Jump to content

Community Engagement

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

Community Engagement was a Wikimedia Foundation staff department focused on the goal of increasing the quantity, quality, diversity, and reach of free knowledge by supporting people and organizations aligned with the Wikimedia Foundation mission. It was created in February 2015 under the direction of Luis Villa. Subsequent leadership included Maggie Dennis (2 2016-1 2019) and Valerie D'Costa (1 2019 - 11 2019). In November 2019, the decision was made to distribute the teams of the department into other departments, as community engagement had through the years of the department's existence become increasingly common for multiple departments within the Foundation. For more information, see the announcement

The function of the department was to support contributors by representing them in the development of new technical tools, by supporting community governance and innovations, by implementing trust & safety, by scaling strategic programs, and by making grants to individuals, groups and organizations working on building community and growing content on Wikimedia projects and sites as well as related open knowledge projects. We are committed to supporting under-represented contributors and emerging regions, languages, and communities.

The Community Engagement teams

[edit]

The Learning and Evaluation team (L&E) helps monitor the impact of the work being done across the movement and guides other Community Engagement teams in executing effective grants through ongoing analysis, learning and evaluation support. The team is focused on sharing best practices and facilitating community knowledge sharing, listening to community voices for better decision making through community leader/editor surveys, and fostering collaboration and support to and with Wikimedia Affiliates.

Main article: Community Resources

Resources offers grants and other capacity-building resources to support community-led impact. Resources they offer include:

Grants Resources funds communities (individuals, groups and organizations) to build impactful programs, technologies, communities and organizations
IdeaLab Campaigns Resources connects ideas with people and resources to foster community-driven innovation
Community capacity-building Resources supports emerging communities to build key capacities that help grow their participation, content and reach
Conference Support Resources supports the movement to connect and share at events around the world
Main article: Community Programs team

Programs supports shared learning for growing core programs, especially Wikipedia Education Programs, The Wikipedia Library, and the initiatives of GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums).

Main article: Trust and Safety

Trust and Safety serves the Wikimedia Foundation, readers and contributors by providing support on Foundation initiatives with a focus on community consultations, governance, and training, and by addressing trust and safety concerns including around appropriately escalating threats communicated on our projects and helping to safeguard the safety of attendees of Wikimedia Foundation supported events.

Main article: Community Relations

Community Relations helps developers to build features in collaboration with our communities. The team supports WMF Product teams, tech ambassadors, and other contributors willing to get involved in the planning, development, and deployment of software features in Wikimedia. We act as liaisons between non-technical communities and developers.

Until June 2018, the team was called Technical Collaboration and was organized in two subteams based on primary audiences: Community Liaisons (editors) and Developer Relations (developers).

See also

[edit]

Quarterly Reviews

[edit]

Current fiscal year

[edit]

Older reviews

[edit]