Nikki: Welcome to episode 14 of WIKIMOVE in this podcast we discuss the future of the Wikimedia movement I am Nikki and with me is Eve Martin Eva: Hi everyone! Nikki and I are part of Wikimedia Deutschland’s governance and movement relations team. This episode was recorded on November 1st 2023 things may have changed since we recorded this show but what we still know is that…
Nikki: By 2030 Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us.
Eva: Our podcast is available on podcast apps and YouTube. If you want to reach out to us you can do so via the WIKIMOVE meta page or you can send us an email. All the relevant links are available in the show notes. So, Nikki, what are we talking about today?
Nikki: In this episode we'll talk about affiliates, chapters, user groups, thematic orgs, maybe some hubs, and what their role can be in the Movement we imagine for the future. Affiliates represent the Wikimedia Movement and support work focused on specific themes, topics, subjects or issues within or across countries and regions. So I didn't make that up that's actually on meta.
Eva: When we talk about affiliates we talk about a very diverse group. We currently count over 180 recognized affiliates in our Movement being active on every continent. We've been hearing some discussions lately around the role of the affiliate, the limitations of our current model, the funding system as well and the relationship between affiliates and the volunteer communities.
Nikki: We think Affiliates will be crucial vehicles and players for implementing the movement strategy: Growing the Movement, supporting volunteers, raising funds, and they will be coming together with project communities, individuals, and other stakeholders in a movement governance system that is currently being developed as the charter is being written and that governance system will be discussed at the Wikipedia Summit in April of next year among these very Affiliates.
Eva: We wanted to talk to two wikimedians sharing different perspectives today. We invited one guest with a long history of involvement and one with a fresh perspective and that's Elizabeth Carrera. Elizabeth has been an executive director of Wikipedia Norway since August 2022. She started her career in GLAM and then moved on to management positions within the knowledge sector and the cultural heritage. She's passionate about volunteer support structures and has spent 25 years working for nonprofits as a volunteer and as a staff. Hi Elizabeth.
Elisabeth: Hi guys, nice to be here!
Nikki: Thanks for joining us! We also have Andrew Lee who has been a Wikipedia editor since 2003 and that year he was one of the first academics to use Wikipedia in the classroom for student assigned work. He's also the author of the 2009 book “The Wikipedia Revolution: how a bunch of nobodies created the world's greatest encyclopedia”. He currently serves as the Wikimedian at Large at the Smithsonian Institution and Wikimedia Strategist at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. He is an administrator on English Wikipedia and Wikidata, and in 2022 at Wikimania, he was named one of the first Wikimedia Laureates. Welcome Andrew!
Andrew: Good to be with you!
Eva: Thanks for joining this call. We would like to start by getting to know you a little bit more. Andrew, you've been been around The movement since its early stages, you wrote a book about Wikipedia that was published in 2009 and a lot has happened since then. My first question would be what additional chapters would you now add to your book?
Andrew: The funny thing is I just realized it's been more years since the book has been published than the number of years I covered with the book. So in fact we are maybe beyond the second, maybe the third phase, beyond the book which covers up until 2009. A lot of new things have happened. Elizabeth and I worked in the same areas of GLAM. When the book was published in 2009 the whole idea of GLAM Wiki was not even a thing, believe it or not. It was kind of like 2010 where GLAM Wiki became a significant force. Wikidata did not exist when the book was published in 2009. The terms fake news and misinformation were not around at the time, I mean, they were but not like they are today, which is a very different environment than it was in 2009 when Wikipedia was rising and there was a different landscape and then Movement strategy itself was not a thing either. So I think those big things of GLAM wiki, wikidata the misinformation climate - they could all be books in themselves - but those are certainly new things that have emerged since the publication of that book in 2009.
Nikki: Thanks Andrew! So, Elizabeth, an intro question to you: You have recently about a little more than a year ago, taken the lead at Wikimedia Norway and so you come into this Movement with a sort of a fresh view. Share a little bit what are your observations after over a year, what do you think about this bunch?
