Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Process/Steering Committee/Notes/2017-01-20

20 Jan 2017: Community Process Steering Committee

Meeting A: 8 a.m. Pacific (4 p.m. UTC) (See conversion)

Meeting B: 2 p.m. Pacific (10 p.m. UTC) (See conversion)

Committee members:

• Risker, Canada, Individual contributor/Former ArbCom/Functionary/Election Committee/FDC
• Lucy Crompton-Reid, UK, Staff/ED of WMUK
• Bishakha Datta, India, Former WMF Board/FDC
• Florence Devouard, Former WMF Board/Individual contributor
• Nicole Ebber, Germany, Staff of WMDE
• Mykola Kozlenko, Ukraine, WMUA
• Dumisani Ndubane, South Africa, WMZA/Former FDC
• Sandra Rientjes, Netherlands, Staff/ED of WMNL
• Kaarel Vaidla, Estonia, Former ED of WMEE
• Liam Wyatt, Italy, Individual contributor/GLAM/FDC
• Andrea Zanni, Italy, Wikimedia Italy, Wikisource leader

In attendance:

Meeting A:

• Kaarel Vaidla, Estonia, Former ED of WMEE
• Sandra Rientjes, Netherlands, Staff/ED of WMNL
• Bishakha Datta, India, Former WMF Board/FDC
• Nicole Ebber, Germany, Staff of WMDE
• Shannon
• WMF: Jaime (facilitator), Guillaume, Karen B (notes), Suzie

Meeting B:

• Risker, Canada, Individual contributor/Former ArbCom/Functionary/Election Committee/FDC
• Lucy Crompton-Reid, UK, Staff/ED of WMUK
• Mykola Kozlenko, Ukraine, WMUA
• Liam Wyatt, Italy, Individual contributor/GLAM/FDC
• Andrea Zanni, Italy, Wikisource
• Shannon
• WMF: Jaime (facilitator), Guillaume, Nick W (notes),

Unable to attend:

Florence, Dumisani.

Agenda

HH:00 Welcome and Introductions

HH:10 Overview of the Task and Parameters

HH:20 Guiding Questions & Idea Share

HH:50 Next Steps

HH:00 Welcome and Introductions

Group A:

• JA starts by suggesting introductions, and thanks community members for their willingness to put time and love into helping with this process
• We will be evolving our time choices as we go to try to pick the best time, but we’re likely to still have multiple times
• JA: I am Jaime Anstee, head of Learning & Evaluation
• BD: I live in Mumbai and am currently on FDC. From 2010-2014, I was a member of the WMF Board
• GP: I work for the WMF (since 2009), have been a Wikimedian since 2005. I’m part of the strategy team
• KV: From Estonia, I am transitioning out of leading the chapter. I am a big strategy person!
• KB: SuSa, note taker
• SR: ED of WMNL, very happy to be here!
• Shannon: I am a PM from WilliamsWorks, which is partnering with the WMF/movement to facilitate the strategy process development. Looking forward to working with everyone, I am really inspired by how invested the community is in this work!
• SN: I have been working with the WMF for a year on the various strategy projects, and I am part of the strategy team this time around too
• NE: WMDE advisor on International Relations, I joined in 2010, interested in affiliates, their challenges, and their roles. Very excited to be here.
• JA: also on the committee but not in this meeting (will be attending later one) include Risker, Lucy Crompton-Reed, Florence Devouard, Mykola, Liam Wyatt, Dumisani, Andrea Zanni. It’s a great, broad, experienced group!

