Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Board resolution and vote on the proposed Movement Charter/Appendix

This page is for discussions related to Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Board resolution and vote on the proposed Movement Charter/Appendix.   Please remember to: Sign posts using the four tildes (~~~~) Remain civil and polite during discussions. Place new comments below in existing sections or start a new section.   Discussion navigation: Overall discussion Proposed Changes to Resource Distribution Product and Technology Advisory Council Proposed Changes to Ecosystem of Movement Organizations

Overall discussion

Am I the only one who (despite all of the verbiage in the resolution) has no clue exactly *why* the Board rejected the Charter? Do they just think a Charter is a bad idea now even though it was a good idea five years ago? LtPowers (talk) 02:56, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

The reasons were previously stated in Talk:Movement_Charter/Archive_5#Wikimedia_Foundation_feedback_on_Movement_Charter_Final_Draft, linked from the resolution. Nemo 09:07, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I was under impression that the MCDC tried to address a number of those concerns raised by the board in their last draft, including slimming down the size of the Global Council from ~100(!).

The last statement from board, with their broad concerns are in the June 20, 2024 email: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/IH6CY4GSMZB2C3WTWQISUOYUQCKPQS4R/ Jenny8lee (talk) 07:28, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Questions raised by DerHexer on wikimedia-l

Hi, in response to a statement of Pundit where he explained his thoughts on the Charter draft, I shared my little confusion about the communication and content of the proposals. I had offered and was later asked by Yael to move it to this place. So here we are:

“While I can follow the reasoning behind the concerns about the Charter draft (and I personally share some of these in parts), I still do not understand the reasoning for the proposed next steps (appendix):

• Why is there no Movement Charter and no Global Council mentioned in the Appendix as they are considered relevant parts of more equal decision making within the Movement Strategy which was also adopted by the wMF? What is the vision of the WMF on these parts of the Movement Strategy and how to we make progress on these over the next couple of years? — With this proposal I feel like we're left in vacuum without any idea how and where to progress with these topics together with WMF.
• Why are all currently proposed bodies designed exactly the way all parties had problems with over the past decade?
  • One of them fully selected by WMF staff: “Applications for the PTAC […] Candidates will be selected [by WMF] for an interview on a rolling basis.”, etc. -> “recommendations for Wikimedia Foundation Product and Technology teams”
  • The other one financially fully dependent on budget allocation -> “will seek the recommendations and insights of this body for proposals“

  I assume that some of these wordings have legal reasons, but they create more frustration than needed because nobody knows if and how recommendations are heard and many of us carry their baggage. This is getting even more complicated the way the next steps were announced: Maybe there is a general need for the WMF Board to put everything in motions instead of starting conversations with other stakeholders, but for me it feels that by doing this there is not much ground for conversation but the next steps are put in stone just to fill a vacuum none of us ever wanted.

Both of these points, the omission of core Movement Strategy vocabulary and the way the experiments are designed and seem to be set in stone, are nowhere close to “equity in decision-making”. I think we can do better, together! Why not also with regard to the next steps?

Maybe you can also emphasize on this. :) It's helpful to read more from the Board perspective for one's own reflections, thanks once again! I'm also looking forward to conversations about it at Wikimania and meeting many of you again.” —DerHexer (Talk) 12:13, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Proposed Changes to Resource Distribution

Being a former member of the first FDC and now being a member of N&W Europe Regional Funds Committee, i both applaud the proposal at the same time I give a big sigh of frustration. The applauds is for the general set up of one GRDC and eight Regional Funds Committees and the general principles proposed for them. The sigh is for the set up/implementation for the different bodies. Just this year, in the N&W funds committee and in the informal groups discussing the GRDC there is emerging a sense that the group of EDs (for chapters and/or corresponding in other affiliates) will/could/should be a key stakeholder in this ecosystem. Should the members in the regional bodies primary be taken from former EDs, or some parts of it? Should this group be formalized as an election body for new members, or a part of it?. Should there be established a complementing body of non EDs, for he EDs to not a have 100% say in this? As understood, these questions are in an early phase, and needs to be discussed more thoroughly and broader, but I believe it would be a mistake to run into implementation as written here. Once again a top-down approach that miss out on the input of several that is the way we work in the project (bottom-up). And at the same time as I want more discussions, I see it leasable to create a GRDC as proposed to jan 1. Anders Wennersten (Yger) (talk) 12:03, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Anders Wennersten, Yael Weissburg here, VP of Community Growth. Thank you for this reflection. I'm glad to hear that in some ways this proposal builds on what we learned from the FDC and the Regional Funds Committees. That is certainly the intent; to improve on what worked/is working and discard what isn't.

