User:DRanville (WMF)/Compte rendu WikiConvention Francophone

Strategy Poster at the WikiConvention Francophone 2019 in Brussels.

Strategy Session at the WikiConvention Francophone 2019 in Brussels.

This report gathers all the feedback from the french speaking community collected during the WikiConvention Francophone 2019 on recommendations from the Strategy Working Group. It was collected in two ways:

• post-it notes stuck on the "strategy poster" displaying summaries of recommendations
• a strategy session during which groups of participants discussed 4 thematic areas and took notes on this etherpad

This is all raw feedback written directly by participants.

Diversity

Feedback from the strategy poster

• Recommendation 4:
  • make quotas more flexible (30% to 70% women / 30% to 70% men /10% to 30% minorities)
  • ridiculous and very euro-centric. In our country this would result in having no User Group because we will never have 40% women (our societies are different from yours, even if we try...)
  • focus should be on skills and not quotas
• Recommendation 6:
  • Why the hell should we ask people to share tons of private data?!
• Recommendation 9:
  • In order to avoid cultural appropriation, advocate for changes in royalty policies (droit d'auteur). Working with Creative Commons will not be sufficient.
  • Absolutely against this. Cultures are free and meant to be appropriated. One cannot claim property over a culture.
  • Non-free licences are against the wikimedia projects' spirit, and would absolutely not help preventing cultural appropriation.
  • No to NC/ND.
• Recommendation 10:
  • Decentralisation starts with acknowledging Chapters' initiatives like WikiSpeech and Lingua Libre, and not crush their projects under a "new" WikiOral.
• Recommendation 12:
  • Linguistic diversity is important. Everything should be at least translated in the 6 UN languages.
  • Teaching minority languages and teaching how to contribute to minority languages projects could be done hand in hand.

• Additionnal toughts:
  • Share, be transparent
  • The WMF should not forget francophones!
  • Talk more about, and address, the issue of social diversity: various incomes and financial means, including in "niche" countries.

Feedback from the strategy session

10 people took part in the discussion about Diversity recommendations and agreed on collective comments. Profiles: 4 women, 6 men, all from different francophone countries, including one native american woman from Quebec.

• Recommendation 1:
  • A Code of conduct should exist. But signing it will have no impact in reducing the number of discriminations.
• Recommendation 2:
  • agreed.
• Recommendation 3:
  • in support.
• Recommendation 4:
  • everyone agrees that the recommendation is unclear and impossible to implement. Diversity should indeed be encouraged with a +-10% gap, but strict quotas can prevent development.
• Recommendation 5:
  • implementation seems complicated. Example: some African contributors have their articles deleted and don't come back on Wikimedia projects. Thus African content is less represented. How can we actually monitor and evaluate this kind of discrimination, when people are not on the projects anymore?
• Recommendation 13:
  • The majority of the group is in favor of this recommendation, but some people are worried that the Foundation would impose its vision while it concerns editorial content.

Revenue streams

Feedback from the strategy poster

• Recommendation 1: API
  • Like the idea (3 notes)
  • No (3 notes)
  • Bad idea.
  • Very good idea, but should be charged depending on the volume/amount used, not the client.
• Recommendation 3:
  • Merchandising clients will mainly be contributors who already give their time. Why take their money?
  • Good idea, but should not become a goal in itself.
• Recommendation 4:
  • Meh.
  • Ok.
• Recommendation 5:
  • Yes!
• Recommendation 6:
  • Finally make banners decent, would be time! (too agressive, etc).
• Recommendation 8:
  • yes!
• Recommendation 9:
  • yes!!!

• Additional toughts:
  • Chapters should be able to get back revenues (banners)
  • Reduce costs. Stop scattering grants.

