New subject: Fwd: Where are we standing now?

18 Dec 2011


      Hello,
Am replying to your questions inline to the best of my ability. SJ may be
in a better position to provide more info.
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 9:32 PM, Alice Wiegand me.lyzzy@googlemail.comwrote:
...
Hi SJ, hi all,
the last input to this mailing list was made by SJ a day before the
board meeting in October. Phoebe announced the minutes (
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-10-07 ) at the end of
November and stated on internal-l that there where no decisions or
votes regarding movement roles. Nothing else.
Movement Roles was allocated 1.5 hours at the board meeting. That is
nowhere near enough to seriously discuss the three items that Sam placed
before the full board:
- Endorsing a movement charter:
   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles_project/charter
   - Endorsing three new models for organizations, in addition to the
   current Chapters: partner organizations, informal associations and
   affiliates
   - Appointing an Affiliations Committee, which would include members from
   the Board, to expand on the current Chapters Committee model by working
   with all types of Wikimedia organizations.
Board members asked some broader questions since there wasn't enough time
to go into the substance of it:
How specific does a charter need to be in order to be useful?
Is something that is very general useful enough?
How can one strike a balance between stating general principles and
ensuring they are worded tightly enough to mean something substantial?
How long should a charter be? While most trustees felt this should be tight
and concise, similar to what's being developed, a minority were in favour
of a much longer charter, upto 100 pages.
How will entities in the movement signal their acceptance of the charter?
No conclusions were reached on any of these - perhaps this is something for
the MR workgroup to consider.
The proposed new models and the proposed affiliations committee were
discussed together. There was general support for the idea of having new
models. On the proposed models themselves, there were questions about the
specific 'names': partner orgs, informal associations, affiliates - it was
suggested that the names be reviewed again for precision and to ensure
there is no confusion about the type of group. For example, 'cultural
groups' or 'cultural chapters'?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles/summary/New_Models
Jon Huggett was also present at this part of the meeting. As far as I know,
his contract ended on 31 October - but I wonder if he is still on this
list. (Jon, are you here?)
Following this, an IRC Board Discussion was held on 6 Nov to carry the New
Models/Affiliations Committee discussion forward. Here, the main question
was about the nature of the Affiliations Committee - Is it to be a board
committee? A staff committee? What form could this committee take? We were
tasked to ask the MR workgroup to think further about these.
I am reconstructing the main points from board emails/memory. SJ has the
draft summary of the IRC chat and can add more.
...
Is there something going on currently? Can we hear some of the voices
of your board discussion? Are you planning next steps in the process?
We definitely need to plan next steps in the process together - this has
languished enough. SJ and I have had two very short conversations about
this; he has been really busy, but I'm hopeful that we can restart the
planning process from the coming week.
...
The preparation for the chapters meeting is going to begin soon. If
the movement roles project still exists, there is no way to not
present something or reanimate it at that meeting. What are we going
to do?
Let us start discussing this once we restart the planning process; my
personal goal is to get Movement Roles moving again before the year is out,
along with an agreed process in place for doing so. Agreed by those who are
part of the MR working group, I mean. (Very similar to what you state in
your next para, and I'm prepared to put in time towards this.)
All ideas welcome.
...
Unfortunately I feel not only frustrated about the process but also
uninformed about the current status. And I mean both, the status of
the movement roles process (which doesn't really look like doing any
kind of processing) and the status of this group. Is there still a
group existing? Is there still interest in having a group (formerly
called core team)? What are the tasks the group is responsible for? In
my last mail I talked about burying and reanimation and more than then
I would prefer to put an end to it at this stage and officially
restart next year with a new team and defined roles and tasks.
I fully share your frustration. This has been a stop-start process right
from the beginning, moving in fits and starts. And many times when we seem
to be getting somewhere, we then go into hibernation. I am tired of the
number of times I have had to go back and re-read every single thing on the
MR pages on meta to refresh my memory before a re-start.
And I agree that the last three months has been particularly frustrating,
with hardly any movement or information or anything happening. I can only
apologize on behalf of all the three board members who are on Movement
Roles: none of us took the initiative to move things forward or to at least
provide information to this list.(This is my belated attempt at doing so).
 I think the three of us need to sort out our roles among ourselves more
clearly, so we can provide back-ups to each other when one of us may be
exceptionally busy. We don't have such a system in place and we need one if
we are to move ahead purposively, as opposed to in fits and starts.
About whether or not the MR group still exists, there are certainly
individuals who seem interested in seeing this through.
About the tasks that the group is responsible for, SJ and I had a brief
chat yesterday and we both feel it would good for individuals in the group
to take more responsibility for seeing through specific pieces or
recommendations from MR that they feel passionately about. For instance,
smaller workgroups could be formed around each of these recommendations
with specific mandates. Others who are interested in these but not part of
the MR list could come in too. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles/recommendations/board and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles/recommendations for the
current set of proposed recommendations.
So overall, I agree that something needs to be done, something that can
move this forward meaningfully towards a conclusion.
I hope that we will have more specifics later this week, but until then, it
would be most excellent if anyone on this list could put forward their
thoughts, ideas, suggestions etc. so that all these could be considered as
part of the 're-imagining' of Movement Roles.
Best
Bishakha