Movement Charter/Community Consultation/July–September 2023

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This report reflects community feedback received about the Global Council, Hubs, Roles & Responsibilities, and Glossary draft chapters of the Movement Charter throughout its consultation period on wiki and in community calls spanning July 12–September 2, 2023.

Feedback is focused on the actionable content and is organized based on the sections of the draft chapters.

General overview of the Charter drafts feedback

The community consultation process saw a very diverse range of sentiments and opinions regarding the four draft chapters of the Movement Charter. Some of this feedback is at a granular level that is highly contextualized and cannot be generalized as a view for the entire Charter.

Some of the key sentiments that were captured including:

The Movement Charter should be more connected to the recommendations from the Movement Strategy works: as a major recommendation of the Movement Strategy process, there is a general view that a future Charter should seek to implement and incorporate the findings that are the Movement Strategy recommendations. Some of the currently proposed provisions in the draft Charter are criticized for being incompatible, inconsistent, or downright opposed to the recommendations, and it is suggested for the drafters to look more closely at the results of the Movement Strategy process.
The Movement Charter should be short and simple: there is a general consensus that a future Charter should not delve into too much detail, as it currently is. Such details would be better served by secondary policies, rules, regulations, and decision-making processes that are more adaptable to change, and could be formulated in a more decentralized manner by different governance entities governed by the Charter, in line with the Movement Strategy spirit.
The Movement Charter should not be changed too often: in relation to the previous point, there is a general view that amendments to a future Charter should be kept in a level that is not too often in order to preserve its character as a document that will serve the Wikimedia movement in a timeless manner. It is also noted that there should be a chapter about amendments to the Charter itself, of which currently there is none.
The Movement Charter should facilitate transfer and decentralization of power in both legal and social fashion: as a future Charter seek to transfer and/or decentralize some or entire categories of power from the Wikimedia Foundation toward other Wikimedia movement entities, it should not only be seen as a document that facilitate such transfer and decentralization in a formal, legally-binding sense, but also informally as a “social contract” based on conventions, norms, and precedents of powers and how it has been traditionally used within the Wikimedia movement throughout its history.
Several key movement governance elements should be reformed to ensure success of the Movement Charter: as a future Charter aims to define, explain the relationship between, and govern the rights and responsibilities of the existing and future entities of the Wikimedia Movement, the general view is that some of the existing elements that is being incorporated into a future Global Council will need to be reformed or reimagined first in order to ensure it is compatible and consistent with what the Charter is trying to achieve. Some of the current elements that are consistently mentioned include:
- the models of affiliation, which governs the Affiliates ecosystem;
- revenue generation and fund dissemination model;
- technical decision-making process.

Global Council

Background

Suggestion: focus the draft on high-level principles and the purpose of the Global Council, and leave the policies around governance to be set by the Global Council itself
Suggestion: use the three major questions left unanswered by the Movement Strategy recommendation to guide the draft of the Global Council:
- What is the nature of the Global Council: advisory or governing?
- What functions in the movement can and should be decentralized?
- Is the current fundraising and grant making model that we should continue to use to distribute resources?
Suggestion: give the GC a mandate to look at and investigate any new questions and needs which arise over the coming years and which may not fit neatly into the listed powers, in order to ensure it is relevant and active beyond 2030.

Definition

Suggestion: this should be the definition of the Global Council: “The Global Council is a body to assure transparent, equitable and participatory decision making (governance) about issues that affect the movement as a whole or a large part of its stakeholders.)
Suggestion: move the reference to the Movement Strategy to the Purpose section and anchor the purpose of the Global Council to the recommendation text.

Purpose

Observation: Will this actually improve the projects or lead to content creation/management?
Observation: The current movement structure gives older affiliates much more advantages than newer entities; the section should explicitly seek to resolve this problem.
Observation: The goal of the right Movement Charter is neither efficient decision making, but more likely separation of powers.
Suggestion: use more direct and clear word choices and phrases.

