Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2021/Meetings/Candidates meet with the the Sub-Saharan, Middle East and North Africa Communities

Changed time

@Rosiestep: @Mike Peel: @Pundit: @Fjmustak: @Waltercolor: @Laurentius: @Discott: Just writing you all to highlight that the meeting has been moved to another day and time, and I would have personally overlooked this if I hadn't gotten curious about a recent change notice... Adamw (talk) 20:36, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

User:AshLin's answers to Questions raised on Sub-Saharan Africa & MENA Communities

Caveat:: AshLin had trouble with the microphone during the meeting. Other candidates had the chance to reply to the questions (and their replies are recorded).

Question by User:Darwin

• Question from @Darwin:: 10 years ago we had communities from the Portuguese speaking African countries, but those have faded into complete extinction in Wikipédia by now. There are starting/potential small communities or isolated members in some countries. Generally they have no desktops, though cell phone use is generalized there. Often they speak Portuguese but no English and no French. This has been hindering a lot progression in these places, along with the fact that there's nobody in the region available to give training. What would be your approach to help including those non-represented and underrepresented communities in the Wikimedia projects and movement?

  Answer. Small communities, such as the Portuguese-speaking community in African countries, need major attention and engagement because almost every issue is a challenge. The problems interconnect; lack of volunteers, resources, expertise, institutional support, community awareness, as well as challenges from the socio-political environment the community lives in, all affect each other. In such a situation, part of the problems lie beyond the clearly defined limits of Wikimedia programs, so the Wikimedia projects can be part of the solution but all the challenges need to be tackled at the same time, if the Wikimedia-related activities are to be fruitful. So, some of the needs may be addressed through Wikimedia solutions, some would require solutions beyond the scope of the Wikimedia movement.
  
  We need to focus exclusively on this community and its information needs as a whole. We need to carry out a deliberate analysis, this will involve much talking to people, surveying and getting feedback, to understand the situation, and identify the needs accurately and how they can be tackled. SWOT analysis is a good start to assess our initial situation. However, for successfully developing a long term approach for our problem, we should learn about and understand how to tackle wicked problems.
  
  Wicked problems involve a variety of social, cultural, financial, political, religious, economic, etc. Applying a single action, or a set of actions does not resolve the problem, but it can improve the situation for some time. However, after an action/set of actions, once some issues are resolved but then other issues will crop up and they will need to be addressed with a different set of actions. So, over and over, we need to adapt and keep working continuously until we reach a situation that will satisfy our needs.
  
  So, in the situation mentioned in the question by User:Darwin, the mobile must be the basis for making a say Telegram group to become a community, to connect and communicate, to get and give information, and understand the problem, and to brainstorm how to solve each problem. Initiate a program to recruit volunteers from different sections of the community, like students, any retired people with time on their hands, academics, sponsors etc. Identify which people can use laptops/PCs and use Project Tiger-like initiative to give them those devices. Provide resources ways and means for teaching French and/or English to those who want to learn, ranging from online apps to sponsored university course, to creating and deploying English and French language courses on Wikiversity and Wikibooks to support them.
  
  Start a program to identify the information needs of the community, how they want to preserve and nourish their language and culture. Teach basic editing skills for all the Wikimedia projects. Wiktionary and WikiLambda /Abstract Wikipedia can help save important aspects of the African Portuguese language dialects. Recording spoken language and videos and images of cultural items and events can be saved for posterity on Commons. Old books about the African Portuguese Community can be saved in Internet Archive/Commons and then transferred to WikiSource.
  
  This band of solutions would be interspersed with non-Wikimedia related solutions such as advocacy, resource-raising, engagement with academics and with technical people, cultural organisations, non-profits, educational educations, government and so on.
  
  All these activities would be taken up, finished, new activities started, and so on until the desired outcome, that is heathy African Portuguese Community is achieved, both in real life as well as on Wikimedia movement.
  
  In my opinion, only such deep engagement will actually help the community to prosper, and piece-meal solutions may give some progress in some aspects, but overall they will fail in long term, unless comprehensive engagement with all issues is done. I am deeply aware that this is a very hard and difficult thing to do, but by taking advice and suggestions of all stakeholders, this process can be made possible. However, this will require some people to dedicate their lives to it. I am deeply aware how much African people are committed to family and society, and I am very much convinced that this is do-able. In the continent where Nelson Mandela achieved peaceful establishment of a nation amongst hate and violence, and where librarians of Tombouctou risked their lives in Mali to save their imperilled literary heritage, I am convinced that the African Portuguese people can save themselves with a little help.
  
  I hope, this answers, your query, User:Darwin. AshLin (talk) 07:24, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Question 1

• What is your strategy to promote (increase) representation of under-represented communities in various boards and committees?

  Answer: My strategy would be two fold.
  
  In the first part, I would work to make sure there is adequate systemic provision for the under-represented communities to be accepted and given access to representation in such boards and committees. I would work to ensure that there are no obvious or hidden barriers to under-represented committees from such opportunities. For carefully selected boards and communities, I will advocate representation through seats reserved for Global South/emerging communities, to ensure equity (credit for this idea to my fellow candidate Ravishankar Ayyakkannu).
  
  My second part would to encourage the Community to develop carefully chosen volunteers for representing their community. For this, I advocate making available training, opportunities and resources.
  
  Of course, these would be done through consultation with WMF officials who are responsible for this task and through putting up policy proposals in the Board.

Question 2

• How can you balance the decision-making power between communities, affiliations and user groups?

