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Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/Global Conversations/Report/21-22 November minutes

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This page contains detailed, original minutes from the 21-22 November Global Conversations. The information below was compiled directly from the event's breakout session docs, discussion minutes and chat archives (after it has been anonymized and with a minimum editing for style). You can also read a summary report from the events.

Summary report of breakout sessions, Saturday, November 21

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General

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  • The particular question refers to the global level -> important to do together
  • A lot of the initiatives and the recommendations have never been thought about at the local level.
  • Not everyone knows about the recommendations - more work to do here.
  • Depending on where you sit the priorities look very different so we need to keep this in mind and make sure that we understand how tackling one or the other priority/initiative might or might not support global participation in the movement. For example: how do people in emerging communities' geographies actually get to participate in the global council or  other initiatives if they are not funded, or if leadership support is not available.
  • All initiatives around Knowledge Equity need to be started quickly; It is a bold initiative in the 2030 Strategic Direction and we have not made much progress on it to-date.
  • The way we do many of our consultations is currently flawed. So if that method is used for creating, say, the Global or Technology Councils, they will themselves be problematic. We need to solve consultations first before solving big global issues.
  • Principle of subsidiarity: things to coordinate globally are things that affect communities across the globe. So perhaps issues around global governance, resources allocation, should be coordinated globally

Recommendation 1 - Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement

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  • Unless sustainable it cannot exist for the longest period.
  • Why isn’t Wikimedia Foundation incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation (a company with a conscience)? That could help with a lot of the governance issues. There’s already a model, it should be studied.

Initiative 1 - Systematic approach to improve satisfaction and productivity

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  • For me this initiative is the key. Everything is included there.
  • Difficulty to retain volunteers, it is better to reward people/give them something back, otherwise they will not stay.

Initiative 2 - Funding for underrepresented communities

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  • Provide blind people support via picture description option in commons uploader (not the same as existing descriptions)
  • Funding for underrepresented communities, like blind people, can be a possibility to motivate new authors for the projects. It's senseful to find initiatives that combine work for each other.
  • There are some difficulties in getting funding from the Wikimedia Foundation in India.
  • The Sudan User Group is a new and emerging community and needs assistance to grow and expand. Regarding the second recommendation, we need a methodology in acquiring information for the user group and in teaching new contributors to Wikimedia projects. We also need to address issues about gaps in Wikimedia projects.
  • Marathi community, rural India, important to work for different language communities. Problem: How to approach new students? This could be a good support solution.
  • The problem of capturing a lot of people, people want money. Transport fee, paying for data. And with this it’s hard to motivate people. With this initiative it will become easier.
  • People expect something in return, they don’t want to do it for free. People come to events, but when they see they’ll get nothing in return, they won’t come again. I’m lucky because I live next to the University in the capital, but for people from other places it’s much harder.
  • German group focusing on services for blind people - text for images, enhancing experiences
  • Many communities are unrepresented online and also don’t have resources. 13/14 affiliates in India that can’t access funding (for example banking issues/bureaucracy and regulations re the transfer of funds from overseas)
  • Over the years it has been quite challenging running projects without funding

Initiative 3 - Increased awareness about the Wikimedia Movement

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  • Speaking of the African continent, this is important
  • Increase awareness of Wikimedia around the world (create toolkits that can be used at the local level).
  • It's important that we keep creating a lot of awareness concerning theWikimedia movement, this would in turn help with satisfaction of user and increase  productivity

Initiative 4 - Global revenue generation policy + fundraising strategy

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Initiative 5 - Developing enterprise-level API

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Initiative 6 - Engagement of third party ecosystems

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Initiative 7 - Revenue generation for the Movement

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  • We see this as very important, for the Foundation to explore other means of funding, in order to ensure that there are resources available to do the work that the movement needs to do.

Initiative 8 - Align with environmental sustainability initiatives

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Recommendation 2 - Improve User Experience

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  • Improving UX is not only tech but also how the communities interact with each other.