Responsibility and associated powers

Feedback for this section will be divided into three specific subjects (Tech Council, fundraising and fund dissemination, and dispute resolution) and the remaining responsibilities and powers outside of those three.

Tech Council

Observation: It's unlikely that any Technology Council will be sufficiently representative of every community so they feel comfortable delegating any real authority. There is no substitute for WMF software teams working directly with each community to co-develop software and come up with changes that can pass muster. Individual editors are not going to accept changes they don't like because they were anointed by a Technology Council, which in effect means more bureaucracy for no benefit.
Observation: Risks slowing down development by blocking all planning and decisions on a few people from an elected committee.
Suggestion: frame the Tech Council to solve three problems:
- More equitably distributed funding and decentralized capabilities, including software development;
- Communities should have more proactive influence (not just review and feedback on WMF’s proposals) on software development; and
- So much resources – time, effort and money – is poured into a software that might eventually be rejected by the communities
Suggestion: the mandate of the Tech Council should be:
- Develop and maintain a set of guiding principles and best practices for technical development within the movement;
- Review and advise the WMF and volunteer developer community on technical project plans;
- Create and maintain standards for how to effectively gather feedback on technical development; and
- Assure that tech development is in alignment with the values of the charter around equitable access and the inclusion of marginalized and communities of people with disabilities.
Suggestion: structure the Tech Council to compose of current tech stakeholders as well as representatives from communities with higher tech barriers.
- Decisions should be made by experts with critical knowledge and specific skills/experience to make those decisions
- Members of this council should not only be people who seek to ensure an equitable representation; they should also possess relevant knowledge and experience.

Fundraising and fund dissemination

There are three open questions posed for this subject.

[Q1] What role should the Global Council have in fund dissemination? There is a slight favor toward the Council having oversight/review authority on the WMF decisions regarding fund dissemination, with a minority favoring the Council to serve in a coordinating capacity.

Additional thoughts on this question including:

Observation: The global fund dissemination policy should be followed by movement entities that have the capacity to disseminate the funds. This policy will need to be collectively formulated by all Wikimedia movement stakeholders.
Observation: Purpose #2 does not align with the Movement Strategy recommendations since there is no opening for establishing different approaches to funds dissemination and there is no mechanism available for prioritizing certain questions or problem areas.
Suggestion: Clearly set the cadence of Global Council’s recommendations to the Board of Trustees, such as an annual recommendation.
Suggestion: Clarify to what extent the Board of Trustees should let itself be governed by the recommendations made by the Global Council.
Suggestion: In the proposed General Assembly model, the Global Council would be closely coordinating with the WMF for funds allocation and distribution, with explicit authority on a “Movement Budget”, which include its own budget and funds for knowledge management, capacity building, and evaluation and monitoring.

[Q2] Should there be a committee that reports to the Global Council that handles central/cross-regional fund dissemination? Generally, it is recognized that a committee in some form for this is generally needed. There are thoughts that the Regional Grants Committees could fulfill this; however, there is a concern that the model is not yet proven effective.

[Q3] What should be the Global Council's role with regards to the allocation of the funds within the WMF? Overall, there is a general consensus that the Council should be consulted rather than having no role at all for this. However, citing the Movement Strategy recommendations, some recommend that the Council should have an oversight role, guided by the aforementioned global fund dissemination policy; another comment from an individual went further and recommends that the Council should also have the ability to withhold funding from the WMF.

Additional thoughts on this question including:

Suggestion: Judging by the unusually constructive discussions surrounding last year's fundraising banners on English Wikipedia, the GC should also have the ability to withhold funding from the WMF.
Suggestion: Increase financial transparency from the WMF towards the GC, with the GC being empowered to issue broader guidelines/areas of focus. This could lead to a healthy exchange while the final power still resides with the BoT. That transparency would need to be encoded in the Charter.

Other suggestions for this topic outside of the open questions including:

Suggestion: include in the Charter how the Global Council is funded in ways to assure its independence and accountability to its stakeholders.

