Content Partnerships Hub/Goals

Content Partnerships Hub

Improving the Wikimedia movement’s work with content partners

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  About

  • Background
  • Goals
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  Needs assessment

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  Data uploads

Goals

Vision

Through the work done as part of the thematic hub the Wikimedia platforms will become the obvious place to share content for organizations across the world, so that it can be redistributed and reach a worldwide audience including the people that need it the most.

The hub will provide the missing infrastructure for free knowledge globally and a service for all good forces to come together. It is contributing with one of the missing pieces of the puzzle globe.

This is closely connected to what is stated in the Strategic direction for the Wikimedia movement:

We, the Wikimedia contributors, communities, and organizations, will advance our world by collecting knowledge that fully represents human diversity, and by building the services and structures that enable others to do the same.”

— Our strategic direction: Service and Equity

To achieve this goal we will need to collaborate with organizations who hold much of the knowledge Wikimedia wants to provide.

The hub will help to contribute to Wikimedia Sverige’s vision:

Free knowledge for a better world. To help people and organizations create and support free knowledge, and make it easily accessible for all.

— Wikimedia Sverige’s vision

The main efforts in the hub will center on the final sentence, “make it easily accessible for all”, as we are convinced that the Wikimedia platforms are the best option for content partners to bring their knowledge to the general public and experts across the world.

Mission

Support content partners across the world so that we, in a joint effort, can utilize crowdsourcing to bring together, interconnect and develop the knowledge they hold. For free, in perpetuity.

Goals

Through Wikimedia Sverige’s hundreds of projects and partnerships we have identified some of the main issues in working with partners and have set long-term goals accordingly.

• Problem area: Including content from partners onto the Wikimedia platforms is currently too hard to share content on a large scale where all opportunities can be captured. It is a task with a very high barrier to entry, as it requires an extremely high level of skill and knowledge.
  • Goal: Develop a professionally supported pipeline for bulk data and multimedia contribution into the Wikimedia ecosystem that supports institutional content contributors of all shapes and sizes, and empowers Wikimedia volunteers and affiliates to drive impactful content partnerships and collaborations.
    • How to reach the goal:
      • Provide hands-on support to free knowledge actors that want to add content from a partner but are in need of support – for example with batch uploads or edits, to find relevant documentation or the right expert in the Wikimedia movement to talk with.

• Problem area: Many of the tools that are needed for effective content partnerships are unreliable and poorly supported, we want to help to change that. High-quality tools that are reliable can allow for automatic or semi-automatic addition of content which saves time and allows for larger partnerships. Currently, the tools are often hard to use for many, due to usability issues or because of a lack of documentation and training.
  • Goal: Become a developer and maintainer of key Wikimedia technical pipeline for content partners, including supporting documentation and training resources.
    • How to reach the goal:
      • Partner with existing developer communities and work with them to improve the tools for content partnerships.
      • Ensure adequate investments for software development of tools that are used to form content partnerships.
      • Provide support with maintenance of tools that are widely used.
      • Provide support for other Wikimedia organizations working on software development so that they can understand the specific needs of content partners or the affiliates working with them.
      • Improve the clarity on what tools exist and for what purpose through better structure and increased visibility; ensure that new tool developers know how to use this structure.

• Problem area: We are currently not successfully providing knowledge to understand each other better, share learnings, develop our thinking. Wikimedia is very big, the knowledge, skills and connections to work with content partners are spread out across chapters, user groups and communities. Partnerships often require a high level of knowledge, experience levels and technical ability. Capacity building is needed for local communities to work effectively, professionally and with speed. A community should not have to start from scratch but have the support they want and request.
  • Goal: Support an increase in capacity for the free knowledge movement to work better with the content owners across the world.
    • How to reach the goal:
      • Knowledge mapping efforts in the area of content partnerships to identify existing resources and make them easier to identify for other parties.
      • Support translation activities to make high quality content needed for capacity building multilingual and adjusted for different contexts.
      • Support the development of content that is missing altogether and refine the existing content as well as providing the learning resources, documentation etc. in different formats to be suitable for different types of learners.
      • Ensure that training is provided and that networks between practitioners, learners and trainers are developed and maintained.

• Problem area: Wikimedia organizations mostly cover work in one country but much of the knowledge we want to collate is often held by international organizations which work in many countries in many languages; especially as they have uniquely valuable multilingual content of global reach. Communication is often a challenge as these are very large organizations and it can be difficult to find the right person to talk to, and due to unclear responsibilities these international organizations often find it difficult to contact us.
  • Goal: Form and facilitate strategic content partnerships with intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) or international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) to support them to effectively share their content with the Wikimedia movement and ensure reuse of their material.
    • How to reach the goal:
      • Clarify how the responsibilities and tasks in the Wikimedia movement are distributed among the different actors.
      • Work with the Foundation and relevant Wikimedia affiliates to establish new content partnerships and to develop existing partnerships, so that larger amounts of content is added, or existing collections receive more focus from the volunteer community.
      • Develop information material to support the case to work with the Wikimedia movement, so that the work can scale in the future.