Initiative 9 - Methodology to improve the Wikimedia platform UX research, design, testing and community engagement / Community engagement around product design and UX / Adaptable UX to various devices

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  • Support to community engagement around product design and UX
  • User design - problem for new contributors
  • Translation user experience can be awkward. Referencing systems are different and are duplicated
  • Global referencing system needed for connecting across languages (Eg open maps needs to be more multilingual)
  • Most of readers come from mobile devices, but this is not optimised for mobile devices for editing and contributing
  • Community wishlists could be one way of communicating technological needs
  • Video content would be useful, living in a video-oriented world (Youtube, IG, Tiktok, et al)
  • We should invest in improving the interface of Wikipedia and its sister projects to achieve its optimum potential as the gateway to free knowledge.
  • Wikipedia has an interface that has not been improved for so long. I personally prefer how Wikipedia appears on WikiWand because it is organized, has a better layout, and is easy to read and to navigate, both on mobile or desktop view. Just like what one Wikipedian said, "editing on mobile works only if you set it on desktop view." During Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments Philippines, and edit-a-thons, we often receive reports from the participants that their user account is being blocked, especially those using mobile phones in registration. Most of the users and contributors now use mobile phones.
  • Making it as easy as possible for people to contribute quickly, from whatever device they are on. Suggestion boxes and help desks?
  • Technology needs to be developed and the user interface could be improved. It is helpful to hear the points of view of people from different countries. This initiative might address this.
    • Don’t want people to have different experiences across platforms so it makes sense to do things like this globally. And we need to hear everyone’s perspective on this.

Initiative 10 - Compatibility with Accessibility Guidelines

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  • Engage people with blind and visual impairments, and other disabilities, around the world
  • 10 is a little ambiguous, because I'm not sure if it's only technical but also for people with disabilities.
  • Accessibility for modern users, like showing different sources next to each other for easier consumption.
  • Most new people join through phones nowadays. To ensure that we stay relevant for them we need to coordinate development, new initiatives etc.
  • Stressing more on accessibility to neurodiverse communities.

Initiative 11 - Resources for newcomers

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  • Most of readers come from mobile devices, but this is not optimised for mobile devices for editing and contributing, which hinders newcomers at participating
  • Contributing to Wikipedia and its sister projects should be hustle-free. Anyone who wants to join us should have access to tutorial videos, physical facilities such as safe space with free internet connection, and readily available references whether physical/hard copy, digitized format or online access. Contributors only rely on their limited resources which should not be the case
  • How do we Invite, welcome, train & support new contributors?
  • Coordinate translations and design leadership programs to help create local communities
  • There are a lot of people who don’t know how to help, or know where to get involved. Where does this go in the initiatives? How to share knowledge across the movement? People don’t know about what happens in the community - they want to participate, but don’t know how. Default of English language for many communications makes it harder for people to get involved or know how to get involved.
  • Also, many people are active in Wikipedia(s) but not in the  community
  • Tools for new users - particularly more technical features e.g. citations.
  • Is this “Resources for Newcomers” a thing? I find hard it how to do this work on a global level for WPs, because they’re so differently structured, but Wikidata is a more global project -- so perhaps this could be done more easily.

Initiative 12 - Peer-to-peer spaces

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  • Needs to engage in community collaboration from the start (from welcoming of a newcomer), once a newcomer has been engaged with a “tutor”
  • Coordinating volunteer group that specifically addresses barriers to entry

Initiative 13 - Platform functionality and documentation standards

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  • Wikipedia App on mobile devices that is able to include incubator projects, at least for signed in users. If the articles for incubator projects can be written on the phone, it would greatly enhance the chances of getting the incubator project to a published state

Initiative 14 - Cross-project tool development and reuse

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  • In the "Improve user experience" section, 9 and 11 are popular, and I agree they are important, but they cannot actually be done without implementing 14 first, even though it’s less popular
  • I will add that there is a common equity problem in the technical infrastructure: the software platform that the different wikis use only appears to be the same for everyone, but actually it isn’t. MediaWiki is the same for everyone, but many of the important features are implemented on the layer of templates, modules, and gadgets, and they cannot be shared.

Initiative 15 - Partnerships to develop Wikimedia API

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Recommendation 3 - Provide for Safety and Inclusion

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  • For the next 10 years it will be major issue around the world
  • Foundation support for understanding different online cultures for different languages/locales, and how that relates to the resulting Wikimedia community
  • The third recommandations is very important because some of their contributors have been dox because of their wikipedian activities. It’s important to protect the community better.  
  • Will benefit from a global approach, but need to respect nuances and differences - different cultures see differently. E.g., issues of harassment
  • Safety is particularly important for our work, as we work with women contributors who often suffer from harassment.
  • Safety and security out of scope for Wikimedia, as it is so large and something that the world has to deal with.