For the last 6 months we've been engaging with Affiliate EDs on how we can improve the grants distribution process, including for next year's budget, and regardless of the outcome of the Charter vote. I am currently drafting a summary of that process, including what we learned and heard, and I will tag you when it's published (my hope is end of next week). In short, there seems to be common agreement that Affiliate EDs, while not the only stakeholders in the grants process, are the primary stakeholders, and therefore they must be better included in the process. Precisely what you're calling attention to.

What we were trying to wrestle with in the proposal is how to bring that perspective in without putting EDs in unfair positions where they represent both their own Affiliate and the broader region, and also how we don't overprivilege existing Affiliates as we as a movement make space for new ones. In my mind, what feels clear is that there needs to be mutual accountability - that however the Regional Funds Committees are composed, they are accountable to the Affiliates and the community in their regions, and that the Affiliates and communities delegate authority to the Regional Funds Committees.

I like the questions you've posed (copying below), and would value hearing from you and others about your ideas here:

Should the members in the regional bodies primary be taken from former EDs, or some parts of it? Should this group be formalized as an election body for new members, or a part of it?.

[My own questions]: Maybe there are ways we try to test one or more of these in the first iteration? Something like, regional elections with at least one seat needing to be filled by a former ED? Something else? RWeissburg (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Glad to see you also are thinking of how to best involve EDs more or less formally in the upcoming process of establishment and running of the Regional Funds Committees. And I like your first spontaneous suggestions, but I believe a more dedicated group/process to elobarate on these issues must be established rather soon if anything should be concrete before end of year. I suppose we can take it on after you have published your summary next week? Perhaps you can complement that summary with a proposal of how to continue this discussion in order to establish some type of routines, even if preliminary, before end of year Anders Wennersten (talk) 05:41, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Anders,

Absolutely. I'll tag you in on that. In the meantime, my overall proposal is that we continue the discussion on-wiki; that we do what our community is so good at and deliberate and debate in the open. I'm hoping this page can be that place, but happy to move the discussion elsewhere if you can point me to a more appropriate place. RWeissburg (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Committee composition

I understand that not everyone is happy with the Regional Funds committees, but I'm not sure how this will solve any of the problems that previous bodies might have. It would also be important to bring some more of the documentation of the current problems that the Regional Funds committees are having and how this solution would address them, since it's not 100% clear where this proposal is coming from or what are the problems that the proposal is trying to address. As the BoT has expressed, form follows function, so it would be good to see that the BoT is doing what they preach.

Moreover, having community & elected bodies is important, but there are several assumptions here that need to be unpacked around "representativeness", and/or how a popular vote might solve current deficiencies. In any case, any committee working on funds should pick for skills & abilities, not only for popularity. There are ways in which this could be solved:

• a number of seats for onwiki volunteers interested in participating in the decision making processes, elected by vote through an on-wiki process;
• a number of seats for affiliate members/volunteers (including board representatives, movement organizers, etc.), could be TDB how to elect them (could be with a vote from the affiliates or with members of the affiliates or etc.);
• a number of seats allocated to professionals that are actually working on the civil society space and have a professional background on the topics that are normally in the interest of affiliates and/or have experience with strategic processes. These seats could be the last to be appointed, with a process that involves the first & second categories deciding on who to call, etc., with the aid of Program Officers for each region.

Popularity when connected to money won't lead to better outcomes, and might end up creating unfair situations for a lot of reasons. As an example, some of the gender work back from 2010-2011 wasn't very popular among the online editor community, which pushed back against any work that tried to address the (persistent) gender gap. Some of the hardest topics that society needs the Wikimedia movement to be delivering reliable information on are very niche or hard to grasp if you're not expert in the topic, or might not seem as impactful for a number of reasons. There are no safeguards being proposed to ensure that there's diversity, representation & equity being brought to such a body -- so you could end up in a situation where there's more representation from certain countries or certain demographics with more power than others. Broad participation doesn't always lead to better representation, particularly in the Wikimedia movement, where we estimate that only 1 out of 10 editors are women, not to mention other minorities and population groups that are barely represented in our movement.

There's also a balancing act that needs to be made among the different stakeholders involved in making decisions around funding, funding allocation, distribution of resources, etc. Otherwise, the problems that the Funds Dissemination Committees had will be re-created and re-enacted again.

Some of the criteria being proposed is also very problematic, such as the idea that "funds could be allocated based on other criteria such as population, community size, community need, etc.". Whatever criteria should be in line with economic justice -- for several reasons, all the criteria mentioned there goes against important justice principles (small populations receive less money; countries where people have more time to volunteer and have bigger communities would be favored instead of those were economic conditions, educational backgrounds, etc, make it harder to volunteer on Wikimedia projects, etc., etc). Any definition of impact of the work an affiliate is doing should involve a conversation with affiliates working on this region, and not just a decision made by the Board of Trustees, the Wikimedia Foundation, or even a semi-elected body. Subsidariety also comes with knowing the local reality you're operating in.

