Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network/archive/Wikimedia Movement strategy May 2019
This page shares feedback from members of the Wikimedian in Residence Exchange Network in the 2019 Community Conversation component of the 2018-20 Wikimedia movement strategy.
Background edit
The Wikimedia community plans strategy with the Wikimedia Foundation periodically. Right now in May 2019 there is broad discussion distributed among focus groups. The Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network coordinated its own discussion and findings as reported here. Documentation guiding this discussion is at
In March 2019 Esther Jackson, Wikimedian in Residence at the New York Botanical Garden and member of WREN, volunteered to coordinate the strategy discussion among the group in response to the call at "Strategy Liaisons Organized Groups".
The Wikimedian in Residence Exchange Network scheduled coordination of these discussions in its routine monthly virtual semi-public meetups for April, May, and June 2019.
Additionally there were special discussions only for meeting to discuss strategy in meetups on
- Tuesday 26 March 2019
- Friday 3 May 2019
Most of the feedback below is from these meetings, while the routine meetups called for attention and review of the strategy process.
The plan is for groups to choose focus directions most relevant to their interest, discuss these, then share feedback to the central coordinating body. This report shares that feedback.
Participants edit
The following individuals are members of WREN and provided public feedback in this planning process:
Issues edit
Advocacy edit
How do we ensure that our community’s various contexts are represented through advocacy? How do we advocate so that all people who want to access Wikimedia projects can do so, in the languages and ways the want? How do we use advocacy to turn “adverse” or “unaware” environments into enabling environments? How can we ensure that the movement's advocacy efforts are not harming the neutrality of the Wikimedia project's content? What is needed to encourage and inspire advocates for the Wikimedia movement? What sort of material, conceptual, resource and expert support do movement advocates need and where does it come from? How do we safeguard and protect the efforts of advocates (and contributors) within “adverse” or “unaware” environments? What external frameworks should we support and/or change to further ground contribution and access in free speech and free knowledge (e.g. legal frameworks or government departments)? How do we incorporate existing and future aligned partners in our advocacy efforts? From Lane: the WMF legal department and WMF board sometimes quickly assert strong advocacy positions. This has to stop - instead of being reactive, we need to be proactive in the long term. For issues like copyright, we need long term ongoing community conversation about our position and values, that way when an opportunity for political lobbying arises, we already have our position. An example of a frenzied discussion is at - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:EU_policy#Help_requested_-_Directive_on_Copyright_in_the_Digital_Single_Market_initiative Lobbying should not be based in the WMF. Instead, the WMF should survey the wiki community then help coordinate conversation around issues of interest to wiki participants to fill in the gaps for jumping from volunteer conversation to a legally actionable position.
From Andrew: I appreciate much of what Lane has mentioned above and at times have indeed "head scratched" over what the WMF has advocated for. On the other hand taking to wiki on every single possible advocacy issue is untenable, and at some point you have to delegate and empower a body/committee/group to act on our behalf, even if it's just for scalability issues. Otherwise, nothing will ever get done because we have seen how intransigent "the community" is in the absence of anything approaching consensus or critical mass for defining a policy direction. I think that's why the WG wants to cap off the better part of three years (!!!) of strategy with a mandate that the community can act on with confidence and not need to "referenderize" every small policy position.
Richard notes: Advocacy is needed for- Open Content Wiki Projects Ourselves - WM in Res Professors who do Wiki work Funded positions Easier guidelines What would be helpful: Better documentation on different data that become open Fine-grained examples of advocacy Tool-kit for something like this?
Hillary notes: Agree with much of what Richard said Openness is key We deal with institutional pushback, questions about data sharing, etc. How do we balance?