Initiative 16 - Code of Conduct

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  • Important for europe - seeing more bad behaviour
  • If we want to preserve the friendliness of Wikipedia need code of conduct and everyone should participate
  • This is supposed to be a movement-wide set of rules and principles
  • need to continue with it - has already been started globally - should be prioritized
  • Even though some communities don’t see the need for it b/c they’ve not encountered those kinds of issues, it’s still important
  • There is a lot of tension and conflict in the geographical as well as project spaces. It is important to have CoC to ensure safety. The tension is because of political and linguistic issues. Tensions are also because of the variety of dialects and standard usage favoured by the Arabic Wikipedia platform.
  • Tensions are also because of the lower number of female participants in comparison to male participants/editors.

Initiative 17 - Private incident reporting

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  • Personal preference to prioritize this based on several incidents.
  • When there is a problem people post public and that is not a good way of reporting problems. Incidents. More in confidence and private spaces.

Initiative 18 - Baseline of community responsibilities

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Initiative 20 - Advocacy - local capacity development

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  • Important to have ambassadors that are certified with experience in our projects.

Initiative 21 - Built-in platform mechanisms for safety

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  • Important because, in some communities, a lot of stalkers are endangering other participants.

Recommendation 4 - Ensure Equity in Decision-Making

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  • Interim Global Council, Movement Charter and the Global Council are the basis for future change and require a lot of resources. If we don’t implement these initiatives, the change we are all working towards will not happen, especially when it comes to decision-making and knowledge equity
    • Movement charter, global council, and regional/thematic hubs: they’re the rails on which the movement strategy will move forward.
    • How do we include everyone in this process, since it takes a lot of time and energy to participate, but only a few affiliates in the world currently have the resources to work on this
    • How much should bigger organisations like WMF or WMDE contribute to this process and how much should they distribute their power within these new structures?
    • Re-engaging people and people outside the global community has been difficult in the last year and should be a priority in the implementation phase
    • Collect public input as part of this engagement
  • Movement Charter and Global Council have to be globally coordinated
    • These are at the heart of strategic delivery to achieve the vision - the principles have a narrative of subsidiarity, distributed and shared power - if that is only delivered by a small cohort of powerful parts of the org, the rest of the implementation will not have as much credibility
  • Movement Charter, Interim Global Council and the Global Council will need global coordination.

Initiative 22 - Movement Charter

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  • This is supposed to provide movement-wide governance structure and principles
  • PhilWiki Community belongs to a bigger organization of affiliates and is part of ESEAP which stands for East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, therefore we think that a movement charter is important to achieve our shared goals.
  • We need to understand how we interact with each other - Movement Charter can help here.

Initiative 23 - Interim Global Council

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Initiative 24 - The Global Council

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  • Stepping up into global leadership from African community
  • Want a structure to give opportunity for African’s to take role in global leadership
  • UN-style: Every community has a representative, might not be the most effective at decision-making
  • Use regional hubs as proxies for representation on the global council instead
  • This is supposed to be a movement-wide entity
  • Important to have a global council that has wider coverage than the local chapters and the Wikimedia organisation. This will hopefully help promote trust within the movement, because otherwise a lot of communities will be left out.
  • Global council is super important. If we don't have that, a lot of communities are left out. A new body that is really balanced/filled.  Wider coverage than the board of the WIkimedia Foundation or local board. Unity and representation are important.
  • These sequencing questions are really important. e.g., the Movement Charter is required to guide/define the work of the Global Council.
  • Format? UN-style or small representative group? “We don’t need a networking org”
    • If we have hubs, could select from that to represent a region
    • More manageable # of people to have meaningful conversations, make decisions, and come to consensus -- 10-15 people
    • What will the decision-making process of a global council - “many people means more problems”
    • If a larger council, would need to have an executive/steering committee
  • Important because it allows for new people to engage with the funds, improves cooperation across members. ESEAP hub can improve capacity across members and is useful for coordination. Arabic community can have a hub in the MENA region and can build capacity along with improving skills. A lot of knowledge is already available and it needs to be structured well, these activities can be coordinated under the Hubs
  • Global Council is the organ that will oversee everything so it should be the first place to start if we want to be sure the implementation happens in a coordinated way. It’s important that the global counsel is diverse.
  • More of a “general assembly”, not an executive role - has to be spelled out in the movement charter and has to be built up from affiliates and online communities like volunteers on ENWP, Wikidata, Commons - should be represented at the Council, just as Affiliates

