Nano Charter

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

The Nano Charter is a concept, first raised during the January SWAN discussions on the IGC, to launch an affiliates and community-driven process to develop a very short precursor document to the Movement Charter.

As it stands, the existing plan is for the Interim Global Council, which leads to the Movement Charter, which leads to the Global Council. But even the first rung of the ladder is quite vaguely defined and open to varied interpretations, so the idea of the Nano Charter is to distill 3-5 basic principles which almost all affiliates and communities can agree on, and which could be written as simple bullet points.

The goal is to kickstart the process in the right way, as a positive creative act driven by community consensus.

Potential bullet items:

  • Wikimedia organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation, will all have a democratic governance with a majority of elected board members.
  • Democratic representation will include underrepresented geographic and other groups, wherever practical as selected by relevant communities themselves, not appointed.
  • The community-driven Movement Strategy process and Global Council will integrate all side-issues, such as branding, bylaws and grantmaking.
  • The final Movement Charter will be subject to approval by the support of the communities at large.