Elisabeth: Well as you said, I'm still very much an absolute Wikimedia beginner which is a bit terrifying talking to a group of you guys with loads of experience. I can't offer much apart from a fresh perspective perhaps, but coming into this Movement has been really quite inspiring. It's a large and very complex Movement, utterly confusing at times, most of the time a joy to be with. At other times incredibly frustrating. One of the biggest strengths, I think, of this Movement is that it really knows how to nourish initiative so if you have a brilliant idea and you want to do something, there are support structures for you, there are learning opportunities and potentially funding if you need that, so it's a brilliant Movement to come into if you're passionate about things and you want to do something.That is its wonderful strength. On the other side the complexity of it all and all the opportunities and everything that's going on is completely overwhelming, so, to be honest, there are so many ways to connect and collaborate and learn and get involved that you lose yourself at times and it can be quite difficult to keep your perspective “what am I here to do?”, you know, because you're constantly bombarded with opportunities. I think, perhaps, that's one of the big rabbit holes of this Movement you can just get sucked into this entire ecosystem, a fascinating wonderful complex ecosystem. But when it comes down to it, maybe there isn't just one ecosystem either, it's like a whole collection of large and small ecosystems working together and I think that's really where you need affiliates. They're your link to those ecosystems. The other thing I find exhausting, sometimes, is that there are so many processes in this Movement that take up such a lot of your time and attention. So sometimes, well, what you want to do is really get on with whatever you're here to do, what you're here to perform and what you want to achieve, etc. But there are an awful lot of things going on that you have to relate to and that you need to be part of and it's important to be part of those things. But as a small affiliate how do you manage, you know, how do you keep doing the things you need to do, your core functions, your local community work, all the important things that goes on in affiliates while still being part of this immense Movement? So I'm struggling with those things and I find it hard to navigate this.
Eva: This makes a lot of sense Elizabeth and I found for someone who recently joined the Movement you already have a very good overview of the mechanics of what's happening. So Elizabeth, you mentioned the ecosystem we are working within so I would like to maybe touch upon the current affiliate landscape. Andrew, you've been around for a very long time and I would like to know what's your take on the overall affiliate landscape and how it came to be?
Andrew: Wow, that's a small question isn't it? I want to echo what Elizabeth said. You know one of the interesting things is as we've been working with the Movement strategy for so many years at some point. I remember folks saying “we shouldn't say the Community” right as some kind of monolith we should start using the term Communities or the Communities and I think that was really smart and we often forget that it is as Elizabeth said, a lot of different diverse communities plural and we oftentimes, probably too often, think of as the Wikimedia foundation and then the Community and that's absolutely not the case even though it's simpler to think of it that way. So to speak to this idea of, you know, Communities and affiliates as this diversity of different ways of thinking about the Movement. My, I will be very frank, one of the weird things is that I've been in this Movement a long time, even before the affiliates were really affiliates in 2003. We didn't even have anything like what we call the Affiliates committee. We had the beginnings of what we call a chapters committee because it was only chapters back then. We had a special projects committee that I served on and it was only after we were talking about planning this episode that I remember “oh my God yeah that's right I was around back then when all this is forming”. But the weird thing about Affiliates and our Movement is that over the years they've accumulated in different ways in different phases of our maturity as a set of Communities and one thing that's really odd about it is that even I don't feel like I have a grasp of the totality of what Affiliates have done over the years right. That's partly because it's such a long time span but also the Affiliates are each kind of approved and adopted different times along the evolution of the Wikimedia Movement right, and sometimes you'll have like two Affiliates in some place as small as Macedonia but sometimes you have zero Affiliates for gigantic regions and it's just really interesting to see how these things have come about. So in many ways it's been kind of uneven and not really master planned. And as we start thinking about Affiliates and hubs that we start thinking more about how to plan these hubs better. This is very new territory because the way that Affiliates are approved is just kind of what I call onesie twosie in English. They are considered one by one as they approach afcom and almost like independently of what's come before and what's going to come afterwards. I know that's too simplistic and afcom would probably have a big debate about whether that's accurate or not but if you look at the number of Affiliates that been approved over the years it really is kind of like on a case by case by case by case basis and there really is very uneven and lumpiness. I think Elizabeth alluded to some of this in terms of what Affiliates exist and what don't exist. My personal involvement with particular Affiliates tends to be in the thematic hubs, right, so whether it's wikipedians and residents or GLAM and things like that rather than Regional and being an American some people may know that the US Affiliates or the regional Affiliates in the US are not very strong versus National ones like Deutschland and France and things like that. My experience is only really in the Thematic type hubs whether it's education, GLAM or other things, and it probably no surprise that folks in Europe are much stronger in terms of regional, probably because of experiences with EU and EC and those type of relationships. II think what's interesting is that the Affiliates really take on a character that is not necessarily consistent across the globe. It just depends very much on what time frame they're interested in creating Affiliates and also what kind of the established culture that really you come from in many ways. The affiliate system is very lumpy and inconsistent not because that's a bad thing per se, but that's just kind of how things have shaken out over the years.
Nikki: Elizabeth, you got a little view of the history here of Affiliates forming and how that's been sort of chaotic. You've been with Norway for a little over a year. It's a chapter, right?
Elisabeth: It’s a chapter and it's a tiny chapter. It's a tiny country and a small population and still have a chapter so we're small but beautiful.
Nikki: That's great, so you recently went to the ED meeting in Utrecht and you met some of your fellow EDs from tiny chapters and from big chapters. Talk a little bit about what's your impression of the state of the chapters at this moment in time.