  Answer: Each nation has a group of communities decided by nationality, ethnicity, language or region. These are represented unevenly by communities, affiliations and user groups. All communities are not represented equally, some have representation in the form of affiliated chapters, some have user groups, some communities have neither an affiliated chapter or user group. With formal structures coming into being with Global Council and hubs, unrepresented or under-represented communities are going to face issues related to exclusion. The issue is about making sure as many communities are represented as possibly can. For this "emerging communities" need to be helped. (I am not using the emerging communities definition used by the Grant Committee, which excludes the most needy or struggling communities from getting any kind of aid or help). For this we need to make sure that:
  

(a) New communities should have an easy process to get Wikimedia projects accepted through the incubator process.
(b) New communities should have an easy process to get grants.
(c) It should be easy for new communities to form affiliates and user groups.
(d) It should be easy for new communities to get accepted as members of hub and Global Council, and get equal treatment and equal say as others.

Question 3

• What are your plans to create a healthy environment free of harassment and abuse

  Answer: Making a safe and inclusive space for all Wikimedians is my top priority of the three Movement Strategy priorities which I have listed in my candidacy page. In this, I strongly advocate a minimalistic but adequate Universal Code of Conduct, but not in the present form where WMF is the gatekeeper of such conduct, but where there is provision with each community project for a disciplinary resolution committee and with an analogous committee at Global Council level.

The minimal Code must have provisions for identification of unacceptable behaviour, due process, appropriate and scaled disciplinary outcomes for defaulters, protection of privacy for stakeholders till the charges are proved, due process, protection for whistleblowers, etc. Where the community has not accepted the code, they should have policy pages which provide such protection to the volunteer editors from harrassment and abuse.

We also need Community to oversee that:

(a) WMF doesn't overstep its bounds, as happened in the Fram case,

(b) That nominated neutral community volunteers and not WMF staff are the code of conduct gatekeepers in discussions where there is disagreement between the WMF and the Community,

(c) That besides the usual safe spaces where users are protected from abuse and harassment, we create "intellectual safe spaces" where antagonistic or dissenting ideas can be presented and where the users who espouse them are not removed from the discussion because they expressed those ideas, and where they are safe from action by WMF disciplinary action or project admin action.

I am open to discussion and engagement on these ideas on my talk page and through email or other forms of social media.

Question 4

• What are your plans for developing marginalized or non-English speaking communities?

  Answer: Marginalized or non-English speaking communities face a variety of challenges. Often their volunteer count is low, and they are unable to address the issues they face. So these challenges never go away, and the communities remain marginalized. For such communities, the first need is support from the larger Wikimedia Community and the WMF; the Communities needs need to be taken into account, and provided help and support for their immediate needs, whether it is representation of their issues, advice, providing monetary and human resources help, etc. Subsequent to the immediate need, the community needs to be grown and help provided in recruitment, training and volunteer development so that it can attain a more sustainable science. The next step is for helping the Community to look at their long term needs, challenges and issues in a broader context, including social, cultural, educational, political, economical and other perspectives; this overview should be done periodically (say annual) and from these deliberations (which need to be open-minded, inclusive and solution-oriented), a strategy should be addressed and then pursued to progress towards the goals of the community. Naturally, such a discussion would have to be on a broader context of open knowledge and furthering human values, and the local Wikimedian community, the global community and WMF would need to look to provide solutions where they can through the Wikimedia Projects environment.
  
  Besides this long-term engagement of the marginalized community, systemic issues need to be resolved such as the the WMF Grants Committee's definition where they discriminate against the most marginalized communities:
  

there is great potential for increase in quantity and quality of Wikimedia work, and where there is, locally, insufficient capacity to realize that potential, and where there is an existing active core of self-motivated volunteers, which therefore WMF could effectively devote some proactive resources to support and nurture.

Another systemic barrier is the difficult and tedious process of getting language Wikimedia projects approved through the Incubator. Besides this, we need to ensure that when the Wikimedia Charter results in creation of the Global Council and Hubs, new emerging communities should not face discrimination and barriers in getting accepted into them on an equal footing from well-established, dominant Wikimedia communities.

Emerging and non-English speaking communities must get all the help to survive and prosper and take equitable place in the Wikimedia movement, so that we as a global Wikimedia movement live up to all the values we profess.

Nehaoua questions

@Nehaoua: Some thoughts about your questions.

1. Building a more equitable Movement demands a revision of the current power balance that inhibits underrepresented communities to reach leadership positions. The creation of the hubs as support structures focused on specific regions or thematic areas should help in capacity and leadership development among these emergent communities. There are also very successful initiatives, like WikiIndaba, in this context.

2. The 2030 Movement Strategy establishes an important advance by sharing decision-making processes with Movement stakeholders. This is an opportunity to create a permanent dialogue among the multiple communities and Movement organizations. For sure, mechanisms to ensure equitable representation in this structure must be incorporated and continuously evaluated.

3. The WMF adopts high standards of management practices and should lead by example. Eventual cases of management misconduct should be taken seriously. It is key to develop more clear pathways for victims to report the incidents. Also to guarantee a fast response, the individual protection, and strategies to mitigate the harm.

4. As a physician in very poor zones of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, my daily routine is to work with marginalized communities and to deal with conditions of limited resources.

The Movement Strategy correctly determines an expressive increase of resources for funding marginalized communities-related expenses and the Board, proactively, must assure this. The same with capacity building and skills development actions to create leadership, autonomy and sustainability of these emerging initiatives.

Working with communities historically oppressed and exploited demands respect, genuine interest, and humility. It is crucial to develop projects that preview practical benefits or the empowering of that community.

--Vinicius Siqueira (talk) 20:25, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Recording of meeting

Where can I find a recording of the meeting? Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 20:59, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Ad Huikeshoven, it has been placed on the page of the event. Link for the video proper is here. AshLin (talk) 13:07, 18 August 2021 (UTC)