Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/Proposal: Drafting a Movement Charter

Let’s talk about drafting the Movement Charter next week

To take this conversation forward and to see where the different proposals can align, let’s talk! We have scheduled two video calls on Tuesday/Wednesday, please join!

• Tuesday, 20 April 2021, 18:00 UTC on Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/jne-fver-upi
• Wednesday, 21 April 2021, 02:00 UTC on Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/94870044273

@Lyzzy: For the sake of clarity, who would be "we"?--- Darwin ^Ahoy! 15:54, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

It's "We, the initial authors", I made a link to the related paragraph. Alice Wiegand (talk) 06:59, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

I am seeing this invite for the first time. i appreciate it. i will be open to joining future zoom calls. feel free to let me know. if you have an automated notification list for talk pages, you can feel free to add me. thanks! --Sm8900 (talk) 21:06, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

comments

Thank you for this! Jan-Bart (talk) 11:57, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for that! I couldn't leave that discussion page without a discussion! Schiste (talk) 11:11, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

"Tokenizing"

Hello, I cannot help to find this a rather... remarkable note:

"We acknowledge the lack of diversity of the group behind that text. This work started as a friendly discussion and we were too far off in the work to include new people without tokenizing them."

Am I the only one? Ziko (talk) 11:50, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi Ziko. What this means is that this document developed after informal discussion among the signatories, who are mostly from Europe and mostly involved with affiliates. This is not the level of diversity or representation that we want to see in the Movement Charter drafting group, or indeed in anything really for the movement in future. We could have reached out to a wider and more diverse group of people and taken longer to establish a broader consensus. However we found out a few days ago of a deadline, because yesterday there was a meeting of the WMF Board Community Affairs Committee. At this point we felt there was no time to meaningfully engage more people in the conversation before publishing. If we had gone to other people saying "hi we are publishing this very shortly, please add your name but the text is already almost final" then that could have been disrespectful. I hope this makes sense. Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 12:51, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

All that looks very artificial, and very much the opposite of a grass-roots community level thing. This should be going by elections or RfC, and not by (mostly self) appointment by (by who, really?). --- Darwin ^Ahoy! 15:52, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Questions from Joalpe

Hi. I admire the work done in the strategy process, and I am happy to see people who were directly involved in this process eager to continue involved in collaborating to devise next steps. I have four questions about what is proposed here:

1. A concern that has been raised again and again in meetings I have attended on the IGC is that the governance that leads to the Global Council should be radically democratic and participatory. How does the proposal being made address this concern?
2. Why are you directing this proposal to the BoT and not the Wikimedia Movement in general?
3. I fear the existence of two proposals will lead the community to create a mechanism to decide on which is the best, eventually through an RfC process, and slow us down even more. I am actually not aware of another mechanism to decide on matters of this relevance/magnitude in the community in cases of two proposals. Isn't it possible to reach consensus working on the proposal put forward by Pharos, as it emerged based on opposition to the exact proposal you have made here?
4. I see some editors here have signed with the account associated with their affiliates. Should we understand this signature is made in the name of the affiliate?

Thank you. --Joalpe (talk) 14:38, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi Joalpe, and thank you for these questions! I haven't discussed these replies with the rest of the group, but for my own perspective:

1. All of us are deeply committed to the radical democracy and participation embedded in the Ensure Equity in Decision-making recommendation. Many of us were involved in developing this recommendation in the working groups phase, and also sometimes in pushing hard to keep these ideas in the final recommendations when some other voices wanted to reduce them. So it's a fair question of why is this not more strongly reflected in this proposal. In short: Because of time, and momentum in the strategy process. A 40-member mainly-elected Interim Global Council will take a long time to establish. It could easily take a further 6 months to work out the method of election, then 3 months to conduct the election, then 3 months of finalising and onboarding... meaning no-one would even start thinking about how to draft the Movement Charter until mid-2022, the Movement Charter would be drafted in 2023, maybe ratified in 2024, and elections to the actual Global Council maybe in 2025. That is a long time to wait for real change. If the "interim Global Council" becomes a smaller group then more meaningful change can happen earlier.
2. The proposal is directed at both the movement and the WMF, though the specific requests are of the WMF. This is because at the moment the WMF is the only body that can move the process forward. What's more, the WMF is going to undergo a lot of change this year. A new ED and Board could come in and decide they don't like some or all of the strategy recommendations, because they are challenging and radical for the WMF. So there is actually a lot of urgency. It's important that by the time the new ED and Board come in the Movement Charter process is underway and is demonstrably working. Now at the moment, even after Katherine's departure the WMF continue to be active in pushing the strategy forward, so personally I am a bit relieved. But there is still a risk that if there isn't clarity about the way forward now, then by the end of 2021 nothing will have happened.
3. There are big overlaps between our proposal and Pharos's - specifically, making the "interim global council" restricted in scope, relatively small (c. 20 people), and set up quickly. There is also a difference in method of selection (he suggests two elections, we suggest appointment). If it turns out there is now a consensus on the first points about scope, purpose, and size of the IGC/Movement Charter Drafting Group, then that is great! I expect the point about appointment vs election would then be much easier to solve. If there is not consensus about the idea of having a smaller Movement Charter Drafting Group then it would be great to see other concrete proposals on how to move forwards. Our main concern is that the process is currently stuck, and our proposal is an attempt to get it moving again.
4. Everyone is signing in a personal capacity. People with affiliate names in their signatures are staff members using their work accounts, but not reflecting their organisations' official views.

