With Wikimedia 2030, we are not only writing a global, open strategy, we are building the Wikimedia Movement of the future. Wikimedia Deutschland has asked people from all over the world about their vision of more equity and more democratic movement structures.
Our team is working to help drive the implementation of the Movement Strategy recommendations. We are looking at what the principles and recommendations mean for WMDE, the role we can play in bringing them to life, and how we can help create spaces or opportunities for others in our Movement and beyond to get involved.
One of the key areas we are focused on is participating in the global discussions about implementation of the recommendations and Movement governance. We are publishing and commissioning a series of papers that are designed to inform the deliberations around the big questions of the movement:
Putting Movement Strategy into context at WMDE[edit]
What do the Movement Strategy recommendations and principles look like in everyday practice at a Wikimedia affiliate? How can they shape the programs that we work on? These are questions we are exploring together with teams at WMDE. In late 2020, we held a series of workshops with 7 teams WMDE where we went through the recommendations and principles and discussed what these mean on the context of each team’s work. The teams then developed ideas for ways that they could align their work more with Movement Strategy. They then identified priorities that could be considered for future planning purposes. In October 2021 we developed a new and shorter thinkshop format called "Movement Strategy Alignment check", that we tailored to the needs of the TechWisch team to support them in their annual planning.
We are looking at how to build on this workshop format and continue supporting teams at WMDE in interpreting the recommendations and principles for their work.
Our 2030 Morning Show was launched in May 2020 to be a forum withtin WMDE for open and frank conversations about topics related to movement strategy. By creating this space we intended to let the WMDE audience know about the latest happenings, new ideas, present opportunities to participate, contribute and provide feedback.
Our Shows focussed (among others) on the following topics:
Marginalized Communities
Universal Code of Conduct
Regional and Thematic Hubs
Knowledge Equity
Sustainable Development Goals as Topics for impact
In the light of the positive feedbacks we received, we decided to create a new format to take this show to an even broader and more international audience. This is now the movement-wide podcast WIKIMOVE.
Fostering collaboration among European affiliates[edit]
Together with Wikimedia Nederland and Wikimedia Österreich, we have begun hosting events that bring together representatives from European Affiliates. The aim of these events is to discuss the Movement Strategy recommendations and what they mean for European affiliates. They are also a space to share learnings and experience and discuss new ideas. You can find more information about our meetings on the following event pages:
A lot of Teams at Wikimedia Deutschland are involved in Movement Strategy projects and initiatives. In the following we present some of those and hope you will be inspired by them. Please get in touch with us!
WHY: As staff at Wikimedia Deutschland reviewed our program work – in education, science and culture, as well as in software development and community engagement – in context of the 2030 strategy, we understood that some of the big concepts are worth looking into more closely. Knowledge Equity as one of the pillars of the strategic direction takes the concept of open and free knowledge from our movement’s vision to a new and different level: The vision states: Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Knowledge Equity makes us examine the ‘every single human’ more closely, and better understand how they start from different places. And it makes us examine the ‘sum of all knowledge’ more closely, and learn how there are different kinds and formats of knowledge, and which ones are currently not represented in our projects. The concept, beyond improving our theoretical and ethical understanding, also raises all kinds of questions for the practical work of affiliates: In what ways do we put resources into achieving more equity? How do we create spaces for marginalized communities to share their knowledge? How do we foster allyship in the traditional western open knowledge communities?
WHAT: Our teams felt that they needed some time to think and learn here. There is an internal conversation that staff organized and also an external call for information. We are planning a series of public Salon discussions with interesting people from politics, education, science and culture in cooperation with Germany’s biggest broadcaster and we are producing learning modules. We don’t know exactly where this is going, but we welcome any input and will share lessons, events and products.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: If you have experiences, thoughts, writings, projects, practices, policies, initiatives etc that are centering on knowledge equity, please add them here.
WHY: As a mirror of society, Wikipedia unfortunately also reflects the inequalities, structural disadvantages and omissions of society. There is a great imbalance both in the composition of the authors and in the representation of knowledge. Important content is not represented or is represented one-dimensionally and thus not seen by the readers of the fifth most visited website in the world. To date, WMDE’s scope for intervention has been limited to supporting initiatives that emerge from the existing community. In this pilot we will explore more proactive approaches to commensurate with the gravity and urgency of the problem.
WHAT: Pilot project to explore how WMDE can help reduce structural discrimination within German Wikipedia and move closer to the goal of knowledge equity. Together with allies from inside the Wikipedia communities we will coordinate partnerships with stewards of marginalised knowledge (content partners) and activist initiatives for visibility and representation of marginalised communities (community partners). We will use these partnerships to develop and test different strategies and approaches to support integration with the goal to increase community diversity and representation in articles.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: If you are active in the German Wikipedia community and interested to get involved please get in touch!
WHY: Even though it is built and managed by Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikidata has always been a movement project. Therefore WikidataCon has always been an international conference. This year, we are also approaching the organization and program design of the conference as a collaboration with a movement partner from the global south - Wiki Movimento Brazil.
WHAT: WikidataCon will take place as a hybrid conference October 29th-31st, combining an online program with locally organized events.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Organize your own local events as part of the conference!
WHY: Social and Technical innovations are going to be crucial to master the challenges of today and tomorrow of becoming a movement including all voices and co-create knowledge with underrepresented communities. We need to innovate in different content formats, experiment with and create new projects or pathways to address gaps in knowledge equity, and therefore, to stay relevant as a movement in the future.
WHAT: The UNLOCK Accelerator supports projects teams who create functional prototypes of an innovation benefiting diverse and inclusive Wikimedia projects and communities. UNLOCK is a structured online program that accompanies project teams during the implementation phase with professional coaching, peer-to-peer sessions, access to experts and, if required, financial support in the form of stipends. UNLOCK was piloted in 2020 in Germany, and in 2021 is scaled to Europe. In 2022 we would like to further develop the program together with a partner from the global south or one working with marginalized communities to reach out to new audiences and attract innovators for open knowledge from across the world.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: If you are an innovation hub from the global south, and are interested in a collaboration for 2022, please contact us. If you are part of the Wikimedia movement and would like to help with the co-design, please contact us as well.
WHY: Wikibase and Wikidata offer many possibilities for new and underrepresented communities to store their structured data and connect with the linked open data ecosystem. The data partnerships team partners with large institutions on projects related to Wikidata and Wikibase, however, we are very interested in working with and learning from new communities, civil society organizations and people working on currently underrepresented knowledge and topics.
WHAT: Partnerships with new communities or organizations interested in using Wikibase, or contributing structured data to the Wikidata project.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: If you are interested in a data partnership with WMDE, please contact us.
