Iberocoop/Buenos Aires Letter/WMF Response Wikimania17

Montreal, Canada. August 11th, 2017

Dear friends,

Thank you for the Carta de Buenos Aires. It is an example of the energy and commitment your community brings to the Wikimedia movement. Reading it reaffirms my excitement for the contributions the Iberocoop community makes on behalf of the Wikimedia movement. Today, at Wikimania, this spirit is all around us. I’m grateful for this letter, and to Iberocoop for opening this communication channel with the Foundation.

Some of the concerns you raised in the Carta de Buenos Aires are longstanding. I am certain this represents some frustration on your part, yet I appreciate your dedication to continuing to raise them. The Foundation needs your voice to understand where we are succeeding, and where we continue to fall short. Over the past year we’ve been working to strengthen the relationship between the Foundation and Wikimedia communities, through listening, openness, and engagement. Although we have made great progress, we can do more.

While I hope to address some immediate points through this letter, my true concerns are more enduring. We must strengthen the Foundation’s relationship with the Iberocoop community so that your perspectives can better inform our work in the future. In the meanwhile, I hope you’ll accept my specific responses as a demonstration of our commitment, and as an invitation to further conversation:

1. "There is no people without culture, and no culture without language" to which I agree, and share the Arabic expression, “لغة جديدة هي حياة جديدة” — “a new language is a new life.” With each culture, community, and identity that is represented within our movement, we as a movement are more fully alive.

2. We agree there is great value in translation as a means of supporting more diverse participation. Translation as part of the movement strategy process has confirmed how important it is to broaden our discourse and perspective.

I saw first-hand the value of translation at the recent WikiWomen’s camp, where simultaneous translation deepened the participation and exchange of Spanish and English speakers. Our movement knows well that we are always balancing difficult resource choices, and support for translations is something that will need to balance with other work. As an immediate step toward more translation, we would encourage event organizers to include funds for translation in their grant requests, particularly when the requests are reasonable in scale.

3. We recognize the challenge of writing requests and proposals in a language other than one’s own — it stilts expression and adds complexity. We also recognize the challenge of offering fully multi lingual experiences for everyone in our community, given our global reach and diversity. However, we must engage with this challenge. In the coming year, we commit to reviewing the issues and implications for cost and equity.

While it may take some time before we can commit to fully supporting all local languages, we are already experimenting with this approach. Two examples of recent successful grants applications in languages other than English include the following: Grants:TPS/Robert_Radke/SMWCon_Fall_2014 and Grants:Project/Rapid/Istanbul_Photowalk)

4. I am hopeful that you find promise in the draft strategic direction, particularly the section, “locally relevant and sustainable.” The section calls on us to recognize the strength of distributed and diverse local communities as powerful tools for adaptation and innovation, and asks that we “share our local experiences and learn from each other to inform our global activities,” balancing “self-sufficiency and autonomy with intention and values we all share.” I personally interpret this as a meaningful first statement in support of an inclusive, responsive future.

However, we should not wait to incorporate the intentions in the draft direction. Every community has contextually specific ways of measuring the success and impact of their work. This is one reason the Community Resources team removed Global Metrics replacing them with “grant metrics” last year after extensive consultation. These are intended to balance our understanding of our movement’s progress against some globally shared metrics, while also giving each community space to highlight outcomes that are the most relevant, important, and representative of their work.

We strongly believe in qualitative outcomes and storytelling. Not everything can be measured with numbers. We hope that grantees continue to communicate their outcomes qualitatively, whether through their grant reports or through their grant program officers.

5. The effort to include translations in many languages for the strategy work was a deliberate commitment to the plurality of our movement. Although we do not currently have resources allocated for further language translation for major projects in this year, we acknowledge the value of translation to the Iberocoop community. Going forward, we will seek to find means to transparently and collectively evaluate the balance of resources required for translations against other requests and needs.

6. Exploring Wikimedia communication around the world with our communities as partners in this process is a welcome opportunity. The Foundation Communications team would like to invite interested parties to continue this dialogue about community representation in Foundation materials — to explore our audiences, our needs, and examine ways of supporting the outcomes we are all hoping to achieve. Currently, we have a regular community news digest that specifically highlights the work of local chapters, user groups, and other affiliates in addition to individual blog posts about affiliate-led projects and initiatives. We are eager for a diverse range of stories and ideas to share that reflect the impact and breadth of our movement. We encourage you to come speak with us in the social media hub, directly contact Heather, Juliet, or Mel, or via email to the entire team: communications@wikimedia.org.

I hope that my reply, developed with input from many teams across the Foundation, may serve as a first step in our continuing dialogue. I am also hopeful that they may offer some context and illumination of the reasoning of the Foundation as we consider concerns raised by the Carta de Buenos Aires.

I would like to reiterate my appreciation for the efforts of the Iberocoop community. You represent a dynamic, engaged, and creative future for our movement. I look forward to your continued leadership in your communities, and for our shared Wikimedia vision.

Un abrazo,

Katherine