Dispute resolution

Observation: While there is a general endorsement for the Global Council to bear the responsibility as mediator to resolve significant disagreement between 2 or more Wikimedia entities, the German chapter noted that the Global Council has too many operative tasks and instead, mediation should be assured by external, neutral parties.

Other feedback on responsibilities and powers

A major point of contention in this chapter is the unclear relationship between a future Global Council and the Wikimedia Foundation. A RACI matrix based on an individual observation toward the draft chapter shows that the Foundation retains most of the accountability, while most of the responsibilities are shifted from the existing movement governance entities such as the Language Committee and Affiliations Committee toward the Council. This lack of clarity is partially based on the possible complex legal relationship between the two entities, as noted by both internal and external legal review of this draft chapter.

A proposed alternative from the point of contention is to have the Global Council as a separate entity that:

Have a written agreement with the Foundation, possibly modeled after the Foundation’s relationship with its Endowment body;
Strategically integrated with other movement governance entities;
Retain most of the accountability currently assumed by the Foundation; and
Have a timeline for the changes and their anticipated impact toward the day-to-day operations of the Wikimedia movement.

It is also recommended to clarify which responsibilities and associated powers of the Council that are constitutive-legislative (setting up standards, policies, etc.) and which that are for enforcement. Such clarification should also outline how the Council will formulate its policies/guidelines, and how it will be amended.

Some of additional responsibilities and associated powers that the Global Council are proposed to have including:

Ensuring compliance of the Wikimedia projects and its communities with the Wikimedia movement policies and values;
Evaluate the viability of a new Wikimedia project, possibly modeled after the existing Language Committee;
Be consulted in the formulation of global site policies by the Foundation; and
Safeguard and manage the Wikimedia brands upon its transfer from the Foundation.

For the Affiliations Committee, it is observed that a lot of new responsibilities for it would necessitate significant support from a professional staff, directly in contravention with the idea that the Council should not have a permanent professional staff. In addition, should the committee be supported by such staff, it should be clarified who is employing them: the Council itself.

Structure

There are two open questions posed by the MCDC for this topic.

[Q1] Should the Global Council exist only as an executive body or should it exist as an executive body with an advisory board? The overall feedback is that calling the Council an “executive body” while proposing it to have mostly advisory powers is confusing. In its current form, broad expectations are that the Council should be a highly representative body of the Wikimedia movement’s diverse demographics.

[Q2] With its size, the Global Council must have adequate diversity and clout, but not be so large as to undermine effectiveness. As an executive body, how many members should the Global Council have? (Option 1: 9-13 members; Option 2: 17-21 members): Overall, a larger-sized Council is favored, with options ranging toward 200 seats (the General Assembly model). The pros and cons of small vs large Global Council are generally presented as:

Smaller group is easier to reach decisions, but also to get corrupted, risk of burnout, and vulnerable to people not being able to participate and thus not being able to reach a quorum
Big group is more representative, but accountability is harder, risks inactive members, only gives the “talkers” unduly influence over the “doers”, and may be challenging for each member to truly participate in a full group discussion or having a clear role within its structure. Additional observation: the increased bureaucratisation must be proportional to the power and impact of the GC, and may further delay the implementation of the movement strategy.

Being one of the most controversial part of the draft chapter, the following additional points of feedback are presented:

Observation: weaknesses of the current proposed structure. Some examples mentioned are:
- It will rely on a small number of volunteers to do a large body of work by the way of committees and subcommittees
- It creates a body that is not representative of all movement stakeholders and is instead based on how elections in the movement are used to be done, leading to those from larger projects and communities to be elected (“popularity contest”).
Observation: necessity of permanent staff support. The current draft does not provide the Council with a permanent staff. A concern to having the staff provided by the WMF is that it will jeopardize the Council’s independence and question its legitimacy.
Suggestion: total overhaul of the structure toward a General Assembly model. The German chapter presented an option to completely reimagine the Council structure to use the so-called General Assembly model. The best explanation about this model could be found here. Some form of this model is also proposed by individual editors.
Suggestion: it might be useful to review and adapt the way some of the current structure of movement committees. Some of the committees mentioned include the Regional Funds Committees, the UCoC Coordinating Committee’s Building Committee, and the MCDC itself.
Suggestion: clarify who will be the official employer of any support roles (or of any paid AffCom roles which may become necessary with its expanded responsibilities), since the employer of any such staff gains a fairly significant power over these support roles, and by extension over the GC (or AffCom) which they serve.

