ウィキメディア財団最高経営責任者兼事務長/Maryanaの聴き取りツアー/パズル
Section 1: パズル
パズル1: 世界が今、私たちに求めるものは?
私のすべての会話で満場一致の同意を得た唯一のトピックは私たちの仕事の緊急性であり – 今ほどそれが求められる時はありません。誤情報が増え続け、社会の二極化が世界全体でますます激しくなるにつれて、ウィキメディアのプロジェクト群はオープンな知識と中立性の原則に引き続き注力していきます。私たちの貢献が必要とされ、喫緊であることに疑いの余地はありません。私たちが成功することは、世界のニーズなのです。
「私たちこそ世界（We are the world）。私たちが取り組むものは……とてつもなく大きいです。それなのに、私たちはほんのちっぽけな存在です。自分たちにどんな影響力があるのか見極め、私たちの活動の理由を、もっと多くの人に信じてもらうようにしていきましょう。ここでも、そこでも、あらゆる場所で。私たちがこれまで不得意な部分が、ここにとどまること、そこに出かけること、あらゆる場所に存在することだったとするなら。」
I was not surprised to find that the consensus narrowed once conversations moved beyond the importance of our mission. I heard some say they “live in fear that we are going to be left behind” and others express alarm that “we are in a bubble that impedes innovation.” Nearly every conversation touched on our social purpose to advocate for free knowledge while also staying focused on core technology projects to write an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit – in ways that truly represent the sum of all knowledge across the diversity of our societies.
“”私たちの使命が今ほど世界にとって価値を持ったことはありません。情報と知識がこれほど武器として使われるようになるとは……正しい方向へ私たちの戦いを進めましょう。
I noticed that it can be convenient to say that our mission is too big and too complex for any meaningful consensus or action…on anything. Yet, I heard a shared sentiment that the 2030 movement strategy can light a path: “I went from thinking that the Movement Strategy process was total madness to now believing it is the only way it can be done. What was done was remarkable.”
As we move into implementation, the collective puzzle to solve is how to make sure that what we decide to do now is what the world needs from us, not what we think is needed. Our priorities must match and respond to what we see and learn from the world around us.
A worrying number of people shared with me that “we have a very insular view of the world” and that we can be “too inward looking…a false oasis that is not engaging enough with the outside world.” Many said that we need to ask more hard questions like: “Are we still relevant compared to so many other online platforms? Why would people come to us? How easy is our technology to use?” When I probed further, I heard: “On some very emotive issues, we have no baseline data.”
Every movement engaged in societal change faces this same dilemma. How to be inventive, relevant and responsive to what the world actually needs? How to accelerate the pace of testing, failing, learning and repeating? How to measure impact, not initiatives and activities?
Our work is more important now than ever before. How can we ensure that our priorities and goals respond to the needs of the world we serve?
パズル2: あらゆる貢献者たちを考慮する
Wikimedia projects represent a global movement with diverse and varied community-building investment and activity happening every single day, all over the world. I asked whether we had an equivalent metric, like the edit count, to understand the value of this contribution?
“We don't and we should… I don't think the movement has ever established a principle of parity among all kinds of contributions, or if we ever did, we sure did a terrible job at proving we believe in it.”
目立たないコミュニティのボランティアは特に、「編集とコミュニティの創造・形成に時間を費やすことのトレードオフに悩んでいる」と言います。「コミュニティ形成の貢献を共有しようとする仕組みは、手作業で、時間がかかり、拡張性がない」とも言います。「利用者グループやコミュニティーのオーガナイザー/コーディネーターが、Meta上、活動やプロジェクトを文書化し、作業内容を記録し、プロジェクトにおける人々の役割を明記する『ランディングページ』を作ったけど、とても大変な作業で、どういうわけか今でもMetaの編集回数に集約されています」とも言っています。
For me, the puzzle is that so much of our 2030 strategy implementation – to advance knowledge equity, innovate in free knowledge, grow our global reach, diversity and impact – will require contributions that take many different forms beyond edit counts. Yet, we don’t seem to have a highly movement-aligned understanding of how to measure and value these contributions. Without this, how will we know if our significant investments are delivering results? What to scale further because it is working? What to stop because it is not working?