Initiative 25 - Regional & thematic hubs

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  • Hoping that “hubs” are not limited to “regional”. There are so many other ways of organizing “hubs”, some of which we are familiar with, and others which are emerging, or even haven’t come into our consciousness yet.
  • Actively facilitate and support the creation of regional and thematic hubs - Better sharing of Information of being part of the movement
  • For engagement in Asia-Pacific region
  • Regional hubs would be a good idea, because some affiliates are evolving and require support, as well as organising regional meetings or Wikimanias, which is currently a difficult process
  • We should coordinate the global structure of the regional hubs, this will allow efficient distribution of resources among affiliates & communities.
  • Also, the movement should provide support to groups that wish to set up a regional hub. Setting up the respective regional hubs should of course happen at the regional level itself.
  • The ESEAP region is one of, if not, the most culturally diverse and underrepresented region in the movement and in the real world. Regional hubs for underrepresented communities and groups such as minority language speakers are important to serve as venues for unheard or unknown voices. Communities and groups being presented as underrepresented sometimes are over-represented and actually have louder voices, figuratively or otherwise. We have seen these at conferences even at regional conferences but still being attended by some from the Global North. They dominate the discussions and naturally intimidate culturally reserved, soft-spoken, non-confrontational people who usually are non-English speakers. They are the ones who ask people to speak louder without realizing that they do not listen to them intently.
  • How to create a model that ensures that all stakeholders are represented equally. Using regional hubs does not seem to be a great answer to this problem. Also: how to engage at the community level.
  • There is interest in regional hubs  for both practical reasons (as simply as time zones) and more overall (more engagement). However not everywhere is a suitable place to maybe start a regional hub.
  • Regional and thematic hubs to make it easier for local chapters and communities to support their decision-making and to increase trust among the movement.
  • It is not specific in the strategy - that’s intentional. Could be many things -- meet the needs of communities and “move the center”
    • Needs overview/oversight, guidelines
    • “Could turn into a bunfight”
    • Concerned that hubs don’t reinforce power dynamics in the movement
    • EU - needs time to develop it
    • If WMUK or WMDE can share their experience in leading projects, other orgs can benefit from that - happens informally now, but would benefit from some structure
  • Something we’re very supportive of and interested in
  • What is a hub? How is it used? Needs more definition(s)
  • Not too much bureaucracy - make it easy to start projects and get them running - if it doesn’t work, that’s fine. Should support people to try new things, make many investments and see what works
  • We should coordinate the global structure of the regional hubs, this will allow efficient distribution of resources among affiliates & communities. Also, the movement should provide support to groups that wish to set up a regional hub. Setting up the respective regional hubs should of course happen at the regional level itself.
  • Need to have a strong voice and adequate infrastructure to ask for something (and get it!) - no point in hubs or global council otherwise. Don’t want the latter to be dominated by people from the global north. decentralisation of power.

Initiative 26 - Flexible resource allocation framework

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  • Wikimedia Foundation should increase overall financial and other resources directed to the Movement for the purpose of implementing Movement strategy. - The Global Council should oversee the implementation of recommendations for funds allocation to regional and thematic hubs and other Movement organizations
  • There is a desire for greater equity especially from those of us who represent communities outside the so-called First World. But in reality, it is very clear where the real power lies. Wealthy, powerful nations are over represented and representatives from these countries tend to have the most important roles within the hierarchy at the expense of countries like the Philippines etc. That is not real equity. Our experience with grant applications and with AffCom perfectly illustrates the importance of striving for greater equity within the movement.
  • Need to talk about financial workflows - who and how is money being spread around our Movement? We need to think about structures.
  • May need some sort of global coordination, particularly around fund distribution. Question is what order do we discuss this? Will representation come through hubs or through languages? Would hubs need to be represented in the global council?
  • Revenue generation is key to be able to do locally through global support and coordination. Currently the funds collected by a US organization cannot be transferred to all countries. This needs to be coordinated globally to find ways to work around it.