Membership

There are four open questions (each with some form of corollary) posed by the MCDC for this subject.

[Q1] Should there be some imposed limits to the membership in terms of movement representation? Overall, the most popular limit is geographic (either a limit per continent, or a cap for members from certain regions e.g. from the Global North). Other kinds of limits mentioned are limits by Wikimedia projects and by gender.

A small minority of feedback prefer no limit of any kind. Some concerns regarding a quota system mentioned that it could bring several unintended consequences:

The quota from which one could stand for election can be quite arbitrary
Quota may encourage tactical voting and people running to be elected representing the project with less representation, despite personally viewing it as one of their secondary projects.
Risk of encoding a biased and one-sided view of diversity
Risk that if one is elected as a representative of some specific group, they might feel expected to defend the needs of this group, at the cost of what they might feel is better for the movement as a whole.

[Q2] Should there be a regional cap (e.g. max 3 persons from a single region)? Overall, a plurality of feedback supports the proposed cap in order to ensure more equity and avoid the lack of representation from certain regions, such as what is currently happening in the composition of the Board of Trustees.

A significant minority of feedback argues against the regional cap because regions shouldn’t necessarily have equal representation, as the number of active and qualified contributors can vary greatly from one to the other.

In addition, it was argued that communities should take part in defining the regions based on which caps will be imposed (as it wasn’t the case for WMF regions).

[Q3] Should there be a home project or entity cap (e.g. max 2 persons from a single wiki project or affiliate)? Overall, a plurality of feedback opposes the proposed cap because it is too complicated to set up and may lead to possible loss of expertise from the qualified candidates.

A small minority of feedback argues for the proposed cap, with caveats against using the current “home projects” definition.

[Q4] Should there be any other limits for Global Council membership? Some of the proposed limits including:

A limit based on regional diversity;
A limit on experienced Wikimedia project contributors;
A limit on Wikimedia Foundation and Affiliate staff members; and
A limit on the term of office of the Global Council members, with a maximum of two terms being mentioned.

Outside the open questions, the following feedback are presented:

