Movement Strategy and Governance Newsletter: Issue 7

Welcome to the 7th issue (July-September 2022) of the Movement Strategy and Governance Newsletter! The newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the implementation of Wikimedia’s Movement Strategy recommendations, other relevant topics regarding Movement governance, as well as different projects and activities supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The MSG Newsletter is delivered quarterly. However, if you are interested in frequent updates, there is the Movement Strategy Weekly, which is for Wikimedians who want to closely follow our processes. You can leave feedback or ideas for future newsletter on the talk page. You can also help us by translating the newsletter into your language/s and sharing it on your community platforms. You are also invited to subscribe to the newsletter here.

Thank you for reading and participating!

Increase the Sustainability of our Movement

WMF carbon footprint report published: The carbon emission of the Wikimedia Foundation decreased by 7% from previous years. This is indicated in the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2021 annual environmental sustainability (carbon footprint) report. The purpose is to ensure that our work and mission supports a more sustainable world. You can read a summary of the report on Diff and the detailed reported on Wikimedia Commons (pdf).

Improve User Experience

Improvement to Wikimedia projects desktop interface : the Web team of Wikimedia Foundation started a series of improvements as part of the Vector 2022 project. The improvements include various changes to the features of Wikimedia projects page, such as the user menu, header, and table of contents. Read more on Diff.

Provide for Safety and Inclusion

The work on the Universal Code of Conduct continues. A Revision Committee is reviewing community feedback to make changes to the Enforcement Guidelines. The Revision Committee also published an updated timeline. You can continue to share feedback on Meta or on the new Movement Strategy Forum. You can also discuss a recently approved grant request to test peer support groups for administrators.

Ensure Equity in Decision-Making

• Hubs : From 24 to 26 June 2022, the MSG team convened a series of Global Conversations about the proposed Minimum Criteria for Hub Pilots. A report from these conversations will be published soon.
• Movement Charter drafting : the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) met in-person for the first time. Their meeting took place in Berlin, Germany from 17 to 19 June 2022. MCDC is currently preparing the outline of the Charter (similar to table of contents). The outline will be divided between several sub-committees to draft each part of it. MCDC also welcomed a new member, Daria Cybulska, who replaced Jamie Li-Yun Lin. Read monthly updates.
• Wikimedia Deutschland white paper on designing futures of participation in the Wikimedia Movement: Wikimedia Deutschland collaborated with a small group of Wikimedians to publish a white paper that aimed to “provide input for the potential design of participatory processes in the Wikimedia Movement”. The white paper is connected to the drafting process of the Movement Charter. A non-public presentation and Q&A session is scheduled on 11 July 2022. Read the white paper (pdf).

Coordinate Across Stakeholders

Helpdesk for content partnership launched : as part of its work towards creating a Content Partnerships Hub, Wikimedia Sverige has launched a Helpdesk to provide hands-on support to affiliates and volunteers who are trying to form content partnerships, especially for local communities in the underserved and underrepresented parts of the world. Read more on Diff.

Invest in Skills and Leadership Development

• Capacity building for Brazilian community leaders : An average of 2,000 active editors are contributing to the Portuguese Wikipedia, with a significant number of them coming from Brazil; some are also organizers linked to the country’s sole Wikimedia Affiliate Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB). WMB members Lucas Piantá and Adriane Batata are aiming to to build a capacity building plan along with community members willing to engage further in the Wikimedia movement through their latest project, Capacitação de lideranças brasileiras (“Leadership Development Plan for the Brazilian communities”).
• Needs assessment research starting in Cape Verde : In the other side of the Atlantic, Portugal-based Wikimedian-in-Residence, Rute Correia, recently visited the African country of Cape Verde to start the ground work for an assessment needs research, with the intention to share the research findings with the community by September 2022.

Manage Internal Knowledge

Wikimedia Developer Portal launched : the Developer Advocacy team of the Wikimedia Foundation launched Wikimedia Developer Portal , a “centralized entry point for finding technical documentation and community resources”. Read more on Tech Blog.

Innovate in Free Knowledge

• High-quality videos for scientific experiments : Shared Knowledge, the Wikimedia movement affiliate in Macedonia, are continuing with their Wikiexperiments project, which aims to record high-quality videos of systematically selected physics, chemistry, and biology experiments in order to illustrate important scientific concepts and phenomenas. This project was started in 2015, in collaboration with the Institute of Physics, FNSM in Skopje.
• New toolkit to record oral transcripts : Wikimedians Amrit Sufi and Nitesh Gill have published the Oral Culture Transcription Toolkit, which is a set of tools that gives detailed instructions on how to record oral culture, how to upload them on Wikimedia Commons, and how to create transcription and upload it on Wikisource.

Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt

Results from the Equity Landscape project pilot : in February 2022, the Global Data and Insights team of Wikimedia Foundation launched the first cohort for the pilot of the Equity Landscape project, which aims to “map our existing wealth of landscape data to develop an equity landscape data reference and index”. A full report is available on Meta-wiki. Read more on Diff.

Other news and updates

• Movement Strategy Forum : in late May 2022, the MSG team launched a proposal for a Movement Strategy Forum (MS Forum), which is a Discourse-based multilingual discussion forum for all Wikimedians to ideate and discuss the implementation of the Movement Strategy initiatives. The detailed proposal has been published on Meta-wiki. The review period is until 24 July 2022 and Wikimedians are invited to give their feedback. If there is enough community consensus in support of the MS Forum, it will be launched in August 2022 before Wikimania. The MSG team publishes a weekly report that provides statistical insights into the forum.
• 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election : the process to elect new members of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is ongoing. A total of twelve candidates will run for the two community-and-affiliate-elected seats. The representatives of Wikimedia Movement affiliates will vote in July 2022 to shortlist six candidates. The Wikimedia community at-large will vote in August 2022 to elect the final two candidates. Voters can rely on the individual candidate rankings provided by an all-volunteer Analysis Committee, the Election Compass, and the candidate’s very own answers to the questions posed to them before voting.
  • Register yourself as an Election Volunteer if you want to be more involved in the Board of Trustees elections. An election volunteer will be responsible for bridging the gap between the Elections Committee, the facilitation team supporting the Board of Trustees election, and the Wikimedia community. You will help your local community members to participate in the election and contribute to shaping the future of our Movement.
• WIKIMOVE podcast : our colleagues from the Movement Strategy and Global Relations team at Wikimedia Deutschland launched WIKIMOVE, a podcast aimed to “be a forum for open and frank conversations about topics related to Movement Strategy”. The episodes are available with RSS Feed on major podcast platforms. Video version, with English subtitles, is available on YouTube. The latest episode featured a discussion about the UNLOCK Accelerator project, which was a recipient of the Movement Strategy Implementation Grants.
• Changes to the MSG team : a small note of gratitude and good luck in their future endeavors to our departing colleagues who left the Wikimedia Foundation or moved to other team: Youngjin Ko, Yumiko Shibata, Sam Oyeyele, and Jackie Koerner. Thank you, and see you around!