Elisabeth: Well, I think, whenever we meet, we talk about changes coming up and I think that's very much a part of this Movement. It's a Movement where things are always happening and going on and certainly now a lot of things are in motion, internally, in the Movement. But also external factors, you know, new technology, uncertainty about fundraising for the future. So the overall impression is that we're all sort of expecting changes but we're not quite sure how those changes are going to affect us. Which isn't a good situation to be in when you're in charge of a small or mostly small or medium-sized affiliate. We have all sorts of considerations we need to think of, you know, we have staff to take care of, we want job security for our staff, we all do. Some Affiliates struggle with inflation rates that are just insane and the financial instability that causes, but certainly there are also some structures in this Movement that add to uncertainty, so sometimes purely administrative stuff, rather than reassuring us, sort of adds to the uncertainty. There are still things we can do to make processes within the Movement more predictable for Affiliates, certainly everything around funding and all of the different reports and routines we have to stick to, to be part of this financial ecosystem. The point I was trying to make is that certainly there are a lot of changes ahead and a lot of uncertainty but there's also a wonderful amount of initiative and sometimes I think of these ED meetings as sort of maybe breeding grounds where good ideas and good initiatives meet sort of and a place where collaborations can grow. I guess, that's one thing this Movement is really good at: bringing people together to pull their resources and let new things sprout, it's brilliant!
Nikki: Do you get a sense that the chapter EDs feel like they can help shape the upcoming changes or that are they just sitting there expecting them? What's your take on that?
Elisabeth: I think it varies. I think our take on that varies. To be honest, I think chapter EDs, we're not in part of this Movement representing ourselves, we represent someone, so whenever we do something whether it's part of our day-to-day operations or whether we represent our affiliates at a meeting or whatever, we are there to represent our communities and our members and our board, of course. I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't been prepped by my board telling me what I think about Affiliates, that's part of.
Nikki: Yeah we'll talk a little bit about representation later in the pod. I want to move to Andrew and ask: You described a little bit the affiliate structure, the way it has grown and what it looks like now and, it's kind of weird it has grown chaotically and doesn't necessarily make sense. So the question is: Do we need to be more strategic about this? Particularly if we want to implement this Movement strategy thing, or are we going to continue to just let stuff emerge and that organizations emerge. Do you have thoughts on that? What is the value of affiliation and how do we want to grow that group in the future?
Andrew: Yeah that's a good question. I guess by definition since we're implementing Movement strategy I guess we should be more strategic and how we think about Affiliates going forward. The reality is much harder in terms of, how do we take the current system that we have, which is, “whoever is moved by the spirit can propose an affiliate”? It's almost like the Affiliates committee would be a bad guy if they told someone no. It's almost like the default is “of course you should, of course be bold, of course you want people to be able to execute on their passions or their interest level and if there's 5, 10 folks who want to coales to do something, how do we as afcom have the heart to tell them no? And I completely understand that, it should be a very inclusive large tent that we have in the Movement. On the other hand, what the result is, is kind of a a lumpy and, may not be chaotic, but something that isn't designed or necessarily coherent. In recent years the Wikimedia Foundation board, we've been struggling on how to better represent the Movement and many people probably know that, the Wikimedia Foundation board started with pretty much all appointed with a few seats that were from the community and the overwhelming consensus from the community is, we want you know at least 51% of the board to be from the community. Now what does that look like? How do we do that? So recently we said “well let's use the Affiliates as a model and we'll have kind of affiliates selected board seats” and it's not a terrible idea in that Affiliates do a decent job of reflecting the will of a portion of our communities. The problem is now that we're using a structure in the Affiliates of being representative when it was never designed to do that. It was “whoever's moved by the spirit can create an affiliate” and we had many Affiliates in many different areas not necessarily even across our Movement. But when we start using Affiliates as a form of representation in governance without it ever being designed that way or it being consistently curated that way, then we run to a lot of problems and that's where we do have the problem of maybe an individual active in three, four, five, seven different Affiliates, suddenly has three, four, five, seven points of influence on the outcome of the board elections right. That's something that we don't really necessarily have a good answer for, but we know it's an issue and I think that's something we really do need to think about going forward with the Movement strategy. That more and more, if we're talking about a global Council, about something that is representative of the Movement, we need to start making much more shrewd decisions and this cannot just simply be “anyone who's moved by the spirit gets more representation”. That's a very hard thing for us to do because we've never really had to make those very tough calls about more of this, less of that, prune this away, add more here. That's never really been part of our dynamic, but I think it has to be part of the thinking going forward if we want to ensure equity in decision-making which is one of the Movement strategy recommendations.