Hope this helps - let us know if you have any more questions. Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 08:37, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi there, thänk you Chris' for your answer, I completely agree with all of it and just wanted to add a few thoughts / details from my side:

1. There are certainly always more radical ways to go about this, but I believe that having something like a "constitutional assembly" to draft a Charta and then an end product that needs to be ratified by all stakeholders, is definitely democratic and resembles the processes in many democracies. Of course this requires diversity and representation in the group/assembly and that is a point that we probably did not communicate well enough in our proposal.
2. One of the main reasons for me to speak out was my concern - based on experiences of the past - that a change in leadership in the Foundation often leads to a vaccum with important change and progress being stalled. This process needs to be resourced appropriately and the resources can only come from the WMF, hence their prominent role in this proposal.

Regarding my signature, as one of the people with a staff account: Our board was not involved in the creation of this partcicular text, but they knew about my involvement and the content is aligned with our internal discussions at WMAT. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 10:00, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

This proposal needs Movement sign-off first, timing, and ratification

This process needs to get sign-off from the meta community first, before asking the WMF to adopt it as a mechanism. In my view I dislike how it is appealing to urgency because of potential WMF changes to run past the process.

A consistent complaint is that the WMF uses running out the clock as a mechanism to aid their position, and now an affiliate-led proposal is doing just the same. Far better no proposal than something that could lead to a bad set of rules. To me, this reads as nothing more than attempting to do an end run around disagreements on how the IGC should be formed. The proposal of limiting it just to this document crafting has been made before, and was not sufficient to bypass the deadlock. Deadlocks are not inherently bad - things like this shouldn't happen if they can't garner clear consensus.

Finally, ratification should have at least three things, plus potentially an affiliate bit (though why something the Community backs should fail if the affiliates don't agree is beyond me)

1. WMF Board 2. Communities (that is, a majority of communities who formally consider ratification) 3. Editors (that is, a majority of editors who participate in ratification votes).

Having both 2 and 3 is needed to avoid both tyranny of the majority and tyranny of the minority. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:24, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Answering some questions

Some of you reached out to some of the initial authors with questions which we think are important for clarity and understanding. Therefore we start with some of them in a Q&A style. If you have questions which aren’t answered yet, please add them below. We worked as a group on this, I sign each section for clarity. Alice Wiegand (talk) 12:02, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Why is the group of initial authors not more diverse?

We all have been involved in different phases of the Movement Strategy in different capacities. We are a group of individuals, we are not speaking on behalf of any organization.

Some people happened to talk to others and we found ourselves together spontaneously. We wanted to start quickly, keeping the momentum of “let’s do something to make the Movement Charter and Global Council happen”. That we are Europeans is not by design, it's just because we connected over other things and then realized that there is this one topic we all care for and want to find a solution for.

And to be fair, it also is proof of how much we need to change the power structure of the movement and not just try to fix it. It's a remnant of a world we want to be done with.

Diversity is key in implementing the strategy recommendations and principles. This of course is true also for the creation of the Movement Charter. Our group came together, and we immediately started to work. When we finished the work, we published it and reflected on how it went. We are of course aware that the initial group of authors is not as diverse as it should be. As we move forward, this needs to be fixed. This proposal was meant to kick-start an open discussion based on a practical plan and move away from theoretical discussion. That is why we hope for the Movement Charter Drafting Group to be a diverse group and started a public open discussion to discuss and improve that proposal. It is meant as a first step to unstick a situation that has been stuck for months. Alice Wiegand (talk) 12:02, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

I’m not sure if I understand what you are proposing, can you explain it again?

