Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024/Questions for candidates/All questions and answers

This page contains all five questions for the candidates of 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Board election and its answers by the candidates.

Question 1

The creation and implementation of a Universal Code of Conduct has been a Board priority since 2020. The original timeline for the implementation of the UCoC was wildly unrealistic, the UCoC was implemented by the Board without community ratification, and the first Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee was recently elected without a sufficient number of members to form a quorum. What lessons should the Board take from the UCoC process, especially about how the Board interacts with volunteers?

Bobby Shabangu (Bobbyshabangu)

I think the first thing we all need to acknowledge is that as the movement grows, communication becomes increasingly complex and challenging. This means that more time must be invested in community consultations, and we need to use a variety of communication channels. Most importantly, the board needs to engage with people where they are. For example, we cannot only rely on Meta and Wikimedia-l to reach out to the community, board should have put together a Communications team dedicated to this project and put in place a full Communication strategy that equally utilised other social media platforms like YouTube to create video messages about the UCoC and share them on sites like Facebook, Telegram, and WhatsApp on top of speaking to community leaders. We are masters in our own Wikimedia domain , but these platforms are highly effective at reaching people, and many Wikimedians use them.

Deon Steyn (Oesjaar)

The Afrikaans Wikipedia is in the 79th percentile of the ranking list (69th out 331 Wikipedia's). From this stat we should be seen as big but in reality are deemed to be small. The bigger Wikipedia'a can be divide into two blocks, America and Europe and they dominate Wikipedia. This is not a negative remark but a realistic one. We get very little news re events, incidents from anybody. Sometimes a WMF user would dumped something about something on our version of Village Pump and we would jokingly refer to it as another solution looking for a problem!

The first time I got involved with the UCoC was when I was asked to assist with translating it into Afrikaans which I end up doing. Thereafter no formal communication re the UCoC reached my ears. The problem that I have though with the UCoC is as follows: In South Africa there is a chapter called WikimediaZA which Afrikaans is part off. It is registered as a Non-profit Company in South Africa meaning that it must comply with the Companies Act and most importantly - South African Labour Laws. In South Africa WikimediaZA is thus seen as a legal person, it can sue and can be sued. Wikipedia Users in South Africa will thus be seen as members of WikimediaZA and any labour actions re grievance, disciplinary hearings must comply with South Africa Labour laws. Where does this leaves the UCoC? I am curious to know, I have been involved with labour issues in my corpoarte life. This matter need to be resolved. What is the situation in other countries?

Erik Hanberg (Erikemery)

No response yet.

Farah Jack Mustaklem (Fjmustak)

No response yet.

Christel Steigenberger (Kritzolina)

I think I understand the perspective this question is coming from. It is a good and important question. And I want to suggest to look at the whole process from a different angle: To see the creation of the UCoC and its enforcement guidelines as a combined success of the community and the Wikimedia Foundation. The Board had strategic oversight over this process, but little actual influence. The Wikimedia Communities put the creation of the UCoC as a very high priority in the 2030 strategy - and the board supported this. It asked the Wikimedia Foundation to create a participatory process that would bring results as quickly as possible. And so the Wikimedia Foundation tried and mostly succeeded - only "as quickly as possible" took quite a bit longer than expected.

Of course the results of this process can and should be improved upon, but I still see it as a success that we have a valid and widely accepted UCoC. And we have more, we have guidelines for implementation that made a first trial run for a U4C possible and that many communities already apply to their needs. Yes, it took longer than we thought when we started. Not all problems are solved yet. And yes, the way community at large was called to vote on the Code certainly can and should be improved. But still - we as a movement moved several important steps toward the goals of the 2030 strategy. Now it is time to evaluate, iterate and adapt.

Lane Rasberry (Bluerasberry)

To improve this and many other interactions between the Wikimedia Foundation and user community, the WMF must practice budget transparency. A major source of conflict is that the WMF hires staff who advocate in one direction, while volunteers without money want different things. Investment is a Wikimedia Foundation signal that a something is important. When the Foundation assigns its own staff to a project without sufficient support for community engagement, then that signals the value of staff development and the optional nature of community input. The result of such projects is an outcome that is more attractive to staff than community, and that is designed for the people who fund it rather than the people who use it.

I organize LGBT+ programs. Because LGBT+ people get extra harassment and have few options for support, I hear harassment reports from around the world. With others, I have been advocating for Wikimedia victim support services since 2014, and still the LGBT+ community in Wikimedia projects has never had appropriate protection. I appreciate the Universal Code of Conduct, but it is the latest of many investments which prioritize the protection of the WMF as a corporation rather than the Wikimedia community. Of course I want both WMF and the user community to have protection, but the Wikimedia community must have freedom to speak for itself and financial independence to design its own community safety services.

The idea of the UCoC is immensely popular in the Wikimedia Community, especially among vulnerable demographics. The community did ratify the code, and is aware that it is supposed to be community-led. I am very grateful to the volunteers who drafted its text and developed its different parts, because their contributions are essential even while we still need a few more community pieces. The ratification and community input to this point demonstrate enthusiastic consent for many parts of the UCoC. The failures around implementation and lack of quorum are indications that the stakeholder activists who demanded this for years do not overall see themselves leading this program right now. If all of this design were community-led rather than foundation-led, then there would be much greater enthusiasm.

Lorenzo Losa (Laurentius)

The creation and implementation of a Universal Code of Conduct stems from one of the 2020 Movement Strategy recommendations, Provide for Safety and Inclusion, and was picked up by the board.

While, as mentioned in the question, there was not a community ratification vote for the UCoC itself, we had one for the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines and another for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C). I'm not sure what motivated that choice, but which decisions should go through community ratification, and which ones shouldn't, is an important question to reflect on. Ideally, we want to select the ones that are the most fundamental and impactful; and limiting to a few votes per year, to avoid creating a burden on the community (which would result in fewer and fewer people casting informed votes). Whether or not there is a community-wide vote, in any case, a community-wide consultation should always take place.

The results of the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee election in May are interesting, with most candidates having a high level of opposition, so much that almost half of the seats were not filled. Understanding the reason is important: is it because most voters believe the candidates are not good enough? If so, how can we push more people to nominate, and how can we support volunteers to grow in these roles? Is it because the candidates were not well known to the global community? If so, how can we help them be more visible? Have some voters voted against most or all candidates to oppose in principle the implementation of the UCoC?

I also believe we have a pattern of underestimating the timelines of such processes. If we look at the whole 2030 movement strategy, the process started in 2016, and it's still on - resulting in volunteer fatigue, and many people disengaging from the process. We should be more realistic when estimating how much time is needed for movement-wide processes; while at the same time designing iterative processes with shorter cycles, and striving for greater community engagement in movement governance.

Maciej Artur Nadzikiewicz (Nadzik)

I worked on the Universal Code of Conduct as a part-time contractor for a few months in 2021; I was responsible for consulting the Polish community about it – these were the most extensive consultations with the Polish community. They started with the community rejecting the idea of anything being moderated and controlled "globally", as it is not how the Wikimedia Movement was planned to function. The community rightly demanded the distributed model of control.

It took many days of work to ensure every community grievance was heard. Explaining what the Wikimedia Foundation wanted to do also took a lot of effort. With historical hindsight, it now strikes me that the Legal team could have done a much better job explaining that the UCoC was not only one of the Movement Strategy Initiatives, but also a requirement put on us by regulators and lawmakers (for example the European Unione with the Digital Services Act). While some communication regarding that was put out there, it was hidden in places where regular community members rarely look ([1]) or done much after the fact (2).