Observation: allowing WMF or affiliate staff to stand for the Council election is a bad idea. Such a situation will be putting their employees in a bad position or leading to decisions that might be influenced by their employers interest, direct or indirect.
Observation: a lot of the listed responsibilities of the GC have the nature of one-off initiatives (setting up completely new structures and establishing completely new ways of doing things). It would stand to reason to expect the first couple of years of the GC to be more demanding, commitment wise, then later years, which may necessitate a different mechanism for how the first GC is seated.
Observation: The current proposal suggests that Council candidates must meet the “voter eligibility criteria for the BoT”, which effectively means that any candidate needs to have an active on-wiki participation. This would exclude anyone from other parts of the free knowledge ecosystem to be elected, and prevent much needed expertise to be brought into the GC from outside of the communities.
Observation: while it should not be hard for the more populous of the communities to identify a replacement candidate when the current member reaches their term limit, this might not be the case for the more marginalized of our communities, especially if the time commitment is large, there are language demands on members, or specific expertise which must also be matched.
Observation: there is nothing in the proposal to suggest that it would not be the same set of people who are nominated for, and who vote in, the GC elections as in the BoT elections. With both of these being elected, the possibility of difficulties finding candidates, the community suffering from election fatigue, and others must be considered.
Observation: If the GC is even more abstract than the BoT, and especially if its membership is large, can we really expect people to vote based on anything other than name recognition?
Observation: How do we ensure that the elections and the impact that it can bring gets communicated equally across our various sub-communities (not the same as a banner showing everywhere)?
Suggestion: clarify process to replace members. There is currently no process outlined to fill a vacant Council seat (due to resignations, death, etc.)
Suggestion: investigate different electoral models, such as the draw system instead of popular vote.
Suggestion: have a hierarchical selection, like elections per region so that each region has its representative, or have the Hubs appoint the members of the Council.
Suggestion: clarify the expectation for members to “consistently participate” in order to get a feeling for who will in practice have the opportunity to participate.
Suggestion: clarify the term “equity” and “proportionality”:
- Is "equitable representation" the same thing as proportional representation (which, for national politics, is generally considered the ideal form of representation today)? That would mean the few largest Wikipedias dominating decision making bodies. Are we ready to say that the most equitable representation is the one where one person's vote is worth ten times another person's? Affiliates generally have more stake in the Global Council than volunteer editors (as most of its powers is about regulating affiliate activity and affiliate budgets, so most of what the GC does is very important for affiliates but not terribly relevant for most editors), but in terms of number of people involved, and (with the exception of the WMF and maybe WMDE) in terms of mission impacts, affiliates are dwarfed by the wiki communities. Should "equitable" mean that the hundred thousand or so volunteers involved in wiki editing get significantly more say in the composition of the GC than the few thousand volunteers and staff involved in the WMF and affiliates, or should it mean that the people who are the most affected have the biggest opportunity to influence the decision?
- What does proportionality mean for affiliates? Today, a large affiliate with hundreds of staff and thousands of involved volunteers has (at least on paper) the same representation in decision making than a user group with two active members, which doesn't strike me as a healthy situation. On the other hand, it's hard to assign a meaningful "size" to affiliates; the size of membership mostly depends on how aggressively one recruits and whether there are any dues (it's easy to find people who sign up as members and then never do anything again), and in the case of formal organizations, how much local law penalizes them for having lots of inactive members (which would e.g. lead to quorum problems).

Hubs

Definition and purpose

Observation: whether there are any simpler methods to manage internal knowledge of the movement and providing communication platforms without creating new bureaucratic structures and adding to the fragmentation -- the question of “scaling” hubs.
Observation: Some affiliates feel that what hubs are trying to do can be done by strengthening affiliates and supporting them better.
Suggestion: Hubs should be listed as a type of Wikimedia organization that has the purpose of “fostering collaboration, coordination, mutual support and resource development/sharing for affiliates.” Under this categorization framework, Hubs would be accountable to its members and will be regulated by the Global Council.
Suggestion: clarify how thematic Hubs and thematic organizations differ, and/or consider a new affiliate structure that removes this difference.
Suggestion: Hubs need to focus on a certain set of values and principles, and aim toward addressing a challenge or a problem.
Suggestion: Clarify what is considered a “region”, non-overlapping geographical regions or if regions are allowed to partially overlap and are instead based on shared challenges and opportunities.
Suggestion: Clarify the current Hub purpose to “be a mutual support structure for the hub members”, since it could be read that they should not support non-members (organizations or individuals), which would conflict with the statement about individuals under “Membership and composition”.