Openness discussion Wiki Library - access to paid content to add to articles. Some folks are not in support of this Wikipedia Zero Internet.org initiative “Free basis” on Facebook - if you are a mobile operator, if people access facebook, make it free - “free” access to things like IA, etc. Deals made behind the scenes - not a level playing field Why don’t we give free access to Wikipedia? Popular, but doesn’t create a level playing field. Wikipedia Zero killed because of pushback from India How much do we collaborate with closed sources? When working with GLAMs.. What we say to people is that when content is donated, more people have access to it. Esther’s comment - we are quite concerned in NYBG about DOI assignments by for-profit databases - can we compel Cross Ref to prioritize DOIs that direct to open sources?
WIR power with #9 (above) - lend our names and institutional affiliation for pushing for change!
Revenue Streams edit
What ongoing revenue does the Wikimedia movement need by 2030 to accomplish its mission over the next 100 years? What do we need to know about past generation and spending of revenue to determine the best way to reach our goal? What internal and external factors affect our ability to reach our goal? What are the lines that we should not cross while working towards our goal? What revenue streams will enable us to reach our goal? What capacities do we need to develop these revenue streams? How do we take advantage of being a global movement with local presence to reach our goal? How do we organize revenue generation and flow across the movement? From Lane: consider the model of Facebook and YouTube. These platforms generate and report their own traditional income, but the value of these platforms is actually in the user generated content. They are corporate so they have to focus on their own income. Wikimedia projects are nonprofit and do not need to follow that corporate model. Instead, we should measure the revenue into our community engagement. As an example, there is no one at WMF or in the Wikimedia movement who makes calculations of the revenue in community organizations, to Wikimedian in Residence programs, or to Wikimedia campaigns that raise huge funds for content creation. The only revenue we currently measure is that to the WMF.
From Andrew: Amen Lane! I had always thought we should try to - at least order of magnitude - estimate some value for time and labor donated at the level of UG/chapters and in this case WiR, to assist in measuring our impact. This will also help in terms of "in kind" donations when doing fundraising. That is, go to a foundation and say "Give us $50,000 because our contribution is $50,000 in volunteer labor. Your money is amplified."
We don't do great at matching funds, so we should encourage investigation into incentivizing bodies in our movement to co-fundraise!
Lane recommended changes: encourage reporting of revenue which the WMF never touches encourage an environment where Wikimedia community members to talk about money WMF should better report investments which concern community, including "investments by region", "investments by topic", "investments by target demographic". This data is currently private but would greatly inspire community conversation.
Andrew: Better grants system that hits on the strengths of GLAM institutions, as in the above by Andrew. Matching grants, quantifying the in-kind impact of GLAM partners, etc.
Richard: There can be more opportunities between collaborative institutions to fund boots on the ground positions - maybe WREN can support with our networks Maybe we all need accountants!
Esther: Agrees with Lane about better transparency and reporting would be very helpful.
Hillary: Position funded by single foundation with joint-institutional grant Hard to find someone for her position because it is a temporary position - there is not stability of the permanent position; Hillary is returning to her previous role in institution once grant finishes Better to look for collaborations with institutions that do not rely on grants - make the positions more permanent. Would allow recruitment from broader areas of society.
Roles & Responsibility edit
What governance and organizational structures do we need to support the delivery of the strategic direction?
We should be frank about discussing money, which is currently a taboo. The situation is that the Wikimedia Movement claims participation of what is various called the Global South or Developing World, but actually it is challenging to find evidence of sharing money with this demographic. I would like to see many more small grants go to small wiki organizations. A particular difference is while I would not support funding administration by default in Western countries. I would support WMF funding for administration by default in countries with less money. The situation that bothers me most is when the WMF will fund outreach initiatives to recruit volunteers, when it would be less expensive to get the same outcomes by paying staff outright to do the labor. Paying people outright is not cost effective in rich countries, but is usually less expensive than volunteer recruitment in less wealthy countries. This can even apply to funding institutions to hire their own staff Wiki people to serve in Wikimedian in Residence roles. - Lane
Partnerships edit
How might we build Wikimedia into an effective convenor of impactful partnerships, coalitions, and collective action based on a shared vision of open knowledge and the “Big Open” Movement? How do we develop technical infrastructure, capacities and support that we need in order to be an effective partner to share ‘the sum of all knowledge” and fulfill the vision of knowledge as a service for our partners? How can we empower people and organizations working on partnerships to get the support they need to fulfill our potential to carry out diverse, sustainable, effective and impactful partnerships? How do we create an inclusive, movement-wide culture of sharing knowledge, skills, and practices on collaborations and partnerships - so that everyone in the movement can participate in and benefit from them? Lane: the most significant partnerships are not WMF + organizations, but Wiki community + organizations. Content is our objective, not tying relationships to the WMF, and all content comes from the community. The WMF should actively discourage organizations like universities, STEM organizations, cultural heritage, government agencies etc. from the misconception that to partner with Wikimedia they need to get permission from the WMF. Instead, the WMF should be proactive in encouraging most partnership conversations to happen in the absence of WMF staff.
