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Wikimedia Café/minutes 2019 09

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These are minutes from a Wikimedia Café meeting. During the meeting notes are at

After the meeting the archiving of notes happens in a subpage of Wikimedia Café.

Anyone can correct or edit these notes to reflect the meeting.

Meeting Plan edit

26 September 2019 at 2 PM Eastern / 6 PM UTC (14:00 Eastern / 18:00 UTC)

Proposed agenda edit

Planning to attend edit

  1. Casual chat, once a month, one hour, in video, about wiki! Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:23, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Abhinav619 (talk) 13:37, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Wikilover90 (talk) 20:50, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  4. ↠Pine (✉) 20:52, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Megs (talk) 20:54, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Rajeeb (talk) 05:06,12 September 2019 (UTC)
  7. - Darwin Ahoy! 10:07, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 10:44, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Ferdi2005[Mail] 17:53, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  10. SSiy (WMF) (talk) 14:37, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  11. LMixter (WMF) (talk) 17:33, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Meeting Notes edit

Attendees edit

  1. User:bluerasberry (notetaker - please join taking notes)
  2. User:LMixter (WMF)
  3. User:SSiy (WMF)
  4. User:Pine
  5. User:MassiveEartha
  6. User:Yair rand

Notes edit

  1. Introductions, including usernames and/or realnames, affiliations, interests in attending the meeting, and one thing for which you're grateful
    1. Pine - in Wikimedia Cascadia, which is a casual user group. Hoping for a wide ranging conversation about Wikimedia community issues. Grateful for sunshine in home city of Seattle, which is unusual for this time of year.
    2. Kelly - in London at a cafe. Grateful for just having dinner with friends. A member of Wikimedia UK, the country chapter, and AfroCROWD UK, an project supporting and usergroup working to improve content about and awareness in the African Diaspora, member of the new Wikimedians of the Ca an project supporting and usergroup working to improve content about and awareness in the African Diaspora, member of the new Wikimedians of the Caribbbean User Group and activeactive Creative Commons Global Network Global Network.
    3. Lane taking notes, anyone can edit, will be posted to Meta
    4. Leighanna - an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation in the legal and public policy team collaborating with Sherwin. I am interested in the potential collaboration with the Samaritans, which I saw on the agenda. Grateful for nice San Francisco weather right now.
    5. Sherwin Siy - most of what applies to Leigh Anna applies to Sherwin.
  2. Fundraising from non-WMF sources for Wikimedia projects and affiliate organizations
    1. Perhaps consider the recently published Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20 recommendations:
    2. there are various recommendations which are diverse and ambitious. Currently the community is discussing where to focus its efforts.
    3. Pine's favorite project as a focus is the English Wikipedia The Signpost, which is the community newsletter. It currently operates with no funding. There are difficulties with it getting Wikimedia Foundation funding.
    4. Lane - gratitude for in-kind donation; claim that most community organized events never leave a report or media record; wish to better report programs and events as a way of thanking institutional partners, like schools and cultural institutions, who host Wikimedia events in collaboration with the community.
    5. Kelly: focus on measuring via editing metrics versus time and monetary value disregards what funders often want to see
    6. When your funders want to see that their dollar or pound has an impact then we need to have a way for communicating that impact. About the Signpost - sometimes the Signpost has some amazing stories. ##Stories start in the Signpost and travel around the Wikimedia movement. I wonder if an organization like the Knight Foundation would fund the signpost on the argument that a community newsletter galvanizes community impact.
    7. On the idea of non-Wikimedia Foundation projects: especially for grant funding, I do not see many examples of the Wikimedia Foundation partnering with a major funding to do a special public project down a special project funding strand. It seems like most Wikimedia community financial support comes from commercial organizations, and not typically from foundations as many Wikimedia community members would hope.
    8. Pine: I think too many organizations take Wikipedia for granted, as if it will always be there reliabilly with no support.
    9. Kelly: some of the user groups have legal registration, funding groups, and their own funding sources. There is a network of volunteers and contributors which is online, and that is different from an in-person regional organization. Governance can be a challenge for any user group to establish when there are so many online community contributors. Fundraising takes a longer term in-person commitment and often a user group and individual may not have time to do this.
    10. Lane: some value spent and brought in isn't necessarily reported on or measured, such as in-kind donations of venue space, labor at events (e.g. WMNY), meetings with institutional partners, etc.
    11. Pine: lack of documentation due to lack of administrative personnel; this leads to lack of funding, which contributes to lack of documentation...