“We have the same shared struggles across communities: it is difficult to recruit, retain and keep people motivated. [Yet] our experience is that experienced editors are actually not good at recruiting new editors.”
Volunteers who contribute by inviting newcomers into the movement, especially newcomers who may be in the margins, describe these challenges:
“Providing open information is a radical act. Anyone from marginalized communities can recognize the importance of having representation in content… But we need to approach this from the perspective of the ‘needs of the society’ – we are competing with other social movements that capture people’s time and attention. Neutrality doesn’t mean we can’t have a view on anything… we can stand for our values in a more active way.”
“Too many women have left the movement because they have felt uncomfortable…This cannot be left to the communities.”
“Globally, acceptance of the LGBT+ culture and community varies… Generally it isn’t safe for everyone to contribute on queer topics. We need to be clear on the bias and where it exists.”
“We need a long view here because people need to know we exist before we can ask them to be contributors. But also awareness will not lead to more editors if the experience of harassment is what people come into when they decide to join.”
“Volunteering in our context is so different. How dare we present our work as ‘urgent’ when people are dealing with much more difficult issues like the basics of food, water, safety? We don’t make our work relevant by connecting it to these more urgent issues – like using our platforms to highlight a relevant social issue first, and then inviting people into our movement through that, not just saying it is important for them to edit in general.”
This complex puzzle will require our best thinking along with the bravery to try radically new ideas. How do communities shape the capacity and support they need for growth, impact and sustainability? How are volunteer leaders at all levels empowered to chart their trajectory of skills training and professional development? How do we make the trust and safety of every single contributor a foundational pillar, not just a project to be implemented?
“”We are the possible factor of change here, by giving new data and tools to communities, to just go beyond the edit count.
パズル3：人が主体の運動を技術で実現するには、〈技術対応〉を強く促進
Our projects are founded on the revolutionary idea that anyone, anywhere can contribute collaboratively and in real-time to the sum of all human knowledge. 20 years later, hundreds of thousands of contributors have delivered on this promise of the Internet. This has powerful lessons and insights for society’s leaders, policymakers, and other online platforms around the world.
Yet, our actual product and technology struggles to keep up. This puzzle may be the most frustrating because most people I heard from agreed about the problems, not the solutions:
“Every day the gap is getting bigger between our technology and what is cutting edge in the world… it can take years to onboard someone in our technology, which is absolutely crazy compared to how fast the rest of the world is moving.”
「技術面では、20年分の宿題を抱えているのです。それをなんとかしようとすると、また20年かかってしまう……毎年毎年、年次予算は増えてきたけれども、資金や人手が増えたところで、私が見る限り、技術面の宿題に手をつけてこなかったのです。」
“We have not unlocked the true power of being ‘open source’ – how to get the benefit of third parties contributing to speed and innovation.”
“We aren’t accessing the places where real intellectual debates are happening (e.g., Facebook, Whatsapp, WeChat) because our platform isn’t modern/flexible enough for it. Big loss.”
“”A history of prioritizing ‘New Feature’ development over ‘Existing Feature’ maintenance means we have constantly competing priorities between cleaning up technical debt and focusing on the future of our technology.
On these issues, there is no shortage of opinions about our priorities, resource allocation, and roadmap. I heard that we may be ‘too unique’ for industry benchmarks, and that we have ‘too little data’ to really assess the return on our investments. Some said that the “undercurrent of why we can’t move on technology innovation is that volunteers are basically saying: ‘I am used to doing it this way. Leave me alone.’” While others believe that poor product and technology rollouts have created “resistance to change and friction.”
I understand that the Wikimedia Foundation has a central role to play in shaping and enabling the product and technical infrastructure that is core to every aspect of our mission. While we can’t solve this puzzle alone, I can take accountability for the leadership, focus, and clarity that is needed to begin closing the gap between where we are and where we need to be.