Yes, sure we can. Since for almost all of us, English is not the first language, we may not be as clear as we want to, we may use terms which have different meanings depending on context and language, and we may just not express our points in a comprehensible way. We try to avoid buzzwords, and still we may sometimes use words from the strategy glossary without checking their general meaning. On top of that, our proposal has not been written by one person but by ten, so language and expression might not always be aligned throughout the text. If you wonder what we mean with a word or a sentence, please ask. We will then try to explain it in different words or give more context. Alice Wiegand (talk) 12:02, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Is the group of initial authors self-appointing for the proposed Movement Charter Drafting Group?

The group of authors do not see themselves as the initial members of the Movement Charter Drafting Group.

Some of us have relevant experience, would like to do that work, and will nominate themselves in whatever process will be set up. Others just don’t have the time or don’t see themselves as best fit for that task. To be honest, we haven’t discussed that in detail and there is no hidden list of members to push forward. Alice Wiegand (talk) 12:02, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Where can I explain my interest to be a member of the Movement Charter Working Group?

There has been some discussion about how to find and select the right people for the challenging task of drafting the Movement Charter. What hasn't been talked about is who after all is willing to invest their time, expertise, and motivation to that. Are you? Alice Wiegand (talk) 12:02, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

What do you mean when you speak of leadership/leading?

In our proposal we used the words “ready to serve, lead and support”. Some people asked what exactly we mean by “lead” in this sentence. As mentioned above, we do not see ourselves as all being future members of the Charter Drafting Group. However, in the last few months there has been a strong sense that everyone is waiting for someone else to take action. There have been some valuable proposals from the community. Each proposal has prompted discussion, but that discussion has not continued. We mean to move the discussion forward, planning video meetings, being active thinking and proposing, connecting the dots, and not waiting for someone else to offer paths to move on. Alice Wiegand (talk) 12:02, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Do you want to start a competition of different proposals?

No. Our idea is to bring good ideas together and provide opportunities for partial solutions to open a feasible path forward, to make real progress before the strategy process stalls and people lose interest. That’s why we referred to previous suggestions and Pharos’ 3*7 proposal in our text, since it addresses raised concerns and it still is a pragmatic move. Alice Wiegand (talk) 12:02, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

"Would recommend starting with a core of appointed members to kick start the work as early as possible."

Your own intro suggests why this would be a terrible idea. You said that you got too far into the process to not be able to bring in more opinions without tokenising them - conceding one of at least 4 major issues with starting with some and thinking you can resolve issues by later adding more individuals.

No. This would formalise a first-mover advantage - the early souls always set the general path, with later individuals only being able to move details within that overarching form. I am appalled that there seems to be such thinking that the benefits of speed outweigh all of the negatives. I'm also concerned that you think there is merit to affiliates getting not just a seat but as much representation as the at-large community. The proposal did not address raised concerns. Terrifying.

Progressing so far and not seeking prior community approval before asking the WMF to adopt the mechanism is just a set of end-runs - ones in good faith, absolutely, but that does not reduce the negatives and issues in doing so.

@Alice Wiegand: in your Q&A list you mention adding questions below, but there are questions/concerns above that haven't been answered in the list. Could these be answered prior to the first call, please :) Nosebagbear (talk) 18:20, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Hello @Nosebagbear: - thanks for your comments and sorry no-one got around to answering your points further above.

Regarding urgency and 'end-runs' - well, it depends how much urgency one feels there is in the situation. I appreciate that some will feel the main risk is of doing the wrong thing, and/or that the status quo is basically fine. However I believe there are also many risks to not making any progress. One is that we don't make any progress on the 'big picture' goals of including more of the world's knowledge. Another, which doesn't get talked about so much, is that WMF-Community relations actually go backwards and that we end up in a few years with another Superprotect situation.

I think I agree that if a 'core group' started to do too much too quickly, then that core group would have too much influence over the process. However we don't see a 'core group' forming and then right away starting to draft a Charter, or even start to draft a consultation process on the charter. At most they will start to plan the structure and approach to starting to do those things. (Sort of the opposite of the process behind drafting this proposal, which was a discussion about content right away).