Esther: Seems like Lane is advocating for a PR campaign to
Richard: Would like groups like WREN to be more of a resource for partnerships
Hillary: Is the WMF encouraging institutions to start WREN programs? Richard says that people reach out to them, but they don’t always know what to do with all of the requests. Esther comments that it seems there is a pipeline of people/orgs who want WREN programs (maybe help finding funds for this) but there isn’t infrastructure in place to create/support these positions.
From Andrew: How do we help connect institutions and hiring a WiR better? Much of this from Hilary Thorsen comments earlier. Not make discovery of WiR an ad hoc thing. Help for a GLAM partner to define the WiR position, broader participation from a wider spectrum of society. (New titles - “WM strategist,” etc. - broader spectrum) Past bad history with Belfer Center has made this an impediment, but we need to move on.
From Andrew in response to Lane: Agree in general about not requiring WMF in the loop. But there is a value in providing a professional interface and professional standards. We need a regular ongoing boot camp training and best practices to train more ambassadors to connect with GLAM orgs. Esther: Love the idea of bootcamp training! (Nope, did not know about GLAM camp.) Maybe what we do as WREN - trumpet our success better. Amazing slate of people who have been WM in R and we have done great work.
We need better maintained core tools, tech wise for GLAM work. Everything Magnus does, for example. Quickstatements, TABernacle, etc. (We rely on some very unreliable tools - not sustainable.)
GLAM WIKI conference - Regularize running conferences, since face to face interaction is key
Regularize engaging in existing GLAM conferences. Andrew has been to IFLA-WLIC for libraries, and MCN for museums. He has done online webinars for OCLC for partner training. Nearly all of these are all out of pocket and personally financed. Need to keep funding us to do these things to keep ties relevant and strong. But funding for these from WMF sources is hard to come by.
From Andrew, via Berlin: How about the non-Big Open partners? When should we partner with <insert big bad corporation here>? Google Arts and Culture? Facebook Zero? Internet.org? Elsevier? Big Open orgs are easy to collaborate with. They are our most-like-minded partners. But what about the folks where the eyeballs are, but don't really share the bulk of our values? This is the major feedback was given to the WG in Berlin Wikimedia Summit from folks in the circle. (“Big Closed”). (This relates to the Wikipedia Zero conversation above. Zero rating and "free" knowledge as in beer)
How might we build Wikimedia into an effective convenor of impactful partnerships, coalitions, and collective action based on a shared vision of open knowledge and the “Big Open” Movement?
John Cummings commented that he is part of the working group here. He suggests: this is a vision for 2030 so please feel free to be bold in terms of what you would like things to be like. Also feel free to be blunt e.g instructions on wiki are terrible
Richard said that our focus should be on convening professional working groups and matching them to peer to peer working groups.
Esther said that communication from the Wikimedia Foundation is essential for this.
Kelly said that she wanted better communication channels for when Wikimedia Foundation staff leave. Sometimes organizations have dependencies on WMF staff, such as in the event space and in the trust and safety space, and there is disruption when there is no chain of communication. Richard said that it can be chaotic to lose a relationship with the WMF for an organization.
