Thanks for the feedback, Shaba.
On Sun, Apr 28, 2024 at 7:47 AM Stephane Coillet-Matillon < stephane@kiwix.org> wrote:
Thanks SJ, very interesting. And cool to hear that there’s interest around offline wikis.
The million-dollar question I guess after what you wrote is whether we should support or not this Charter when it is put up for a vote?
Personally, I am unlikely to support this version of a Charter: it is still changing too much and too opaquely. A charter for our movement of all movements should honor the value of fast, flexible, frequent iteration. [the committee just confirmed https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_Charter#End_of_the_Community_Engagement they will make another major bulk revision and immediately proceed to a vote.]
For our group, even if the final text resolves the many open issues with the current draft, I think we should be wary of supporting it for two reasons:
*–* Revisions are going to be made even harder. From Risker's latest comment https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_Charter#Alternate_ratification_and_amendment_process_proposals on the talk page, all revisions of any substance may require a community vote. That's a risky outcome in my view: a high-overhead governance process, requiring a second high-overhead process to make any changes.
*=* This final round of outreach + vote has positioned affiliates against individual contributors in terms of setting tone, purpose, & priorities.* This is an affiliate-heavy governance proposal with a few affiliates already asking for a Council to be the "highest decision-maker" about resource distribution.** That doesn't feel right for reasons Yger expressed here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_Charter#Concerns_over_comments_from_Affiliates_EDs_and_Affiliates_summit. We should fix this in the draft before voting, or indicate that more work is needed.
Sam
* There has been little substantive engagement of the broader editing community since the first drafts landed on Meta last year. The last month of outreach leaned heavily on a Summit gathering of affiliates alone. ** This would be risky governance practice to assign to a yet-undefined Council, with gameable governance and COI challenges. It's also rather different from the 2019 plans that started us down this path https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Iteration_2/Roles_%26_Responsibilities/2%263 .