Group B:

• JA: Introductions. Confirmed everyone read thru Charter.
• JA: I am Jaime Anstee, head of Learning & Evaluation, works with Affcom, and more
• AZ: aka Aubrey, longtime Wikisourceror, since 2005. Involved with WMIT, president for 2 years.
• GP: I work for the WMF (since 2009), have been a Wikimedian since 2005. I’m part of the strategy team
• LW: aka Wittylama, works in GLAM sector, founding member of WMAustralia, now involved with WMIT, and part of FDC.
• LCR: Chief Exec of WMUK
• MK: Wikipedian since 2008, checkuser, member/board of WMUA, representative of
• Shannon: I am a PM from WilliamsWorks, which is partnering with the WMF/movement to facilitate the strategy process development. Looking forward to working with everyone, I am really inspired by how invested the community is in this work!
• Risker: [connection issues]
• JA: also on the committee but not in this meeting (see list above)

HH:10 Overview of the Task and Parameters

Timeline

• January 20: The Committee holds the first to discuss design parameters for the two track processes (organized groups and individual contributors) and share ideas on process with the core strategy team.
• January 27: The core strategy team shares the first prototypes of the two processes for discussion with the Committee and iteratively improves it based on comments.
• February 1: Post prototypes #1 of processes for Tracks A and B on Meta for comments
• February 3: Core strategy team shares second version of prototypes of the two processes for discussion with the Committee and iteratively improves it based on comments.
• February 7: Post prototypes #2 of processes for Tracks A and B on Meta for comments
• February 9: Core strategy team shares the third version of prototypes of the two processes for discussion with the Committee and iteratively improves it based on comments.
• February 13: Post Final prototypes for Tracks A and B on Meta

Design Considerations:

• Engages our global communities with a process that is diverse, inclusive and robust, within the overall timeline and constraints.
• Process is highly participatory across languages, geographies and projects, with active facilitation through a variety of methods, potentially including online (synchronously and asynchronously) and in face-to-face discussions, which includes significant data to drive ultimate decision-making.
• Facilitates inclusive representation of all voices, without the loudest voices dominating.

:10 notes

Group A

• JA: Let’s talk about the Charter!
  • Key information in this is the timeline (you may have seen this discussed at Metrics meetings). We want a “10,000-foot view” thematic direction ready by Wikimania. Not tactical strategy (which will come AFTER Wikimania).
  • In order to hit that target, our committee has a very short time to work
• Discussion about the different tracks
  • 4 tracks to reach out to people to build this direction
    • • track A: organized groups, including affiliates
      • track B: on-wiki individual contributors
      • track C: current readers and partners
      • track D: prospective readers and partners
        • C and D ideas will be developed by a different group; this committee is working on A and B, specifically
        • though we know many of you have affiliate experience, try to remember that track A is not only affiliates, but all organized groups
        • KV: some organized groups could fit better as part of Track (B?) than in A. Also, I recommend we include chapter representatives in Tracks C & D, since chapters do a lot of work on partnerships and have a good understanding of those issues at the local/regional level
        • JA: yes, none of these tracks are exclusive categories. Someone can participate or fit in multiple tracks. Important to remember that these overlap. Each of the tracks is gathering data and then sharing it out, so they will not be working in isolation/not sharing with each other
        • NE: Additional question. I second Kaarel’s point, and also, what about “affiliate partners” - not only content and funding partnerships, but also (?) partnerships. One plan had an “expert” track; can you share a bit more about why partnerships vs new readers, and no “experts”?
        • JA: Yes, “experts” got broken down among the other tracks, since they tend to have expertise through affiliates, or contributing, etc
        • SN: Rather than just having a separate “experts” track, those people fall under tracks C and D, depending on their focus
        • SR: What is the rationale for grouping readers and partners in the same group? I see them as quite distinct.
        • SN: Because tracks C and D require a higher focus on research, the tracks are being divided to best accommodate how they will be resourced. There are teams at the Foundation that already work closely with experts, readers, and with prospective experts and readers. This clustering allows us to maximize the work done.
• Timeline for steering committee
  • JA: Ok, moving to the timeline. The main part of it is from now through 13 February. Today is our first set of meetings, and we want to get a basic gist of where we want to go from here - what actions/choices do we take to let us design a process that fits our goals (diverse, etc), and have our direction by Wikimania
    • Also, the process is highly participatory across languages & projects, and will have active facilitation via a variety of methods (on-wiki, face-to-face, etc). Information collected in these ways will be collected and shared to meta
    • Facilitate inclusion of all voices, without the loudest ones dominating
  • JA: next week we will have a 1st draft of this process, to be posted to Meta the week after. Then a week later, a 2nd draft. Final process posted to Meta by 13 February. It is up to this committee to advise about where, how, who this process should happen, but it’s not your responsibility to carry out those things. We do have budget and potential staff resources.
    • Community Liaisons (CLs) particularly; we can review the job descriptions for strategy CLs if you think that would be useful

