Grants:Project/MSIG/LGBT/Conversation series - LGBT+

Wikimedia LGBT+ proposes to organize a conversation series on social and ethical issues in the Wikimedia LGBT+ community in an effort to bring public engagement on LGBT+ topics into the Wikimedia Movement Strategy.

statusNot Funded

Movement Strategy

Wikimedia LGBT+ conversation series for Movement Strategy

a conversation series for LGBT+ Wikimedia contributors

targetmeta, enwiki, up to 7 other languages

start date8 November

start year2022

end date31 May

end year2025

budget (local currency)$102,075

budget (USD)$102,075

grant typeGroup

grantee• bluerasberry

contact(s)• bluerasberry, OwenBlacker, Zblace• governancewmlgbt.org

organization (if applicable)• Wikimedia LGBT+

friendly space expectations

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Share your results

Applications are not required to be in English. Please complete the application in your preferred language.

Project Goal

What will be the outputs of your project and how will those outputs contribute to advancing a specific Movement Strategy Initiative

What specific Movement Strategy Initiative does your project focus on and why? Please select one of the initiatives described here

• Ensure Equity in Decision-making
• Coordinate Across Stakeholders
• Manage Internal Knowledge

Project Background

When do you intend to begin this project and when will it be completed?

As this project builds upon the existing monthly Wikimedia LGBT+ meetings listed at Category:Wikimedia LGBT+ meetings, this project can begin as soon as the Wikimedia Foundation is able to fund staff to supplement those meetings with staffing for additional activities.

Where will your project activities be happening?

The primary activity will happen in the online meetings scheduled at Category:Wikimedia LGBT+ meetings while additional documentation will be published at Wikimedia LGBT+ and in some cases, various language versions of WikiProject LGBT+ Studies.

Are you collaborating with other communities or affiliates on this project? Please provide details of how partners intend to work together to achieve the project goal.

We are looking to partner with a national chapter to deliver on this proposal. Details to be discussed with the chapter before submission.

What specific challenge will your project be aiming to solve? And what opportunities do you plan to take advantage of to solve the problem?

Many parts of the Wikimedia community approach Wikimedia LGBT+ with questions and problems related to supporting LGBT+ Wikimedia contributors. The challenge this project addresses is organizing community conversation to respond as a group to those challenges. The opportunity that we have already is that we have global LGBT+ membership and participation already.

Does this project aim to apply one of the examples shared in the call for grants and if so which one?

No

Project Activities

What specific activities will be carried out during this project? Please describe the specific activities that will be carried out during this project.

1. Surveying the Wikimedia LGBT+ community to identify the most important social and ethical issues related to LGBT+ topics in the Wikimedia Movement we have a list of ideas
2. Organizing meetups which invite broad and inclusive public participation to discuss those issues
3. Providing for security to enable volunteers and the public to participate in those meetings
4. When the meetings happen, document conversation and outcomes while being mindful of security
5. Produce a conversation summary, again while being mindful of security
6. Recruit community comment on the summary to confirm it
7. Publish that community comment within Wikimedia LGBT+ and on Meta-Wiki
8. Distribute the published community comment in social media, including the WikiLGBT twitter accouts and similar

How do you intend to keep communities updated on the progress and outcomes of the project? Please add the names or usernames of these individuals responsible for updating the community

the paid staff hired to organize and document meetings will be responsible for updating community

Who will be responsible for delivering on this project and what are their roles and responsibilities?

the Wikimedia LGBT+ governance committee will be responsible for overseeing the paid staff on this project and ensuring that they do the activities

Draft list of discussion topics

• community statements: who has support to speak on behalf of LGBT+ wiki editors?
  • Under what circumstances can Wikimedia LGBT+ speak for the LGBT+ wiki community?
  • Under what circumstances can anyone else speak for the LGBT+ wiki community?
• recurring social challenges
  • in-wiki editing issues: prioritizing content development, labeling people as LGBT+, deadnaming, pronoun use
  • off-wiki social and political issues: for example, political issues affecting LGBT+ wiki editors, or off-wiki access to media at museums, etc
• safety for Wikimedia LGBT+ contributors
  • harassment on wiki
  • harassment off wiki
• increasing diversity
  • addressing and correcting disparities in access to Wikimedia movement resources
  • how do we prioritize expensive outreach when resources are scarce and we cannot include everyone?
• serious events
  • addressing suicidal comments - LGBT+ observes these more than many other communities
  • what data should we publicly report about violence, crimes, stalking, etc?
• collaborations between LGBT+ and other wiki groups
  • How will this look?
  • What do we prioritize - partnerships with powerful orgs with less LGBT+ interest, or smaller orgs with more activist alignment?
• countering misinformation
  • a lot of citable, academic, reputable sources publish anti-LGBT content or hate material
  • how do we balance Wikipedia fact checking against anti-LGBT+ propaganda campaigns?
  • How do we counter LGBT+ erasure in communities where fact checking does not recognize LGBT+ accomplishments?
• translation
  • How do we move LGBT+ information across languages?
  • What do we prioritize, who benefits first, how expensive will this be, and what is the timeline?