I think the UCoC was one of the best-consulted projects in our Movement, but it still fell far short of what we needed. Only a handful of communities got individual attention, others were just spammed with MassMessage. The way it is done is not always the fault of the staff, as you can only do so much in 10/20/40 hours a week; it is the fault of the entire model and management understanding. The community must be talked to in local languages by people who know the communities, not just in English and by someone who came to work at the WMF without a clue of what our community is and what we do. They must be consulted during their volunteer time, not at 10:00 AM on a Wednesday when most volunteers are at work or in school.

There are people in the community who would like to engage in projects like the UCoC and its development. There are people that need to be convinced and then would become the project's allies (look at the en.wiki ArbCom implementing the UCoC to their ruling ([2]).). But it is the job of the Wikimedia Foundation to find these people and meaningfully engage them, not the other way around.

The Board should prioritize the community by stressing the importance of contacting the people locally, at their designated spaces (some communities meet on Telegram, some on Discords, some on Facebook; it is not universal!), and IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGES. It may take more resources, but why do we have money if not for supporting the volunteers?

Mohammed Awal Alhassan (Alhassan Mohammed Awal)

Well, it is an undeniable fact that volunteers play a crucial role in Wikimedia projects, and there should be adequate support for their efforts. In order to be empowered to contribute effectively, they should be given a significant level of recognition, and provided with training and resources. The Board should consider establishing support systems that address the diverse needs of the volunteer community. The Board should as well adopt a collaborative approach in interacting with volunteers rather than a top-down approach. Engaging in dialogue, listening to concerns, and co-creating solutions with the community can build stronger relationships and trust. This collaborative spirit should be embedded in all Board activities. For instance, it is apparent that the initial timeline for implementing the UCoC was ambitious and failed to recognize the complexities involved. Future projects should therefore involve more realistic planning phases, with enough time for community feedback and iterative development. The Board should ensure that volunteer perspectives are integrated early and throughout the process to build a more inclusive and representative outcome. Also, it appears that there was a significant gap in engagement with the community which resulted in the implementation of the UCoC without any community ratification. For any policy or guideline to be effective and respected, it must be perceived as legitimate by the community it intends to govern. The Board should therefore prioritize mechanisms for community approval, such as referendums or comprehensive consultation periods, to ensure buy-in and adherence. To bridge the engagement gap, the Board should deliberately set consistent and clear communication channels to provide regular updates, explain decisions transparently, and spell out how community feedback is incorporated in the process. That way, there will be trust, and is equally a demonstration of respect for volunteer contributions. Electing the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee without members forming a quorum means there is the need for careful planning in governance structures. To avoid such situations, the Board should ensure that committees are properly constituted and have enough members to function effectively. This might include setting clear criteria for elections and having contingency plans for filling vacancies. The implementation of a universal policy like the UCoC should not just be a one-time event but rather as an ongoing process. The Board can learn to adopt an iterative approach, where feedback is continuously gathered and used to refine the policy and as well be made flexible in responding to emerging community needs and challenges. The Board should adopt a collaborative approach in interacting with volunteers rather than a top-down approach. Engaging in dialogue, listening to concerns, and co-creating solutions with the community can build stronger relationships and trust. This collaborative spirit should be embedded in all Board activities.

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (Rosiestep)

In 2018-20, I volunteered to serve on the Movement Strategy 2030 Community Health Working Group (WG). Our WG included WMF staff, WMF board, affiliate representatives, and community members. We met weekly for more than a year, and developed the 12 Movement Strategy 2030 Recommendations/Initiatives related to community health, including “Number 1: A joint set of rules we all agree to live by (a.k.a. Code of Conduct)”.

The Board should take this lesson: our WG worked so well together, as equals, with no one person having a greater voice than another. No cabal. No back-channeling. This is a lesson and a great gift, as I believe a cooperative effort that assumes good faith is the cornerstone of the Wiki way. I don’t see my thinking as utopian. I believe it is how we are at our best. So I live it… as a first-term WMF Trustee, a founding/participating member of multiple affiliates, and a day-to-day Wikipedia editor.

Tesleemah Abdulkareem (Tesleemah)

I have always know the Universal code of conduct as way back as 2021 when I joined the movement as a kind of guideline that protect individuals from getting mistreated within the community, it is that important that it got read before the commencement of any wiki event. I feel that volunteers need to get involved in these guidelines aside editing as a volunteer, as I can see from here that an election actually took place passing through the first and 2nd ratification even, with 1746 votes across 107 'home wiki'. I understand that some volunteers feel there is lack of representation underrepresented communities within the movement who are either not fully involved or whose votes are not really reflected due to their small population. My suggestion is that volunteers can engage more through the English, German and French Wikis as they are the official languages of most Countries. These three languages has more votes and indeed, will reflect our voices. For instance, my home wiki is Yoruba however, I engage more on the English Wiki and I have been carrying out more of my volunteer work through that. Also, the board can hold more engaging sessions with community to hear their concerns and suggestions. I believe all these will go a long way in having a unified community, satisfied volunteers and a functioning Board.

Victoria Doronina (Victoria)

The statement about the absence of the UCoC ratification is incorrect. After a consultation on Meta, which included open calls, the UCoC was ratified by around 2000 people from from 107 “home” wikis representing 74 of Wikimedia’s project languages voting and 74.87% of voters supporting the UCoC. Despite the UCoC passing with a healthy majority, the Board had noticed that the Enforcement guidlines were causing the majority of the negative comments accompanying the vote, so they were returned for the corrections.

A small number of engagements between the majority of volunteers and strategic discussions is an ongoing problem. The same people turn up for the call for volunteers for global structures such as the Affiliation Committee or Sister Projects Taskforce, mainly from the Global North. On the other hand, there are also candidates from the Global South who are very enthusiastic but have insufficient experience and often don’t understand the fundamenta wikimedial policies, such as copyright. We have a generational and geogrational gap, which is reflected in the difficulties of the Movement governance.

The absence of the quorum for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee also raises the question about the feasibility of the current proposed structure of the Global Council, which starts as a 25 person body and potentially can be expanded to 100 members. In my opinion, we simply don’t have 100 diverse volunteers who are prepared to work on this level additionally to their other projects.

As for the lessons, WMF is implementing variuos training opportunities for the people to be prepared for work at high level, for example training academy WALDO, which the candidates will take part in. In this election we have 12 candidates and only 4 of us will be elected. I invite everybody who will not be appointed to the board to apply taking part in the other global governance structures.

Question 2

There has been some trend towards devolving or sharing the governance of the Wikimedia movement, including having a separate board for the Wikimedia Endowment and the proposed Global Council in the Movement Charter. What do you see as the positives and negatives of these trends, and what is your overall assessment of the work so far?

Bobby Shabangu (Bobbyshabangu)

I think the positive side of creating a separate board for the Wikimedia Endowment allows for more focused and efficient oversight of funds, and I also think it will allow for better resource management. However, the down side can also lead to the Board of Trustees working in silo from the board for the Wikimedia Endowment and making it harder to keep strategies aligned across different governing bodies. Same applies to the proposed Global Council in the Movement Charter.

I am not opposed to sharing the governance of the Wikimedia movement. I believe it can be most effective if done by creating sub-committees under the Board of Trustees, with equal representation from Affiliates. This approach would help prevent the two challenges I've highlighted - working in silos and misaligned strategies.

Deon Steyn (Oesjaar)

Managing Wikimedia is quite a challenge as it literally covers the globe with different languages, cultures and statuary requirements. Then to complicate matters, not all Wikipedia's are the same size in terms of users and mother tongue speakers and English skew this whole picture further. There are responsibilities that will always be controlled at Organizational level e.g. strategy and finances. The Board cannot prescribing/advising/managing at Community level for various reasons such as the differences already indicated. But still the communities need to be involved so devolving or sharing within the Wikimedia Movement is the answer. Creating separate boards for the Wikimedia Endowment and proposed Global Council in the Movement Charter will improve efficiency, representation and accountability. It will also make the Communities feel that they belong, not being left alone and improve communications.

