Right to Information/FAQ

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Right to Information

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Basics

What is the Wikimedia Right to Information?

The Wikimedia Right to Information a claim from a representative group of Wikimedia community members to require information from an organization.

What sorts of requests are typical for this process?

Here are some typical requests:

1. Please provide the accounting record for a program.

Who may make a Right to Information request?

Anyone may draft a Right to Information request, and seek sufficient endorsement from the Wikimedia community for it, and may issue to it any organization.

Which organizations must answer these requests?

All requests in this process are by the authority and esteem of the Wikimedia community. The Wikimedia community make make requests to any organization in the world which ought to respect Wikimedia community authority and esteem. Of particular note are requests from the Wikimedia community to the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia community has special concern for the activities of the Wikimedia Foundation and may use this formal process to make formal information requests to that organization.

Scope

What sort of information is appropriate to request?

This process is for formal requests from the Wikimedia community to an organization. For this level of formality, appropriate requests probably concern a matter of more than 0.5% of the Wikimedia community financial assets. Total assets in 2019 are about US$100 million, so 0.5% is US$500,000. Make requests on matters of that importance or higher.

What are the characteristics of a good information request?

The best information request has the following elements:

1. respectful and concise text
2. easy to understand summary of the requested information
3. respect for the organization fulfilling the request by estimating the cost of answering it
4. links to prior discussion which demonstrate that a group of people thoughtfully discussed the request
5. sufficient endorsement of the request
6. good documentation that the organization at the target of the request received it

Enforcement

Who enforces the Right to Information process?

The Right to Information process operates under the authority of everyone who signed endorsement at Right to Information/join.

What happens if an organization does not respond to the request?

It is useful to make requests even when organizations might not respond. Making a request here creates a permanent, public record of a group making the request. This project creates the opportunity to document that an organization received a request and is now making its own choice about how to respond. If an organization chooses to not respond to a request, then a lack of response communicates that the organization knows it received a request but that it does not have respect to answer it.