If you participated in the discussion, please feel free to edit, add to or clarify this post.

A small number of comments addressed the draft on Hubs; they were generally favorable. The language of the draft was apparently not well understood and needed further explanation. People criticized that hubs could only be established by two affiliates. This was seen as an obstacle and a disadvantage especially for those communities that already suffer from a lack of infrastructure. If this won’t be changed, it is to be hoped that existing affiliates will recognize the need to establish such an organization.

There were many comments on the draft on the Global Council. All were characterized by disappointment, outrage, or resignation. Many community members felt their assumption confirmed that the Wikimedia Foundation was unwilling to share powers. The "equity in decision-making" promised by the MCDC and the Movement Strategy, allowing a stronger representation of all groups in the Movement, was regarded by many voices as an obviously vain hope.

In particular, a kind of parliament or general assembly was missed, as well as powers beyond those already exercised by various volunteer bodies. There was a clear desire for the Global Council to be more than just an advisory body.

A few comments related to information policy. Community members expressed their anger or disappointment that, given the importance of the Movement Charter, no emphasis was placed on distributing information globally. The German-speaking community has therefore begun to remedy the lack of information for Europe on its own initiative and will soon be holding a German-language Zoom call on the topic of the Global Council.

Best regards, Denis Barthel (talk) 02:59, 20 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Many thanks for this useful summary, Denis! RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 02:44, 22 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

The Wikimedia movement is based on sharing free knowledge. But when it comes to share power, what we need first is a reliable information tool, because sharing information is sharing power.

Natural text is nice for presenting, explaining and discussing, but when it comes to give opinions, make decisions, vote, we need more facts, more figures, more statistics more factual arguments to do an informed choice.

In order to get a clear picture of the Movement Charter's new structuration propositions, to have the same level of information, understand the interactions, make informed decisions, allow changes in the future, I suggest we create a reference point with a set of Wikidata elements describing our operators and how they interact in the structures and processes of our movement. We could then use them for describing structures, projects, and monitor them more precisely.

Having a Wikidata set of what we do and how we organize ourselves in the Movement is very different from a Glossary. It's not a list, it's a tool.

Such a compass could serve as a point of reference for both the new Global Council, the Community and the Foundation.

This would help us to be more reactive and precise, especially in those time where AI is changing the game and we have no idea how 2030 will look.

So it should be a key to successful implementation of our 2030 strategy in a fast changing world.

Writing the Wikidata elements of all our operators, the processes and structures which use them and creating the grammar of their interactions could also be a common task supported by the whole community. Using the same factual infos should also help us to get more well-argued comments and more concrete propositions in the discussions.

This is typically one of these "alternative proposals that can mitigate, if not eliminate, major disputes between community and WMF regarding global site policies in the future."

In fact we realize nearly all our actions with five operators : ACCESS, CONTENT, RESOURCES, TECHNOLOGY, CONTROL.

ACCESS : Who is eligible to undertake which tasks ? Conditions of access (with Control), unequity in access due to gender gap, knowledge gap, underrepresented groups, regions, languages...), access for paid editors, external entities, AI...

CONTENT : edition (based on human, knowledge, (machine ?) resources), indexation (wikidata), publishing on line (made under Control)...

RESOURCES : includes 4 types of resources : financial resources (from fundraising to fund dissemination), human resources (volunteers, paid staff), environmental resources (carbon footprint servers, travels...), knowledge resources (books, magazines, educational material, etc..) and machine resources (bots, AI...).

TECHNOLOGY : the means which allow us to work together and makes our projects living on line.

CONTROL : the whole chain of control of access and content of our platforms and movement, from the patrollers, the admins, bureaucrats etc... to the legal team. Includes also the financial and technological control.

As a piloting tool, this set of Wikidata elements about our movement would ease the analyze of our structures and projects. What are we doing exactly ? With which means ? What should we change or replace and why ? When ?

For example, creating a tool for easing the addition of a citation in an article for new editors is Access + Technolgy + Financial resources to make Content edition easier.