This proposal is concerning because it has the opportunity to exacerbate problems in regional power distribution dynamics, and I'm expressing my opinion here just to give voice to this concern. Moreover, I think that this process should have been done in a completely different way, and that the Board is eroding public trust in the decision making processes at the WMF. --Scann (WDU) (talk) 19:04, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

You raise some important issues. My impression is that the new in this proposal is the creation of the overall body, GRDC, being composed of non WMF, and this set up is dearly needed (and new). The regional bodies are proposed to remain much the same, but their composition and election is not clear and need further discussion. My experience tells me that there are three major aspects these bodies need to look at in allocating funds to affiliates/user groups:1. quality and benefits in the applications 2. The balance of promoting newbees and supporting older/bigger affiliates 3. The issues of local incomes and if we should have a "cap" of funding to bigger affiliates expecting any further wanted growth to be financed locally.

For the composition I believe, as you state, it would be beneficial to have members related partly to the affiliates (my proposal is former EDs) and partly with members with no direct relation to the affiliates (but here I think in realty they would have some experience being a member in some bodies beforehand, and then being a little bit known already). People being "outsiders" I do not see being of benefit, we already have the region fund officer and it is a critical competence for members to know all issues from "the inside".

For the election of members I am very unsure how to do this, but think in general an election body could be beneficial, but composed of whom? I also am hesitant if is good to have elections where "everyone" will be involved, perhaps better to leave all to the election bodies, but I am unsure and interested to hear other ideas/opinions on this. Anders Wennersten (talk) 05:50, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Scann (WDU),

Thanks for your comment and for the specific proposals you offer for improvement. I think the suggestion of having different ways for Regional Funds Committees to be filled is a very important one. The examples you give are one way to think about ensuring that these committees are mutually accountable to their communities, which is what we're trying to solve for here, as it's one of the top concerns that has been raised about how they are currently composed. I'd be curious what others think of Scann's proposal here.

I want to respond to your comment about the "criteria being proposed" for how RFCs make decisions. As I mentioned on our call earlier this week, we are not proposing any of these criteria - the suggestion here was that each region should decide for itself what criteria it believes helps to make effective funds distribution decisions. In line with the principle of Subsidiarity, this means that one region might decide that funds are allocated based on grants that prove measurable impact, and another region may believe that dividing funding without grants and with more consideration of other factors is more appropriate. We're in no way proposing the criteria themselves - we were using them as examples (hence the "e.g."). I hope that clarifies the substance of what is being proposed. RWeissburg (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello @RWeissburg (WMF), thanks for your response. You mention that "One of the top concerns that has been raised is that the current composition of the committees (means that they) are not mutually accountable to their communities". Where is the research, survey or documentation that has identified this as the top concern? Where is the evidence that backs this shift? Scann (WDU) (talk) 11:58, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

This is one of the top concerns that has been raised to the Foundation when discussing grantmaking with Affiliates and communities at places like Wikimedia Summit, Talking:2024, and one-on-one conversations. It's not a research project we've undertaken. RWeissburg (WMF) (talk) 15:40, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Scann (WDU) thanks so much for this question. As the person formally in charge of Learning and Evaluation within the Community Resources team I led the feedback process for 21/22/23 fiscal years. You can find the reports here: 21/22 round 1, 21/22 round 2 and 22/23 both rounds executive summary and full report. As a result of this feedback there are several issues that the Community Resources team have attempted to address in improving procedures and support systems for both grantees and Regional Fund Committee members (RFC). However, there was reiterative "more structural" feedback such as reshaping the way RFC are selected and the skills set they should have, as well as having a more participatory process to define global and regional budgets. Hopefully the resource distribution pilot that will be collectively designed will help address some of these issues in a iterative way. JStephenson (WMF) (talk) 16:10, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

I hope this is the right place for feedback on the Experimental Global Resource Distribution Committee (EGRDC) proposal, which I was able to get an initial handle on through remote participation in Wikimania. I was not involved with FDC and am not familiar with it. However, it seems that the FDC was replaced by the RFCs, and is now being recreated. What was the original rationale for replacing the FDC, and what were lessons that led to what seems a reversal and a (partial?) recreation of a global body? (Were lessons learned unable to be applied, were new lessons learnt that outweighed previous ones?) Given the two-year timeframe, would a successful GRDC experiment look like? This will be important information for the initial members, whose first terms exceed that experimental period.

On EGRDC membership, the procedures are undefined, but they should be clear on if the 16 members are drawn directly from the RFCs and/or are otherwise chosen by the RFCs, and if the first how that interacts with the composition of the RFCs. (An immediate new election? Appointment is another option, and seems to be proposed if there is a need to replace a RFC member mid-term. Will the EGRDC and RFC terms start at the same time of the year or be staggered?) A smaller point would be clarifying what the proposed "served one term on a Regional Funds Committee" entails, is this a full two-years? If so, given RFC terms are limited to 2, it's either very quick churn there or pulling up former members who have finished both terms.