These changes may lead to complexity, coordination challenges, can be resource intensive and can possibly lead to conflicts.

I support devolving some duties and responsibilities Global Council.

Erik Hanberg (Erikemery)

I think it’s important to begin by noting that the wiki community are already the leaders of the movement, whether or not there’s a Global Council to represent it. And the WMF board is built to have majority representation from the community.

But I am, in general, wary of devolving or sharing legal governance.

I agree with many of the tenets and values of the proposed Movement Charter, and I admire the work that went into it. I think it captures a shared vision quite well. That said, I believe opening up a separate body like the Global Charter is likely to make reaching that vision harder, increase bureaucracy, and make internal disagreements within the community more acute.

Part of my thinking is structural. The WMF board has a legal and financial responsibility for Wikimedia and all its platforms. That’s part of the law governing all nonprofits like WMF. It’s not a responsibility a board member should take lightly. A separate governance organization that doesn’t have that same legal and financial obligation, such as the global council, would always put it on a different footing than the WMF board, and I think it would result in more friction, not less. I worry it would create a poor dynamic with confusing relationships that would not be productive.

Finally, I do call on the WMF board to think about ways to address the concerns of the movement that resulted in calls for this shared governance model.

Farah Jack Mustaklem (Fjmustak)

No response yet.

Christel Steigenberger (Kritzolina)

Generally I am a big fan of sharing responsibilities and sharing power. And in the end this is what shared governance means. Basically the idea of Wikipedia is based on this sharing of responsibilities. All editors do their part and rely on others to do their part as well. So I think it is only appropriate that the governance structures of the movement should mirror this.

There are of course also drawbacks to this sharing of responsiblities. Shared power means a higher need for communication and more risk of mistakes and confusion. Communication doesn’t always go well. With a global community of the size of our movement, this risk of confusion is especially high.

I think at the moment we are at the hight of confusion in regards to the Global Council and the Movement Charter. And yet I am confident we will find a way forward that will lead to more shared power through different governance bodies. This will benefit the movement as a whole.

Lane Rasberry (Bluerasberry)

In the past the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia community have disagreed on ethics, values, and the interpretation of the Wikimedia mission. I support the establishment of the Global Council because such an organization would empower the Wikimedia community to speak for itself and improve collaboration. Wikimedia is special because it is the only user-generated content platform where the users themselves govern the project. The Global Council is our best-developed plan to support community self-expression. The Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Endowment, and Global Council can coexist with different goals while avoiding competition over the same power and resources.

Even though it is nice to imagine successful crowdsourced governance by anonymous online Internet people, there are many problems with power sharing. The processes that work for collaboratively organizing volunteers to build an encyclopedia are different from those for sharing the next billion dollars that we will spend. I am happy with the development of the Movement Strategy, I endorse ratification of the Movement Charter, and I wish to join the board to establish the Global Council with attractive powers for the community. Overall, I am satisfied with the Wikimedia community's demand to speak freely and independently, and of the Wikimedia Foundation's intention to support significant power transfer.

Lorenzo Losa (Laurentius)

Having multiple entities or bodies with different roles is nothing new: affiliates have been there for 20 years, and the first community-wide committees, like the Affiliations Committee or the Language Committee, were established shortly after that. As time passes, more and more structures are created to support the mission. This is generally a sign, and a result of, maturity in the movement; but at the same time, we need to think carefully when structures are useful and when they are ineffective and make us slower.

The two examples mentioned - the Endowment and the Global Council - are different in nature. While the proposed Global Council would be a governance body, the Wikimedia Endowment is a specialized organization, with a very specific purpose: to support Wikimedia projects in perpetuity. It has more an operational role than a governance role. It is a fully independent legal entity mainly for legal reasons: to make sure that claims made against the Wikimedia Foundation could not undermine the Endowment, and vice versa.

In terms of sharing the governance, I think we still have a long way to go. While a lot of work has already been done, it generally focuses on having wider participation in the governance of individual organizations: often on the Wikimedia Foundation, as the largest one, but also in affiliates. What we really lack are structures for taking decisions together. For instance, not to assign grants, or tell the Wikimedia Foundation, or tell Wikimedia affiliates, what to do - but to align in the decisions that each organization, and different parts of the community, make. We can design participatory processes to assign Wikimedia Foundation grants. We can design participatory processes to give input into the annual plans of the Wikimedia Foundation or affiliates. We already have some of that, and there are proposals on the table to improve them. But often times, this sounds like someone telling someone else what to do. What would really make a difference would be to have all these entities, and the community, work together on what each of them is doing.

Maciej Artur Nadzikiewicz (Nadzik)

Over the past few years we have seen several developments in the Movement governance structure. The Board of Trustees now has half of its members elected by the community (by changing the affiliate seats and the affiliates' role in the process). We have a separate board for the Wikimedia Endowment, although some, myself included, wish that the community had some say in this process.

When it comes to actually sharing governance with the Movement, the Foundation has yet to do so. We still have self-selective committees (e.g., the Affiliations Committee), ones with complicated structures that lead to the lack of quorum (e.g. U4C committee). Even when successfully selected, the committees are under-resourced and understaffed, and the volunteers are over-stretched (sometimes doing the job that the support staff should be doing), leading to bizarre situations in which those important bodies have no capacity to act, leading to frustration on all sides. We have regional grant committees that are tasked to share money in their respective regions, but it is still a few people at the Wikimedia Foundation that decide which regions get how much; there is no real Movement governance over the Movement's funds.

There are signals coming from the Board Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Board liaisons reflections on final Movement charter draft that the BoT may vote against the proposed text of the Movement Charter (which would lead to it being veto-ed). While the Charter is not perfect and offers less than many may have wanted, it is our first real attempt at sharing the governance of the Wikimedia movement. I've organised a global meeting to talk about this development, let's see where we are with this in a few weeks.

Overall, as a Movement, we are developing a governance model. In some parts, we are achieving great success; our ongoing hub projects are the best examples of that. In other parts, we are still stuck in time because of the decisions made many years ago. Meanwhile, the world keeps turning, and no one will wait for us.

Mohammed Awal Alhassan (Alhassan Mohammed Awal)

The trend towards devolving or sharing governance within the Wikimedia movement has several positives and negatives. Below are my opinion about some of the positives and negatives:

Positives;

Having separate boards like the Wikimedia Endowment and the proposed Global Council will ensure a more specialized governance systems. These boards can focus specifically on their mandates, which can facilitate a more informed and effective decision-making. Considering the proposed Global Council in the Movement Charter and its activities so far, it seems to represent the true diverse global community more effectively which is the ultimate goal of the Charter. This inclusivity can ensure that different regions and linguistic groups have a voice in the movement’s governance, and ensure a more democratic and equitable structure. Having a smaller, and or specialized boards or councils ensures a shared workload and guides them through their areas of focus and specific responsibilities. This can lead to faster implementation of initiatives and more targeted support for various community needs. Sharing governance responsibilities can alleviate the burden on the central Board of Trustees, allowing it to focus on broader strategic issues while other bodies handle more specific tasks. It also ensures checks and balances among the bodies. Checks and balances are more effective when there are multiple governance bodies. This ensures accountability and transparency across the movement.