And finally on the issue of 'affiliate' vs 'community' representation. I definitely agree that this process needs more voices from what you refer to as 'the community at large' than the Working Groups phase did. However, I've also observed that outside of the Western world there is less of an 'affiliate' vs 'community' divide. If the aim is to include the views of Wikimedians from India or who speak Arabic then the relevant affiliates are a good place to start. (And those people are very unlikely to be contributing on Meta!). Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 19:50, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Oppose

I want to make clear that I strongly oppose this proposal because it amounts to mock participation, in order to avoid necessary and possibly productive conflict. But as I could have predicted, the proposal only offers room for support but not for opposition. Which even strengthens my point.Mautpreller (talk) 19:37, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

But that's not a constructive comment. What would be your proposal to move on, Mautpreller? Could you share more details of your thinking? --2804:7F0:A082:6675:B1C2:9950:6505:8AC0 19:42, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

The point should be, what kind of charta do we want? There should be several proposals, at great variance. There is no need to press on, what is necessary is to discuss if we want a charta of digital citizen rights or a charta of a set of beliefs and dutys (as a religious organization would prefer). The last thing we need, however, is a small group of selected people who negotiate one "draft" without even bothering to discuss this crucial question in the communities. This is pseudo-participation. Not to mention the "appointment" idea which is absolutely unacceptable.Mautpreller (talk) 19:51, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

There is some talk about "trust" and "lack of trust" in the beginning of the proposal. Well, I for my part will never trust a group that only permits support but no opposition. And I am not alone. The first remark on the German Kurier talk (the usual place to discuss such questions) was exactly: "We can only support this proposal, we cannot decline it? Will that be the same in the future, in the involvement of all stakeholders and the ratification by all involved, including the communities?" This is the safest way to produce massive distrust.Mautpreller (talk) 20:02, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

I don't see an oppose section on Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer or COLOR; you seemed happy to add your name to both of them. And obviously, no, a movement charter will not be ratified with the same process. Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 20:13, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

That was an open letter of people sharing the same opinion, addressed to the WMF. This is not anything of this kind. Hence a fundamentally different issue. What you call obvious is not in the least obvious. I am convinced that a movement charter will be ratified with the same process if your proposal is accepted.Mautpreller (talk) 20:22, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for your feedback! I would like to clarify a point you make, with which I strongly agree (and I know the other authors do to) is that this process to be successful will need to tackle on very tough and complicated topics. Anything less would be a waste of the efforts of everyone. That proposal isn't meant to water down those discussion at all, quite the opposite. I believe those discussions are essential and critical for the movement and we need them. We need them for a long time actually. So the spirit behind that letter was a call to start that process asap, and create the space for those discussions to happen. And I have no idea what the approval process will be, but I can't imagine it being a single approve/oppose vote at the end. As you precisely say, this will need to embed productive debate (I change that word because we are all on the same side here ^^), and that is not just an approve/oppose vote. Finally, our goal was to get things moving and to me that discussion is contributing to it and I just hope we will soon run faster toward those needed discussions :) schiste (talk) 13:37, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

I do want to chime in here, just to echo the need for real and constructive discussion of this proposal. I am actually not opposed to this proposal. however, I am picturing the reaction by the community, since it seems likely that a large majority of the community has no idea that this proposal even exists. So I am just trying to be somewhat helpful to the proponents of this idea. --Sm8900 (talk) 21:04, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Drafting

Hello,

I think it is important that everybody who is interested can create a draft for a specific topic of the Movement Charter. If there is a committee for drafting the movement charter then the work of this committee should be transparent and not a exclusive work of the committe to create a draft. The Wikimedia Projects are a collaborative project that anyone can edit and this is for me a important part and so it should be at the movement charter. I also suggest to make the movement charter not too complex. I try to write a draft proposal for specific parts of the movement charter and then I see how many times it takes. In the last year I read through statutes of some organisations and so I think that should be possible to do in a acceptable time that I have as a volunteer. --Hogü-456 (talk) 19:38, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

thanks for this page

I'm please to see this summary here as a resource for the community. i will try to view this proposal with an open mind. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 20:57, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Movement Charter drafting as a participatory process

Hello, I want to share thoughts about how to make the process of designing and ratifying the Movement Charter more inclusive.

My name is Alek Tarkowski and many of you probably don't know me, as I am not a very advanced Wikimedian. I have nevertheless been active in the access to knowledge / digital commons / open movement since 2004 and have contributed to the movement by being part of the Movement Strategy process (as coordinator of the Partnerships Working Group). I am also co-author of the proposal being discussed.