On EGRDC roles, presumably there will need to be a formal mechanism for communication and cooperation with the Board of Trustees, AFFCOM, and other bodies. The relationship to the RFCs should also be clarified. Is the EGRDC meant to evaluate individual Regional Strategies and Fund Distribution Plans? Will the EGRDC and/or its members have any responsibility or interaction with specific funding proposals, or do they serve purely as oversight to set broad strategies? They would presumably need some involvement at the individual level, if only to gain information to be able to evaluate funding initiatives. There is still need for improvement on conveying results/feedback regarding the outcomes of approved (including partially approved) grants for RFCs, and it will need further improvement to convey information to the EGRDC as well, especially in both cases as term limits will impose new considerations regarding institutional knowledge. The mentioned shift towards clear metrics is promising in this respect.

On the RFCs, the immediate item that jumps out is that currently some RFCs are unable to find consistent manpower, even though it is an appointment system than can exceed 7 individuals. Elections provide accountability but they also reduce flexibility, so there is a risk that the new system will exacerbate potential dips in participation. On the term limits, there should be some initial flexiblity/adjustment to try and create a situation where the two-year terms do not all end at the same time. If say 3 terms end in one year and 4 the next, there is a better transfer of knowledge and more consistency for applicants than if RFCs completely reform every 2/4 years. Some transitional plans will also be needed initially to clarify how past RFC participation counts for term limits and EGRDC eligibility during the experimental phase. Lastly, current RFC practice is to make any individual receiving a salary from any WMF-related body, be it WMF, a national chapter, or other, ineligible for a position in the RFC. Is this criteria expected to be maintained for the RFCs and/or the EGRDC? Lots to think about in a short time period! Best, CMD (talk) 05:51, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

CEE Hub View

The CEE Hub is currently working on a slightly different suggestion to what has been suggested here, but it will be based on what we outlined in the document on future funds distribution, although its content is a bit out of date without the anticipated Movement Charter and without a global body to work on a new Wikimedia strategy process. Philip Kopetzky (talk) 10:37, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Proposed Changes to Ecosystem of Movement Organizations

Notes from the Wikimania session (public) : https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WM2024_Day3_Belgrade-_Room_8

One alternative proposal

At the consultation session at Wikimania, one group was explicitly invited to come up with some alternative proposal. Of course the time didn't really permit us to come up with something well-thought through, but there were a few principles that I picked up on, and could propose an alternative route for the global distribution for. It does not address the other challenges that were listed during the session by WMF staff as important to solve.

Some of the challenges this group saw with the current WMF proposal was that it felt like another supercommittee that was charged to solve complex problems, while introducing new region-politics into that process by giving individual members a specific mandate for a specific region. This might very well introduce pressure to "defend the interests of their region" turning the process more into a tug of war than a collaborative process. I deduced two important principles from this discussion:

• Bureaucracy is expensive. Every new committee that we set up, needs to be filled with volunteers that have some scarce skills. Design therefore the simplest process that gets the job done. It may not be perfect or solve everything.
• Avoid 'w:tug of war' (pulling a rope by two teams) between regional groups. By appointing people who have served on a regional committee, based on an election by that same region, I personally see very big risks for that tug of war political game.

This leads me to a potential alternative approach, just to get thinking going:

• There is no global committee, but rather we solve the global allocation question by letting the regional committees work together.
• Step 1: each regional committee (after consulting their grantees?) comes up with an 'Ask' for their region. This is a concise budget, with 1 page of justification at most.
• Step 2: an independent party (e.g. the WMF, but in principle that could be anyone, including outside the movement) creates a 'distribution proposal' based on these 'asks'. This is now the status quo.
• Step 3: Using the distribution proposal as starting point, each regional committee can propose a 'distribution amendment'. In their amendment, they consider the one-page asks from the other regions. They can only suggest to change allocations for other regions, not for their own. The overall sum has to be the same.
• Step 4: We aggregate these amendments (e.g. using a knapsack algorithm). This is the final distribution.

There could be many alternative versions for this, but this is the simplest process I can think of, without coming up with a new committee that will extract essential skilled volunteers from the already shallow pool of Funding Committee members. It does not address the question of how to address the other questions that may arise around funding (dealing with banner fundraising, status of chapters, criteria for fund distribution etc) but I'm not convinced that the kind of membership that was proposed is best placed to make those decisions anyway. One major question is how big the available overall budget should be for affiliates. (I'm summarizing very briefly some eloquent points that others made in an email thread - I'll let them respond here if they are so interested). Effeietsanders (talk) 22:48, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Product and Technology Advisory Council

We invite you to discuss this proposal directly on the separate proposal page