Now, let's consider Negatives;

In as much as it is necessary to ensure that all bodies are aligned with the overall mission and vision of the Wikimedia movement, devolving governance may sometimes lead to a lack of cohesion and unified direction amongst the different bodies. This can lead to complex or bureaucratic decision-making processes. Unless there is a clear communication and coordination mechanism put in place to mitigate this risk, there will be less results achieved within a longer period. Establishing and maintaining multiple governance structures requires resources. Another possible negative impact of the multiple governance structures is the additional resources required in their establishment and maintenance process. There is a risk that this could divert resources away from core activities if not managed efficiently. In terms of human resource, with the establishment of multiple governance bodies and to ensure that all of them have the necessary expertise and experience, it is necessary to have a robust selection and training processes to ensure effective governance across all levels.

My Overall Assessment of the case is that;

The establishment of separate boards and the proposed Global Council are steps in the right direction towards a more inclusive and effective governance. However, there has to be a carefully designed plan and a continuous evaluation process to ensure these bodies function efficiently. In the planning processes, the mandate of each body should be clearly defined and there should be regular communication and evaluation of their activities to ensure they align with the objectives and goals of the Wikimedia Movement. To gain the trust and buy-in from the Community, there should be continued engagements and transparent processes to clearly convey the benefits of these governance structures to them. During these engagements, there should be willingness to adapt based on feedback from the Community and changing circumstances to ensure success of these governance structures. Flexibility and responsiveness to the community’s needs should remain a priority.

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (Rosiestep)

I have taught Organizational Behavior at a university in California, so my opinion is not solely based on the Wikimedia movement. The key to successful governance is being flexible. An organization (such as the Wiki movement) should have appropriate structures for the work that must be done at a given time. For example, in the last few days, on Wikimedia-l, there’s been discussion regarding the WMF’s “old days”: “...WMF was originally incorporated as a membership organization…” We know that the model has evolved since then.

The Wikimedia Endowment is appropriate for supporting a U.S.-based non-profit organization focusing on “knowledge”/education. Its positive side is that it will ensure that Wikipedia lasts perpetually. The negative side is that endowments are not universal; people from some parts of the world are baffled by them. Maybe we need to better explain what it is, what it does, and why it does it. (Ditto for Wikimedia Enterprise.)

The proposed Global Council is a noble idea; developing it from scratch is tough. That's because questions such as what should it be, what should it do, and why should it do it are central to its development as well as the changes that will cascade after its establishment. The positive side (premise) is that it will assume roles best suited for such a structure. The negative side is “the unknown”, e.g., we don’t know how successful it will or won’t be.

My overall assessment of our governance work so far is that we have functioned better in some years than others.

Tesleemah Abdulkareem (Tesleemah)

Establishing a supreme board for Wikimedia Endowment and Global Council is not totally a bad idea, I understand the reason for this is to ensure there is equal representation which is on the positive side.

However, I feel this will lead to clash of power as the establishment of the council is to control the affairs of the board, how will the three bodies work together when there can only be a body making decision on behalf of others? this may hinder proper representation we actually envisage for the wikimedia community.

I believe a better way is to have a sub-committee within the board such that, all affiliate are properly represented. This way, there will be equal representation on the board without the need for clashes in power.

Victoria Doronina (Victoria)

Wikimedia Endowment and the proposed Global Council are entirely different entities. Wikimedia Endowment is separate from the WMF organisation and has a different goal—raising and investing money to ensure the existence of the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity—which is a very cool goal. However, while it started making grants, it doesn’t deal with the movement's operational questions and doesn't provide support for them.

There’s also Wikimedia Enterprise, which diversifies operational income sources as the banner revenue declines. So, only the proposed Global Council fits the description of “sharing the governance of the Wikimedia Movement.” I would also like to mention Hubs as places for fostering intra-regional and thematic collaborations, filling the gap between individual affiliates and the US-centric and serving the devolution of the responsibilities from WMF. The WMF has also delegated responsibility for the WMF grants to the regional grants committees.

I think that devolution of responsibilities is a good thing and should be encouraged. However, we must be careful to avoid creating more levels of movement bureaucracy, which will eat into the resources dedicated to our mission—growing and disseminating free knowledge—without providing any benefits. Creating such levels is a possible negative outcome.

Question 3

In the 2024-25 draft Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan, there is a statement that Wikimedia content is becoming less visible as part of the Internet's essential infrastructure, because an increasingly closed and artificial intelligence-mediated internet doesn't attribute the source of the facts, or even link back to the Wikimedia projects. What responsibility does the Board and the Wikimedia Foundation have in enforcing the CC-by-SA licensing of the content from all projects by AI or other digital media information formats that do not respect the copyright law?

Bobby Shabangu (Bobbyshabangu)

I believe laws are crucial for our protection, but current laws may not be adequate to safeguard Wikimedia from AI companies using our content without proper attribution. I think the Board should not passively wait for change though. It should act now by collaborating with mission-aligned organisations like Creative Commons to advocate for the enforcement of CC-by-SA licensing. This situation also presents an opportunity to engage with major open source AI organisations that rely on our facts. Partnering with them to ensure proper attribution of Wikimedia content could be mutually beneficial and promote ethical use of information across other digital platforms.

Deon Steyn (Oesjaar)

The Board has to act, it cannot just leave this matter. The responsibilities include legal action against violators, establishing monitoring mechanisms, advocation for stronger legal frameworks, developing standards and best practices AI practices, providing educational resources and running awareness campaigns.

Collaboration with technology companies is crucial to ensure compliance with licensing terms. The Board and the technology companies must also develop technical solutions that facilitate proper attribution and linking.

Overall, the Foundation and its Board need to take a proactive and multi-faceted approach to enforce CC-by-SA licensing in the era of AI and digital media. I can think of legal enforcement, advocacy, community engagement and collaboration with technology companies.

Erik Hanberg (Erikemery)

In general, I believe the board should be proactive in its enforcement of copyright law for its content. The Creative Commons license is not a giveaway.

Unfortunately, when it comes to AI in particular, my understanding of the legal and copyright questions posed by chatbots and such is that winning a lawsuit on these grounds is not certain. The law has not caught up to the technology. And a court decision that goes the wrong way might be a blow. In that regard, some strategic patience may be required, as the WMF seeks favorable conditions for a legal strategy. But, again I believe the board should actively defend its legal copyright claim where it can and where it has a likelihood of success.

Farah Jack Mustaklem (Fjmustak)

No response yet.

Christel Steigenberger (Kritzolina)

Yes, we see a world that doesn’t respect the way we want to share our knowledge. Often it diminishes our efforts as volunteers by not giving credit where credit is due. And I think this is a problem that goes beyond the scope of this question. Licenses are only a small part of the issue. On this topic I see a clear responsibility of the Board to act in its core capacity of developing strategies on how to tackle problems volunteers face. The Wikimedia Foundation has the responsibility to research and monitor the situation (it already does, this is why we see these issues listed) and to act on the strategies the Board, I am confident, is already working on.

Lane Rasberry (Bluerasberry)

Our community of content creators develops open media. We generously and freely share this media, but there are many corporations with bad intent who capture the content, conspire to make it closed, then convert our free access into their paid product. This is a known problem that affects more than just Wikimedia content, and it is bigger than just the Wikimedia platform. When corporations abuse the system, they are following copyright law, because they are large enough to control governments and write the laws. It may be legal, but at least the Wikimedia Foundation can support the user community in telling the world that corporate capture of the commons is unethical.

To solve the problem of enforcing Creative Commons licenses, I would like to propose a more formal multiyear partnership with the Creative Commons organization. Wikimedia and Creative Commons are interdependent on each other, and if we want expertise with their licenses, then it would be less expensive and more sensible to fund their advocacy instead of duplicating their efforts with Wikimedia Foundation staff. Their budget was US$4 million in 2022 compared to $180 million for the Wikimedia Foundation. Because we need them, and because of the difference in money power, it is appropriate for us to share something.

There have been Wikimedia community complaints that the Wikimedia Foundation endlessly grows its own staff bureaucracy. I do not support wild growth of the Wikimedia Foundation, but our donors give because they trust us to protect the world. Part of our protection should be sharing money with movement partners, and Creative Commons is one of those.

Besides Creative Commons I think we should commit multi-year grants to other smaller allied organizations who support our mission, including Internet Archive who maintains our links to deleted websites; OpenStreetMap who manages our maps and who are experiencing corporate capture of their open data and user content community; Flickr Foundation which has provided so much image support to Wikimedia Commons; and the Tor Project which provides essential online privacy services in the media environment.

There is no hope of the Wikimedia Foundation alone resisting corporations. As the biggest and best funded nonprofit steward of an online community, the Wikimedia Foundation can find success in bringing all the smaller more vulnerable communities together.

Lorenzo Losa (Laurentius)

The new pattern of artificial intelligence-mediated access to information poses new challenges that we are not fully equipped to face. It's too early to fully understand the impact it will have on our projects and on the world in general - but we still have to react, because otherwise it would likely be too late. In particular, how generative artificial intelligence interacts with copyright laws, and licenses, is still unclear. There are several litigations taking place between AI vendors and publishers or authors, and some have led to unexpected results.

Even beyond AI, enforcing the Creative Commons licenses used in our projects is hard for the Wikimedia Foundation because the copyright is owned by individual contributors. The Foundation has no more rights on the content of Wikipedia than any other person in the world. The Foundation can have a role in communicating the issue and advocating for solutions, and (with some limits) supporting individuals who want to do more, but cannot directly appeal to a court for a license violation.

Wikipedia Enterprise might give us some small additional opportunities, because through it the Foundation is in contractual relationships with some large companies - even though this is not directly connected to AI, because Wikipedia Enterprise is not generally useful for AI training (dumps are well enough for that). This gives us a venue for advocating for a use of the content of the projects that is more in line with what we'd like to see - but nothing more, and it's not a tool to force it.

Maciej Artur Nadzikiewicz (Nadzik)

Wikipedia is a strong global brand, but it cannot change the world by itself. It cannot fight alone. The Wikimedia Movement needs allies, like-minded organisations, and mission-oriented organisations that can support it. It also needs a Board of Trustees that is committed to the cause and understands the challenges ahead.

The Board cannot be operational; it shouldn't work on enforcement or micromanage the staff. However, it is the Board's role to plan the organisation's overall strategy and ensure that the next Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plans appropriately focus on the changing world around us. The strategy and Annual Plans should increase resources for public policy efforts; this is one of the most vital activities right now, which, ignored, can lead to our downfall the fastest out of all the dangers that are facing us.

We cannot win with big corporations; some of them pay their only CEO more in salary than our entire Movement spends in one year on EVERYTHING. We need allies in other organisations; we need allies that are activists; we need allies in other projects; we need allies in the regulator sphere. We need to educate people on the value of non-BigTech internet; we need to make sure that the idea of Open Knowledge has allies and supportes.

I have been a Board member at Wikimedia Europe for two years now. During this time, I have appeared at multiple public hearings at the Polish Parliament and various other institutions – User:Nadzik/Policy. I have seen firsthand the impact we can make when appropriate resources are invested in securing the safety of our Movement. We need to strengthen this effort and make it one of our priorities.

Mohammed Awal Alhassan (Alhassan Mohammed Awal)

First of all, I believe that significantly investing in the development of APIs or tools that automatically embed attribution information when Wikimedia content is used is the surest way in ensuring that the CC-by-SA licensing of content from Wikimedia projects is respected. The Board and the Foundation can facilitate the process by enforcing proper attribution and share-alike requirements when content is used by AI systems and other digital platforms. When the Board takes the responsibility to advocate for proper attribution and the ethical use of open content to raise awareness among AI developers, digital media companies, and the broader public about the importance of respecting open licenses and the legal and ethical implications of failing to do so, the tendency of having a reduced violations for copyright will be high. Monitoring for non-compliance, issuing cease-and-desist orders, and pursuing legal remedies when necessary by the foundation's legal team to protect Wikimedia content and uphold copyright law will also reduce incidence of violations of the CC-by-SA license. There should also be the provision of clear guidelines and best practices for AI developers and digital media companies on how to properly attribute or cite Wikimedia content by creating resources, toolkits, and tutorials or documentations on complying with CC-by-SA licensing. Equally, there should be a dedicated legal team to address licensing violations and provide legal support to volunteers and community members who identify non-compliance. To achieve this, the Wikimedia community should be properly engaged in the enforcement process. The board and foundation can enhance the process by engaging the community and encouraging volunteers to help monitor the use of Wikimedia content and report violations. There should be recognition and support for the community's efforts in this regard. I believe that through a combination of legal action, advocacy, technological solutions, and community engagement, the board and foundation will not only be protecting the integrity and visibility of Wikimedia content but also upholding the principles of open knowledge and the legal frameworks that support it.

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (Rosiestep)

The Board’s responsibility is to foster high-level strategic thinking and to guide the CEO in this regard. The WMF’s responsibility is to operationalize the strategy. Within the WMF, this topic ("Wikimedia content is becoming less visible as part of the Internet's essential infrastructure, because an increasingly closed and artificial intelligence-mediated internet doesn't attribute the source of the facts, or even link back to the Wikimedia projects.") falls within the Legal Department. As there are rapid changes within technology at the same times as there's a need for advocacy, its vital for the CEO and the Legal Department to keep the Board abreast of challenges and opportunities. At the same time, the community's perspective needs an avenue for discourse, in all the ways that the various communities prefer to share points of view. No easy answer, except that we need to be agile and bold.

Tesleemah Abdulkareem (Tesleemah)

Thank you for the question, according the [plan of WMF 2024-2025] drafted, truly there is emphasy on Wikimedia content gradually fading due to AIs not referencing the encyclopedia contents and also because the articles are now widely spread;with translations available, access to English content as reduced since the common language of goggle is English.

The WMF governed by the board are doing a great job with the wikimedia Enterprise that allows the reuse of content for public consumption, it also allow partnership. To enforce CC-BY-SA licensing especially on contents written by AIs, I will say Wikimedia Enterprise can partner with these digital corporation. There must be a way Meta AI work around citing as I've seen it reference Wikipedia articles a couple of time. Other digital platforms like chatGPT, Gemini among others can be made to do the same.

There should also legal consequences with copyright law clearly stated, Another thing is that there should be more sessions and training for editors, contributors and audience revolving around copyright.

All these will go a long way in ensuring there is proper licensing and prevent copyright infringement when using wikimedia contents.

Victoria Doronina (Victoria)

This is an excellent question. So far, WMF's approach to entities that use our content for commercial purposes, such as Google, has been to ask for some charity politely. As a result, WMF has a productive collaboration with Google, which prominently displays Wikipedia articles in the right panel of the search results. It has also become a multi-year paying client of Wikimedia Enterprise, which is one of the sources of the diversified WMF income.

As far as I know (and I was wrong before), there’s no ongoing relationship with companies that create AIs. Meanwhile, some US newspapers negotiated to sell their content for AI training to these companies. However, they did it via lawsuits, and what is acceptable and expected from for-profit companies can do more damage than bring gain for a charity such as WMF—and we don’t have millions to spend on lawsuits with an uncertain outcome.

I think the Board should encourage the CEO to explore possible mutually beneficial models of interactions with AI companies. If I am reelected, I can start exploring this question.

Question 4

Wikimedia Foundation's Annual Plan recognizes multiple trends negative to the Wikimedia movement: decreasing visibility, audiences moving to a novel competition such as artificial intelligence solutions and Internet influencers, increasing information warfare and erosion of trust, necessary technical investments while the revenue growth was flattening. At the same time, the movement's products and processes change very, very slowly. Which bold steps would you recommend to the Wikimedia Foundation?

Bobby Shabangu (Bobbyshabangu)

I think the people contributing and consuming Wikimedia are best placed to recommend a bold step the Wikimedia Foundation can take. The thing that draws people to continue reading and editing Wikipedia should be investigated and strengthened. I also believe part of the answer lie in the Movement strategy document particularly recommendation no1 Increasing the the Sustainability of our Movement which recogises that "Our future is dependent on a healthy, diverse, and collaborative environment and on a continual inflow of contributors. However, we lack mechanisms to assure resources and capacities (e.g. money, partners, facilities) are available equitably across the Movement." and recognise that "Increasing contributor recruitment and retention depend on improving procedures, processes, and frameworks to meet and support varied needs."

Recommendation no2. Evaluate, Iterate and Adapt also recognises that "We need to adapt to meet new and altered situations and challenges by adopting policies and procedures based upon evaluations of the changing Movement and the changing world."

Deon Steyn (Oesjaar)

The first part of the statement can summarized in the following words: accelerated technological innovation and the second part is slow growth in revenue. Bold steps: fight fire with fire- the Foundation has to accelerate the use of technological innovations as well. This included integrating AI and machine learning by collaborating with AI companies for proper attribution and developing AI-powered tools for editors. Improving user interfaces, especially for mobile platforms, can enhance user experience and engagement. The core business of the Foundation is that of an online Encyclopedia and not that of an IT company. Unless a new sister company eg. Wiki-IT is formed, collaboration is the key for success.

With regards to revenue: the days of printed books are numbered for various reasons: costs, impact on environment etc. My vision is that the Foundation collaborate with universities and high schools to provide the very textbooks online, much cheaper! It is by far easier to update changes online whereas textbooks have to be reprinted. The universities and high school can invest in this project as it will be mutually beneficial. The Foundation has the capability of providing textbooks in a variety of languages. The Foundation can then market this project with the universities and schools to potential donors.

Another bold idea: introducing membership program and selling merchandise can create new revenue models.

To expand content and reach - invest more into language support. Improved and easier interfacing, multimedia videos and podcast in all the languages is crucial. Very few languages has specialist dictionaries, this is crucial to grow content in the smaller language Wikipedia's.

Erik Hanberg (Erikemery)

I believe that relative to big-tech, Wikimedia’s slow pace to change products and processes is actually a hidden strength. Yes, it can be frustrating at times. But I would always choose it over the “go fast and break “ things mentality that seems to guide Big Tech. How often have we seen a company like Meta go all in one idea (metaverse, a phone) and then pivot six months later to the new shiny object? Wikimedia must be more thoughtful about any new initiative.

I would certainly embrace a new bold idea where there was a good bet for paying off. Or testing many smaller ideas with the community and its users and readers. But overall, the strength of Wikimedia is the community, its nonprofit status, and its deep trust with readers and users. Like a glacier, it moves slowly, but when it moves, no one can stop it.

Farah Jack Mustaklem (Fjmustak)

No response yet.

Christel Steigenberger (Kritzolina)

For me the boldest step the Wikimedia Foundation can take is one that is not new. The boldest action the Wikimedia Foundation does again and again is to truly trust its creative, intelligent, amazing community of volunteers. I believe the Board should always apply this trust in all its stratgies and should also try and push all stakeholders towards this trust. The community is the true strength of our movement. Wikipedia and its sister projects exist, because we humans bring it "alive" again and again with our contributions. As long as we have healthy vibrant communities across the world, the Wikimedia Movement will prosper and overcome all difficulties to freely sharing our knowledge.

Lane Rasberry (Bluerasberry)

To address all of these challenges, I recommend that the Wikimedia Foundation greatly increase university research partnerships. The least expensive, highest-value option for continuously getting good recommendations is to make research support, data, and documentation up-to-date and easy for researchers to access.

Currently the Wikimedia Foundation has no particular option for university research partnerships. I know this, because since 2018 I have been Wikimedian in Residence at the School of Data Science at the University of Virginia, and I have free-of-cost graduate students who want to do machine learning and artificial intelligence projects on Wikimedia datasets. While we have done some research, I have difficulty introducing Wikimedia content to students repeatedly every term because the Wikimedia ecosystem is simply unprepared for student research. Doing research with Wikimedia should be as easy as doing research with large datasets from other tech platforms. Now is the time to develop our infrastructure to support university research.

To all of these questions - how should we respond to artificial intelligence? how do we grow trust in various countries? what investments should we make in technology? what business plans are sensible? - the answer is to tell the world that we want university research partnerships. Many research questions can be answered with our publicly available open data and without need to disturb any editors. In many cases, researchers would like for us to ask them questions, because they only want to do a project that would be helpful to us and that no one else is already doing privately. Researchers appreciate when we recommend ethical guidelines and ask them to adopt open science practices.

Beyond computer science and data science, we need partnerships with schools of law and public policy to protect our values, with schools of commerce and business to review our budgets and investments, with sociologists to conduct Wikimedia reader and user surveys, and with every kind of school for content development of Wikipedia itself.

Lorenzo Losa (Laurentius)

The word wiki means quick in Hawaiian. All our projects were created with the idea of being able to do things quickly. When we look at the processes and the structures that we have put in place, however, I sometimes think that we have lost that idea somewhere along the way.

To be honest, there are good reasons why change can be slow. More than one billion people use our projects: very few websites support as many languages and as many browsers as we do, and even apparently trivial changes can have huge implications. Moreover, we are a widely distributed movement, and changes often require buy-in from multiple parties.

The recommendations I would make are valid for the whole movement, not just the Wikimedia Foundation:

1. Empower individuals to take direct action when they are not disruptive to others. We are good at this when editing wiki projects; be bold is our motto. This is not always the case for products and processes.
2. Do not be bound by choices made in the past if they are not relevant anymore. "Easy to start" goes hand-in-hand with "easy to change" and "easy to end". On-wiki, any edit can be reverted; and if this were not the case, it would not be possible to allow everyone to edit, because it would be too risky. Changing products and processes is not so easy, but the principle is the same. Maybe ten years ago someone got a great idea (or what seemed to be a great idea); but maybe what we built at the time is not so good anymore. We need the courage to recognize that - otherwise people will be afraid to experiment, develop and support new ideas.
3. Find more effective ways to reach - or recognize - community-wide or movement-wide consensus on key decisions. Sometimes things are not happening just because we don't even know whether there is support for them.
4. Accept that, despite all the efforts, sometimes getting everyone to agree is just not possible - but a decision needs to be taken nevertheless. Back when I was chair of Wikimedia Italy, I remember the first time the board took a non-unanimous decision as a great success. Striving to get everyone to an agreement is essential, but so is recognizing that sometimes you can't get there, and you still have to make a decision, because failing to do so is much worse.

Maciej Artur Nadzikiewicz (Nadzik)

I will argue that the reason for the slow change in our Movement is partially the consequence of the distance and lack of trust between the community and the Wikimedia Foundation. The volunteers do not trust the Foundation (sometimes with good reason), and the staff does not understand the volunteers. Some headway is being made towards that, but it still sometimes feels like "1 step forward, 2 steps backwards". In this atmosphere, even the smallest change proposed can lead to a very cold atmosphere in the Village Pump / Discord / mailing list etc.

The Wikimedia Foundation needs to own up to its mistakes. Many grievances done throughout the years are still felt by some members of the community, because the case was never fully closed. Some official communication was exchanged, but it sometimes feels more like a legal letter than a simple "sorry, we made a mistake". The community is right to expect clear communication and a certain level of responsibility; after all, the Wikimedia Foundation is responsible for its wellbeing. More clear communication and transparency would do wonders; sometimes, "airing dirty laundry" is the only way to have a clear shirt when we need it most.

A bold step I would recommend to the Wikimedia Foundation is to be more open and vocal in its contacts with the community. There is a process in the UK Parliament [3] in which every petition that gets a certain number of signatures gets a response. I am not advocating for the exact model Westminster uses, but I do recommend the Wikimedia Foundation to start answering the community. These should be reliable statements by someone with authority that could later be referred to. It will take resources, but it will allow us to rebuild the trust we lost along the way. We cannot build things and defend ourselves from the outside world if we don't trust each other.

Mohammed Awal Alhassan (Alhassan Mohammed Awal)

My first recommendation to the Foundation is to embrace AI and Machine Learning. Investmemt develop AI Tools for Content Creation and Curation should be prioritized. That way, AI can be leveraged to assist with content creation, moderation, and curation such as tools for automatic vandalism detection, increasing the quality of articles, and suggesting content improvements. This can also involve using AI to create personalized user experiences, recommending articles and content based on individual interests and browsing history. From the experience I have in my region, the majority of African Wikimedians do not have access to laptops and are using mobile phones to contribute to projects. Therefore, mobile optimization should prioritize the mobile experience to capture the growing audience that primarily uses mobile devices. This includes faster load times, a more intuitive interface, and offline access to content. Also, editimg process should further be simplified to improve the overall user interface to attract and retain new contributors. Equally important for Wikimedia Foundation is to make conscious efforts to partner with Internet influencers, educators, and content creators to promote Wikimedia projects and integrate Wikimedia content into educational curricula and popular media. Wikimedia projects can also be promoted by engaging with major digital platforms and search engines to ensure Wikimedia content is prominently featured and properly attributed. More work should also be done to educate the public about the importance of open knowledge. This can be achieved by launching marketing and public awareness campaigns to highlight the value and reliability of Wikimedia projects and to actively promote high-quality and unique content to attract new readers and contributors.

Foundation should also be willing to provide more resources and support for volunteers, including training programs, recognition, and incentives for active contributors. Funding opportunities for individuals and groups for community-led projects and initiatives that align with Wikimedia’s mission should be increased. Foundation should as well maintain transparent communication with the community about ongoing projects, challenges, and successes and establish regular feedback loops to incorporate community input into decision-making. Closely related to that is the need to strengthen mechanisms for conflict resolution and addressing issues of misinformation and disinformation within the Wikimedia community.

Another thing the foundation may consider is expanding crowdfunding campaigns and exploring partnerships with philanthropic organizations to diversify funding sources. In addressing Information Warfare and Erosion of Trust, the foundation may implement robust fact-checking mechanisms and partnerships with fact-checking organizations to combat misinformation and disinformation. This can be achieved by developing and integrating tools that help users verify the credibility of information and sources.

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (Rosiestep)

1. Be more multi-year focused than ever before.
2. Be more collaborative than ever before, e.g., not only listening and/or gathering feedback (by the way, well done for 2024-25!), but including the community in writing it.
3. Develop a "Global Annual Plan process" that includes the WMF's Annual Plan as well as that of each Affiliate who meets a certain threshold, e.g., perhaps Chapters and ThOrgs for a start.
4. Every year, do a “review, iterate, adapt” post-mortem.

Tesleemah Abdulkareem (Tesleemah)

While the product and technology team of WMF are doing well with the way Wikipedia articles displays, for instance I got to know about wikimedia for the first time through random goggle search, I believe the search engine optimisation were top notch among other things put in place. I will recommend that the product and technology team continue to develop innovations that will help these articles reach better audience better. Also, the publicity team should also not stop working on how everybody get access to open knowledge as the mission of the WMF entails.

I recommend that more wiki fan clubs should be established in schools especially higher institutions.

As regards the funds flattening, the call for donation can be more digitalised while funds are spent on more important things; setting priorities and allocating funds based on needs. This will be better implemented

Victoria Doronina (Victoria)

Reduce the bureaucracy and allow staff a possibility of failure. When contacting the on-the-ground WMF staff, I still often see fear of taking action that has not been authorised by their manager. It’s much easier for them to give a non-committal, bureaucratic answer than to try and take action. This is not good for a distributed, open-source movement and creates a barrier between the Wikimedian way of working and WMF- staff should work in an agile, not waterfall way.

Since Maryana Iskander started as CEO in 2022, she has made headway with the C-levels and general management, but the changes have not completely penetrated the on-the-ground staff. The Board should continue helping Maryana complete the organizational transformation.

Question 5

What are your thoughts about systemic bias on Wikimedia projects, both in their content and their demographics, and including identity-based, language-based, economic/resource-based, ideological/worldview-based, and other forms of system bias? What measures or initiatives do you think the Board can appropriately take to address systemic bias?

Bobby Shabangu (Bobbyshabangu)

I believe systemic bias remains a significant challenge for the Wikimedia movement, particularly affecting underrepresented and Global South communities. While I have seen the support that WMF has provided to these groups, I think the focus should be on the movement itself. We need to activate and retain new users, we need to be comfortable with new type of knowledge that we are not familiar with. We also need to give incubator Wikimedia our full support (now it looks like a "by the way" project), and I think WMF should invest in tools and training to help contributors recognise and mitigate their biases and ensure that Wikimedia's Friendly Space policies and UCoC are effectively enforced to protect particularly underrepresented communities, newcomers, and those from the Global South. We need to foster a culture of continuous reminder, education, and support for users (both experienced and newbies). Over the years I've witnessed a lot of overt and subtle harassment within the movement, really UCoC needs to have teeth if it we are intentional and serious about being inclusive.

Deon Steyn (Oesjaar)

Systematic bias in Wikipedia projects affects both content and community demographics, manifesting in identity-based, language-based, economic/resource-based and ideological/worldview-based forms. Addressing these biases are crucial to ensure Wikipedia projects reflect the diversity of human knowledge and perspectives. Bigger groups dominate, think of the power of the English language in Wikipedia.

To address these biases, the Foundation should diversify the contributor base through outreach programs and partnerships with educational institutions. Supporting diverse languages and cultures with tools, translation resources and cultural sensitivity training is essential. Resource allocation through grants, scholarships and infrastructure investment is also vital and also important: the returns on these investments must be measured.

Community guidelines and policies must be strengthened, providing even better translation tools and assist to create specialist dictionaries in smaller languages Wikipedia's. Anti-harassment measures and bias detection tools are necessary to create a welcoming environment.

Erik Hanberg (Erikemery)

There are many forms of systemic bias that exist throughout our global society and thus, are present in Wikimedia projects as well, as cataloged on the Systemic Bias page of Wikipedia. People from the Global South, women and are often underrepresented in favor of English speakers, men, and people from the Global North. I recognize that I am one of those individuals and carry a degree of privilege because of it. Part of my work in life is to carry that recognition with me and help other privileged folks to see it as well.

One place the board might contribute to removing systemic bias from its platforms and services is through commissioning an annual or bi-annual report card on bias from a third party. This review of Wikimedia projects might help us see places for improvement, and give the community a regular snapshot of how we’re making progress on these goals, as well as resources and tools to fix these issues moving forward.

Farah Jack Mustaklem (Fjmustak)

No response yet.