Eva: Maybe when we talk about the Movement strategy, it doesn't say so much about the future of the role of Affiliates, but it does introduce a new kind of organization and that's the hubs. I know Andrew, you mentioned them already. Let's maybe talk a little bit about it. Some people discuss whether or not hubs should become Affiliates. That's a question for both of you, but let's maybe start with Elizabeth. I know that Wikimedia Norway is part of several of these Hub structures. Tell us a little bit more about your thoughts. Do you think that hubs can replace the needs for local chapters? Or what are their functions?
Elisabeth: I don't think, and I hope not, that hubs are intended to replace local chapters, and user groups, etc. In my mind there are sort of different ways of working and what you typically do in a hub would be to collaborate so, Wikimedia Affiliates and others, would collaborate in hubs. As easy as that! And how do you fit that in with everything else you're doing? Well we tend to think of things that are ongoing, you have your day-to-day operations, all the activities you do and so on, that's what you do on a regular basis, and then you have projects time-limited things, you put an extra effort into, providing you can secure resources to do so, so that comes on top of like your regular everyday thing. Hubs, I guess, there's sort of a way of finding a structure for your long-term collaborations perhaps, something more committing than a project, but even so maybe less committing than forming a new structure. So a hub wouldn't necessarily be a proper organization. It's a forum where you meet others and where you pull your resources in different manners. At least that's what I hope hubs are going to be. But I have to say, when I first came into this Movement, hubs were popping up everywhere and several people said to me “oh we have no clue what a hub is but we've started one” and to me that's kind of going, well, I like to reverse the order sort of, I like to have an idea of what I want to achieve and what my ambition is and then I try to find a structure that will fit with what I want to do sort of. So hubs, certainly for some, the order was reversed and I'm not sure that was a good thing. Fortunately, several hubs have turned out just fine anyway.
Eva: Andrew I saw you nodding a few times. Do you maybe want to react to what Elizabeth just said?
Andrew: Yeah, I think that's right, we are all kind of feeling around the dark about what the Hub is and it's the table of the elephant. Some people are feeling the trunk, some people are feeling the tail, some people are feeling the leg, and they're all different things to different people. I think I do see some hope of folks converging on what it is, but I think it's mainly just driven by whoever is getting there first to create the first hubs and then they get to define what hubs are for the long term. So I don't know what the future is for hubs exactly as a governance structure. I think they're great as a collaborative structure, I think they might be useful as a focus for funding, that it's easier for the foundation to release a chunk of money to a hub and then have them regrant out and manage a pot of money that might be a good way of doing things for resource distribution. But in terms of governance it's a big question mark, at least for me, I don't really know how that's going to fit into how global council, or any of those different governance structures, are created.
Elisabeth: Well I think one issue that I feel has been neglected a bit, with hubs, is that, well, as soon as you start a new initiative you open up, encourage people to start hubs and you make resources available that make it attractive to start hubs. That happens with a risk of resources being drawn away from something you've already got. So certainly as an affiliate, well, we went into the language diversity Hub, Flags High, full force, and what happened was that it was draining our regular operations, so really, for a tiny chapter at that point we had 2.8 staff and one staff was tied up working on language diversity Hub, which is a wonderful initiative, the Hub, but still, at the expense of a lot of other important things that we need to handle in our chapter. So if you want to encourage a new initiative I think it should also come with fresh funding and opportunities to do that without undermining existing structures.
Nikki: I think that's a very good point, I mean, collaboration always takes extra tim. It also creates extra impact when you do it well, but it always takes time to just organize it and then come to convergence about stuff and plan. Definitely we need that extra funding and extra people to do this work.
Elisabeth: But I guess also, if we want to do that type of work and make sure we work towards equity, I think we should also realize that it's much easier for a large strong structure to move into something new and make the most of it, than it is for a small structure with limited resources. So, larger Affiliates could immediately, sort of, jump on the wagon and start doing Movement strategy implementation activities, whereas smaller entities would struggle to manage capacity wise.
Nikki: Yeah, yeah, very true. And as evidenced by the formation of Wikipedia Europe, which probably was the first, it's not called a hub, but first hubik structure that's already fully operational at this point. So where are we in this conversation? We're moving to global governance, we're moving in around, between, sort of the roles of Affiliates, and then how we translate that role into global governance. Eva, do you want to say something?
Eva: Sure we already dropped the big word ‘governance’ a few times. Andrew I know that you initiated the strategic Wikimedia affiliate network, also known as the Swan Network or like the infab Swan meetings. Can you maybe tell us a few words about how this has worked as a forum for deliberating about Movement strategy and particularly thinking about the future and the next steps regarding designing a new governance structure for the Movement.