• Problem area: For equity to be achieved the resources available in the Wikimedia movement need to be distributed.
  • Goal: Develop a governance structure for the Hub that is replicable that contributes to more equitable decision-making and resource allocation especially to geographic and cultural areas where no traditional organizations or volunteer communities exist. This model could then be replicated to contribute to develop subsidiarity and decentralization in other areas of work of the Wikimedia Movement.
    • How to reach the goal:
      • Ensure that the Hub will connect, support and be supported by other hubs and Wikimedia and free knowledge organizations.
      • Frequent and ongoing sharing of lessons on hub development to lower the threshold for more hubs to form across the world.
      • Collect and redistribute financial resources ongoingly through different initiatives and grant structures.
      • Support the development of initiatives by other funders, inside and outside the Wikimedia movement, to ensure funding of high impact initiatives around content partnerships.
      • Model an equitable and participatory governance structure for the Hub to be exemplary for the movement.

• Problem area: The knowledge and content we want to share on the Wikimedia projects is held by thousands of organizations all over the world in many languages. However, we do not know who they are, what content they hold. This stops us from being strategic and proactive in deciding who to work with. It also prevents us from effectively prioritizing content that otherwise risks being lost.
  • Goal: Provide a global database of institutions that are potential content partners for the free knowledge movement.
    • How to reach the goal:
      • Develop and maintain the database through research and collation of data from across the movement and externally.
      • Coordinate with Wikimedia communities to identify missing datasets across the world, and to have them released under the CC0 license and uploaded.
      • Support community initiatives to compile data through crowdsourcing, especially in countries where no official datasets exist.

• Problem area: The needs and assets of the GLAMwiki community and other actors that are working with content partners are ever evolving and changing.
  • Goal: Increase the understanding of the needs in the Wikimedia movement.
    • How to reach the goal:
      • Develop and maintain a core understanding through needs assessments.
      • Organize professional contacts regularly to ensure that changing needs are identified.
      • Work and coordinate with other initiatives that are assessing community needs and assets for various strategic purposes.

• Problem area: Many organizations take the important decision to open up their content and hope that the decision will be of value for as many people as possible. For the content to reach its full potential people have to be able to find it.
  • Goal: Ensuring that the knowledge from content partners is used widely, and appropriately, on the Wikimedia platforms and receives visibility by a diverse set of people (including people with disabilities).
    • How to reach the goal:
      • Increase searchability of the content by working on improving the metadata.
      • Support campaigns so that volunteers are encouraged to add the content in different places on the Wikimedia platforms and to connect the content to content from other organizations.

• Problem area: The philosophical underpinnings of open and free knowledge needs to be better explained to partners and the public. Currently it is poorly understood, which prevents organizations from taking the rational and strategic decision to share their content under free licenses.
  • Goal: Support the Movement to change the perception of how, when, and what to share with the public and each other amongst organizations from across the world.
    • How to reach the goal:
      • Support the development of well researched resources needed for political, legal or policy changes amongst possible content partners.
      • Actively contribute at forums where decisions are taken that could affect the Wikimedia movement’s possibilities to form new content partnerships.

Key principles for the Wikimedia Thematic Hub for Content Partnerships

#	Principles	What	Why
1	Always ensure local ownership.	Define a clear area of responsibility and based the work on subsidiarity.	Effectively support the work done by other organizations without doing things that have a negative effect on local needs and focus. Not blocking other actor’s work because they think they need to consult us. Constantly adjusting and iterating through experimentation based on the needs and wants from the ever-changing Wikimedia movement. Allows for a more holistic approach within the given thematic area as more knowledge can be compiled, and more resources directed to solve the full problem rather than only parts.
2	Build on what exists.	Use what already exists and try to build on existing foundations (in this case Wikimedia Sverige). (There can be different models for this for different types of hubs!)	The hub is quicker to launch as the basic organizational structure is already there. Scale fast as staff already working can get new assignments. Reducing need for additional (duplicated) bureaucracy. Build on an existing brand within the thematic area.
3	Be complementary and supportive.	Work to fill gaps that are not addressed by traditional structures within the Wikimedia movement.	Building and maintaining (technical) infrastructure needed for the movement’s activities with content partners. Reduce the cost and burden for movement actors, especially those who have not yet started. Support geographical and content areas where no traditional organizations or volunteer communities exist. Lead or coordinate areas which span over several traditional areas of responsibility or geographic area.
4	Think and act long-term.	Ensure long term organizational and financial stability.	Avoids solely focusing on short term solutions. Allows key skills and knowledge to be built up, developed and maintained. Allows for recruiting and retaining expert staff. Allows for deeper relationships to other partner organizations.
5	Increase coordination between good forces in the Wikimedia community	Provide the movement with coordination and leadership in the thematic area (not sole decision maker though).	Wikimedia events are not coordinated around the thematic area. Identifying opportunities that are created or strengthened through cross-organization activities. The cost of coordinating with multiple (types of) actors across the world is high for a single traditional Wikimedia organization to bear. Speed and flexibility to investigate and propose new initiatives. A natural ‘platform’ for decision-making in the thematic area. Hiring and engagement of experts within the thematic area is hard.
6	Ensure learning and development for all stakeholders	Support knowledge compilation/dissemination.	Knowledge gathering is limited within the thematic area. Forms the knowledge base needed to facilitate coordination (above). Ensure good ideas are made available to other actors. Research about what the movement is doing in the thematic area.