How do we develop technical infrastructure, capacities and support we need in order to be an effective partner to share “the sum of all knowledge” and fulfill the vision of knowledge as a service for our partners?
Esther asked John for clarification on this question. Is this about how the working group can build infrastructure, or how the working group can make requests of the WMF? Richard said that for example Magnus Manske makes tools for the community, but he is a volunteer. Many Wikimedia community members depend on Magnus’ tools but there is no WMF resource allocation to developing these tools on which many people rely.
Esther asked what our relationship should be with foundations and the government - when should the WMF be the bridge to community tool development, and when should other partner organizations serve the role which the WMF currently serves.
Esther shared that for example the Wiki Education Foundation provides the Programs and Events dashboard, which is not a WMF tool.
Jeffrey said that he wanted access to communication tools like Zoom, which we use to convene conversations. Luca agrees that Zoom is very helpful for webinars and communications.
Luca said that in Italy they have many requests for Wikibase-related things. The current Italian community outreach plan depends on libraries and if it were possible to bridge institutions and libraries through Wikibase, then Wikimedia partnerships in Italy would expand greatly. Luca also agreed with Jeffrey about access to tools which can host webinars. Many Wikimedia community members want such things and cannot get them.
Esther asked for clarification about Wikibase - is the requested support that the WMF create instances of Wikibase? Luca replied that we are still in the early phase of Wikibase development so many things are necessary. He described that libraries are comfortable setting up their own instances but there are some basic functions, like data exchange between a local instance and Wikidata, are still very difficult.
How can we empower people and organizations working on partnerships get the support they need to fulfill our potential to carry out diverse, sustainable, effective and impactful partnerships?
Hilary said that she is just establishing the Wikimedia program at her university. She started by talking with experienced Wikimedians at her school. A Wikimedia Foundation staff-person contacted her to offer some setup support. She has technical development-related questions and sometimes has questions about when to try to address these herself and when she should take an issue to the Wikimedia community for conversation. She said that she is learning all these things as she goes along but would appreciate any suggestions or tools to make her early planning more easy. She said that she was learning more about the Wikimedian in Residence roles by looking over documentation.
Esther comments that she is interested in better understanding funding sources - perhaps a part of the WREN on-boarding.
How do we create an inclusive, movement-wide culture of sharing knowledge, skills, and practices on collaborations and partnerships - so that everyone in the movement can participate in and benefit from them?
A better interface for sharing information, maybe? I confess I still have never uploaded an entire powerpoint presentation to Commons. Making new pages on Meta seems like whispering into a vast desert (one with hidden caches of valuable knowledge, admittedly) -Rachel Helps
Lane’s response: The basis of institutional partnerships is providing media reach. Wikipedia is a publishing channel, and organizations mostly take interest in Wikipedia because Wikipedia helps them reach a large and relevant audience. The shortcoming is that Wikipedia currently does not provide a communications dashboard or metrics report which matches the standard in contemporary media, like Facebook or Twitter. Our current tools for this are the Programs and Events Dashboard and the Massviews Analysis tools. Neither of these tools target organizations which have communication or educational impact as a goal. Instead, these and other Wikimedia tools primarily target editor recruitment as a goal. (Institutions want to see that people are actually looking at content in Wikipedia! That will help recruit more organizations.)
The basic problem is that the WMF incentivizes outreach that tries to recruit large numbers of new editors to make obscure articles which few people read. In contrast, knowledge organizations typically care less about recruiting lots of editors, and instead are happy to have fewer highly engaged editors sharing content which huge numbers of people read. Wikipedia can do this very easily and inexpensively, and highly trained Wikipedians in Residence can pull these metrics, but they are inaccessible to casual users.
Advocate that the Wikimedia Foundation promote the development of tools and infrastructure which align with contemporary institutional practices in communication, so that Wikimedia engagement can more easily fit into organizations’ communication workflows.