Andrew: Yeah, that's a good question. Some of you may know that we've had for a while, we haven't had them recently, but for a while and then especially during the pandemic, we had these calls called Swan strategic wikipedians Affiliates Network and this is a long string of animal themed acronyms that we've kind of like to use in the community so we kind of backronym, it but it worked out quite well. The motivation for this was just to get our community to talk with each other in a way that was more open and maybe more free flowing, this is not a critique of Carl or anyone else doing the strategy, it's just so much to talk about, right? We don't always have the time in more structured conversations to do a lot of these things and we felt that a lot of the conversations and deliberation were on meta pages that you could never find or in telegram here and there was just no way to really digest it to say “hey if you can only you know drop in once a month maybe this would be a good place to catch up on what was happening” and some of this was motivated from the original kind of community concern around the branding. Many of you may know that the branding project was quite controversial in our Community with the Foundation looking into it, maybe you know Wikimedia Foundation or Wikimedia Movement as a blanket term, and this was a very passionate issue for a lot of folks. So the Swan call started off mainly with that as a point of concern to open up a dialogue with the Foundation because I think a lot of people were feeling there wasn't enough conversation happening. I think after the genesis of those calls that were oriented around the brand, people kept asking like, well, “can we keep doing these calls?” it's not just “we want to talk to each other to fight against something - we want to keep this conversation going” and that's where myself and maybe three or four other people and thankfully it was Europeans, South Americans, and Americans all collaborating to keep these calls going and we actually have two calls per month which is basically a kind of a Europe and North America call and then an Asia Pacific, EAP call because we want to adapt to the time frame. We’re actually getting maybe 30 people for the Asia call, maybe 50 to 70 for the European North American call, which is quite a lot if you think about it, it's like 100 people on a call per month and they were quite engaged. We worked quite hard to have a real agenda and not spend more than five minutes on each one to lay the groundwork and maybe have some conversation around it and we think that they were successful enough that the foundation started requesting that “could we get five minutes, could we get five minutes?” and we said “sure you're welcome to have that”. I was telling Nikki and Eva that I think the reason why these calls became popular was because the foundation used to host a monthly call which used to be called “the monthly metrics meeting”, it became so interesting and broader that became the monthly activities meeting and used to be a foundation run call that would just talk about two or three issues that were happening that month, introduced new staff members, things like that. It was very useful until the Foundation stopped those calls after a while, you can look into exactly why, but I think they were concerned about it being a good return on investment given all the time, but I think the community really was craving connection with not only each other, but having a connection with the foundation so over the the year or two that we've had a lot of swan calls, we've had the chief legal officer we've had the CEO of foundation drop into the calls, we've had board members like Shani Evenstein, and other folks, Rosie, have been very active in attending those calls. I think it's been useful to have those even though we've kind of tailed off in the last few few months given Wikimania and other in real life-engagements that have now filled in that need, but I think the swan calls were really important during the pandemic to reconnect us and to have some of these conversations that we were missing in other areas.
Nikki: Yeah I think it's really important, especially during the Covid years when we couldn't meet in person to maintain those connections. Because otherwise the conversation just becomes sort of weird if it's just on talk pages on meta. Do you know what the plans are for for the swan meetings? Are they going to continue? And if so, how can people find out about it?
Andrew: I think in some ways Swan was kind of waiting for what was going to happen with the Movement Charter and that it could be a useful avenue for discussing Movement Charter developments. I think the Movement Charter, by all measures, has moved a little bit slower than we'd wanted to, but there doesn't necessarily have any monthly updates from the Movement Charter folks. It might be quarterly, so maybe that's one reason. A lot of the Movement strategy stuff is kind of like waiting on the Movement Charter to move forward, because we don't have a global Council if we don't have the Movement Charter, we don't have other actionable items until that comes around.
Nikki: They have their own, now monthly, calls also with the drop-in calls with the Community so maybe those can take the place for a while. Let's talk some more about governance! Elizabeth, you've been around the block of other movements, other non-profits and networks, a little bit. How is our Movement governance different from other movements that you were part of, and sort of especially as when you focus on the voice of Affiliates or the voice of these more organized members of a movement. What is their role in other Movements?
Elisabeth: Well, I've mostly been part of organizations where you have more traditional layers of representation. You know, what we're all used to, you'll have a local level that feeds representatives, up to a regional level, to a national level, to a multinational or international level. You have all of these layers where you can voice whatever you want to voice really. But when it comes to this Movement, I think, whenever we talk about governance we should remember that where the magic happens is out where the local volunteers are. That's the engine of this Movement, that's where content is being produced, that's where knowledge is being compiled and shared and all the wonderful things that go on in the different Wikimedia projects. I sometimes feel that there is quite a gap between that work and those key elements of our Movement and where the sort of high level decision-making goes on. There is something in the middle there missing.
