User:Teles/Grupo de usuários

During Iberoconf *, it was discussed with chapters of Iberocoop the way that Brazilian volunteers group are organized and develop actions. The structure of user group was raised from that as good option to connect actions promoted by community.

Description

The Wikimedia Brasil User Group is a group formed by active members of Wikimedia Movement in Brazil that aims the organization of Brazilian community and promotion and participation on projects kept by Wikimedia Foundation.

Objectives

General objectives

• Stimulate the sense of collaboration between users on realization of activities;
• Planning on a reasonable and democratic way Brazilian activities with defined goals in periodic meetings;

Applied objectives

• Improve in quality and number content published in Portuguese language on Wikimedia projects;
• Elaborate informative content about the methodology of projects, aiming to clarify and promote the collaborative model of knowledge production and organization;
• Promote technical activies in order to raise the technical body of members of wiki projects in Portuguese;
• Engage Wikimedia projects' contributors on participating and organizing Brazilian community;
• Stimulate and planning online and offline activities (lectures, reunions and community meetings, hackathins, editathons)*
• Planning and executing Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth in Brazil;
• Planning, executing, and promoting wikicompetitions; *
• Promote activities and cultural partnerships following GLAM initiative in Brazil;
• Participate and promote activities of Wikimedia educational program in Brazil;
• Internalize the Education Program through realization of activities in contact with institutions and editors of their region;
• Support projects developed by Brazil Catalyst Project;
• Improve and narrow relationship of Brazilian community with WMF, Iberocoop and other groups and chapters from around the world.
• From organization and maturing of the group and its activities, work on the formation and formalization of Wikimedia Brazil chapter.

Activity planning and decision making

Any activity proposal that require involvement of Brazilian user group have to be previously discussed with Brazilian members. Once clarified whether it will be required partial group member participation (how many) or full participation (everyone), it shall be put for democratic validation by other members in order to evaluate the activity merit. *

In case the proposal is approved, this * should be established as a goal of the whole group, and clear goals must be defined with an estimated time for their implementations. Reunions have necessarily to be periodic to evaluate activity progress.

Group will use consensus between members to make decisions. In case there is no resolution or a need to vote is observed, we will require a minimum of 60% of support to approve what is being voted. In case the decision being voted may change community as a whole, we will publicly consult Brazilian community *

Post-approval proposals*

Executar as atividades propostas para alcançarmos os objetivos definidos inicialmente:

• Engajar a comunidade e buscar novos membros e colaboradores para o grupo e demais projetos WIki.

Message

We share the desire to promote the free knowledge in an accessible way through Wikimedia projects. We acknowledge the notable effort and dedication of members from this committee on following group and entities affiliation procedures that wish to participate on the great Wikimedia projects volunteers movement.

However, we would like to state hereby our worries about consequences that certain practices may generate on the movement.

During the process of Brazilian chapter recognition, we, that closely followed the whole process, felt dissatisfied many times upon the slow conduct imposed by AffCom to the process. It ended by discouraging many volunteers engaged on chapter creation, creating empty discussions and making dissonant voices eventually become more present than the usual.

We acknowledge that the committee is composed by volunteers the act on important activities, including outside of it. However, we are not agreed that the work of local groups interested on becoming official should be harmed by procedural misconducts from AffCom.

Thus, we suggest that this committee, which value has been mentioned, improve its practices, aiming to offer more celerity to the reviewing process of community requests. That way, unsuccessful cases like the previous request of Brazilian Chapter will not happen again and AffCom will become even more unlike the image of a mere bureaucratic instance. We want AffCom as a live element of Wikimedia Movement, helping and facilitating, above all, thematic and local group's organization instead of consisting on a barrier to them.

We reinforce that we acknowledge the value of this group's members and our hope that these suggestions will be taken into consideration.

Regards,

Wikimedia Brasil User Group.

Note: I left a few remarks on editing box. They are signalized with a "*" on text.

Note II: This note shouldn't be copied to the user group page :D