Content Partnerships Hub/Helpdesk/Working Groups

Working Groups of the Helpdesk

Scope

The Helpdesk is one of the core components of the Content Partnerships Hub. We want to expand the Helpdesk concept to establish integrated Working Groups. Working Groups of the Helpdesk ensure support for the people or organizations requesting help through the Helpdesk.

When a request to the Helpdesk has been prioritized by the Expert Committee support has to be provided. Until this point this work has been provided solely by WMSE’s staff, but we think that this approach has a number of limitations. Thus, we want to explore how we can implement so-called Working Groups in the work. The Working Groups will consist of Movement experts. WMSE staff will work as part of these on fulfilling the requests submitted to the Helpdesk, so that we can provide better contextualized answers, and identify already existing resources connected to the request.

The Working Groups will therefore help with developing an inventory of existing resources as part of the process. Working Groups can be used to compile the most important resources in different languages within a thematic area. The Helpdesk’s Working Groups will be a structure that increases coordination across stakeholders. The Working Groups also have the potential to increase the connection/matching of peers across the Movement for teaching and learning new skills, and to increase mentoring and peer-to-peer support.

The Working Groups are organized under the Expert Committee, which consists of volunteers. The Expert Committee guides their work and prioritizes what the Working Groups should focus on.

Types of Working Groups

We foresee two types of Working Groups to form as part of the Helpdesk initiative: The Standing Working Group and the Working Group Task Force(s). These could consist of both volunteers and paid staff with different commitments. Participants in the Working Groups would be salaried, rather than volunteers, and the funding is expected to come from either the Hub or through co-financing by another Wikimedia actor.

The Standing Working Group is formed in advance of requests coming in for the Helpdesk. They consist of selected Movement experts that have committed a certain amount of hours to work to support the Helpdesk requests. They focus on fulfilling what is expected to be a steady stream of requests requiring in-depth knowledge and expertise of what the Wikimedia movement has worked on regarding content partnerships. They act on the requests prioritized by the Expert Committee.

A Working Group Task Force is organized to work on a specific larger issue. These can either come from a specific Helpdesk request that is demanding, and have been prioritized by the Expert Committee, or from a need identified across multiple requests. Once the request has been fulfilled, the Working Group Task Force is dissolved. Working Group Task Forces are not separated from the Standing Working Group, but will be designed to intentionally have overlaps and exchange between them.

Aims

Increase equity within the Wikimedia movement, by:
- Fostering diverse delivery of the support and services provided to the Movement.
- Supporting the work to make underrepresented knowledge accessible on the Wikimedia platforms.
Work in collaboration with other initiatives connected to the Wikimedia 2030 process (e.g. the regional hubs), thereby finding new synergies, means and opportunities for working on a global level.
Increases the sense of shared ownership for the Helpdesk which in turn ensures its long-term sustainability.

Goals

That the Working Groups ensure that the requests to the Helpdesk are processed as fast, or even faster, as before as the Helpdesk service scales over time and provides further value to the Wikimedia movement.
That the Working Groups ensure that the Helpdesk provides the best possible answer for the actor who sought help.
That the possibility of joining a Working Group creates engagement, understanding and further visibility of the Content Partnerships Hub in more parts of the Wikimedia movement.
That the members of the Working Group develop their own skills and network through the peer learning that happens through exchange and joint capacity building efforts built into the Working Groups.
That the Working Groups provide insights and an organizational structure for developing complementary capacity building resources.

Structure of the Working Group(s)

Size

Both the Standing Working Group and the Working Group Task Forces should have at least four members and a maximum of 12 members, a size that enables diversity and many perspectives. At the same time it should provide a good and efficient working environment.

We expect that initially the Standing Working Group will be of smaller size, to first test out the concept. What is suitable for the first Working Group Task Forces will depend on the task at hand.

Duration and frequency

The Standing Working Group is expected to meet monthly to discuss and jointly work on the requests forwarded from the Expert Committee.

The members will also work asynchronously in between meetings to identify relevant resources etc.

The frequency by which a Working Group Task Forces meets will be decided based on the details of the request which they are focused on, as requests might sometimes be time sensitive.

Selection process

We will develop an open application process for establishing and staffing both the Standing Working Group and the Working Group Task Forces. This is to avoid biases and to create entry points to engage with the Content Partnerships Hub. The Expert Committee will develop the selection criteria and evaluate the applications.

As both the Standing Working Group and the Working Group Task Forces exist to provide a service the main focus is identifying experts from the Movement who have a specific competence needed for the Working Group.

To not limit the pool of candidates it is important that each selection process is actively communicated and that Hub representatives actively work to identify potential participants (at e.g. training events they participate in, conferences they present at but also from suggestions from other hub initiatives or from initiatives such as the Capacity Exchange (CapX)).