Set-up and governance process

Observation: it is too early to outline the details for the internal structure of Hubs because the hubs are still being piloted.
Observation: having a Hub Host as fiscal sponsor is helpful for the development of a Hub, but from past experience, "putting more power where it already exists" may not be equitable or efficient
Observation: being a Hub Host carries a high risk to an entity -- a recommendation is to build the organizational capacity for a reasonable amount of time before being a Hub Host.
Observation: Hubs consisting of affiliates only would limit equity in certain regions, as there are a lot of small project language communities that may not have capacity to operate as affiliates but may be interested to form a Hub.
Observation: It is clear that the rules proposed in the draft are formulated with some of the current hub embryos in mind, and reviewing current experiments is something that should continue to be done. However, there is a risk in adding too many strict limitations in the Movement Charter, as it could lock down hubs to the shapes seen in these embryos.
Suggestion: rules and other policies for hubs should not be included in the Charter; those should be left for the entity that will recognize and derecognize hubs. Focus on purpose and principles of hubs; what hubs are meant to solve for.
Suggestion: the term "thematic" should be also understood to include the more "functional" parts of the Wikimedia movement (e.g. a Capacity Building Hub, a Knowledge Management Hub, a Evaluation & Monitoring Hub should be considered as a thematic Hub).
Suggestion: In practical terms, since any hub needs to be recommended by AffCom (per Global Council draft) before being recognized, the details could work as a (public) instruction letter to AffCom.
Suggestion: Try an approach focusing on the opportunities that hubs can offer and developing the rules based on ensuring these, and on encouraging a diversity among hubs. This might lead to hub structures we have not yet even discovered.

Membership and composition

This section consists of an open question from the MCDC: should there be a limit to how many hubs an affiliate can join? Overall sentiment is leaning towards allowing Affiliates to join as many hubs as they want.

Those who support a limit argue that:

Such a limit may avoid one affiliate joining way too many hubs (“spam joining”);
Avoid uncertainty as to which hub an affiliate should turn for funding; and
Limiting the level of participation for regional Hubs can prevent affiliates from trying to "grant shop" among different regional funding committees, should the Hub be connected to regional funding structures in the future.

Those who oppose a limit argue that:

Affiliates should join as many hubs as they want;
Most affiliates work in numerous thematic/programmatic areas;
Placing such limit is essentially restricting the diversity of the work done by affiliates; and
Thematic hubs serve needs of so many affiliates, and even multiple regional hubs can be relevant to the same affiliate (e.g. cases like Mexico and the Caribbean).

Some alternatives to the limit include:

The number of hubs an affiliate can join depends on the type of hub (regional or thematic); some propose a limit on the number of regional hubs an affiliate can join, but no limit should be imposed on participation at thematic hubs.
Such a limit, if needed, should not be governed specifically by the Charter, but by a specific policy (set by the hubs or the entity overseeing hubs).

Some additional feedback offered in this topic:

Observation: while there is a broad consensus that the minimum amount is too low, there is no consensus of how many Affiliates it should take to establish a Hub.
Observation: the 2 affiliates-requirement:
- lacks a diversity component, since in some cases multiple affiliates serve a single community in one country;
- might have the potential to proliferate unsustainable mini-hubs with not enough purpose or backing, as it is easy enough to establish two affiliates; and
- could set up situations where there are competing hubs within thematics or regions.
Observation: the rule that individuals cannot be members in hubs risk disenfranchising individuals or groups of individuals e.g. coming from countries without a Wikimedia affiliate.
Observation: When it comes to thematic hubs (and albeit less explicitly for regional hubs) individuals may have a more direct interest in this area of work without wanting to join an existing affiliate. Do we really want to set up a process where such affiliates would need to set up a User group mirroring the theme of the hub in order to have a say in its decision making?
Observation: It is unclear if external organizations (non-Wikimedia affiliates) can be members of a hub (while it is clear that such an organization could act as a Hub Host). Examples of such external organizations could be free knowledge organizations (such as Open Knowledge, Creative Commons, OpenStreetMap, to mention a few), GLAM institutions, universities and research organizations, IGOs, etc., or regionally active chapters of these organizations.
Suggestion: identify paths for individuals to engage directly within the hubs, e.g. through some form of representation.