I wanted to share with you some thoughts from the side-lines of the process - from my specific perspective, which is due to the fact that I don't know everything about Wikimedia's traditions around selection of people for roles in global processes. From this perspective, I see that elections / voting are often invoked as a fair and democratic method for representing the global community that forms the Wikimedia Movement.

I would like to suggest that there are other methods that should be explored as part of the Movement Charter process. Wikimedia is a unique collective endeavour that should - in my opinion - also lead with state of the art exploration of novel governance methods. There are currently a lot of interesting projects that combine democratic, just, participatory values and methodologies with possibilities offered by digital technologies. Sort of what Wikipedia did in the encyclopedies space, only related to decision making.

A few good examples of this approach include: - Decidim, a civic open source platform developed in Barcelona, used mainly for local-level community decision making - Pol.is, a "a real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words, enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning" developed by the Computational Democracy project.

One other important model is the citizen panel or citizens assembly. I think that this is the general model that should be used by the Movement Charter Drafting Group and its ratification process. What I find important about the citizen panel model is that it tries to engage a broad range of members of a community, including those that wouldn't step up in a traditional selection or election process. Experience shows that various people, when invited, are willing to step up into such a process (provided that proper conditions are met, often including financial reimbursement for their effort).

If such a transparent, participatory - but also just and fair and ensuring diversity - method was at the heart of the process, then membership in the Drafting Group should become less of an issue. Because participatory methods and tools mean that everyone can have a voice in the conversation - even if it happens at large scale. In this model Drafting Group members are administrators of the process, and not decision-makers.

An option worth considering is sortition - random drawing of lots from people declaring willingness to take on a role. There is ample evidence that this is a more democratic and inclusive process than normal elections. It gives decision-makers independence, creates equal opportunity to participate and allows diversity. I recommend a report on sortition published in 2018 by the Bertelsmann Stiftung in Germany.

So I would suggest that the Movement Charter Drafting Group does not elect any members, but instead rely on self-appointment, combined with random selection (managed by a trusted third party). Of course this needs to be combined with a participatory process that will ensure that all other interested parties in the community can participate. The community would need to put this much faith in the Drafting Group - that it will choose such a process. I personally believe it will, no matter what its composition. Tarkowski (talk) 13:56, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Thoughts on creation and ratification process

Hello! A theme of conversations about the Movement Charter has been the need for ratification of the final document by the Wikimedia community.

This document sets out how ratification might work, and also how the entire Charter drafting process might be shaped to be open, participative and transparent - and building on lessons learned from previous stages of the strategy process and other Wikimedia initiatives. These are only some initial thoughts but I hope they are useful for future discussions. Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 14:00, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

The final stage is not the only stage: Iteration and Co-Creation

The “final stage ratification” where a final document is put out for a “Yes” or “No” vote from communities is not the only stage of this process. It is not as if the Movement Charter Drafting Group should write a document and then submit a final version, without talking to anyone before that happens.

The drafting of the Charter should be an iterative, stage-by-stage process.

There will need to be a difference between on the one hand consultation and co-creation where communities are asked for input as to what the content of the Charter should be, and on the other hand verification / ratification where communities are asked to formally indicate agreement or disagreement with a specific text. Both are important.

Ideally, before each stage of the drafting process there should be a stage of consultation and co-creation, and afterwards a stage of verification to check that the drafting group is on track. Also ideally, people participating in these conversations would be aware of the multi-stage process and able to calibrate their feedback accordingly. However this ideal model also risks being painfully slow and exhausting of community attention through potentially four, six, or eight rounds of community conversations. There may be a balance to be struck.

It may be that the process starts off using less formal consultation methods like open meetings, facilitated discussions and gradually becomes more formal, with the later stages involving straw polls and then finally highly formal mechanisms like RfCs on projects and resolutions of Boards of movement organisations.

It is important to be clear about the level of agreement required in this final phase [to do: add links to previous discussions on this]. But it is also important to give attention to the process leading up to that point.

Learning from previous experience

There are a number of previous attempts at consultation in the Wikimedia movement which we can learn from, though none of them are as bold in scope. I do not know if the WMF has documented any learning points from these, or if they have, whether they are willing or able to publish this - it would be helpful if they could. What follows are some personal observations.

Doubtless there will also be learnings from outside the movement - anyone got any ideas?

