Talk:Wikimedia movement affiliates/Affiliates Status Report

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Please Note:
We are reaching out to primary contacts for Wikimedia Affiliates, with an exciting update and a request for your review and input to our latest strategies to increase the transparency of the Affiliations Committee Actions related to affiliate non-compliance. Specifically, we are also working to maintain categories for affiliates "in good standing" "out of compliance" and "under suspension" and "formerly recognized" to correspond to their posted Reports page status. This would introduce increased transparency on the portal page, but also make transparent a new status category previously kept confidential, "under suspension". We would like for all active affiliates to have this opportunity to review the draft portal page and category strategy as it has been modeled so far without the "under suspension" category. Please let us know what you think about this plan and what if any concerns or excitements you have regarding the proposal.

    • - Are the category descriptions Clear and distinct?
    • - Are there any concerns about the level of transparency with any category?

Talk page inputs here are invited for the month of July through to August 10, 2019. Following this input period, the Affiliations Committee will review and update on the next steps for implementing full scale.



Step in the right direction[edit]

This seems like it is going the right way, with more transparency. But what worries me more is that the rationale for suspension may not be thoroughly investigated before decisions are made. In Wikimedia Portugal, we spent most time of last year working with AffCom to lift a suspension that still feels unnecessary. Our claims in the early stages of this process were only vindicated after WMF seeked external legal council more than 6 months after the initial discussion with AffCom following the extraordinary meeting that changed the Board of Wikimedia Portugal. This whole process took an entire year to reach its end with the signing of a new chapter agreement, and took the commitment of not only the WMPT Board, but also members of AffCom, WMF staff and external legal council. It is my sincere belief that much of this could have been avoided with better communication, which I am not sure this current change will help solve, at least not entirely. But at least it might make way for better support between affiliates that may be going through similar difficulties, improve tracking and support of affiliates through different stages of their life cycle, and help prevent that the movement is caught by surprise when these situations blow up. GoEThe (talk) 10:43, 9 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Completely in agreement with @GoEThe:. The willingness at first place by Affiliations Committee need to be celebrated. However, the rationale for suspension is also important as mentioned. This also cannot happen closed door and needs to undertaken as a dialogue with facts and evidences. Like Portugal Chapter or India Chapter.--Abhinav619 (talk) 11:10, 9 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Aside from the ways in which suspension decisions are made and completed there is a question if this is the best use of time and towards what end. Is it necessary to list those that have fallen out of compliance? While it is important to maintain reporting and compliance, does this process account for the ways that user groups may operate across time zones, locations, and life? Notifications before suspension actions are important but the question remains who this public listing of that compliance benefits?--Raggachampiongirl (talk) 16:21, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Propose to close this talk page[edit]

I oppose the creation of subpages when the main page is nearly inactive. This talk page is a subpage of Talk:Wikimedia movement affiliates, which has 1 post in its history. Subpages are at Special:PrefixIndex/Wikimedia_movement_affiliates/, and currently there are 324 each of which has its own talk page which users would have to individually click to subscribe. This page is yet another talk page.

Close this page now, migrate all posts here to Talk:Wikimedia movement affiliates, and leave this talk page as redirect to that one. The splitting of so many conversations is a major barrier to community connections and understanding. This page is a major policy discussion and I expect unusually low community participation because this is published in a strange way as an independent subpage without notice to the main page. I have doubts that this page can collect meaningful discussion when it is published in a nonstandard way.

Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:50, 9 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  1. Support Support, redirect this page to the main page Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:50, 9 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bluerasberry, this talk page has been set up as part of a specific Affiliations Committee-organized request for comments regarding the new compliance portal, and affiliate representatives have been asked to leave feedback regarding the portal here. We can certainly look into redirecting it once this process concludes, but merging while it's ongoing will likely confuse matters and make it quite difficult for us to evaluate the affiliates' feedback. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 10:23, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I agree, it is best to run the call for comments as planned and we can check into moving it after this has concluded. Thanks. I still support a move and wish for fewer split discussions in the future but if there is a plan for this then keep it orderly and we can rearrange later. I thought that now would be the time to do this because it seems that there has not yet been an attempt to give public notice with links according to Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikimedia_movement_affiliates/Compliance_Portal, which is an indication that advertising of this has not begun. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:38, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion[edit]

I would like to suggest some changes to make the information more clear.

  1. Add the deadline for reporting.
  2. Add the date when the initial, second, and third notice has been sent. The table format is more readable.

Biyanto Rebin (WMID) (talk) 05:24, 9 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]