Nikki: And couldn't that be the Affiliates? That thing in the middle?
Elisabeth: Certainly the Affiliates should definitely be in the middle there, somehow, and I don't think there's any other alternative then to build on what structures there are and you have a system of Affiliates, you have a system of determining who can be an affiliate, and that's sort of a structure you need to develop and build upon and certainly now that the board of justice have been working on their report about Affiliates and afcom and their role, I think that just illustrates the fact that that's a key part of our Movement. I was however a little bit surprised, I have to say, because, just the other day when I read the introduction to the report that was recently made available. Let me read this at you, because it says “we need it's crucial to develop a Clear Vision regarding the Affiliates making it possible to assess whether the foundation's investment in collaboration with and policy towards Affiliates is promoting the right agenda” and when I read that I felt sort of alienated because I thought we were all in this together which is actually a quote which is something Mariana said just last week and which I've heard many times and I think that's sort of, I thought that was the overriding feel in this Movement, “we're all in this together” but then that first introduction to that document that was just distributed, I thought, I don't really want to be assessed to make sure I'm a good investment sort of.
Nikki: Yeah I think a lot of people take issue with that language.
Elisabeth: Yeah because certainly if afcom has approved an affiliate that means you're a resource, you're a valuable part of this Movement, what you're doing is good, you're adding to our vision and our overall goals and as soon as you've crossed that threshold you should be a valued member and an integral part of the Movement and I think if you have governance structures that don't recognize you, the affiliate, as an integral part of the Movement that needs to have a definite voice and not just when it comes to being consulted but also being empowered. Well, I think you know where I'm heading with this long rant. I'm all in favor of less consultation, more empowerment, really.
Eva: It also makes me think of, there is a growing criticism of the word Affiliates because Wikimedia Affiliates implies that we are being Affiliated to a Wikimedia foundation and somehow this fits into this narrative of the Affiliates not necessarily being an integral part of the Movement by themselves but being Affiliated to this other organization, being the foundation. So this had a lot of echo Elizabeth what you just talked about
Andrew: Right, I think it also points to the fact that there's quite a bit of vetting at the afcom level. When people apply to be an affiliate but there's no guarantee after you're approved that there's a lot of followup and nurturing beyond that and that's always been inconsistent. I know that the Wikimedia Summit that happens once a year in Berlin used to be a pretty good place for what they call “learning days”. People can come like the Wednesday or Thursday before the Summit gets fully underway, which is typically Friday, Saturday, Sunday, so we don't disturb people's lives and work schedules that much but we used to have some learning days before that to help almost be like a camp or a workshop for Affiliates to develop new skills or to develop more capabilities. But I think in recent years that has been less so. It's not a criticism, it's just that I've seen some changes in that structure. I do wonder whether we could do a better job of nurturing Affiliates after the afcom approval part. Because right now I'm not sure how systematic it is that we do those things.
Nikki: Yeah it's not systematic, and one of the things that is in the recommendations of Movement strategy is the idea that to make it more part of our Movement, this building of Affiliates that we need to create peer support networks rather than frontal education from one side to the new Affiliates. Wikimedia Brazil is actually working on something like that and Knowledge Management is also a big part of Movement strategy, but we haven't really started implementing that piece yet. But I would totally agree that we need to strengthen the Affiliates and I think it is a responsibility, not so much of the foundation I think, but of the stronger Affiliates to support the newer emerging ones, through peer support, capacity building, funding. So starting to decentralize some of those things.
Andrew: If I could point out an example that I didn't even think about until you mentioned it, Nikki, is, I don't know if folks know but Wikimania now has a slightly different model so that we don't put all the burden on one chapter or affiliate to run Wikimania anymore. Starting this year when we had EAP, right, east Southeast Asian Pacific region, collaborating on running Wikimania in Singapore, that is a form of peer support. We don't try to drain or overburden one affiliate but it's also been great as a kind of team building and knowledge exchange to train folks after having helped out with Wikimania. Now they're much better set to do local, smaller conferences in their region and I think we lined up for the next three years to do that with like the francophone community for Paris in the future um hopefully East Africa for the next Wikimania after Poland and Poland right now is with CEE. So I think that's an example of how we're putting some of those strategy recommendations into motion to say “hey let's start making these collaboratives and do peer learning in the process”.
Nikki: Yeah totally and African they've done it with the WikiIndaba which Eva is about to go to as well. They have a Central Committee that hands over sort of the responsibility to the next host site and then they help each other and transfer the knowledge so we know how to do these things, we just need to make sure we keep doing them. Elizabeth, you wanted to say something?
Elisabeth: No I'm just so happy to hear that moving forward, these large efforts will be collaborative processes. Because when I first came into this Movement I was given a really important piece of advice from an experienced executive director and that piece of advice was “never volunteered to organize Wikimania” . It's commonly referred to as the “chapter killer”.