Additional information

If your activities include community discussions, what is your plan for ensuring that the conversations are productive? Provide a link to a Friendly Space Policy or UCoC that will be implemented to support these discussions.

Yes, the focus of this project is community discussion. We will use the Friendly space policies and the Universal Code of Conduct to support discussions.

If your activities include in-person events or activities, you will need to complete the steps outlined in the Risk Assessment protocol. Please provide a link to your completed copy of the risk assessment tool.

This is primarily an online event series. If there is a decision to do any talks in person, then yes, we will use the risk assessment for that online part.

If your activities include the use of paid online tools, please describe what tools these are and how you intend to use them.

This is explained below in the budget section.

Do your activities include the translation of materials, and if so, in what languages will the translation be done? Please include details of those responsible for making the translations.

This is explained below in the budget section.

Are there any other details you would like to share? Consider providing rationale, research or community discussion outputs, and any other similar information, that will give more context on your proposed project.

This is explained below in the budget section.

Outcomes

After your activities are complete, we would like to understand the draft implementation plan for your community. You will be required to prepare a document detailing this plan around a movement strategy initiative. This report can be prepared through Meta-wiki using the Share your results button on this page. The report can be prepared in your language, and is not required to be written in English.

In this report, you will be asked to:

• Provide a link to the draft implementation plan document or Wikimedia page
• Describe what activities supported the development of the plan
• Describe how and where you have communicated your plan to relevant communities.
• Report on how your funding was spent

Your draft implementation plan document should address the following questions clearly:

• What movement strategy initiative or goal are you addressing?
• What activities will you be doing to address that initiative?
• What do you expect will happen as a result of your activities? How do those outcomes address the movement strategy initiative?
• How will you measure or evaluate your activities? What tools or methods will you use to evaluate your activities?

To create a draft implementation plan, we recommend the use of a logic model, which will help you and your team think about goals, activities, outcomes, and other factors in an organized way. Please refer the following resources to develop a logic model:

• Overview of logic models on Meta-wiki
• Example logic models for reference for other movement activities (such as partnerships and edit-a-thons)
• Blank logic model template on Google Drive

Please confirm below that you will be able to prepare a draft implementation plan document by the end of your grant:

• Yes, we will provide this by the end of the grant.

Optionally, you are welcome to include other information you'd like to share around participation and representation in your activities. Please include any additional outcomes you would like to report on below:

Problem

Social and ethical issues routinely arise in all aspects of Wikimedia development. An essential step in addressing these issues is presenting them for community conversation, inviting diverse participation in discussion, and summarizing the discourse.

The Wikimedia Foundation identifies some of these issues as strategic and critical to its plan for developing the Wikimedia Movement. Given the diversity of the Wikimedia community, some Wikimedia community organizations will be attracted to discussing some issues, while they will find others less relevant. At the same time, those community organizations will wish to raise and discuss Wikimedia issues of their own choice and relevant to themselves.

To achieve progress in the discourse and to promote quality in summarizing and documenting community conversations, the Wikimedia Foundation offers sponsorship to Wikimedia community groups who show evidence of being able to organize long-term conversation series which invite diverse stakeholder participation and which can publish outcomes.

Solution

In a typical instance of such a conversation series, a regional or thematic Wikimedia community organization would advertise a discussion agenda for a town hall meeting. The meeting may last 1 hour, the advertisement might reach 1000 people through conventional communication channels, and of a pool of 100 people who have participated in past such conversations, 15 people actually attend this one instance. The meeting includes 20 minutes of socializing, 20 minutes of discussing any of the Wikimedia Foundation strategic issues, and 20 minutes of discussing the community's own strategic issues. Following the meeting the group publishes notes.

Communities themselves decide what sort of documentation is appropriate considering privacy or other considerations, but documentation should generally include a count of attendees, the discussion agenda, discussion notes, and some measure of the demographics of meeting attendees as a way of helping to plan such meetings to achieve diverse participation.

Budget

How you will use the funds you are requesting? List bullet points for each expense. Don’t forget to include a total amount, and update this amount in the Probox at the top of your page too!