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Other comments: Conflict of Interest being confusing/could be conveyed more clearly/could be revised. Agreement that instructions and communication can be challenging - “less chance for missteps if people are communicating more” from Richard.
Diversity edit
Can we establish that every community must have a code of conduct which provides for inclusion of diversity? How does a commitment to diversity also manifest itself in the governance structures of our movement’s organizations, in our public relations, and social media representation? How do we transform our culture and collaborating spaces, including (but not limited to) articles, general discussions, talk pages, and Commons to support diverse representation of contributors and writers, as well as our definitions of reliable sources and neutrality, to build a safe environment where everyone (minorities/unrepresented/underrepresented/mainstream groups and cultures) is included and can see their knowledge represented and talk openly about themselves? Visual Editor (VE) helps with this a lot--I’d love to see it made the default editor for new editors. I’d also like to see VE enabled on talk pages. -Rachel Helps How do we avoid the pitfall of recentism, tapping in to elder networks, LGBT networks, women’s networks, indigenous communities, etc. to develop volunteers for the project as writers, developers, and document gatherers to find and preserve our hidden collective history? I think public libraries would be great partners here. They could integrate Wikimedia projects into programming they are already implementing for these communities as well as likely have partnerships and connections to other organizations working with those communities in their area. -Hilary Thorsen What effective measures should be taken for the future so our greater community can use languages other than English in order to make decisions, eliminating the requirement for a mastery of English as part of our decision-making community? What steps should stakeholders take to ensure language diversity across various platforms (languages, technology, interfaces and organisations for research, oral and visual technologies) to provide support to ensure the broadest possible representation of various languages as well as those with physical and cognitive challenges to participate in our movement? Do those who are learning (children and youth in particular) understand the content presented in and our projects and is the knowledge available in their learning language or platforms? Is it even attractive for their learning processes and reading-terminals (i.e. generations now learning more on video) ? Does integrating historically marginalized groups require that the movement stakeholders rethink its Creative Commons tenets by incorporating use of “No Derivative Works (ND)“ and “No Commercial Works” (NC) licensing (as well as changes on principles of notability and definitions and usage of other sources) to facilitate “authenticity” of voices which have been historically prohibited from telling their own history? Oral history is a frequent method of collecting information with “historically marginalized groups.” I’d like to see sourcing guidelines more specific to oral history (and preferably accepting of them as a reliable source if they adhere to certain criteria). -Rachel Helps No, this is misguided. There are no identified examples or case studies of organizations and individuals who both understand ND / NC licenses and use them in the way this question imagines. Creative Commons 2009 “Defining Noncommercial” study demonstrated that NC licenses are surrounded by misunderstanding and ignorance. There are no thought leaders who say intelligent, understanding things about these licenses. These licenses have no scholarly adherents or understanding community leaders behind them. The people who support these licenses are misled by anti-free culture propaganda and the evidence is that there are no people who both advocate for these licenses and also can state what they mean. - Lane What capacities should be developed within the Movement to combat the tensions that might arise due to increased content/knowledge from more diverse communities on Wikimedia platforms? How do we increase awareness in low awareness regions, in order to ensure adequate representation, both in level of volunteer participation and amount of content? More partnerships with public libraries? Just one idea. -Rachel Helps As volunteering is essentially a role for the privileged, should Wikimedia Foundation start giving monetary incentives and honorarium for people who volunteer a huge amount of their time to movement activities? I love this idea. I’m not sure how other editors would react to this (some are vocally against paid editing in most forms), but editors have received prize money from WMF-sponsored contests in the past, so this seems like a logical extension. -Rachel Helps Yes and no. The favoritism need not be to people with a history of movement activities. I would prefer to give the money to organizations which can have their staff contribute to Wikimedia projects. Pilots should be in the developing world. It is okay to discriminate to favor underrepresented target communities, like priority languages. I would really, really like to see money going to Bangladesh for Bengali language content. - Lane