Nikki: Well Sweden is still around, they survived.
Elisabeth: I guess you gave me the voice.
Andrew: No but it is true, on balance it is very taxing on the individuals. It's a big ask and we deeply appreciate it. If it's not clear, I'm on the steering committee for Wikimania so I'm probably to blame for overburdening these folks with these things but we've tried in recent years to say “this is not good for anyone's mental well-being to put folks through the ringer to organize a conference like that” so I'm glad we found a different way.
Nikki: Yeah but I mean, that's one way, I mean, when you talk about empowerment instead of being consulted, that's one way, we just start doing things ourselves and learning from each other. Hey should we talk a little bit about the charter and the global Council Eva?
Eva: Let's do it! Governance and the charter. Andrew, I think you mentioned the global Council earlier in our conversation and one of the many controversial topic when it comes to the future of our governance is the question of how we represent Affiliates in that Global Council. Can you maybe share some thoughts on this?
Andrew: Wow some thoughts…I think that the global Council and the Movement Charter have been at the front of people's minds. It's very hard, so let me just start with it is an extremely tough job and I appreciate anyone who tries to put their time and brain power behind an almost impossible document to write for our diverse Community to put it nicely. We are not shy to tell anyone what they think about any draft at any time. It's a very tough environment to operate under. That said, I think, one risk is that if it takes too long, it winds up being irrelevant or people just think that “the time has passed, it's too late to adopt something” that is the risk. There is a little bit of urgency, I know that there's a famous adage in Wikipedia, I think it's across all wikipedias, “there is no deadline, we got this long horizon” but I think for something like a charter we need to have a horizon, otherwise we are risk losing legitimacy for some efforts like this. I think that right now where we sit November of 2023 is that we're behind on the Movement Charter, I think in general, trying to be as fair as possible, I think that our communities, plural, were looking for a more diverse set of options for the global Council and if you look at the ones that were put forth, my very unfair characterization of it is that it's either a very small Global Council or a very, very, small Global Council and I think a lot of folks are more looking towards like “where's the idea of a big real Council like a UN style body maybe, like dozens hundred persons”. That may be impractical but I thought that one of the points of the exercise was to put out a range of things to debate and I think some folks were surprised that it was something that much more paralleled the shape and size of the current Wikimedia Foundation board, but it would be beholden to a different set of folks. I'm trying to describe it fairly but I think if you look at the range of feedback so far I think that is pretty accurate to say that, I think people are hoping that there would be more options to debate at this point. My main advice to the Movement Charter drafting committee when it first started, because I know a lot of them personally, was, take the advice that I had when I was writing my book. And the best advice I ever had in writing my book was make sure that writing and editing are two different acts. Don't try to edit while you write, which is a very weird thing to say, but the famous saying for authors was “write when you're drunk, edit when you're sober”. That doesn't mean literally drink beer while you're doing it, but it means that you got to be a little bit crazy and radical by throwing ideas out there and being a little bit willing to be embarrassed by what you put out there, but then that's when you get the feedback and that's where you say “oh okay, wait in the light of day that's not a great idea”, or, “oh no, you're right, I didn't think about that”. But we need kind of those wild and bold ideas out there to start with. I fear that we don't have those right now and there's been a lot of editing and very tight thinking early on and I was hoping that that process would be more public, so that's kind of my basic feedback at this point.
Nikki: Thanks Andrew. I know Elizabeth has some thoughts also on the Charter that we shared yesterday in terms of the level of detail and the, yeah, go ahead Elizabeth.
Elisabeth: Well, if you think of a country's constitutions, they tend to be quite brief, really, focused on main principles and structures. I did a small experiment today and I took a look at a couple of constitutions and you know the American Constitution, the world's longest surviving written Charter, it has just over 4,400 words without the Amendments and that's a pretty good Constitution, it hasn't needed much revision, it still stands today, it's a fairly successful Constitution I'd say, as far as constitutions go. Now if you look at the Movement Charter drafts so far, and there are still bits missing, it's up to over 8,600 words, so why would our Movement need such a lot more detail in our Charter than the American Constitution. Couldn't an awful lot of that content be taken out of the charter and added to policies and guidelines, which would make it perhaps, a charter that can be with us for the future. Because currently the way the drafts are, that's a document that will have to be revised and amended quite frequently. So, if we want a document that we can really use over time and that many people that are part of the Movement can actually read and relate to, I think we need to make it more about the principles and the main structures. What is it you say in English? “Kill Your Darlings”, well that's my advice anyway. Also I feel my impression is, when it comes to decision-making processes, and governance, there are quite a few people in this Movement that were hoping for a general assembly for this Movement, and I don't think the current drafts answer that, at all. There is a need for that because that would add some of the decision-making inclusion and hopefully also equity that we’re missing, and certainly those aspects were important parts of the Movement strategy recommendations. I think maybe it's time to take a step back and revisit the intentions of the strategy recommendations and see what was there and how is that reflected in the drafts.