Initiative 27 - Guidelines for board functions and governance

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Recommendation 5 - Coordinate Across Stakeholders

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Initiative 28 - Living documents to define responsibilities for specific areas of work

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Initiative 29 - Enhance communication and collaboration capacity with partners and collaborators

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  • Better communication between WMF, chapters and other areas of the movement
  • While partnerships are implicated in many initiatives, they aren’t strongly located in a single initiative (except perhaps #29) that could be prioritized. So it seems there is a risk for this topic being marginalized in the implementation phase.
  • Important to have stronger institutional partnerships that share our philosophy. Not only libraries and GLAM, but political institutions, but projects that have the same philosophy (open access, etc).

Initiative 30 - Technology Council (for improved communication, coordination and support)

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  • Technology Council is the most important thing. We don’t have significant human resources, and we want to make advances on the technical development, e.g., wikidata; we don’t have templates/tech teams; we have old information on our Wikipedia - not updated.
  • Technology Council, because there are many volunteers who want to be engaged and the foundation employees many programmers.

Recommendation 6 - Invest in Skills and Leadership Development

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  • Indigenious communities need support, resources and tools if we want to include them in the movement for Wikimedia 2030.

Initiative 31 - Global approach for local skill development - gathering data, matching peers, mentorship, recognition

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  • Wizards taking into consideration the technicality of syntax for citation in regard of newcomers abilities, as well as rules and recommendations.
  • It is necessary as many times we see there are a number of skills that remain shrinked to a certain locality. So wikimedia should prioritize such initiatives.
  • Easier way of getting training within the movement - in general and related to the movement
  • Need not just editing skills, strategy skills, financial skills
  • When people do projects people don’t know how to do reports, budgets, etc.
  • Learn from other countries where they have run successful projects
  • Need not just editing skills, strategy skills, financial skills
  • When people do projects people don’t know how to do reports, budgets, etc.
  • Learn from other countries where they have run successful projects
  • Opportunity for movement to “teach itself” - groups with skills can offer, or groups with needs can ask
  • Investing local skills development focused on organizational management and governance to support chapter leadership with the challenges they face.

Initiative 32 - Leadership development plan

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  • For African community to engage with the wider community. Investing in leadership development for African communities.
  • How to do training from newbies to expert? > Need easier ways to engage people
  • Importance to leadership development in India. Particularly for INdia very important. In INdia we need to support many people who eagerly contribute.

Initiative 33 - Skill development infrastructure

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  • This should be user friendly
  • Easier way of getting training within the movement - in general and related to the movement
  • It is important in order to very progressively be skilled froma naive view of contributor to a more and more “expert”, skilled.

Recommendation 7 - Manage Internal Knowledge

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  • #7 for coordination is so important - basic fluency and knowledge on how to get around wikimedia - I have been here for 10 years and some areas are still completely opaque to me.
  • A lot of good meta content may exist, but it is very difficult to find.

Initiative 34 - Facilitate a culture of documentation

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  • We document, take notes, lessons learned - it’s important because people will read it and try to make a similar project - helps them learn from our mistakes
  • Our community Lacks documentation to explain policy or customs, which can be difficult for newcomers.

Initiative 35 - Establish a movement wide knowledge base

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  • Using a new platform that is easier to use and structures knowledge in an easier to access way
  • Institutional knowledge is lost when people leave communities or organisations within the Wikiverse, which makes documentation and distributed knowledge more important
  • Build on concepts like the Teahouse on English Wikipedia to enhance the knowledge base

Recommendation 8 - Identify Topics for Impact

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  • Is “Identifying topics for impact” truly a ‘global’ topic? Maybe better at a regional or local level! However, coordination across cultures is sometimes necessary to identify knowledge gaps or biases!

Initiative 36 - Identify the impact of Wikimedia projects & content / Misinformation / Identifying impactful topics

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  • People adding all sorts of content to wikipedia > Identify topics that are likely to be targets of misinformation
  • Identify topics that are likely to be targets of misinformation
  • If we know which projects and content people want to read and contribute to, we can focus on this content and make participation more welcoming and interesting
  • The concept of misinformation needs to be clarified.
  • Misinformation is one of the main reasons for my volunteering and this will get worse and harder and we will need to be able to deal with it faster.
  • Concerned about the WMF getting into disinformation issues. They do not have the capacity and meddle in the work of the volunteers.
  • Misinformation requires a global misinformation strategy - misinformation will become a bigger issue in coming years.

