Wikimedia movement affiliates/Noticeboard
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Welcome to the Movement affiliates' noticeboard. This is a message board for public notices and discussions regarding Wikimedia chapters, the Wikimedia Chapters Association, Wikimedia thematic organizations, Wikimedia user groups, and the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee. Please post your message at the bottom of the page and do not forget to sign it. Thank you.
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Wikimedia Foundation Affiliations Committee news and announcements[edit]
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Wikimedia chapters news and announcements[edit]
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Wikimedia thematic organizations news and announcements[edit]
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Wikimedia user groups news and announcements[edit]
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Last hours to vote[edit]
Hi, please review Affiliate-selected Board seats/2019/Eligible entities (last update: yesterday) to make sure your representative voted in the Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2019 process. This is the deadline in your timezone. Contact me directly (via email) for any issues. Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) and the Election Facilitators.
2019 Affiliations Committee call for candidates[edit]
The Affiliations Committee (AffCom) – the committee responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups – is looking for new members!
The main role of the Affiliations Committee is to guide groups of volunteers that are interested in forming Wikimedia affiliates. We review applications from new groups, answer questions and provide advice about the different Wikimedia affiliation models and processes, review affiliate bylaws for compliance with requirements and best practices, and update the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees as well as advise them on issues connected to chapters, thematic organizations and Wikimedia user groups.
The committee consists of fourteen members, selected every twelve months for staggered two-year terms. Those joining the committee during the current process will serve a two-year term ending in December 2021.
AffCom continues to closely monitor the Wikimedia 2030 Strategy process that was initiated in 2016. While the affiliation models continue to be discussed as part of the broader strategy discussion, as no decisions have been made to change the current affiliation models yet, AffCom will continue to work in the same manner with regard to affiliate recognitions and intervention support for affiliates with issues of non-compliance in 2020. Specifically, AffCom will continue to process applications for user group and chapter/thematic organization creation, while we await the strategy next steps and begin to prepare for a smooth transition of the committee and affiliates ecosystem to any changing movement structures and systems in 2021.
Being a part of the Affiliations Committee requires communication with volunteers all over the world, negotiating skills, cultural sensitivity, and the ability to understand legal texts. We look for a healthy mix of different skill sets in our members.
Required and Recommended Skills for Affiliations Committee Members[edit]
Across all committee members there are additional relevant skills as well as requirements which help to support the committee and its sustainability which include both required and relevant general skills
Required Skills[edit]
- Fluency in English
- Availability of up to 5 hours per week, and the time to participate in a monthly one and two-hour voice/video meetings.
- Willingness to use one's real name in committee activities (including contacts with current and potential affiliates) when appropriate.
- Strong track record of effective collaboration
- International orientation
Relevant Skills[edit]
- Skills in other languages are a major plus.
- Public Communications (English writing and speaking skills)
- Strong understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Documentation practices
- Interviewing experience
- Knowledge of different legal systems and experience in community building and organizing are a plus
- Experience with, or in, an active affiliate is a major plus.
- Teamwork
- Focusing on shared goals instead of disagreements
- Focusing on the conflict at hand and not past ones
- Ensuring each member of the team has a clearly defined role, which can help reduce disagreements over areas of responsibility
- Project and people management to coordinate different parties on a shared plan and seeing it through to completion.
- Problem-Solving
- Ability to evaluate various solutions
- Ability to consider multiple interests and points of view
- Willingness to revisit unresolved issues
- The capacity to recognize and respond to important matters
- The ability to seek compromise and avoid punishing
- Ability to work and communicate with other languages and cultures.
Given the expectations for maintaining course in 2020 and preparing for potential 2021 transitions, it is important that we are also clear about two different skill sets critical to committee support at this time. The first skillset is oriented to understanding affiliate dynamics and organizational development patterns to successfully process affiliate applications for recognition; the other is oriented to conflict prevention and intervention support for affiliates in conflict.
Affiliate Recognitions Relevant Skills[edit]
- Administration
- Willingness to process applications through a set, perhaps bureaucratic process.
- Attention to detail
- Monitoring & Strategic Development
- Readiness to participate in political discussions on the role and future of affiliates, models of affiliation, and similar topics.
- Organizational Awareness
- Understanding of and community building and organizational development
- Understanding of group dynamics
- Awareness of the affiliates ecosystem and models
Conflict Prevention & Intervention Relevant Skills[edit]
- Communication
- Active listening
- Reading nonverbal cues
- Knowing when to interrupt and when to stay quiet
- Being culturally sensitive at the same time remaining clear and concise when explaining a concept or opinion
- Stress Management
- Patience
- Positivity
- Ability to inject a dose of humor to dilute anger and frustration when needed
- Taking well-timed breaks that can bring calm in the midst of flared tempers
- Ability to manage stress while remaining alert and calm
- Emotional Intelligence
- Being emotionally aware,
- Ability to control emotions and behaviors,
- Ability to practice empathy,
- Impartiality,
- Don’t take anything personally,
- Being aware of and respectful of differences.
- Facilitation skills
- Meeting facilitation experience
- Peer or community mediation training
- Peer or community mediation experience
Do you have any of these skill sets and an interest to support movement affiliates?
