Wikimedia Deutschland/Dialogue on organizational values 2021-2022/Proposal: Wikimedia Deutschland – Our values
Proposal: Wikimedia Deutschland – Our values
This can be found at Wikimedia Deutschland/Dialogue on organizational values 2021-2022/Values
Enabling participation, practicing diversity, providing free and open access, attaining equity, effecting sustainability and facilitating respectful collaboration -- these fundamental values constitute the core of Wikimedia Deutschland. They are the principles that inspire us and to which we as an organization aspire, knowing full well we will sometimes miss the mark, always with the intention to learn from our mistakes.
I. Enabling participation edit
The community that surrounds Wikimedia Deutschland is a multifaceted assortment of people; they participate, speak up and provide input. Each participant is free to participate in whatever way they see fit.
Wikimedia Deutschland’s role is to provide all participants, current and prospective, with a space in which they can contribute their voice, their knowledge and their creative drive. In so doing, our organization hopes to afford every individual a sense of belonging and of appreciation as they participate not only in Wikimedia projects but in any and all of the organization’s activities, strategies and advisory bodies. It is only through collective effort that we can build and maintain strong, diverse communities for free knowledge over the long term.
II. Practicing diversity edit
Every contribution to the Wikimedia movement’s collective knowledge has value. But the whole of this knowledge is far greater than the sum of its parts. It proceeds from the diversity of all points of view – their manifold nature, richness and variety – that help expand that knowledge day after day. All are welcome to contribute to that knowledge, regardless of where they come from or where they feel they belong, and irrespective of their age, sex, gender, mental and physical ability, religion, sexual orientation, identity or origin.
Honoring these differences inside and outside Wikimedia Deutschland improves every participant’s work by subjecting it to critical scrutiny from a variety of viewpoints. Thus it is Wikimedia Deutschland’s task to foster equal opportunity, to minimize discrimination and to actively oppose exclusion.
As an organization we feel called upon to reach these goals not only in our organizational structures but in our every activity and collaboration. Only in so doing can Wikimedia Deutschland do its part to maintain and expand diverse communities and to represent the diverse knowledge of all humanity.
III. Providing free and open access edit
Wikimedia Deutschland considers access to knowledge and education a basic human right. Humanity needs free and open access to knowledge and education so that all people can participate in the world’s knowledge, use it and enhance it. To Wikimedia Deutschland, free and open access means providing content and technical infrastructure free of charge, allowing it to be used, modified and disseminated.
Wikimedia Deutschland is committed to making access to knowledge a reality for everyone, regardless of their origin, capabilities or existing barriers to access. To reach this goal, we as an organization must dismantle the social, political and technical obstacles that prevent people from creating and using free knowledge, because societies with free and open access to knowledge are more cosmopolitan, better informed and more just.
IV. Attaining equity edit
Wikimedia Deutschland advocates for equity, that state of affairs in which all people are treated equally and fairly while taking each person’s needs into account. Some hold a less privileged position in society and lack the same opportunities as others, and these structural inequalities in our society are inevitably reflected in Wikimedia Deutschland’s own internal structures.
We as an organization pledge to provide opportunities to all people in the place they find themselves and to actively dismantle inequality. Equity, both in our organization and in the Wikimedia movement, is absolutely necessary; it allows people and groups of every stripe to take part on an equal footing and thereby to contribute to the robust variety of knowledge in a self-determined manner.
Making knowledge available that power structures have suppressed is a significant step toward this goal, as is providing people with access to knowledge that power structures have blocked. Only in this way can Wikimedia Deutschland attain equal opportunity in access to knowledge and education.
V. Effecting sustainability edit
Knowledge is constantly being acquired and recorded, and within the Wikimedia movement the very understanding of knowledge itself is changing. Wikimedia Deutschland therefore pledges itself to the long-term preservation of knowledge and those who help shape it, and to bolstering them against the inevitable challenges of the future.
As an organization we maintain an openness to change, and we contribute proactively toward the sustainable development of the organization, Wikimedia’s communities and the global movement. This sustainable development bears equally on the ecological, political and social; securing access to free knowledge in the long term empowers more people and entire societies to make future-proof, sustainable decisions.
VI. Facilitating respectful collaboration edit
For Wikimedia Deutschland, respectful collaboration means that all participants interact with one another in openness, partnership and solidarity. It represents an essential cornerstone of our collective work as an organization and as part of a worldwide movement.
Respectful negotiation among a wide variety of different voices has been an animating force in the Wikimedia movement since its inception. Only when participants feel acknowledged and respect one another can useful exchanges take place, exchanges that allow our projects and our community to thrive and grow. It is our organization’s task to create conditions and spaces for all its participants and all our communities that facilitate respectful collaboration, even when – especially when – opinions differ. For that reason our organization strives to model respectful collaboration with all participants.