• Staff expenses
  • Community outreach: Publicising each meeting, social media, email, scheduling, front-of-house during each meeting
  • Technical writing: Writing up the meeting and combining with feedback from other channels (email, social media) to synthesise a report for each meeting with recommendations
  • Session management: Administering Zoom and other meeting tech, including handling admission of participants and evicting any problematic users
  • Graphic and media design: Publicity images, branding, on-screen graphics
  • Counseling support: An allowance has been provided for mental health support, should it be necessary
• Financial allowances
  • Equipment allowances: Budget for technology equipment — webcam, podcast-quality microphone or headphones, broadband upgrade, or whatever is required.
  • Stipend for expert guests: Allowance for expert guests' fees
  • Volunteer honoraria: A token allowance to recognise volunteer time commitments
• Language facilities
  • Interpretation: It’s expected that 3 sessions will be run in one of English, French and Spanish, with real-time interpretation into the other 2. One other session is likely also to be interpreted into Serbocroatian; a 5th session might be run in Arabic and translated into Russian, English and one of French or Spanish. With the larger budget option, these 2 sessions could have real-time interpretation into up to 7 languages.
  • Translation: Each session will have a report produced; 3 sessions will have a trilingual report (English, French and Spanish), the other 2 sessions will have 6–8 languages (adding Polish, Russian, Serbocroatian and Arabic, with Japanese and Turkish added with the larger budget option)
• Software licensing
  • Zoom, for videoconferencing
  • StreamYard, for managing the broadcast stream
  • Clevercast, for managing multilingual audio streams; the larger budget option allows for a larger number of simultaneous audio streams

Total amount requested USD: $102,075 (3× $34,025)

Budget proposal, per year

Category	Expense	Qty	Unit	Cost	Per sess	№	Total
Per-session costs
Staff	Community outreach	2	person day	$375	$750	5	$3,750
Staff	Technical writing	4	person day	$375	$1,500	5	$7,500
Staff	Session management	2	person hour	$50	$100	5	$500
Staff	Graphic and media design	½	person day	$250	$125	5	$625
Staff	Counseling support for harassment	1	package cost	$500	$500	5	$2,500
Stipends	Expert guest allowance	1	person hour	$100	$100	5	$500
Hardware	Equipment allowance for contributors	1	person	$500	$500	5	$2,500
Translation	Spanish and French for most sessions	2	person doc	$350	$700	3	$2,100
Translation	Up to 8 languages for up to 2 sessions	1	package cost	$2,500	$2,500	2	$5,000
Interpretation	Spanish and French for most sessions	2	person hour	$200	$400	3	$1,200
Interpretation	Up to 8 languages for up to 2 sessions	1	package cost	$1,500	$1,500	2	$3,000
	Subtotal						$29,175
One-time costs
Software	Zoom licence	1	year	$250	$250	1	$250
Software	Streamyard licence	4	month	$25	$100	1	$100
Software	Clevercast Multilingual Bronze licence	3	month	$500	$1,500	1	$1,500
Software	Clevercast Multilingual Gold licence	1	month	$1,000	$1,000	1	$1,000
Hardware	Equipment allowance for staff	3	person	$500	$500	1	$1,500
Stipends	Volunteer honoraria	5	person	$100	$500	1	$500
	Subtotal						$4,850
	Grand total						$34,025

As this is 1 year's budget and we have been advised to apply for 3 years' funding, the total application is for 3× $34,025 = $102,075

Completing your application

Once you have completed the application, please do the following:

• Change the application status from status=draft to status=proposed in the {{Probox}} template.
• Contact strategy2030wikimedia.org to confirm your submission, as well as to request any support around your application.

Endorsements

An endorsement from community members (especially from outside your community) will be part of the considerations when reviewing your application. Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!

• as proposer Bluerasberry (talk) 16:20, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
• as proposer — OwenBlacker (Talk) 18:30, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
• as proposer Zblace (talk) 05:15, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
•  Support great initiative I hope this will bring more people to contribute with a keen eye to ethical perspectives on LGBT issues Nattes à chat (talk) 17:26, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
•  Support - Well-articulated proposal for a much-needed conversation series. Funcrunch (talk) 21:04, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
•  Support - The conversations sound like they will be useful and I'm persuaded that funding will provide support which makes those conversations more robust, effective, and consequential both inside and outside the LGBT+ project. Most of these kinds of conversation are either conducted entirely by volunteers without funding or conducted by the WMF. It seems like there's an opportunity in general to have more structured, well documented discussions, with broadly useful findings, funded by the WMF but organized by affiliates/volunteers. I also think the proposers have the organizational skills to ensure it's pulled off properly. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:37, 5 October 2022 (UTC)