Group B

• The charter
  • JB: Few mins to run through high-level. Note it's a very short timeline. This week is general conversation and understanding of parameters, and collecting advice on how to proceed. Next week the core team will work on proposal draft, which you'll be invited to give further feedback on, which will then be posted at meta. (Clearer timeline above)
• Discussion about the different tracks
  • JB:
    • 4 tracks to reach out to people to build this direction:
      • track A: organized groups, including affiliates
      • track B: on-wiki individual contributors
      • track C: current readers and partners
      • track D: prospective readers and partners
    • C and D ideas will be developed by a different group; this committee is working on A and B, specifically.
    • Neither track is exclusive, and there will be overlap
    • Tracks C & D will be readers and expert input and partnerships
    • Any concerns or thoughts?
  • LCR: want to clarify, in Track C, you talked about a partner that might not be contributing, could you elaborate:
    • JA: a lot of partner work is already being done by wikimedians, eg partners who already are working with us via affiliates or as active editors.
  • JA: In addition to these tracks and short timeline, there are 3 design considerations we're tasked with:
• See Design Considerations above.
  • The WM Affiliates Conference is a big marker, with next big marker Wikimania. Want a 10,000 foot view with thematic directions, by then.
• LW: D track and ? design consideration, about getting new voices involved. How will we be able to gauge this, given that this represents "everyone we don't know".
  • JA: We're primarily concerned with A/B tracks, but coming up with an inclusive model affects all of these and is important, and your ideas welcome.
  • GP: New Readers group will be involved with this, and they have experience doing on the ground research and phone calls and similar outreach.
• LCR: I appreciate this group is focused on A/B, but people within track A will have invaluable contacts within tracks C/D. We're participants as well as conduits. Also, if a huge amount of work is going to happen, by middle of August, because after that milestone comes the work of detailed strategic planning, a lot of work before will help make the layers, e.g, access or global or whatever the thematic directions are. So whilst we're focusing on the high-level details, we should also take notes on our more fine-detailed thoughts, so that detailed notes are available in the later stages.
• GP: Yes, to both, this is an important point that was also brought up this morning by colleagues - as for documentation - yes - all will be carefully and thoroughly documented. We know many will want to discuss ideas and more concrete plans and we will work to capture those.
• JA: Yes, this was a good point that was mentioned in the earlier meeting, and to reiterate there will be a lot of overlap between tracks.

H:20 Guiding Questions & Idea Share

• How might we create an inclusive process to encourage participation of individual contributors across the movement?
• How can affiliates engage communities they serve in participating in this process?
• Do the proposed “tracks” make sense? Is there anyone missing from the discussion? Should the groups be split or grouped differently?
• How can we utilize resources we’ve been given? (Liaisons - potential JD)
• How can this group do outreach to underrepresented communities to ask for input on process? (Space on wiki? Emails?) How can Community Engagement staff support in this?