Initiative 37 - List of high-impact topics / Bridging content gaps

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  • It is really important for Africa, especially ways to identify content gaps -> content creation
  • Those issues can be prioritized locally, but do not require global coordination.
  • There are so many unknown topics, investing in this, will enable persons channel their interest into good use.

Initiative 38 - Content initiatives in underrepresented communities

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  • Most successes in Africa have been related to specific projects.
    • Content related to schools
    • Engage community via content
    • Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Fashion, Wiki Loves Transport have been really effective, create new partners, engages new contributors
  • Also a key issue in Australia

Recommendation 9 - Innovate in Free Knowledge

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  • Look at marginalized groups and how they can contribute their knowledge to the world

Initiative 39 - Identifying policies that hinder knowledge equity

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  • Namely citation rights, use of common knowledge which should not be copyrighted, etc.
  • In Swahili and English we write about different things and people. We need to improve the content. Question: What makes the current volunteers from your country and language slower? Answer: We need better policies on what to write about. People say: “I cannot write this article because it’s too difficult, we lack fonts, we lack computers.” We also need to include people from remote rural areas. For us it’s too easy, we live in urban areas.
  • Another problem is oral citation. Question: Is the oral citation problem on French Wikipedia or in your local language, like Fon or Yoruba? Answer: We don’t write in these languages much, because the sources are in French.
  • An important goal but it isn’t clear what this means - what will the impact be on e.g. notability criteria?

Initiative 40 - Policies for experimentation with projects for knowledge equity

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Initiative 41 - Continuous experimentation, technology, and partnerships for content, formats, and devices

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  • Continuous experimentation, technology, and partnerships for content, formats, and devices (especially mobiles, now that they are the majority device accessing Wikipedia, globally)
  • Technology needs to be developed and the user interface could be improved. It is helpful to hear the points of view of people from different countries. This initiative might address this.
  • Research suggests that a larger percentage of people prefer to watch videos than reading articles. Hence there needs to be adaptation of future technologies.

Recommendation 10 - Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt

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Initiative 42 - Monitoring, evaluation and learning at all levels with support and mutual accountability

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Initiative 43 - Develop a comprehensive evaluation system for Movement activities and structures - including technology, coordination, capacity, policies and governance

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Initiative 44 - Iterative change processes

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Initiative 45 - Adaptive Policies (flexible policies, structures, budgeting and planning to adapt to global changes)

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Discussion and chat

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Below are some of the minutes from the open discussion about the heat map as well as the chat logs.

What do you like about the prioritization as it stands now?

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  • I like that the priorities are covering many needs and not specifically related to a given context, which is great for global priorities
  • Reflects the interconnected nature of the strategy - actually much easier to focus on priorities at an initiative level, not recommendations (which are all important)
  • Initiatives seem to link to, recommendations that Wikimedia affiliates are indirectly doing in their programmatic work
  • It's great that there is a high level of distinction - and some areas are clearly most important
  • I like the focus on the global council and, presumably, the governance conversations that are associated with it.
  • Pleasantly surprised that 32. Leadership Development is high. We need to stop thinking about the western world and start thinking about the rest of the world.
  • There's a clear crossover between 11, 31, 33. I like seeing these because some of these recommendations and initiatives are controversial.
  • I like that we are seeing clear areas of focus. It seems most people agree to a high degree on what the priorities should be.
  • I like the level of granularity. This is more about priority rather than recommendations as a whole.
  • Young people more and more use Wiki as a source of knowledge and are keen to share their knowledge. So for them it’s necessary to see resources and language inclusivity.
  • Was first disappointed but am actually happy with the results. Changes will have to be made over the years and we always have to look back on what worked and what initiatives make sense.

What is missing?

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General:

  • An opposition map would be interesting - that would highlight controversial areas.
  • Dissent. You've only allowed us to agree to things.
  • Seems most recommendations prioritized are the ones that can be done now vs those that will take a lot of action for global coordination.
  • Want to underline dedication of community for blind people, eg. better descriptions, so they can be part of the movement and we can have better UX for many people.
  • The heat map is still very limited in number of dimensions-- we have no overview of where the votes came from. I would be interested to see how different priorities are met to different geographies
  • What we don’t have is a sense of what’s going to be difficult in terms of complexity and controversialness. Some things are really big and will require a year or two of work. Others could be done on a scale of 6 months but more people will be upset by them.
  • We should stress that things like the GC is a notable example-- yes it should be worked on but i don't think it means we should be finishing that along. This is a 2030 strategy.
  • Need to coordinate technical questions on a global level (as an enabler for effective work on, e.g., 13 and 14) so it’s best to think about setting up Tech Counsel first.
  • Until 1, 2 and 4 are sorted out for underrepresented communities, they might not have a strong voice in the hubs and the Global Council.
  • Sequencing is more complex than we think at first glance: We need to make sure to bring in as many people before we create the "governing or "organizing" instances, so that we have everyone in those.

