Wikimedia Café/Reports/Meeting notes for 2020 11

Sunday, 15 November 2020 at 7:00 PM UTC / 2:00 PM New York / Monday 16 Nov 12:30 AM India

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Agenda

Welcome, as described above
The Global Council which the Wikimedia Movement Strategy plan is establishing
- Brief general summary: What is the Global Council? What do the Strategy Recommendations say about how to put it together, and what its responsibilities will be?
- Global Council membership qualifications/disqualifications: Who should be eligible to be a member?
  - Eligibility of holders of other Wikimedia offices, anonymous individuals, non-English speakers, Wikimedia organizations' employees, ...
- Global Council membership distribution
  - Representing communities
    - Proposals for distribution of seats: Yair rand's proposal, historical proposals from Millosh (2008) and Pharos (2005)
    - Elections: Who should run the elections? What rules should apply?
  - Representing affiliates
  - Distributing between parts of the movement
  - General priorities in representation
  - Size of the Global Council
- Timeline until the creation of the Global Council
- Impact and functioning of the Global Council
- ...

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Yair rand (talk) 23:00, 8 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:15, 9 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Rajeeb (talk) 03:37, 10 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Megs (talk) 03:06, 11 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sam/Jamie Tubers (talk) 08:57, 11 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Likely.--Pharos (talk) 18:22, 11 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
SHISHIR DUA (talk) 18:22, 13 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
TheSlowBrosYT (talk) 9:31, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
Vexations (talk) 16:58, 15 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ircpresident (talk) 18:26, 15 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Zblace (talk) 19:55, 15 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Notes from Etherpad

Sunday 15 November 2020

attendees

Yair Rand - presenting developera
George - wishes to here, talk about copyright
Rajeeb - from India, been around 4 years, here to know more about the Global Council
Lane (notes)
Peter Rathe
Vexations - governance is one of the bigger topics in prioritization meetings
Richard / Pharos - Wikidata and Wikipedia, started an affiliate governance group
Sam Oyeyele - sam from Nigeria, english Wikipedia, here to listen
Meg - Wiki NYC, a librarian, Wikidata editor, and participant in the larger open access movement
Rosie - Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, not representing a group bu t Chair of AffCom and a Women in Red organizer. Interested in the Global Council.
tm65
zeljko
SHISHIR DUA

notes

introductions
2. why are you here
The Global Council which the Wikimedia Movement Strategy plan is establishing