Responsibilities

Observation: the Hubs responsibilities to provide legal support, reviewing safety and security guidelines, and developing technologies in service of the communities are missing, and suggested that those are reasonable responsibilities to be borne by the Hubs.
Observation: it is unclear to what extent this needs to be reactive rather than active. It is important that hubs should be able to also work strategically and ambitiously, based on equitable long term-plans within their regional or thematic focus, and not simply reacting when something that already exists breaks.
Observation: It is not clear that a hub would be empowered to coordinate and work with external actors. This is relevant e.g. in working directly with organizations which are on a similar regional level, or in the case of thematic hubs on a global level, where working directly with the members would be less natural for this organization. This is very important to include and would be a missed opportunity otherwise.
Suggestion: retain the Must, Should, and Could division. Generally, most feedback like this division of responsibility, and there is a desire to have it applied to other draft chapters. However, it should not be seen as an exhaustive list (i.e. anything not explicitly listed should be disallowed) – doing so means we lose the potential that hubs may bring to the way we work and, in the strictest reading of this, demote them to simply organizing and administering pre-existing knowledge.
Suggestion: there are several suggestions on what kind of responsibility should a Hub bear towards the Affiliates:
- Hubs should be supporting Affiliates in completing their annual reports, including training Affiliates staff in doing so;
- Hubs should play a role in supporting and recognizing Affiliates;
- Hubs should be involved in developing a new model of Wikimedia Affiliates;
- Hubs should be providing software support or software development;
- Hubs may even do a better job compared to what Affiliates are doing right now in providing representation within the movement; and
Suggestion: a Global Council body that is entrusted with recognition and derecognition of hubs should be the same committee that oversees the other affiliates.
Suggestion: a Hub should be directed to prioritize using or adapting existing Wikimedia technical resources or platforms (chat platforms, Wikimedia project pages, etc) rather than creating new ones for their use (e.g. a separate wiki).
Suggestion: lay out a list of existing Wikimedia project resources (technical, legal, financial, etc.) that might serve the needs of the Hubs.

Fundraising and fund dissemination

Suggestion: make it explicitly clear that whether a Hub helping other Hubs in formulating grant applications for the same type of grant is allowed or not.
Suggestion: clarify the difference between regional and thematic Hubs fundraising abilities.
Suggestion: as a “fundraising entity”, Hubs should comply with the same fundraising policy for all other entities within the Wikimedia movement, which would further clarify and simplify the so-called “local fundraising” abilities.
Suggestion: clarify whether the provision that says “Regional hubs may fundraise locally” means that the regional hubs would be allowed to run local banner fundraising campaigns on Wikipedia or not.
Suggestion: clarify why regional hubs would not be allowed to apply for grants. Citing the experience of the Content Partnerships Hubs and Wikimedian in Residence positions, the options of having both regional and thematic hubs applying for grants have the potential to be very beneficial for the movement and an important opportunity to increase financial sustainability as outlined in Strategic Recommendation 1.
Suggestion: clarify why it is necessary to limit how the hubs could and should secure funds in the Movement Charter, as there is still a strong need for experimentation in this area.
Suggestion: substantively connect the Hubs with the current Regional Grants Committee structure managed by the Foundation’s Community Resources team, but there are differing thoughts on how the Hubs (and different categories of them) should be playing in a role vis-a-vis the grant committees.
Suggestion: Considering the possibility of hubs to allocate funds to members, require Hubs to ensure grant recipients have not received other funding to cover the same activities.
Suggestion: ensure that anyone providing support to grants applicants a) needs to do so in a manner fair to all applicants, b) cannot be involved in the decision making process around the grant.

Safeguards

Suggestion: clarify that the Conflicts of Interest rule applies only to grants financed by WMF/banner funds or to any grants.
Suggestion: ensure phrasing used here doesn’t prevent the hub members from having an input on how funding should be distributed in a good way. I.e. Communication is important in both directions.

Relationship to other bodies

Overall, feedback on this section emphasizes the importance of not having the Hubs as another layer in the Wikimedia movement bureaucracy.

An entity, whether it’s the Wikimedia Foundation or the Global Council, needs to explicitly play a centralized coordination role among the Hubs in the future to better manage coordination and avoid turf wars.