パズル4：多言語対応は名前倒れ？
驚くべきことに、ウィキメディアは世界のどのオンライン・プラットフォームよりも多くの言語をサポートしています。絶滅の危機に瀕した言語のデジタル保存から、言語を超えて知識を拡張できるツールの開発まで、言語に関する非常に多くの次元で革新を行っている、世界のあらゆる地域のボランティアに、私は会いました。
“”運動の大規模な多言語主義は、見落とされがちな大きな強みです。最高の洞察は、英語を話していない人からのものです
しかし、私たちの運動は、ほとんど英語の優位性の上に成り立っています。この問題に直面しているのは私たちだけではありません。私たちの社会的、百科事典的な目的には機会費用が伴います。
「各ミーティングで少なくとも主要な言語数カ国へのライブ翻訳がない以上、既存の人的資本をえり好みしていることになる」
「『声の大きい人』の言うことを聞くことになっている」 つまり、私たちは他の言語よりも英語に耳を傾けがちです。（英語以外の）ウィキペディアで人々が怒っている議論があるとしても、それは...英語の会話における感情と同じ重みを持ちません。
“It has now become extremely difficult to create a new article related to our parts of the world, and many/most of the admin/bureaucrats (especially of the larger, more-significant Wikipedias) seem to be unable to understand what is the relevance of the themes we are trying to create articles on. This pushes a lot of us into wanting to stop contributing, as deletionism seems to be getting the upper hand. It is very demoralising…”
“There seem to be unaddressed problems of systemic bias, because of one-size-fits-all approaches like print-based or online citations needed… How does the bulk of the planet come up with citations, print references, online entries to back up its knowledge, when most of humankind hasn't even seen a reporter enter their village, doesn't have a printing press for maybe a hundred or more kilometres away from them, and has never been ‘researched' by any academic – global, national or local in all their history?”
“The balance of control of the knowledge flows globally is getting increasingly skewed … because if decisions are primarily taken through the eyes of North America and Western Europe, the result as a whole is not going to be very globally representative. I am not suggesting merely taking on more decision-makers from the so-called "Global South" (they could be a privileged lot themselves), but the whole process through which information flows are mediated and controlled needs to be made more neutral and open.”
How can our movement better reflect the language diversity of our projects? How can we open our doors widely to more equitable decision-making?
パズル5：プロジェクトと組織
Early on, I asked for help to learn more about the founding pillars of Wikimedia projects, about the organisational values of the Wikimedia Foundation, and about what led to prior successes and failures throughout our 20-year history. What emerged for me is the circular puzzle of how best to run and manage the centralised institutions of a decentralised, volunteer-led movement?
This question gets asked in many different ways: is the Wikimedia Foundation more like a non-profit development organisation or a technology company? What is the role of affiliated entities like chapters or user groups? How do we account for the majority of ‘unaffiliated’ volunteers who power our projects?
These issues then become layered with views about the power and trust relationship between movement actors, including (but not only) the Foundation and communities. How should decisions be made? How should resources be shared? In my experience, these are familiar debates across many volunteer-led social movements around the world.
In our context, I am learning that some dynamics are about fundamental values, structure and power-sharing: “We operate by the tyranny of the majority – consensus – this is not good enough.” “Transparency is a tool, not a value. What is the end goal of what we need transparency for – to build trust or to what end?” “Capacity is the issue, not resources. We are volunteers – giving us money doesn’t give us time.”
While other issues are about performance and execution: “Too much focus on governance, not actual enablement of people and projects.” “What is the focus of the Wikimedia Foundation today? It is totally unclear.” “We are never willing to turn things off, shut things down or stop doing anything.”
The puzzle is how to build convergence between our divergent organisational forms and in support of our movement strategy. How do we draw on similar pillars and principles even though our organisations cannot be run like our projects? How does our diversity (of every possible form) remain the catalyst for what it takes to create – not just imagine – a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge?
These five puzzles represent complex challenges that can only be solved through shared commitments and joint action. They are not a manifesto or a to-do list – instead, they form the basis for my incoming priorities listed below.