- Brief general summary: What is the Global Council? What do the Strategy Recommendations say about how to put it together, and what its responsibilities will be?
- Yair: The global council is going to be a group which is overseeing movement strategy. It will be ensuring that boards follow good practices, hold affiliate organizations accountable in spending and branding, and it will have a role in resource allocation. In the beginning therer will be an Interim Global Council which will set up a Movement charter, which is something like a constitution, and will transfer certain respnsibility from the WMF board of trustees into the real global council at which point the interim global council will dissolve.
- The GC will have elected and selected members, will reflect the diversity of the Wikimedia movement, and will reflect the diversity of the communities we wish to serve.
- Everything else is an open question which we can resolve over the next half hour?
- George: Will the GC replace the language committee?
  - Yair: The documentation we have now does not say! This is an open question.
- George: GC can invite anyone anywhere in the world? Are even people from authoritation countries welcome?
  - Yair:Yes, but we will have rules. There will be some people who might be on the board but not have their identity possible.
  - Pharos: Yes, we currently have a board member of the Wikimedia Foundation whose identity is not fully public. Their picture is not published.
  - Yair: Right! Should we be okay with people on the GC be anonymous?
    - Sam: You mean we only know their usernames but not their real names?
    - Yair: Yes, it could be.
    - Sam: Since the Wikimedia Movement is founded based on anonymity anyway then this seems like the right thing to do.
    - George: I worry about authoritarian countries trying to influence the global council. OPr repressive countries trying to influence the way that the council operates.
    - Pharos: It is possible! I think it is unlikely. In the post-Soviet space there have been some countries which people have discussed.
    - Rosie: I have some concerns about others trying to influence the Global Council. I have concerns about political governance, influence by the Wikimedia Foundation, and other players. If the Global Council is open, and self governing, and self appointing, then that feels good to me. I want to know who is setting in each seat, selt governing and self electing, only beholden to the wiki community.
    - Vexations: I have seen posts from people saying that requirements to disclose themselves excludes them from participating. There are some people who are not friendly and hostile online, and I would not want those people to have my contact information. It should be possible to work in that way. I would be supporting of allowing participating without outing oneself.
    - Rosie: To participate in meetings such as this one users will have to share some kind of information. to what extent do you think sharing information about oneself in a discussion like this, at a table, is more safe than publishing to the world. I wish to avoid the situation that a person gets one of these valuable seats and we the wiki community do not know who they are, or if a seat is actually a group of people with an agenda.
    - Vexations: I expect that there will be legal requirements to meet and it may be inevitable to disclose to Wikimedia legal.
    - Pharos: It may be like OTRS identification.
    - Vexations: If legal requires something then that settles it. I would not want disclosure beyond what is necessary for the position.
- Rajeeb: I have a question about reservations. Will there be reservations by country?
- Pharos: Do you mean allocation by geography or demographic?
- Yair: I feel like the affiliate representation would be better off like that. If we wanted to have the community elected members, even if they do not want to be identified, then perhaps they could have reserved seats.
- Megs: I think it is important that we know something about representatives, but then we can also provide a way for anonymous people to provide input. Going to Rosie's earlier point I share Rosie's concern about influence. This includes influence by the Wikimedia Foundation. I am thinking of what the relationship will be between the Global Council and the WMF and the money. I work at a university system with a shared pool of money which it allocates to the member schools, and this process is complicated.
- Megs: I can imagine that the WMF will offer 10% of all the money it brings in to the global council, and the global council allocates that according to its own process.
- Pharos: Everything has been vaguely worded and I do not think we have any assurances of even that. I understand that when there is something contentious that the WMF or the board does not want to do, then they will give that responsibility to the global council especially when any response is likely to go wrong.
- Pharos: A lot of the wikimedia community has raised issues about the by-laws, and so far, there is not any real deference to that. Perhaps there could be a movement charter.
- Rosie: I am curious what the relationship will be between the global council and the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees.
- Yair: The text is ambiguous but it says some things. The Global Council will make sure that all Wikimedia Foundation boards are doing good practice. The council will have among its responsibilities any other responsibilities delegated by the board.
Distribution of seats!
- Yair: The recommendations do not say how we should do distribution.
- Yair: presumably we want to
- Yair: I would like to share a proposal for allocation. This formula has 4 variables.
- We have 90-100 seats. This is not sit in stone, but this number was mentioned in early drafts, and proposals in 2005 and 2008 suggested this number.
- 700 projects,
- 30% of Wikimedia community members are on very small projects.
- We want to include sister projects, and not just focus on Wikipedia.
- The movement as it is now is not representative of global diversity.
  - Asian languages are spoken by 60% of world population, but 18% of Wiki editors use Asian languages.
  - For many small groups, I propose they collectively get representation with other small groups in their region.
  - The numbers listed in the output section are without access to a database.
  - For the native speakers variable it is whatever I could find on Google and Wikipedia with back of the envelope calculations. For second language speakers I had no data at all.
  - four variables:
    - active editors
    - very active editors
    - readers
    - number of speakers in the world
Megs: for me, I like the geographic distribution and language distribution. One of the things which comes to mind is the thematic areas which are a priority in the movement.
Yair: Would including affiliates represent thematic areas?
Megs: They could sometime. For example, there are specific affiliates representing gender.
Pharos: In your system, how many members are elected?
Yair: 60 elected, 40 others.
Yair: Does this all seem on the right track?
Megs: Yes, it is all so complicated?
Pharos: how does this live with the past wikimedia community culture of elections?
Yair: For smaller wikis I expect that we would host elections on meta. Smaller wikis would not be albe to manage an e
George: the formula does not seem practical because it is too complicated. It also gives all round numbers. Also English language is dominant in lots of ways.
Yair: If we were dividing this proportionally, I think there would be 23 English delegates, 23 Europeans, and 1 each for many other demographics. I do not think that English Wikipedia would want to put forth 23 delegates.
George: some people would need translation to participate.
Rosie: Looking at the formula, not in terms of numbers of seats being elected but the difference between elected and appointed... if we first elected some people, would those electors appoint the other seats? Otherwise who does the appointing - the Wikimedia Foundation, the WMF board of trustees, or who? If we give appointed seats to the elected body, then the larger the group of the elected body the more likely that we get diversity. Also we could be bitten and have lack of diversity. We know that the 2018 survey of the Wikimedia Foundation found that 80% of editors are male, 19% female, and 1% non-binary. If it starts mostly male then I expect the seats will tend to be male. How will we deal with diversity beyond language?
Yair: I imagined that most of the appointed seats will be appointed by affiliate groups. Does anyone know how we could appoint seats to affiliates?
Vexations: There is a disparity in this kind of representation among editors we already have, and those who we would like to have in a better world. Maybe it is possible to do that through apportionments. We could reserve seats for groups which are underrepresented and this could fix that disparity.
Pharos: There is possibly more risk of gender and other disparities in the small languages which can only elect one representative
+1 from Rajeeb Megs Shishir Dua Rosie
Pharos: We do have the existing affiliates election system for WMF bird seats
- 🐦🐓🐤🐤
- Megs: I’d like to volunteer for a bird seat! ;)
Sam: I think the global council is less about what individuals personally do, and more of what those individuals do as representatives of their communities. Many people who would make good representatives may use English but they represent people who do not. I like the idea of doing representative by Wikimedia projects and languages. I also want to talk about representing the offline Wikimedia community.
- +1 Megs
Lane: We are at the end of our hour! Thanks everyone for coming.
- check the notes. they go on meta soon!
Pharos: The next SWAN call will be November 29.
- Lane: We will keep the room open for another 10 minutes.
- Yair: we did not even get time to talk about how affiliates can appoint seats! the hour went quickly.
- Pharos: the wiki community has a culture of elections.
- Yair: We should try to get some system of distribution which the Interim Global Council can refine. I do not think that the interim council needs to be elected. It will put together the charter.
- Yair: The strategy transition process, by the way, was supposed to end with the formation of the interim Global Council. Early statements said this often. Lately in the mailing list the Wikimedia Foundation has made statements which suggest they are thinking otherwise now. I
- George: How are SWAN meeting publicized? I have not been aware of the meetings.
  - Pharos: We advertised to affiliates. No one needs to be part of affiliates to join.
  - Yair: I am not part of any affiliate and I have attended these. It is a welcoming group
  - That diversity means the global diversity of the world.
  - Global Council membership qualifications/disqualifications: Who should be eligible to be a member?
    - Eligibility of holders of other Wikimedia offices, anonymous individuals, non-English speakers, Wikimedia organizations' employees, ...
  - Global Council membership distribution
    - Representing communities
      - Proposals for distribution of seats: Yair rand's proposal, historical proposals from Millosh (2008) and Pharos (2005)
      - Elections: Who should run the elections? What rules should apply?
    - Representing affiliates
    - Distributing between parts of the movement
    - General priorities in representation
    - Size of the Global Council
  - Timeline until the creation of the Global Council
  - Impact and functioning of the Global Council
1. copyright
2. code of conduct