Roles & Responsibilities

Context and introduction

Observation: the current draft largely describes the current state of roles and responsibilities within the Wikimedia movement, and a high-level question of whether the MCDC started drafting this chapter with a will to challenge that state at all.
Suggestion: cleaner and more nuanced definitions for the different terms used (e.g. communities vs. project communities; not everyone in the community edits; etc.)

Volunteers

Observation: the current draft chapter does not say anything in regard to paid editing, which one person considered as an issue within the volunteer base of the movement.
Suggestion: enshrine the right of volunteers to not receive “severe verbal attack, harassment and discrimination” because of their editing activities.
Suggestion: under rights of volunteers, clearly and explicitly state: "No one should make excessive demands on individual volunteers. In case of dispute, Wikimedia community organizations should be empowered to mediate and speak for individual member peers from their community." (The current statement is in a passive voice.)
Suggestion: change the provision about compensation for volunteers to emphasize “travel sponsorship to Wikimedia events or other benefits", because the other benefits in practice are much less common, visible, or known than other financial benefits.

Movement Bodies

Suggestion: strike mentions of Wikimedia Enterprise due to its controversial beginnings (without community consent and support)
Suggestion: state and clarify further the roles and responsibilities of the professional staff of the Wikimedia Foundation and the affiliates, who carry out the various professional services (e.g. events management, organizing, etc.) for the volunteer movement and may receive uncivil treatment or harassment.

Glossary

There are no significant comments for this draft chapter except for one person on Meta, who appreciated its existence and requested more elaboration and providing context-sensitive explanation on several terms, such as “Equity” and “Affiliates”.

In addition, in the other draft chapters, some suggested stylistic changes to the language including:

Clarify the following terms:
- Executive: “used throughout the drafts in misleading and confusing ways”
- Advancement: could mean both fundraising (as used by the WMF) or capacity building.
Replace the following terms:
- For funds-related provisions, replace “dissemination” with “distribution”, which signifies strategic intent rather than a scattering approach to resource allocation.
- Use clearer terms for the goal statements; replace phrases like “the Global Council improves” and “the Global Council simplifies” with terms such as “ensure that”, “responsible for”, “decides on”, “deliberates about”, etc.

An individual suggested creating a reference point with a set of Wikidata elements describing the major terms in the draft chapters and how they interact in the structures and processes of our movement, which could be used to describe structures, projects, and monitor them more precisely.

Consultation process

Consultation outreach

Some project community members are concerned that the current phase of community consultation has not adequately reached out to the individual contributors in the projects. For example, the German Wikipedia community (one of the largest project communities), were quite vocal in their disappointment that the information and invitation to engage about this round of consultations did not reach them. This sentiment was also shared by some groups that are historically uninvolved in global governance discussions and/or under-represented in global governance structures.

A recurring suggestion from several feedback is that the rationale and notes from the drafting process of the Charter should be shared as a companion document to the draft chapters, in order to help readers understand the intent of the texts to better provide input and feedback.^[1]

Legal review and feedback

Suggestion: the next legal reviews should be framed in “tell me what you want to achieve and I will try to help find a way to legally make this work” [sic] mindset, rather than trying to fit it in the way the Foundation is currently operating.
Suggestion: the legal constraints brought up in the feedback should be reformulated in a more explicit and verifiable manner, as some kind of position statement from the legal team, with references to relevant laws or precedents, as right now it's hard to tell what's actual legal advice and what is just the opinion of the legal reviewers.
Suggestion: seek other external legal review to explore what is legally possible.

Reference

↑ This is a norm for negotiations of international treaties between nation-states, called travaux préparatoires.

Source

All feedback used by this report came from the following source(s):

Talk:Movement Charter/Content/Global Council
Talk:Movement Charter/Content/Roles & Responsibilities
Talk:Movement Charter/Content/Hubs
Talk:Movement Charter/Content/Glossary
Talk:Movement Charter
Notes and recordings from all events throughout the July-September 2023 consultation period

Additional references

External research from MedLab

[1] This is a norm for negotiations of international treaties between nation-states, called travaux préparatoires.

[1]