Another example  : We speak about Hubs and Sister projects in the MCDC discussion. With Wikidata elements we could precise what these Hubs or Sister projects are exactly doing. Is it about Content, Access ? Both ? etc...

We could understand the way our processes are build, in hierarchical or in a transverse way, the interactions of our different operators and how these interactions may evolve in the time or the progress of a project or a structure.

The description of these elements and interactions in a database will make it possible to observe, analyze, decide, act, verify, etc... our processes and structures with more precision. It will allow us to monitor structures and projects in real time and modify them accurately and faster.

This is the basis on which we could move forward and ameliorate our common understanding of a lot of complex processes and projects we need first to describe correctly and in a synthetic way.

Wikidata makes it possible. Waltercolor (talk) 10:53, 29 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Dear @Mehrdad, I waited until near the end of the call for feedback through central notice banner on the one-page draft of the movement charter to give my feedback, and answer the questions in the draft. I hope the charter will not be set in stone, but be amendable. The draft doesn't include a chapter on how the charter can be amended yet.

In the draft is a single question about hubs. My suggestion is to replace the chapter on hubs with a single sentence, with something like "Two or more affiliates can create a hub as a mutual support structure." Regarding the question "Should there be a limit to how many hubs an affiliate can join? (Please elaborate on your answer.)" my answer is "would any of the mcdc pose a limit on the number of friends I can have?"

The second question in the one-page draft is about the role of the Global Council in fund dissemination. Just about ten lines above the question it has been written in the draft "The Global Council will not raise funds in any way." Without funds, the Global Council will have nothing to disseminate or distribute. This model will not work. What could work - and was envisaged years ago in the strategy recommendations, was to have equity in decision making and be inclusive of the large number of underrepresented groups in the movement in decision making. This calls for both a rather large Global Council and with decision making power, and not only advisory functions. It would call for allowing affiliates and projects to raise funds locally using banners on the projects (with geo-ip targeting) - and a Global Council as a federation of affiliates and projects to redistribute proceeds of those fund raisers by the affiliates and projects. (It requires some creativity to make it legally happen in a way the WMF retains its non-profit status in the U.S.). I expect the large Global Council to elect among themselves an Executive Committee, and that the Global Council will have their own paid staff.

The third question is regarding structure. As already noted above - from the onset the Global Council was thought to be a large body with an Executive Committee. Naturally the Executive Committee will be elected by the Global Council. To be able to effectively manage resources (and limit liability of volunteer committee members) it should be incorporated as a not-for-profit legal entity, and naturally a membership organization. Not only (all) affiliates should be member, but membership should also be open for individuals. The Global Council could equal a General Assembly of members. Please be aware that this is not new. Since 2008 there have been every year conferences of affiliates in Berlin (with the exception of 2021 due to Covid when there wasn't one, and 2013 when the conference was in Milan). Those gatherings have nowadays an invitation only character, and are only for representatives from affiliates. The theme of the conference have most times been strategy for the movement, or direction setting for the global movement. However with no formal status or mandate. The movement charter can and should formalize an annual gathering of the Global Council / General Assembly, with a status and mandate for decision making. The remark by one of the MCDC members on another talk pages that a General Assembly would be to costly is out of sync with reality. There have been such gatherings since 2008, so changing the status of the conference to a Global Council meeting as regulated by a movement charter would not by itself incur more cost.

The fourth question is about membership, especially limits to the membership. In my view the Global Council will be a memberhsip organization, allowing both individuals (natural persons) as affiliates (with or without legal entity) to become member. The limits being for individuals to be a contributor to one of the projects, and for organizations to be a recognized affiliate. The General Assembly should be accesible to all members. In case this becomes to impractical in the future, an elected large body could stand in. Attendance to the conference in Berlin was about 200 people. So I imagine a Global Council of 200 people. This is much larger than in the draft text, which talks about 9-13 members of 17-21 members. Those numbers are in my view more applicable to an Executive Committee, not for the Global Council itself. I can imagine a gathering of one representative per country like the IFRC. Discussion about cap numbers are details in comparison with the huge disparity between the current draft of the movement charter on Global Council and how I - and many others - think about a Global Council.

Regards, Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 09:05, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply