Dear all,
Apologies, but I won't be able to join in the call tomorrow (travelling then).
Meanwhile, here are some of my suggested edits to the proposal on meta:
*Background **Para 1 - "some other groups with ambiguously defined roles". Can this be clarified in a footnote or something? What exactly does this mean?
*Para 1 - "The strategy for the growth of Wikimedia calls for an expansion of the activities of chapters and for the growth of new chapters or *chapter-like entities* all over the world." The term "chapter-like entities". Is this accurate?
Para 1 - "This expansion could increase complexity and confusion among all of the entities within the Wikimedia movement." Could we also add the positives to this sentence? eg "While this expansion would ----- (positives), it could also increase complexity and confusion..."
Para 2 - May be better to refer to Wikimedia movement here, rather than Wikimedia organization?
*Purpose* 1. Clarify roles and responsibilites of different *organizations*, groups and people working to support the international Wikimedia movement. My suggestion is that we change 'organizations' to 'entities'.
I think purpose no 2: "set up the Wikimedia movement for success..." needs a bit more specificity; it is currently a bit broad. How can we link movement roles more to this?
*Stakeholders* Do we need to use the term "unaffiliated volunteers?" Or will just volunteers suffice? (The use of the word "unaffiliated" somehow seems to privilege affiliation).
On the *questionnaire*, agree with Barry's point.
Hope this helps, Bishakha
On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 2:07 PM, Jon Huggett jon.huggett@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Alice
Sorry you will not be able to join us on Sunday. Thanks for sending us these thoughts now.
A couple of quick responses below, as well as a clarifying question for you, too.
Barry made an important point when binding the questions to the strategy priorities. If we don't take this chance to strengthen them and their perception we might loose our own working base.
Thanks. This is critical.
Following this I would like to see a question which asks where the answerer sees himself, his position within the Wikimedia Movement.This could be useful to get something about the people, not only the entities and maybe it shows necessities, which can be a good starting point for thinking about structures and organization of the relationships between the different entities.
It is good to know where the respondent is "coming from". Do you mean "objectively" – that the respondent says who they are and what they do – or more "subjectively" – the role that they would like to play and the contribution that they want to make?
What I miss is an idea of how we are going to allocate the questionnaire. Which way will we use to deploy it? Who will be the addressees? And how are we going to analyse incoming answers? It would be great not only to have the voices we already know but also the silent ones or the ones which are not as deep into the internal discussions as we are. But - sorry to say - I have no answer or suggestions about that in this moment.
That is the next step. BTW, this is an interview guide, not a format for a survey.
Regards, Alice.
On 1 October 2010 09:27, Austin Hair adhair@gmail.com wrote:
It looks like Barry meant for this to go to the list.
Austin
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Barry Newstead bnewstead@wikimedia.org Date: Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 1:54 AM Subject: Re: [Movementroles] Next steps To: Austin Hair adhair@gmail.com
Hi - So I've reviewed the questionnaire (didn't take long) and I'm concerned about the framing of this and the potential for anchoring based on narrow interest groups. This probably affects the proposal somewhat as well, now that I think of it.
- Framing: It is structured in a way that makes me think the issue is
only about how to divide a resource pie between chatpers-WMF-other. I actually think the core questions should be "How do we achieve our vision and the strategic priorities laid out in our movement strategy?" This provides a frame for movement roles and allows us to make decisions on the basis of their contribution (or potential contribution) to the goals. Without this, we have nothing to base decisions on and frankly I don't think we'll reach a good conclusion (i.e., aligning the movement around a shared agenda).
I would like us to ask questions about the achievement of the strategy. To paraphrase: Secure our infrastructure, Increase global participation, Improve quality, Expand reach and Support innovation. (http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities)
I think the questionnaire should ask "What role do various groups play in achieving our movement priorities? What do these groups need to fulfill this role? What do they need from other to fulfill this role? What do they need to provide others to fulfill their roles?"
- Narrow interests: I'm concerned that one group of stakeholders will
be most active in responding, namely existing participants on "internal" or "fdtn-L", and this will anchor the answers around a combination of their experience (most folks have limited experience around structuring global organizations) and interests. I think it is important to hear these perspectives, but I worry that if we ask them some of these questions, they will (fairly) assume that the way we are going to get to resolution is to draw a consensus view of their inputs. This would be a problem, since there are vital voices that are highly unlikely to engage - future contributors (mostly from the Global South) and current contributors who aren't active in the existing "power structures"
Sorry for the relatively late engagement, but figure this is food for thought for your meetings on Sunday.
Best, Barry
On 09/30/2010 07:14 AM, Austin Hair wrote:
Hi guys,
I'm breaking this out into a separate e-mail, just so everyone's clear on what we're currently doing:
First, I apologize for not writing about this sooner, but Jon and Arne and I will be meeting in Frankfurt on 3 October to take care of some mostly administrative stuff. If anyone's available at 1500 UTC on that day, I think a conference call would be very productive. I know it seems silly to set up a Doodle for a single time, but it's nice to have a standard location to see at a glance who can attend—please take just a second to add an entry at [0].
As previously discussed, the draft proposal (to whom is apparently not yet clear) is at [1], so please weigh in as soon as you can. Since our working timeline has this made official in just a few days, this is the #1 priority.
Additionally, a draft questionnaire/survey is at [2], which everyone should take a look at in the next few days. This is public, of course, and once it's finalized the idea is to have people copy it to their userspace and link back on that page. They're fairly open-ended questions, and intentionally so—it's meant to get a general feel of what the community thinks of the topic, and allow people with very strong opinions to make those opinions known.
And in case you're wondering, I'm still working on the central calendar/schedule we talked about in our last meeting—expect that later today.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles_working_group/Proposal
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles_working_group/Questionnaire
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