HH:20 notes

Group A

• SR: something we discussed during our ED meeting and with WMNL - we know that only about 12% of editors actually follow mailing lists, Meta, etc and are engaged with what’s happening in the wider community. Of the remaining 85%, about half are “somewhat” engaged, and the rest are engaged not at all. Nevertheless, that “not” percentage are valuable to the community - how are we going to get their voices heard in this strategy process?
• BD: To follow up on Sandra’s point: I completely agree, and one idea: would we consider using (local project?) talk pages more, to grab people who won’t come to Meta?
  • Also, re: not-loudest-voices: maybe we should create a principle about how to ensure the design process has enough “quieter” voices - instead of saying “less loud people” approach it as “more quiet people, because we value them”
  • A lot of cultural barriers to participation exist. Sometimes people have to be invited to participate. I’m not sure how to phrase this, but I think it’s important that we work on those barriers so people know they are part of the global discussion. This will also involve many languages and translations.
• JA: Yes, that makes sense and parallels a point that’s come up before - the level at which we’re envisioning this thematic direction, not everyone wants to engage at that high a level, they might be more comfortable engaging at the tactical level, about specifics. Nevertheless, it’s really important that we get as much community knowledge into this phase as we can, so that’s both a cultural and functional bridge we need to cross. What people are “used to” doing when they contribute on their project is different from what we’re asking them to do now
• GP: There will be discussions on Meta, but also on other wikis, discussions not in English, etc. That’s why we are planning to hire so many language liaisons - to enable discussions in other spaces (e.g. community village pumps on non-English projects). The liaisons would then summarize those discussions and report them on Meta in English
  • Also, other channels like Facebook groups are valid too - if a community wants to use Facebook to discuss rather than VP, then if that works for them, we should work with it
  • I am open to other suggestions about how to bridge that gap and catch non-English, non-Meta input
• BD: These are all great ideas, but again, how do we reach editors (in any language) who may have something to contribute, but don’t hang out in any of the chosen discussion venues (not just Meta, but VPs, facebook groups, etc) - in any community, there are valuable contributors who don’t monitor those places. Is it possible to leave messages on individual talk pages at points, so everyone knows something is going on and feels that yes, they too are specifically invited to join in on it. Can we push our outreach out that far?
• SR: Support Bishakha’s idea about talk pages, MassMessage, wiki mail, etc. However, using talk pages can be resented by community members who watch a lot of talk pages and feel it’s spam or clutters up watchlists.
  • Also, it’s important to create an opportunity for people to give input privately about their ideas - email, etc - for those who are not comfortable talking somewhere where “the loud people” may challenge them or their ideas.
• JA: Yeah people are strongly agreeing with the private-channel idea. Feedback tends to be very different (and more wide) via private methods. Plus, feedback delivered individually like that is easier to sort through and process.
  • Talk page messages do lead to higher uptake rates, but the watchlist problem does exist
• GP: Agree on private option. But also, going back to Sandra’s thought about “talk page spam” - there are other mechanisms for catching the “quiet people”, like working with affiliates and groups to spread the word (maybe even hold discussions in their spaces, online or off). Those groups are often deeply embedded in their language communities.
  • Also, word of mouth - ask participants to reach out to people on their wikis and let them know the discussions exist, and we want their input too. Make the discussion go well for the first contributors, so they report back to their communities that it’s a good, interesting thing to contribute to
• NE: Yes, affiliates are great links between WMF and community, and it’s comparably easy to work with them because they tend to have a single point of contact we can reach out to for help and knowledge
  • Use the local wikis rather than relying on Meta, for sure. Dewiki, for example, they don’t go to Meta, and if we ask them to, we’ll lose more than half of them just on that barrier
  • If you want to post on talk pages on a project, use the language of their community - and not the formal type, but conversational language, so they don’t tune you out
  • But then what about the communities without affiliates? If we rely on affiliates where they exist, we can devote more time and effort to the ones without them
• KV: We need to work hard to determine expectations. Maybe a video (subtitled?) that’s short and inspiring, to get people to share thoughts. And our communication/organization must make it clear that this is not pro forma, a consultation on paper but our decision is already made - make people understand that we are using their input
  • Maybe open questions (2-3 of them?) to get people talking. But of course that makes it hard to evaluate afterward
  • Big communities are very different from small communities. On smaller Wikipedias, there tends to be a core group of maybe 30 people, each of whom is personally known by the affiliate, and therefore an affiliate can do personal outreach to them for us (including translation, etc)
    • If we can find one or two community members who are very enthusiastic, we can empower them and they can go out and recruit people from their community to participate. Might also help the development of new affiliates!
• JA: are we ready to talk about resourcing now? Ambassadors, etc that we’re discussing now sounds a lot like the Community Liaisons we are intending to hire for this process. We can look at the job description we prepared for that role, if people want
• NE: can we review the JD online and leave comments, rather than use meeting talk time for that?
• JA: Sure. Here’s a quick summary, for now (will share JD doc after meeting): there is budget for possibly up to 20 part-time folks to work for a 3-month period, with particular priority languages focused on.
• SN: we’d like to have JD feedback on the doc by early next week, since if we plan to hire them, we need to have enough time. The fastest we could set up an onwiki consultation they’d work on would be March 1, so we could get feedback at the Wikimedia Conference - but to do that, we need those CLs ASAP.
• JA: Right, so everyone please leave your feedback by next Tuesday
• JA: and now, back to guiding questions! We’ve covered outreach and resourcing, tracks, and engagement. But there’s also the question of how we can get input from communities on how to build the process. Ok, share your thoughts!
• BD: A question about something related: I want us to think hard about what we mean by the term “participate” - Let’s say I speak a minority language, and I share my thoughts in that language. Now...how do I follow the rest of the discussion? I don’t read English, so I can’t just skim the Meta discussion. So it’s not just people feeding their thoughts into us, it needs to also include us feeding information and discussion back to them. Is this something the CLs would do, to take Meta discussion, etc, back to local projects?
  • And is 3 months of contract enough for the work we want our CLs to do?
• SN: We may have a little budget flexibility, so we can evaluate if 3 months is enough. I do think that having feedback circle back to local communities/languages is a very good and important point.
• JA: Guillaume? Any comment re: documentation?
• SR: At WMNL, we have a good relationship with college training for translators/interpreters. Could we partner with similar groups around the world to build language capacity?
• GP: Thank you, Bishakha, for that point. I agree that we do need to feed discussion back to local communities, and that’s something we need to plan for in CL time budget. Identifying that need now, before we start, is a good way to make sure we keep it in mind when we start actions
  • Many years ago I drafted a process for multilingual discussions. It was never used but maybe we can use it as inspiration - discussion in multiple languages that is then centralized https://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Multilingualism/En
  • If we do this right in these strategy discussions, with our better manpower and planning, and maybe do the centralization once a month or so, that could work
• KV: If we have these kinds of ambassadors (not paid CLs, but just enthusiastic community members), we can have them collect info for strategy, but also give (??) about what direction we’re moving in
  • Also, we can use the education courses (in unis, etc) to have discussions/workgroups with new-ish editors. They may have really good feedback.
  • Use partnerships & GLAM institutions in similar ways
• NE: I’d like to add that those of us who had a meeting yesterday (ED meeting in Lausanne) consider the Berlin conference as the main venue for affiliates/organized groups to come together and come up with strategy and process-for-strategy. What do we need to have prepared for Berlin to enable that to be most useful? And what will we ask of them immediately after Berlin? Or between Berlin and Wikimania? (and not just asking this because I’m the curator of the conference!)
• SR: Nicole is right that for the affiliates, the process leading up to Berlin is crucial. I’m also interested in how we plan to involve the people who are not linked to an affiliate (not just in non-affiliate countries, but also for people who just don’t join existing affiliates). So affiliate planning is important, but we cannot focus on that to the exclusion of everyone else
• JA: Absolutely! I’ve started drafting some next steps in the section below

Group B

• JB: For a quick review of the earlier meeting, see the Next Steps section below which summarizes.
• MK: Ukraine had a 25% participation rate in last elections. We posted to talkpages of all eligible voters, based on active editors metrics (?). We wrote a brief explanation, why important, why they should vote, plus brief candidate summaries, plus VP posts. Signed by a person from the community (known person). Wrote in simple language, as many community members don't know what affiliates are. What wouldn't work: Focusing on wikimedia-l (too anglocentric, and too WMF-centric); Metawiki (not familiar, too anglocentric, not sure what occurs there). We should try to explore local VP pages and local talkpages - not general spam but get local communities to adapt the message, "you're representing Foo, and we want to get your thoughts and feedback". Could also try to make local discussion on local wikis - not sure how it would work, but it would help to have discussions in familiar environments, accessible in 1 click, with known language and participants.
• JB: Big theme here, is to activate local channels, with familiar language and participants. Also a friendly message from a friendly known person.
• AZ: I think in addition to Mykola, we should try to make sure that minority voices get heard and feel heard. Sometimes I'm speaking from perspective of sister project, or non-English Wikipedia, sometimes you can have local channels that will work with you, and sum up and translate feedback, but I think top-down engagement from WMF is need to activate them. People want to feel that they matter. Sometimes in small communities we participate in surveys and use our mailing list and activate people in VPs, but if we just talk to ourselves, it gets boring and frustrating, and it feels like we aren't being heard at the top. Engaging people is urgently important.
• AZ: If someone from WMF comes to Wikisource, and says "I don't speak your language, but …" and helps them to do what they want to do, it will help them to activate. If you just ask them to copy & paste a message, it won't help to activate them. There are ways for communities to help us get the feedback we want, but we need to make them understand their worth and that they matter
• JA: Similar remarks in the earlier meeting, that some participants can feel like their feedback isn't being valued.
• LCR: I think it builds on what you and Andrea were saying, there seem 4 key things we need to get right:
  • Identify appropriate channels and platforms
  • What's the pitch, how are we articulating the goals and message. E.g. Wikisource might need something slightly different from the Catalan community
  • What is the questions - a blank sheet , a set of prompt or provocations
  • Closing the feedback loop, so that people can see what happened to their input. Even if it's not the exact thing they said, they can see through the extensive documentation that something of what they contributed has been retained.
• LW: Not sure if we should, but is there a plan to make the process using more than just English as the official language, e.g. using multiple official languages. ?
• JB: That's the kind of proposal we're looking for, from you!
• GP: What we're doing here is listening to the advice and recommendations like this, and will draft something based on it, and at the next meeting we'll have something for you to take-apart and comment on and improve. -- 1 mechanism s the CLs we're planning to hire to facilitate discussions in more than English - to help discussions at local wikis, or off-wiki, take place in the local languages. Since we're talking about feeding back summaries into the discussions, e.g. summaries of what's happening at Frwikisource should go back to metawiki, and summaries from metawiki should go to Itwiktionary, etc. So something along these lines is needed, but not sure of exact setup.
• JA: As Guillaume said, temporary CLs are budgeted for, and will take on some of this role. Perhaps as many as 20 half-time folks, for perhaps 3 months (or more, being investigated). The other group decided to look at the Job Descriptions (JD) after the meeting; we can focus on that or the other details.
• LCR: I was struck by the power of face-to-face (f2f) facilitated conversations. We're going to be involving a lot more people than can feasibly be involved f2f, but it think it reflects the values that WM works on, collaborative and iterative processes, with diverse participants. I think we should resource some f2f meetings, in addition to the certain online meetings.
• MK: Following up on Lucy’s point - perhaps we can gather on call to action in Berlin to bring back home and bring back to proper channels for feeding back. Preferably organising a specific post-Berlin meetup with local community to present the strategy process and gather their feedback.
• Risker: Challenge will be finding people who are genuinely interested in working on this "high level" project from smaller wikis (incl some of the sister projects).
• AZ: @risker: i think we can find them. the point for me is that many of them are frustrated", they feel that they don't matter. because often they don't really

HH:50 Next Steps

Bare Bones Ideas:

• Leverage Affiliates in language groups where they exist
• Engage ambassadors/liaisons to different languages and to fill in the gaps where there is no affiliate support
• Use private and public channels as well as direct messages to talk pages
• Have basic inspirational video with subtitles to engage and invite people in
• Access editors through education and other programs
• Conference at the end of March will be main platform for affiliates/organized groups - need to let them know what to prepare and what the outcomes should be at the end
• provide a "toolkit" for affiliates/ambassadors who would like to work with their communities
• See information needs below - we need you to think about these things and start preparing your answers (we need those answers re: names soon, so we can start sharing with the community)

Next steps for committee:

• Everyone to confirm that they consent to being publicly listed as member of the committee
• Everyone to confirm that they consent to minutes from these meetings being posted on Meta
• Everyone to review "Audit of past processes" and give thoughts about what we can take from those lessons to bring into this process
• Suzie to investigate budget capacity for CLs/coordinators
• Everyone to collaborate on best times for next meeting(s)
• Everyone to review coordinator JD

HH:50 notes: Setting next steps

Group A

• JA: Any other information needs at this time?
  • GP: the JD feedback (in the table below)
  • JA: Yes, please give your feedback on that ASAP
• JA: also I need to coordinate meeting times for the next meetings, how should we discuss days/times that work for people? Doodle? How flexible are our day choices?
  • SN: Every week will have a revised prototype, so we need close to a week gap each time to enable the revisions (so not a meeting on a Friday and then the immediate next Monday, for example)
• JA: any other tasks we can start, to get us moving on our prototype development?
  • GP: The goal was for this meeting to be more of an intro and sharing session, and now core strategy team will go to work based on the information we’re giving them from here. Next week, they will have something more concrete ready for us to work on/with
• JA: I will send around a Doodle to pick meeting times
• SR: if we expect affiliates, etc to need to put human time into this process, please let them know as soon as possible so they can budget that resource time into their work

Group B

• GP: Would also love to post the notes from these meetings. Could anonymize specific comments.
• LW: Is there any kind of report or conclusion/results doc, about the last strategy, and how we went.
  • Pointer to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Research_and_notes/Audit_of_past_strategy_processes
  • LW: I meant more the content of the last strategy, and whether the goals were addressed or failed, so that it can inform the process of this strategy. Like - a "how did we go?" report on the last strategy.
  • JA: There's also a best practices document that CR drafted, that has helped to support this committee's forming. One major finding I have heard brought up was that we needed 'owners' of the goals, to drive ongoing updates and to guide work, over the years afterwards.
• MK: What are the criteria for choosing the languages for facilitators?
  • JA: (description from doc)
  • GP: we want to focus not just on the biggest wikis,
  • MK: Perhaps we can find active ambassadors in the communities, e.g. perhaps there are German volunteers who can help already. Perhaps we can redirect resources if they're not needed in a specific community.
  • LCR: Chapters working in a language other than English, often get called upon to translate. That's somewhat ok for smaller messages, but for very large endeavours, we might be exhausting their capacity and the people who take on these roles.
  • GP: Yup, (?)
  • MK: Emphasise that translators must be familiar with WM culture, and acronyms, and etc. I remember in a past elections some statements of female candidates were mistranslated as if from male. Or pagelinks/acronyms were mis-translated.
  • GP: Mykola: Agreed 100% . One of the requirements is "Experienced users of Wikimedia projects, capable of representing our community within the Foundation and vice-versa.
  • JA: Agreed, and the tight timeline makes this even more complicated, hence looking for creative suggestions on how we can use our existing resources, and your advice in general
  • GP: Recommendations appreciated.