Wikimedia Affiliates Network

The Wikimedia Affiliates Network ("WMAN") is a coalition of Wikimedia movement affiliates that unites and represents like-minded projects primarily outside the Wikimedia Foundation. This coalition works to identify then present their collective requests and opportunities to the Wikimedia Foundation and help establish deeper connections to the Wikimedia Foundation projects.

“ The new Wikimedia affiliation models are a fantastic way for previously unrecognized projects in and around the Wikimedia sphere to both increase their involvement with Wikimedia and receive public recognition for their efforts. However, once you become recognized under the Wikimedia affiliation models, you may be left without a place to find all your new colleagues and nurture your ideas related to this new endeavor. The Wikimedia Affiliates Network provides a space created and managed by participants in those outside and smaller projects - either receiving or hoping to receive recognition from Wikimedia - to discuss, coordinate and present their collective ideas and requests to the Wikimedia community and Wikimedia Foundation. ”

Participating organizations include, but are not necessarily limited to:

• Like-minded affiliates of Wikimedia Foundation (aka "Thematic Organizations" or "Movement Partners")
• Open knowledge third-party wikis
• Free Culture specialist wikis run by Wikimedia chapters (Chacowikis)

Purpose

Wikimedia Affiliates Network unifies outside and smaller projects to improve communication and cooperation with WMF under the Wikimedia affiliation models

• Liaison & Advocate
  • Assist projects seeking inclusion as "Thematic Organizations" or "Movement Partners" under the new Wikimedia affiliation models
  • Work with Wikimedia Foundation and chapters to assist in liaising and best practices for engagement with wikis under the scope of WMAN
  • Wikimedia Foundation grant proposals from participating project to support their WMAN eligible activities
  • Discussion on collaboration between Wikimedia projects and outside projects under the scope of WMAN

• Resource
  • Discussion and collaboration among participating organizations
  • Sharing links to where specialist information is
  • Support and utilize proposed Ask.wikimedia.org (Q&A site) or Teahouse

Justification

As Wikimedia expands its affiliation models to engage with outside organizations, this will provide a method for those outside entities to organize and represent their collective needs, ideas, etc. to the Wikimedia community. It is also an opportunity to help unite outside entities with projects already within the Wikimedia movement - ideally to mutually benefit each. This also helps level the playing field for projects of different sizes looking to engage with outside entities - as well as leveling the playing field in regards to representation of outside groups to Wikimedia Foundation.

Membership

Eligibility

• Compatibility with Wikimedia's founding principles
• Copyleft compliant license
• Not for profit / noncommercial

If applicant organization includes a public wiki project, it must:

• Be open for public editing
• Operate on MediaWiki software
• Support open-source software efforts when possible

Process

• Open enrollment via a subpage of the WMAN mainpage on meta wiki (presumably this page)
  • Period for commentary by existing members
  • Use Wikimedia consensus model to make determinations
• Possible future use of Steering Committee to shepard process along

Proposed resources

• Wikimedia Project presence on Meta
  • Links to WMF projects that can serve as resources
  • Links to resources provided by participating projects
  • Information on useful MediaWiki resources (probably just a link/redirect or transclusion of a similar page within MW.org's 3rd party sysadmins project)
  • Links to resources provided by trusted partners of participating projects
• Wikimedia housed listserv
  • Participation in discussion on long-term development of Wikimedia affiliation models
• Grants from Wikimedia Foundation for organizations qualifying under the Wikimedia affiliation models

Related projects/proposals

• Wikimedia affiliation models
• Ask.wikimedia.org (Q&A site) (in a support related role)

Interested projects

Organization / Project	Wiki / Program	Contact	Comments
Aequalitas Project	WikiQueer	Varnent (talk) - co-author and cheerleader of proposal

Chacowikis

Chaco Culture is known for its innovation in a harsh and remote environment.

A Chacowiki (chapter content-wiki) is an independent free knowledge wiki site supported by a Wikimedia chapter, but that is not one of the Wikimedia Foundation projects.

It may focus on a specialist topic of local interest, and/or may take advantage of the hosting of materials under a more open national copyright regime.

List of Chacowiki sites

Add your chapter's!

• Wikilivres (Wikimedia Canada-in process of affiliating with chapter)
• Biblioteca, Musica and WikiAfrica (Wikimedia Italia)
• NYCwiki (Wikimedia New York City)

Proposed by

• Pharos (original page creation as Wikimedia Open Knowledge Network and originator of Chacowiki proposal)
• Varnent (talk)

Proposal supporters

• Abbasjnr (talk) 13:35, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Notes

Possible alternate names

• Wikimedia Open Knowledge Network (possible nickname: "OKwiki")
• Wikimedia Open Network of Knowledge
• Wikimedia Knowledge Consortium

Possible inaugural members

• OpenCongress / Sunlight Foundation
• Jurispedia
• WikiEducator / Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation
• Creative Commons
• Mozilla Foundation
• OpenStreetMap Foundation
• freenode
• ArborWiki
• WikiQueer / The Aequalitas Project