Feedback from the strategy session

5 people (all men)

• Recommendation 1: API as a revenue stream is debated (people are either neutral or against), but all agree that we should distinguish between commercial use (can be charged) and non-profit use like by NGOs (should not be charged).
• Recommendation 2: agreed. Money should not be concentrated in the WMF. Local autonomy should be encouraged and supported.
• Recommendation 3: no objection, if we remain cautious about ethics.
• Recommendation 4: why not. Still remain cautious about ethics.
• Recommendation 5: agreed.
• Recommendation 6: no objection.
• Recommendation 7: self-sufficiency is not equitable. Not all countries have equal internal ressources. On the contrary, we should encourage solidarity between different regions of the world.
• Recommendation 8: very technical/practical recommendation - no objection.
• Recommendation 9: the chart should mention clear separatation between on-wiki editorial content and funding

• Additional tought (overlapping from Resource Allocation): Resource Allocation is closely related to Revenue Streams, because money is currently centralized by the WMF through fundraising on Wikimedia sites (it was not always the case and it could change again).

Roles and responsilibilities

Feedback from the strategy poster

• UGs only depend on volunteers. The WMF should create more chapters in Africa. We need to employ local wikimedians to manage projects, because they "work" a lot of hours.
• The WMF should help its affiliates get a local legal status. For now the WMF does nothing and "waits" for them to do it alone (which is not possible in all countries). We need legal support and mentorship.
• People in Iran or Russia cannot be employed by the WMF because they live in the wrong country. Yet our movement is international.
• Recognition, satisfaction.

Feedback from the strategy session

3 people (all men, from Belgium, Guinea and Brazil)

• The recommendations are useful but lack fundamental clarity about how they would be implemented, because according to how they are interpreted, they could result in very different outcomes.

• We think decentralisation of decision making should be effective before the charter, so that communities are free to decide of the charter's content (agree on shared values and dynamics), as opposed to a vertically imposed single vision that would dictate organization of communities.

Resource allocation

Feedback from the strategy poster

• Solutions should be found to be able to send money to countries like Russia, Iran or Cuba. We cannot just ignore these countries. (2 notes on this subject)
• Develop all wikimedia projects (#NotJustWikipedia)

Feedback from the strategy session

1 person (man)

• Recommendation 1: a little idealistic
• Recommendation 2: same idea as in #1? Question about representativity (how do we determine who takes part in the decision mking)?
• Recommendation 3: why not, should be researched further.
• Recommendations 4 and 5: Ok, but who decides on how much money each Regional Hub gets? On what criteria? Overlap with Revenue Streams.
• Recommendation 6: interesting because it is currently a problem. People should be trusted a priori, and if they accomplish a project it should become easier to finance a new project by the same person/team.
• Recommendation 7: this indeed becomes a true issue, as the WMF's ressource allocation policy is incoherent and puts Chapters and User Group in unstable situations.
• Recommendation 8: Agreed. Kiwix is a good example of this. Vikidia would also be a good test to see if the philosophy of the WMF and the movement has changed.
• Additional tought: Resource Allocation is closely related to Revenue Streams, because money is currently centralized by the WMF through fundraising on Wikimedia sites (it was not always the case and it could change again).

Advocacy

Feedback from the strategy poster

No comments.

Capacity building

Feedback from the strategy poster

• Recommendation 9: unclear.

Community health

Feedback from the strategy poster

• Important issue
• Recommendation 3: Pseudonymity is fundamental
• Recommendation 2: How do we identify "key people"?
• Emphasize the reponsability of people who hinder new editors' productions, discouraging them (+1)

Partnerships

Feedback from the strategy poster

• Develop partnerships with language departments in universities and schools, in order to teach minority languages.
• Initiate, motivate, encourage

Product and technology

Feedback from the strategy poster

• Recommendation 1: get inspiration from the peer-to-peer model.
• Give (back) true responsibilities to volunteers. Communicate before developping and deploying (no more "flow", no more hasty Visual Editor deployment, no more depreciating without impact study). Communicate on free channels (Mastodon, Matrix and XMPP, not Twitter, Discord or Telegram).