NARWHAL/April 2025

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A NARWHAL meeting is planned for Monday, April 28, 2025 at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific. If you have a preference about the date, please say so on the discussion page.

NARWHAL = North American Regional Wiki Hub and Lab - It's an informal coalition of North America Wikimedians, mostly organizers, including Mexico, Canada, the U.S. and the Caribbean. It's analogous to WALRUS for the U.S.

Zoom link, hosted by WMNY
Etherpad notes for this meeeting

Agenda

WCNA 2025 news (Pharos and others)
1. Update on closing out WCNA 2024 accounting and reports (econterms)
Chicago user group update?
Hub news: We have enough affiliates () signing up to join the North American hub (NAHub) and are ready to declare that the hub exists
Hub grant proposal updates (Peter or Pharos)
1. Proposal was submitted on April 1, 2025
Other events? SWAN meetings? Wiknics? Editathons? Parties? Meetups? Salons? Please add here to announce or describe them.
1. Cascadia Wikimedia
  1. Cascadia Wikimedians User Group general members meeting in planning for Saturday Jun 14 2025.
  2. Seattle events
    1. Had meetup in April, planned events include meetups in May & July, Wiknic in August
    2. For Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), three photographers are credentialed to photograph for WikiPortraits (see Commons:WikiPortraits). There are also efforts to create and revise SIFF articles.
Prospective North-American-scale teams or task forces
1. Task force or team to support wiki work on Indigenous North American languages, topics, and wiki activities (need to change name for multi-country applicability; perhaps to "Indigenous"?)
  1. Several have volunteered to be on it, and we were strongly encouraged to partner with experts from universities and cultural institutions
  2. Notes: Wikimedia DC had a couple of editathons with an anthropologists' network called CoPAR (CoPAR, editathon) with experts on Native American materials ; this group has filed for a WMF research grant to index such materials on Wikidata and develop skills and practices of editing about them; good prospects for partnership with U Michigan, U Maryland, and U Missouri, and others.
2. Team to support smart planning and handling of visas for Wikimedians to get to conferences in the US and Canada
3. Bonus: Teams for coordinating CentralNotice campaigns
4. Team to support Wikidata updates for changes to US federal government (agency staffing, budgets, names, reorgs, etc.)
Other Hub developments
1. We have an Monthly online newsletter as other Wiki groups have; and sources to draw from for list of events
2. North American hub proposal -- support and suggestions invited on talk page there -- econterms
3. This user supports the creation of a
  North American Hub
  Please consider adding {{User NAH}} to your meta user pages to get the userbox at right.

Background

RSVP

Please sign up if you plan to join this call:

Chelsea Chiovelli (WMCA) (talk) 20:03, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pharos (talk) 15:16, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
ComplexRational (talk) 19:38, 28 April 2025 (UTC) (possibly)[reply]
JMMaok (talk) 00:27, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

Attendees: (add yourself if you want to be publicly logged)

Lane Rasberry
Peaceray
Luiysia
Rosie
Joe Mabel (jmabel)
Andycyca
Peter / econterms
Jamie/jamieF
Andrew Lih
(11 more attended)