By initiative:

  • 10. Accessibility Guidelines
    • I don't like the fact that accessibility ranked very low, although I don't know how much the current Wikimedia pages conform to the guidelines.
    • Point 10 has decreased because Wikipedia cannot be popular without good User Experience, so we should work towards more accessibility towards some articles for better Wikipedia usage..
  • 29. Enhance communication and collaboration capacity with partners and collaborators.
    • This is crucial as we can't be knowledge ecosystem at global level without inclusion of reputed organisations working in various sectors and different people
  • 30. Tech Council seems to be important as an enabler for effective work on, e.g., 13 and 14
  • 34. Facilitate a culture of documentation
    • 39. Identifying policies that hinder knowledge equity
  • 40. Policies for experimentation with projects for knowledge equity
  • 40-45 are very lightly colored - but they are also process/meta concerns, so that is understandable.
  • 45. Adaptive Policies (flexible policies, structures, budgeting and planning to adapt to global changes)

By recommendation:

  • An opposition map would be interesting - that would highlight controversial areas
  • Provide for Safety and Inclusion
    • Safety and inclusion is critical, but I believe this is best done on a local level, in conversation with our global colleagues.
    • It’s not a priority for global coordination because we want to honor local knowledge and practices — not impose US ideology on all communities and all situation
    • Very surprised that the security and safety received such a few votes. For women editors, harassment is one of the big issues.
  • Coordinate Across Stakeholders
    • Surprisingly, Coordinate Across Stakeholders is missing.  - It would bring in effectiveness.
    • Recommendation 5, and initiatives 28-30 did not do a great job of capturing the idea of partners and collaborators
  • Evaluate, Iterate and Adapt
    • I think Recommendation #10 was never going to rise very high because it is a process-oriented recommendation.
    • Really surprised by #10 being low
    • I guess recommendations 9 and 10 are not glamorous (but they are necessary too).

What would make you want to play an active role in implementation?

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  • Clear process
  • Respect and clarity
  • Clear tasks
  • To partner with others in a transparent way
  • True coordination and real means invested in implementation
  • If the WMF took a step back, and let the community lead
  • A clear decision-making process
  • Improvement in WMF consultation methodology
  • Time
  • Fun
  • Transparency
  • Feeling like our skills are well used
  • More widespread and informed involvement and direct influence on governance
  • Radical decentralization
  • Accountability, transparency and communication
  • Involvement in decision-making - even if it's just local.
  • Empowerment in terms of capacity building and access to information and resources.
  • Identify groups’ and people’s will to work on this or that initiative, and connect them to those who want to work on the same thing.

Emerging questions or concerns

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  • We need a clear mechanism for making decisions, otherwise it is all centralized.
  • One bit that got discussed in both groups is a stress that the "priority" we're giving is purely for "needs global discussion" not "must be introduced in the next year". Some things need loads of global discussion, but several years would be fine.
  • Energy/what your community needs, may not relate to what you can work on, or even what we should work on.
  • There are some important questions around sequencing some initiatives as one builds capacity for the next.
  • There are a lot of people who are not here. We don’t hear their voices; we don’t know their opinions; their point of view is not reflected in the Heat map. How do we take this into account as we make decisions regarding the way forward?
  • A large overwhelming proportion of active editors and readers have no idea that a radical change in Wikimedia governance is proposed.
  • Depending on where you sit in the world the priorities look very different so we need to keep this in mind and make sure that we understand how tackling one or the other priority/initiative might or might not support global participation in the movement
  • Requesting an update on the bylaws conversation, which is so critical to the conversation we are having today.
    • If we know nothing useful about them, how can we make these proposals take permanent effect?
    • The foundation bylaws have to be within the scope of any real strategy process, not something set aside.
    • The meta discussions are not getting clear answers
  • Please ask the board of trustees to be present on the 5 and 6 décember.