The Standing Working Group will act as a sounding board regarding the need for the establishment of a Working Group Task Force. Some of the members of a Working Group Task Force are expected to also be members of the Standing Working Group, to ensure institutional memory. The Expert Committee will take budgets and organizational limitations into consideration when developing the recommendations for a specific Working Group Task Force. They can also recommend the creation of a task force to solve the request but only if added funding can be secured for the work. In situations like this, the Expert Committee can approve the request, but the practical work with fulfilling it will not be commenced immediately; instead, planning and e.g. grant writing or other types of fundraising is the focus.

Acknowledging the limited size of the Wikimedia movement a member of the Expert Committee can also be part of a Working Group, but will have to recuse themselves regarding any decision affecting their work taken by the Expert Committee.

Diversity

The members of both types of Working Groups combine experience and innovation, different perspectives, and a diversity of backgrounds. Diversity in this context means parameters such as geography, culture, religion, gender, language, as well as level of experience and roles within the Wikimedia movement (different thematic expertise, technical background, etc.).

Working language

The working language for both of the types of Working Groups will be English, but the members are encouraged to use networks and ambassadors to convey information to a wider audience than the English-speaking, as well as to gather input from across the Wikimedia movement.

Relation to Wikimedia Sverige

The Working Groups are resourced and coordinated by the Content Partnerships Hub which is hosted by Wikimedia Sverige. However, the members of the Working Groups are however not necessarily staff of Wikimedia Sverige.

The board of Wikimedia Sverige is the highest decision-making body for the Hub, and therefore also for the Helpdesk and the Working Groups.

The Working Group members will communicate closely with the staff of the Helpdesk and the Expert Committee, for smooth processing of the requests within the Helpdesk.

Concept for a first Working Group Task Force

An idea for a first Working Group Task Force is to develop a case study with recommendations on how to use Wikidata to run Wiki Loves competitions. Wiki Loves campaigns are highly interesting from the point of view of content partnerships; the first step of organizing them is often working with local data owners, such as public agencies responsible for the protection of natural and cultural heritage, encouraging them to share their resources under an open license and then publishing those resources on the Wikimedia platforms.

Historically, the competitions have used Wikipedia to list objects available to photograph. However, there is a large interest among affiliates to run WL campaigns on Wikidata, taking advantage of the platform's flexibility and multilinguality, as requests to the Helpdesk have shown, but many lack the data as well as the technical expertise to do so. The Working Group Task Force would develop checklists, steps and best practices, and other relevant resources, to try to lower the barriers for affiliates to run WL campaigns on Wikidata.

The work would be done in one Working Group Task Force, but the Working Group Task Force members must have several different competencies. Because of the multifaceted character of the work, the goal of ensuring that members of the Working Group Task Force also learn from each other will be fulfilled. It will also bring a lot of value to the Movement; the requests, again, have shown the interest in this work from many affiliates, and WL campaigns are some of the largest Movement-wide activities.

The Working Group Task Force in itself will produce a comprehensive outcome, but it will be broken down in several different parts, meaning that Working Group Task Force members can roll up their sleeves in subgroups and work effectively on e.g. identifying and developing the documentation that is needed for affiliates to use Wikidata, documenting how to identify and get hold of relevant data, how to convince data owners to release it under CC0, etc.

The work of the Working Group Task Force is thus expected to go on for a long time, but outputs will be delivered continuously along the way, and many of these outputs are useful not only for Wiki Loves campaigns.

Process

One large meeting for the WGTF on e.g. a monthly basis.
Breaking down the WGTF into subgroups, responsible for different aspects. They work between the monthly meetings. Timelines will differ for different subgroups.
The first step will be to explore and identify missing and needed resources and perspectives, and to develop a plan for the different steps. Existing resources are documented on Metabase.
Discussions to further understand the problem space is an important part of the work. For example:
- It could include discussion and common grounds on what e.g. a monument is, the importance of open definitions.
Case studies will be developed. The case studies would end up with concise recommendations, among other things on how to do the modeling.
Output will be published and shared continuously as it is finalized, but a wiki page will be created where the overall development of the requests will be shown.

Background

The Expert Committee has repeatedly requested a case study on how to successfully implement Wikidata in the running of Wiki Loves campaigns, from very small to very large amounts of data.
The Helpdesk has supported two affiliates in adding cultural heritage data to Wikidata, for Wiki Loves Monuments, and almost a dozen affiliates in adding natural heritage data to Wikidata, for Wiki Loves Earth.
Even though the data has been successfully uploaded, it has not been extensively used by affiliates while running the competition. Running the campaigns on Wikidata requires some technical knowledge and capacity built for the purpose.
The case study proposed by the Expert Committee would cover the process, from finding free datasets to adding data on heritage sites to Wikidata and using this data to run Wiki Loves campaigns.
It would also demonstrate the benefits of running Wiki Loves competitions on Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons as well as distinct steps for the different campaigns.