Agenda

Detailed agenda is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NARWHAL/April_2025
WCNA 2025 news (Pharos and others)
1. For Oct 16-19 ; program submissions will be welcomed starting on May 1
2. Hub news: We have enough affiliates (9) signing up to join the North American hub (NAHub) and are ready to declare that the hub exists (see: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:North_American_Wikimedians/Hub_founding )
3. Hub grant proposal updates (Peter or Pharos)
4. Proposal (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Programs/Hub_Fund/North_American_Hub_2025) was submitted on April 1, 2025 under WCNA (WikiConference North America) on Fluxx due to technical limitations but written by WMDC, WMCA, WMNY
5. question: there was no prior discussion about submitting this grant under WikiConference North America. Why was this? For example, why not in the telegram group?
  1. Answer from Peter, who is signatory: There was time pressure to submit the grant and there was opportunity to revise it after.
  2. We had previous conversations about submitting, and the group submitting thought there was prior consent
  3. communication could have been better
  4. issues: the submission says that there is a legal entity, which is not correct for the conference; it says that there is a fiscal sponsor, but there is none named which seems like an error.
6. follow up:
  1. Rosie, Jamie, Peaceray, and Lane to meet to discuss, representing WikiConference North America
  2. post in the Telegram, which is active with WikiConference organizers
7. Who represents the groups? Louie and Chelsea from Canada, Peter and Ariel from DC, and Richard and Pacita from NYC
8. Peter: I take responsibility for not communicating in the telegram group. It may have looked like a power play to over-speak for the community, but this was an error in organizing and documenting consent. I am happy to stay after this call and broaden decision power instantly
9. Andrew: In many activities Wikimedia community members are not process heavy but in this phase of development we need to set ourselves up for success by starting with good governance, quorum, and good communication. It may be that the Wikimedia Foundation liked WikiConference North America and supported the conference as being the center of regional organization.
10. Andrew continues: This is beyond the pizza budgets we have managed in the past. We need to practice good leadership if we are working with six figure budgets, or more.
11. Question: What is the update on Wikimedia Mexico wishing to participate in a regional hub?
  1. Andy: I am joining today as a member of Wikimedia Mexico and cannot speak for the board. I have no news to share, but I do expect that a board member would like to continue to get news on developments.
  2. Peter: Wikimedia Mexico is not prepared to join the hub right now. Instead their focus is on establishing a Latin American Hub. The relationship is friendly and collaboration is ongoing. Now is not time.
12. question: Should we call it "North America" with Wikimedia Mexico not joining?
  1. Peter: the board of Mexico explicitly supported us calling it "North America"
What do we know about WikiConference North America 2026?
1. There is political tension in the United States. Perhaps people from outside the United States will not want to travel to it.
2. There is some early expressed interest in Vancouver, the Caribbean, and in Virginia.
3. We're trying to track events in a virtual "monthly" newsletter; see North American Wikimedians/News/2025-01 for example
User group news
1. Wikimedians of Chicago User Group is officially recognized by the Foundation
  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Chicago and also https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Chicago_User_Group
  2. Will try to do a meetup every other month
2. Cascadia Wikimedias meetup in Seattle & online in June
  1. will be doing something for the Seattle Film Festival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_International_Film_Festival
  2. collaborated with WikiPortraits to find a few photographers to cover the event
3. Wiki Minnesota User Group has lapsed its reporting and user group status
  1. in process of submitting updates to come to compliance
  2. user group is navigating how to keep institutional partnerships active when the wiki-friendly collaborating staff at that organization leaves
Wikidata MOOC to train new users around a practical project?
1. Wikidata for United States government is a big project and neglected
2. See https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Govdirectory/United_States_of_America
3. disorganized
  1. Where to begin?
  2. comment: starting with pilots in Wikidata is a common first strategy
4. want to develop a United States equivalent to Govdirectory d:Wikidata:WikiProject Govdirectory
Wikimedia game - https://asteroids.wiki/
1. recently presented
@the Wikimedia Foundation is praising the idea of games to attract new community members
Consider Wikimedia Foundation annual plan
1. it is currently seeking comment
2. opinion: Wikipedia focused, less for other Wikimedia projects
3. Selena Deckelmann, the WMF Chief Technology officer is focused on developing mobile tools
Prospective North-American-scale teams or task forces: (Peter)
1. Task force or team to support Native American languages and wiki activities
  1. Several have volunteered to be on it, and we were strongly encouraged to partner with experts from universities and cultural institutions
  2. Several have volunteered to be on it, and we were strongly encouraged to partner with experts from universities and cultural institutions [from the meeting notes on Meta]
  3. reiterated: include more representatives from indigenous communities when drafting documents concerning indigneous affairs
  4. Notes: Wikimedia DC had a couple of editathons with an anthropologists' network called CoPAR (CoPAR, editathon) with experts on Native American materials ; this group has filed for a WMF research grant to index such materials on Wikidata and develop skills and practices of editing about them; good prospects for partnership with U Michigan, U Maryland, and U Missouri, and others. [from the meeting notes on Meta]
  5. Jennifer: I just learned about this event coming up in June, International Indigenous Librarians Forum. It seems like it would be a great place to make connections with potential partners for this task force / team. The event is in Toronto and some First Nations / Metis / Inuit attendees are eligible for free registration. If it's not feasible for the task force to have someone attend, the program could also provide a list of folks / institutions to reach out to.
2. Team to support smart planning and handling of visas for Wikimedians to get to conferences in the US and Canada
3. Bonus: Teams for coordinating CentralNotice campaigns
4. Team to support Wikidata updates for changes to US federal government (agency staffing, budgets, names, reorgs, etc.)
  1. Would like to identify a few folks to work together as a core team to collaborate on this and then engage a larger group (Jennifer / JMMaok)
Other Hub developments
1. We have an Monthly online newsletter North_American_Wikimedians/News/2025-04 as other Wiki groups have; and sources to draw from for list of events
2. North American hub proposal North_American_Wikimedians/Hub_founding -- support and suggestions invited on talk page there -- econterms