Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Working Groups/Roles & Responsibilities

Overview

Keywords

Movement structures, Governance, Leadership

Focus

The organizational and affiliate model of the Wikimedia movement;
the different roles, purposes and relationships of the WMF and its affiliates and committees;
global, regional, local and thematic responsibilities of movement organizations (existing and prospective);
movement wide leadership, governance and decision-making processes;
equity within our structures and distribution of responsibilities for crucial functions needed by the movement (legal, fundraising, data protection, software development, communication)

Rationale

Wikimedia has changed the way knowledge is created and used, and has been a pioneer in keeping the internet a space for collaboration and learning. In the light of our new strategic direction, we need to reflect whether the structures that got us where we are now will be able to get us into the future – a future where Wikimedia will be the essential infrastructure in the ecosystem of free knowledge. The organizational structures in the Wikimedia movement have often grown randomly, non-strategically, or were developed in contexts that are no longer present or relevant; there has never been a master plan for the distribution of roles and responsibilities of Wikimedia organizations and groups.

Currently:

there is currently no global body that has the mandate to lead decision-making processes for the movement and no process to implement these decisions and iterate the changes together;
power is centralized in a few organizations;
we are lacking a clear definition of leadership in the movement;
we don’t have a shared understanding of which organizational model can best serve our mission, and have never defined a clear path of development for the organizations and groups.

The role of the Wikimedia Foundation itself ranges from a grantmaker, platform provider, over a global fundraiser, to a community supporter and coordinator.

If we would start the movement from scratch, how would we structure ourselves and how would we distribute the work that we do to best serve our mission?

Guiding Questions

These questions are not meant to be answered one-to-one but should help the group frame their own conversations and their consultations with movement stakeholders.

What is the definition of the “Wikimedia movement”—who is in it and what roles do they play?
What are the changes we need to make in our organizational structures, global decision making processes, and power dynamics in order to live up to our strategic priority of equity?
How do we share responsibilities across the global movement so that people, organizations and groups are empowered to best serve our mission and advance towards our strategic direction?
What are the roles and purposes of the Wikimedia Foundation, of its affiliates and committees?
What processes do we need to initiate to manage future change in an inclusive, participatory, but yet effective way?

Mailing list

wg2030-rolesandresponsibilitieswikimedia.org

Members

Name	Organization / project	Role	Geography
Anna Torres Adell	Wikimedia Argentina	Staff member	Latin America and Western Europe
Anne Clin	Funds Dissemination Committee	Volunteer	Northern America, Europe
Bodhisattwa Mandal	West Bengal Wikimedians User Group	Volunteer	South Asia
Butch Bustria	ESEAP	Volunteer	Southeast Asia
Chris Keating	English Wikipedia	Volunteer	Western Europe
Claudia Garád	Wikimedia Österreich	Staff member	Central and Eastern Europe
Kirill Lokshin	Affiliations Committee	Volunteer	Northern America, Central and Eastern Europe
Lukas Mezger	Wikimedia Deutschland	Board Member	Central Europe
Margeigh Novotny	Wikimedia Foundation	Staff member	Northern America, Oceania
Nataliia Tymkiv	Wikimedia Foundation	Board member	Central and Eastern Europe
Erina Mukuta	Wikimedians of Uganda	Volunteer	Eastern Africa
Zeinab Takouti	Wikimedians of Tunisia	Volunteer	Northern Africa

Former members:

Abraham Taherivand (ED Wikimedia Deutschland) – stepped down Jan 2019, replaced by Lukas Mezger
Georgina B. Fields (Wikimedia Foundation) – stepped down June 2019 on leaving the WMF

Reports and documents

Recommendations

Please take a look at the draft recommendations (September 2019):

First draft recommendations are available as well (August 2019).
There is also an abbreviated, translated version prepared for easier engagement.

Scoping document

Scoping document (March 2019)

Activities and reports

July 2019: Blog post Roles and Responsibilities Working Group meets in Utrecht
Summaries of our meeting minutes are available here.

Wikimedia Conference Working Group Report (2018)

During the Wikimedia Conference 2018, the Working Group “Roles & Responsibilities” proposed “Power Dynamics” as a title instead. As power is only a part of the broader conversation around global, regional and local responsibilities and roles, and we wouldn’t want the group to only concentrate on this aspect, the Strategy Core Team decided to keep the original name.

This is an overview of the outputs from the discussion about Roles and Responsibilities at the Wikimedia Conference 2018.

The group discussed: 1. What the scope of this thematic area should be; 2. Who should be in the Working Group; 3. How the Working Group should work.

Focus of the conversation

The main points from the Roles and Responsibility group discussion at the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were:

It is necessary to see the organisational structure of the Wikimedia Movement in all its complexity and not as a structure with WMF as its center; WMF is one of the agents.
There is a need to openly consider the current power dynamics in relation to future organisational development.
Focus on developing into an equitable organisational structure.

What?	Who?	How?
The group formulated a list of questions that relate to The organisational structure of the Wikimedia Movement – example: Should we be organized in a centralized way or a more distributed way, Cathedral vs. Bazaar? Power dynamics – example: What are the power structures we would like to see exist? Leadership – example: How are we defining leadership? what are leaders responsible for? Processes/strategies – example: How can we use "change management" theory/methods/consultants to facilitate the evolution of roles and responsibilities in the Movement?	Suggested method to ensure diversity: Consider interdependent pairs of “old – new”, “inside – outside”, “stabilizing – disruptive”, “visual – structure”, “staff – wikimedian” Ideally each person would have more than one of the above characteristics and/or be a “bridge character” Other keywords: Collaborative Alliance-builders Inclusive (specifically include marginalised and disruptive voices) Comfortable with openness Time available Suggested roles in the group: External facilitator (without having too high expectations of external consultants) Manager Generally: a strong set of functional roles (communications, facilitation, etc.)	The group mainly focused on the process design itself. 3 preconditions for a successful process were identified: flexibility of the ongoing process, at the same time the Working Group should reach concrete outcomes. transparency and clarity about the power distribution is key in this conversation. keeping Wikimedia community in the loop throughout; the process has to be well designed in order to have legitimate rich outcomes.

Possible concrete actions for the Working Groups

Step 1	Step 2	Outcome
agree on name agree on rules of interaction and decision-making identify underlying shared values and build trust	map the Movement status quo reach out to the external inputs (stakeholders as well as existing research)	A few realistic scenarios for the Movement Next steps Discuss scenarios with the Wikimedia community

If you would like to know more details about the Working Group discussions on this theme, please consult the documentation.

Resources

Existing materials

This is a non-exhaustive list. Please add more sources that provide context, background information and insights related to the thematic area.