Dear Maryana,

During our last meeting, we promised to get back to you and explain further developments regarding the Montenegrin issue.  We did not manage to get any new answers, explanations, or closure regarding this topic hence my update about the status of the Montenegrin community (which is a part of our CEE region) will be just another try to chronologically explain this issue and hopefully raise the attention to the importance of the way we are communicating and dealing with Wikimedia communities in general.

Hereby I want to share with you a document which was prepared by one Montenegrin volunteer, where she explains in detail the past and current situation of the project, all actions that took place and reactions (and the lack of reactions) which were received.

CEE Hub became aware of this issue in April 2023 and since then, on behalf of the CEE hub I have tried to get some clarifications. I contacted Langcom (in writing, via emails) and I reached out to Langcom liaisons too. I tried to explain the importance of dealing with this topic because all our communities are important, and transparency is one of our core values. Also, on the LangCom’s Meta page there is a very useful information and explanation about transparency where communities are invited to reach out and interact with Langcom:

‘Transparency edit | edit source

·        The whole set of activities of the language committee is public, and any advice from the community is welcome.

·        The committee values the fact that projects are a property of the single editors who make it and considers users' necessities as the primary source for policy.

·        The committee is especially interested in hearing those who proposed a new wiki in the past and got either refused or approved.’

 

Today in this email, I am not writing anything new. I am just repeating what I already explained when reaching out to Langcom before.

I truly believe that within the Wikimedia movement we have sufficient resources to adequately deal with topics such as this one and that every WM community deserves to receive our clear and transparent feedback. I hope that we can do something together to move this topic forward.

I am offering CEE Hub's assistance and support with whatever we can do.

Best wishes,

 

Barbara Klen

CEE HUB Coordinator

Tel. +385 91 1504 413

Web. www.wmceehub.org