Strategy Process - Strategic Direction phase

• The background work for the strategic direction included extensive rounds of research and consultation within the Wikimedia movement and outside it with currently under-represented groups. This was of the ‘soft’ kind of consultation, attempting to draw together themes from the many different conversations taking place. This work took place iteratively, with public documentation of the results.
• The writing of the Strategic Direction was mainly performed by WMF staff and consultants. A draft was shared at the 2017 Wikimania event, but not more widely.
• Unlike subsequent phases of the strategy process, there was an ‘endorsement’ stage where groups and individuals were asked to express their agreement with the finished document. The Strategic Direction received almost universal endorsement from affiliates and organized groups, but the number of individuals engaging in the endorsement process was not large and indicated significant reservations from part of the community (145 endorsed the statement, 35 individuals indicated opposition despite opposition not being asked for and it being clear that statements of opposition had no effect)

Strategy Process - Working Groups phase

• The Working Groups phase took place iteratively, with increasingly more refined drafts being created as the process continued. However, neither the communities being consulted nor the Working Groups themselves had clear expectations of what the purpose of the feedback being gathered was. This led to frustrations from some community members who felt that the consultation was tokenistic, and also from the Working Group members who did not know what they were supposed to do in response to the feedback they were receiving.
• The volume of documentation was massive, with the final Working Group outputs being over 300 pages. The extensive documents were in part a product of a desire by the core team to ensure clarity of thought from the working groups, and in part from the working groups themselves to fully address certain issues. However this made it virtually impossible for individuals to meaningfully comment on the full breadth of what was consulted on - and also virtually impossible for the Working Group members to fully engage with the feedback.
• There was valuable staff support in stimulating community conversations and, later in the process, in reading and consolidating feedback. This helped prevent WG members from feeling overwhelmed by the amount of feedback. The staff team was also multilingual and able to support genuine input in many languages. The strategy team did a good job of being ‘honest brokers’ who were passing on feedback to the best of their ability without making it fit their own agendas.

In my view the project communities were under-represented in this phase of the process, which contributed to a lack of trust in, and understanding of, the Working Groups and their work

• The challenges of ‘harmonising’ the 89 recommendations at the Tunis meeting highlighted the need to agree on principles and definitions, before trying to agree any detailed text

Strategy Process - Transition phase

• A large number of conversations (both local and global) helped gather input and work towards consensus on key priorities.
• There were several long, high-participation online events. While this course of action was in part required because of the Covid-19 situation, it worked well. The event planning and facilitation was exemplary.
• These meetings made good use of straw polls of different kinds to gauge the level of enthusiasm for different options, but still the ultimate questions of decision-making were unclear.

Re-Branding

• The Branding process saw some ‘co-creation’ where community members were invited to participate in online surveys, and also some were invited to in-person workshops (documented here)
• However the branding process has never entirely recovered from the impression that one of the key outcomes was predetermined, and that consultation and co-creation followed on after significant pushback against one particular proposal

The branding proposal has also been criticised for being very selective in its representation of community input, which has undermined trust in the process

WMF Board elections

• As with the Working Groups phase of the Strategy process, the Board elections process was supported by a multilingual team performing community outreach and facilitation, and this achieved a good breadth and depth of participation from different communities
• The Board elections consultation had a clearly iterative process
• It was quite clear what the scope and purpose of the consultation was, how feedback gathered would be used, and who would ultimately make decisions as a result
• Additional options were proposed as a result of community consultation

Code of Conduct consultation

• Add intelligent thoughts here

Some conclusions from the above

• Meaningful consultation and discussion requires dedicated staff support, preferably a multilingual team (to increase participation) and working at ‘arms length’ from the WMF (to increase trust)
• The Movement Charter Drafting Committee will require staff support of this kind - volunteers cannot be expected to acknowledge and respond to the volume of feedback that is likely to be solicited
• As far as possible, there should be clarity about scope, process and purpose from an early stage so that context is clear when communities are asked for feedback

Why can't we all just pull straws and whoever gets the short one gets the worse job until their all filled and then every week redo and switch it up so that essentially everyone has an actual say and equity? Lenore001 (talk) 04:46, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Linking the discussion

As part of revamping movement strategy pages on Meta, I wanted to let you know that we will be adopted the Movement Charter page as the standard place to discuss the topic here (by next week, there will be a new movement strategy portal dedicated for implementation, where that page will be linked). While some important conversations, like this one, may still happen elsewhere, I would like to suggest that you at least link them in the relevant talk page so that they are accessible. I'm also happy to link it myself, if you'd like me to. Also, thank you so much for putting together this proposal! --Abbad (WMF) (talk) 12:44, 24 April 2021 (UTC).