Christel Steigenberger (Kritzolina)

This is a again question on a topic that is not only important for the movement as a whole, but also dear to my heart. I believe that we need a healthy and acitve community that is as diverse in all aspects of identity as possible, to bring those different biases to a shared table – the reality reflected on our projects. Only by inviting as many viewpoints in as possible, by discussing and reflecting about all the different perspectives on the world and all there is to know about it, can we continue to hold up the commitment of freely sharing the sum of all knowledge with every single human being.

I believe it is a core responsibility of the Board to develop strategies on how we can bring this diversity to our communities, where it doesn’t already exist. Strategies that encourage participation of voices that are not yet heard loud and clear. At the same time we need to plan and strategize on how to get some perspectives out of the limelight, so other viewpoints can be seen more clearly. All while making sure the knowledge publicly shared is reliable, well sourced and trustworthy. This is not an easy task, but one I have many ideas about that I would like to work on as a Board member.

Lane Rasberry (Bluerasberry)

The most important bias is financial bias, but currently the Wikimedia community has no way of reviewing Wikimedia Foundation systemic bias in our investments. We have fundraised and spent US$1,000,000,000 in the past few years, and will spend another billion dollars soon, but the Wikimedia community does not have the documentation it wants to be able to understand and discuss this spending. Part of our challenge in addressing systemic bias is that we do not have budget estimates of Wikimedia Foundation investments based on identity, language, economic status, worldview, and other biases that we identify as strategically important. An even bigger problem is that there is a taboo on asking about budgets, which is why we do not have this information already.

I do not believe that we can address bias without being aware of our financial investments, and I want to make Wikimedia Foundation budgets more accessible to the Wikimedia community, to journalists, and to university researchers. We need independent third-party research to survey and report our spending. We need to know spending by country, and spending by demographic.

Lorenzo Losa (Laurentius)

A cornerstone of most Wikimedia projects is the neutral point of view. It provides foundation and grounding for the editing work. Striving to avoid biases in content is a natural consequence of this basic principle. Editing communities are, in general, well-equipped to deal with most non-neutral content: it's one of the key skills that every new editor has to learn. Systemic biases, though, are a particularly challenging category of biases to deal with, and we are not always doing enough to limit their influence.

There are two main parts to what we can do to counter systemic bias. The first is to be mindful of our own biases and the conditions that cause them. For instance, most of us have spent most of their life in one specific country, and there is nothing we can do to change that and the fact that this brings a limited perspective on the world; but we can be mindful that our own lived experience is not the same as everyone else.

There is a limit to what we can do individually, and the other key part of what we can do is to support a more diverse participation, especially in the editing community, so that we can complement each other. This is easier said than done, especially when the problem is rooted in an imbalance or asymmetry in the world; but still, actively trying to safeguard diversity can go a long way.

Maciej Artur Nadzikiewicz (Nadzik)

There is bias on Wikimedia projects. This is one sentence that we can be certain of. It is gender-oriented, language-oriented, and takes many other forms. For a long time, the Wikimedia Foundation itself was aiding this bias by contacting the communities only in English and making decisions in an SF-centered way. This has changed to some degree, but there is still room for improvement.

I am a big fan of evidence-based policy-making. As one of the other candidates is saying, we cannot change something if we don't know the extent of the problem. We need to measure and learn about the problems we have to deal with. Some of this information is available, either measured by the different Wikiprojects (Wiki Loves Monuments has amazing data on the monuments and their states) or by external research (mostly gender-based and language gaps). We have to invest more in researching our own shortcomings. It may be uncomfortable, and it may be hard at first, but this approach will eventually lead us to know more about ourselves and our problems. Only then can we start working on them effectively, with a targeted approach.

Mohammed Awal Alhassan (Alhassan Mohammed Awal)

Systemic bias on Wikimedia projects is a significant issue that affects the quality, diversity, and inclusiveness of the content and the community. Addressing this bias is necessary for ensuring that Wikimedia truly represents the sum of all human knowledge. First of all, there is an unbalanced amount of content in certain languages, particularly English, while other languages, especially those of smaller or less affluent communities, have significantly less coverage. To get this addressed, the Foundation should be interested to invest in programs to develop and support Wikimedia projects in underrepresented languages such as translation initiatives and technological support for content creation in these languages. This will ensure that localization of content is possible by encouraging the creation of content relevant to local cultures, histories, and perspectives to ensure a diverse and inclusive knowledge base. Another way the Foundation can tackle the systemic bias is to ensure that the governance structures of Wikimedia projects include diverse voices. This means having diverse representation on boards, committees, and leadership positions. There should also be an established feedback mechanism to listen to and address the concerns of underrepresented groups within the community. Also, access to resources such as research materials,reliable internet,, and editing tools is uneven, and therefore disadvantages contributors from lower-income regions. Foundation may deliberately provide special grants, scholarships, and other resources to support contributors from marginalized communities and to ensure they have access to the necessary tools and training.

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (Rosiestep)

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Let’s start there. Where we have measured a form of systemic bias, let us work systematically in researching options to improve on it. I have great expertise in gender gap systemic bias, particularly women as readers, women as editors, and women’s representation (biographies, works, issues).

In 2015, I co-founded Women in Red (WiR) (Note: redlinks on Wikipedia lead to nothing, ergo, the name of our community). WiR focuses on “moving the needle” in terms of percentage of biographies about women on Wikipedia, from 15.5% (October 2014) to 19.8% (June 2024). There are 34 other language Wikipedias that engage in WiR work. In 2017, I conducted 65 interviews with Wikiwomen from around the world in the first-ever Gender Diversity Mapping project. In 2023, with two others, I was part of the Research cohort of WikiWomenCamp where we systematically catalogued research related to Wikiwomen. Since 2023, as a member of the WMF Board of Trustees, I was able to make the case for including the gender gap as a strategic priority and since then, it has been included in the Annual Plan.

I recognize that there are many other forms of systemic bias, including intersectional ones, and I have been fervently committed to listening, learning, mentoring, and advancing improvements to the extent that I am personally able to do so.

Tesleemah Abdulkareem (Tesleemah)

Systemic bias is not entirely the foundation's fault as over time, there has been measures put in place especially in the aspect of gender as more project about women and LGBT+ has been approved and organised within the organisation. However, one systemic bias I feel is still lagging behind is demographic bias, there is still underrepresentation of less developed region, Africa as an instance. The board can come in through the community Affair committee by holding sessions with affiliates within this group, provide more support and ensure there are specific policies that allow them to thrive.

Victoria Doronina (Victoria)

Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Projects are created mainly by young white men from the Global North, and it shows. For example, the article about virginity in Russian Wikipedia stated - without citing sources - that virginity as a concept is applicable only to women, which is simply not a fact. The people who had more resources and “got there first”, overthrew the “old gatekeepers” became the “new gatekeepers”.

However, the Internet has revolutionised access to information resources and audiences. Wikimedia projects are empowering minorities, including women and other underrepresented minorities. WMF is working on reducing the gender gap in our content, which in turn should reduce the readership and editors gap. The Universal Code of Conduct should help to reduce the level of harassment of minorities. Several WMF initiaties are aimed at the Global South.

As a Trustee, I try to lead by example. I took part in the biannual WikiWomen+ Camp in Delhi in 2022, where wiki-women networked and got training. The other female trustee that was there, Rosie Stephenson-Goodnight and I had a trustees Q&A session where we told our life stories and encouraged the participants, especially from the Global South, to take a more active role in the Movement governance to become more visible. I’ll take part in a WikiWomen Summit before the Wikimania in 2024.

In general, it's great that we have 4 female candidates in these elections, which is 25% of the total. One of them is from the Global South. I hope that the voters will help reduce the systemic bias in the movement's governance structures by voting for them.