Nikki: Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Andrew, do you wanna react?
Andrew: Yeah, the phrase general assembly is the one I was grasping for, but Elisabeth hit on the head. There's a significant portion of folks who would like to see the general assembly idea at least floated out there and debated and right now it's not even an option. I think the risk of replicating largely what you see in the Wikimedia Foundation board, size and structure, is that we see year after year, year after year no representation from Africa, no representation from East Asia, even though there are candidates on there but just continually European North American folks on and on. I'm saying that as a North American, an American here, so I'd love to see the diversity of our community reflected more but if we replicate the same size and structure of the Wikimedia Foundation board, it's certainly not going to be a good representative body for our community.
Nikki: Good advice for the MCDC, which I think you're not the first one saying that and I think they are currently working on incorporating a lot of the comments that were similar. We'll keep our ears and eyes peeled for the next version of the drafts and then also coming back to Affiliates for the opportunity to discuss the remaining big questions and topics at the Wikimedia Summit next spring. What else do we have left to talk about Eva?
Eva: There is a last point I would like to touch upon and it's the issue of the mandate of the affiliate when it comes to representing the community…the communities! So let's maybe just talk quickly about the identity of the Affiliates. We've just mentioned the Wikimedia Summit and what we heard in the pre-engagement session were a lot of doubts when it comes to the mandate of the Affiliates and to what extent they can actually engage and they should be engaging with the communities around the topic of governance and to what extent they can even represent those communities in, let's say, a global governance structure like the global council. Elizabeth, can you maybe just react to that and I know that in the prep call you had a lot of very interesting thoughts around this issue and particularly maybe to the point of how can chapters better connect their communities with the international Movement and with the global level?
Elisabeth: Well, I can only speak from my, some unlimited, experience and what I often see is that our local communities, because even though we're a small country we actually have at least three very distinct communities, because we support three different language versions of Wikipedia, which is where most of the activity is. But often, these communities are a bit insular, they don't really respond to what goes on in the Movement as a whole, so there isn't that much exchange going on between our local communities and the international level. That means we're missing out on an awful lot of opportunities for learning, and broadening our perspective, and contributing to helping others as well, so, what happens is even though our chapter has been involved in international processes, it's often been staff doing that bit so we've sort of performed a lot of the international communication and collaborations, etc based on staff effort, which isn't really good. It's not really viable if you want to create a thriving community that interacts with the international Movement so we're trying different things to encourage more exchange. And one thing is being conscious of who we send to international meetings and conferences. Do we send staff, or do we try to get volunteers to step up and take on more responsibilities? That's what we're trying to do, at least. I guess, other chapters and user groups might struggle with the same thing.
Eva: This is actually very true!
Nikki: I just wanted to point out that there is a group of Affiliates who is working a little bit on General Assembly model and I think that can be found on meta, we'll put the link in the show notes because also we have to think about when we have a larger Global Council situation, we're not like other movements who are just clear out membership organizations and then you have, what you were describing earlier Andrew, ‘one affiliate, one voice’, everybody is just a member and that's it, but we're a little bit more complicated than that. So we're tossing around some ideas around “how can project communities, Wikimedia projects, be represented? How can we have geographic representation? How can we have chapters and user groups represented in a way that both have a voice as groups and then also the idea of having external partners in there?”, so it's not just all about representing your little group but there's some people with a larger vision in there too, so there's all kinds of interesting discussion around the idea of a general assembly that I would encourage folks to follow and there's also a call of the Movement's Charter drafting committee. But probably that's going to be before this podcast will be published, but they have monthly calls so we can all participate in letting them know what other ideas we have. With that I want to thank you guys, this was so insightful and so interesting! Especially the exchange between those perspectives! Eva, do you want to read us out?
Eva: Thank you very much for joining this interview today. As Nikki said, it was very insightful. WIKIMOVE is a production of Wikimedia Deutschland and its governance and movement relations team. Our music was composed and produced by Rory Gregory and is available under CC by SA on Wikimedia commons. Thanks again to you Elizabeth and Andrew, our wonderful guests, this has been a very interesting conversation.
Nikki: You can visit the WIKIMOVE meta page and listen to all the previous great episodes and suggest topics and guests for our next episodes. You can use the page to react, to connect with other listeners, and subscribe to always be notified when we have a new episode coming out. Finally you can contact us at WIKIMOVE at wikimedia.de to continue this discussion and share your suggestions for next episodes and with that, I want to say goodbye and tschüssi!