  3. Defining "safety" for Wikimedia projects, degrees of safety, what types of safety are desirable, what types of safety are realistic, and weighing hospitality and civility with freedom of expression.
    1. Wikimedia LGBT+ is organizing a May 2020 LGBT+ conference with safety as a major theme.
    2. There is no Wikimedia community code of conduct.
      1. Pine: There are reports that the Wikimedia Foundation is exploring the development of such a thing. I am not sure that there will be opposition:
      2. YR: I think there is opposition
      3. Lane: opposition confirmed, it is challenging to make a code of conduct. Re: LGBT community and conference, a big topic of discussion is what the community can do to protect itself. The LGBT+ community regularly gets crisis reports and there is no procedure in place to address them. Among options, we might take advice from an existing expert organization, the Samaritans. What works about Samaritans is that they are established, reputable, have a community network, and can advise about one particular type of crisis, suicide prevention. What is difficult is that we in the wiki community do not know how compatible they are with our culture, that they mostly want to advise on Wikipedia articles as communication and not on Wikimedia community support, and that we have diverse needs for crisis response when they are focused on only the one issue of suicide prevention.
      4. Sherwin - Samaritans is focused on suicide prevention. They have expertise in how the media should communicate about suicide prevention. They also offer training to existing communities to develop a suicide response. For example, they share information about best practices in responding to suicidal talk and discussing suicide in general.
      5. Leighanna - there does not seem to be any organization which is international and talks about suicide prevention in general and globally. Most organizations focus on a particular community or region. What the Samaritans offer could be generally applicable.
      6. Pine: When the Wikimedia community sees other users talking publicly about crisis situations it distresses everyone exposed to this. There are not good tools in our tool box for responding to this. Also, sometimes the people who make statements of crisis also are disruptive, so the Wikipedia community has mixed feelings about them. They may be in distress themselves, and at the same time, acting inappropriately and hostile to others. Such people draw a lot of attention to themselves.
      7. Sherwin: I think the at-risk people can also be those who aren’t particularly vocal, but who are on the receiving end of some of the disruptive behavior.
      8. A prominent suicide prevention organization, Samaritans, has lightly and informally reached out to consider partnership with the Wikimedia community to discuss a collaboration in online crisis response.
      9. Pine: Adding any solution or response as options seems like it would be helpful.
      10. Kelly: I am happy to hear that the LGBT group is organizing a conference. I am also familiar with the Samaritans. They are part of public life in the UK. They have a popular volunteer program. I hope that the LGBT conference talks about community health in general, and not just people in distress. The Samaritans are often in the news and in television shows. If a TV show features crisis then it will display their crisis phone number at the end. They advertise on the buses. They have campaigns, like for example, their current campaign is offering counseling to middle-age men in London who are high risk of suicide. The Samaritans has a national network of volunteers who stay on phone lines and offer support. Along side Samaritans, another similar organization provided special services for LGBT people. When I was young I remember seeing Samaritans posters in doctors' offices. They are also a volunteer organization where the volunteers are often dealing with distressed people, and they might be able to share cultural or organizational learning about how Wikimedia community volunteers can support people in distress and how we deal with the impact on the wider community.
      11. Sherwin: We have had a few conversations with them and they are evaluating what they might do, and when and how. They might go to the LGBT conference. They also might collaborate with Wikimedia UK.
      12. Pine: I wonder how I can introduce the Samaritans to the Wikipedia community. Should I email ARbcom? Talk publicly on their talk page? Contact the English Wikipedia functionaries group? Is there anyone at Samaritans who wants to start talking to the Wikipedia community?
      13. Sherwin: There are a few people at Samaritans who have been talking with people at the Wikimedia Foundation. They expect a hierarchy and would prefer to have a single point of contact, or a few points of contacts, to start a conversation.
      14. Pine: I wish that I could have a point of contact to share with functionaries in the English Wikipedia IRC channel. Problems in all languages show up there.
  4. Virtual conference best practise
    1. Kelly: I was seeing the talk on the mailing list about limiting air travel for the purpose of environmental preservation. I wish that there could be opportunities for remote or virtual participation in conferences. What already exists?
    2. Lane: There is the sustainability initiative with Gnom from Wikimedia DE. There was a :wmania:2019:Environmental sustainability/Wikimania remote proposal to support remote participation.
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