We are looking for people who are excited by the challenge of empowering volunteers to get organized and form communities that further our mission around the world. In exchange, committee members selected will gain the experience of supporting their world-wide colleagues to develop their communities as well as personal development in guiding organizational development, facilitating affiliate partnerships, and professional communications.
Selection process[edit]
As a reflection of our commitment to openness, transparency, and bilateral engagement with the Wikimedia community, the 2019 member selection process will include a public review and comment period. We invite you to share with us you applications, specifying your focus area you’re interested in. All applications received by the committee will be posted on Meta, and the community will be invited to provide comments and feedback about each candidate.
At the end of the public comment period, the applications will be voted on by the members of the committee who are not seeking re-election, taking into account comments put forward by the committee's members, advisors, Wikimedia Foundation staff and board liaisons, and the community. A final decision will be made by mid-January 2020, with new members expected to join later that month.
How to apply[edit]
If you are interested in joining the committee, please post your application on the nomination page and send an email announcing your application to AffCom
lists.wikimedia.org by 10 January 2020. Your application must include the following information:
- Your full name and Wikimedia username
- A statement describing your relevant experience, skills, and motivation for joining the committee.
- Answers to the following questions:
- How do you think affiliates work best together to partner on effective projects and initiatives?
- What do you see as the role of affiliates in the Wikimedia movement in the next three years?
- What do you feel you will bring to the committee that makes you uniquely qualified?
- Which subcommittee are you most interested in serving on: Recognitions OR Conflict Prevention & Intervention?
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me and/or the committee as a whole. We are happy to chat or have a phone call with anyone about our work if this helps them decide to apply. Please distribute this call among your networks, and do apply if you are interested!
On behalf of the committee,
Camelia Boban, AffCom member
Feedback on movement names[edit]
There are a lot of conversations happening about the future of our movement names. We hope that you are part of these discussions and that your community is represented.
Since 16 June, the Foundation Brand Team has been running a survey in 7 languages about 3 naming options. There are also community members sharing concerns about renaming in a Community Open Letter.
You should have received a separate affiliate survey via email. If you have not, feel free to email brandprojectwikimedia.org.
Our goal in this call for feedback is to hear from across the community, so we encourage you to participate in the survey, the open letter, or both. The survey will go through 7 July in all timezones. Input from the survey and discussions will be analyzed and published on Meta-Wiki.
Thanks for thinking about the future of the movement --The Brand Project team, 13:37, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
Note: The survey is conducted via a third-party service, which may subject it to additional terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling, see the survey privacy statement.
Announcing a new wiki project! Welcome, Abstract Wikipedia[edit]
Hello everyone. I am posting the announcement below, which you may have missed elsewhere, and in the hope that you can share it with your local communities. Please note that it may be available in your language at m:Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/July 2020 announcement. Thanks for your attention! m:User:Elitre (WMF)
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia, a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May 2020 [1] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation [2]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project, and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list [3]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours,
Katherine Maher (Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation) -16:51, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
FYI: Maps API deprecation for 3rd parties[edit]
Hi everyone,
you are receiving this message as it may concern your groups' activities. Here are a few clarifications about our prior announcement re: Maps API deprecation for 3rd parties [1].
As stated, our plan is not going to have any impact on any Wikimedia-hosted wikis. This means that nothing will change for maps, in any namespace, on Wikipedia and any sister projects. Tools that are hosted on Wikimedia services are also not going to be affected (i.e., Kartographer).
This said, we are aware that there may be map usage beyond such venues where deprecation would still affect our community members and their activities - for instance, the Wiki Loves Monuments website, and the Wikimedia Poland chapter website both rely on our maps API.
Hence, over the 45 days deprecation period which ends in mid October: if you represent an affiliated free knowledge group that does regular work with our maps (any Wikimedia affiliates, or established wikiprojects), or if you are closely partnering with other entities who do, we welcome you to reach out, either here on this announcement thread or on the dedicated Phabricator ticket [2].
We will work with you to understand your needs, and what alternatives exist. For further questions, I encourage you to contact me privately to keep noise here at a minimum.
Thank you.
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/maps-l/2020-August/001729.html
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261694 Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:45, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
Movement Strategy - What Are Your Choices For Implementation[edit]
Hello Wikimedia movement affiliates/Noticeboard,
The time has come to put Strategy into work and everyone's invited to participate.
The Movement Strategy Design Group and Support Team are inviting you to organize virtual meetings with your community and colleagues before the end of October. The aim is for you to decide what ideas from the Movement Strategy recommendations respond to your needs and will have an impact in the movement. The recommendations are available in different formats and in many languages. There are 10 awesome recommendations and close to 50 recommended changes and actions or initiatives. Not everything will be implemented. The aim of prioritization is to create an 18-month implementation plan to take some of the initiatives forward starting in 2021.
Prioritization is at the level of your group, affiliate, and community. Think local and relevant! Regional and thematic platforms are great ways to prepare and share ideas. Afterwards, we will come together in November to co-create the implementation plan. More information about November’s global events will be shared soon. For now and until the end of October, organize locally and share your priorities with us.
You can find guidance for the events, the simple reporting template, and other supporting materials here on Meta. You can share your results directly on Meta, by email, or by filling out this survey. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions or comments, strategy2030wikimedia.org
We will be hosting office hours to answer any questions you might have, Thursday October 1 at 14.00 UTC (Google Meet).
MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 16:18, 25 September 2020 (UTC)