[From my comments in the rebranding survey]
"Movement"
Please stop calling us a "movement". I am an active Wikipedia contributor,
but I do not feel part of a movement. Know that I feel excluded when we are
referred to as a movement. I would guess that most Wikimedians do not
consider themselves part of a movement. I feel that I am part of the
Wikimedia _community_.
Note that in the English Wikipedia the title of the relevant article is
indeed "Wikipedia community", _not_ "Wikipedia movement" (which is a
redirect). In fact, the word "movement" does not appear in the main text of
the article at all. "Wikimedia movement" is the title of its article, but
it is described as "the global community of contributors to Wikimedia
Foundation projects". A community of contributors is not the same thing as
a movement. I would say that none of the definitions given in the
Definitions section of the Social movement article apply to us.
One significant problem to using "movement" is that some, including the
WMF, exploit the connotations of the word towards social justice, or a
"greater good", as a rationalization for behaviors that a community might
not support (and in many cases our community has indeed opposed WMF's
behavior). Another is the implication that there is basically a core set of
beliefs and priorities that all those involved support. This is clearly not
the case in the Wikimedia community. I also think there is an assumption
that in a movement, there are institutions that those in the movement
explicitly or implicitly authorize to speak for them. Again, clearly this
is not the case in the Wikimedia community overall.
Paul Weiss
User:Libcub
[From my comments in the rebranding survey]
Other
"We network around our best-known brand to connect the movement together".
That feels like marketing-speak. It is unclear what you are trying to
communicate. I do not think that contributors of non-WP projects want to
"network" around Wikipedia.
The lack of hierarchy in names is detrimental to communication and
understanding of our work.
Paul Weiss
User:Libcub
[From my comments in the rebranding survey]
Name of WMF
To me a trust implies one party relegating authority over a resource to a
second party, who is expected to manage it well, and return it at some
point to the first party or a third party. I do not see the WMF's role as
including such as a notion. I also do not think that including "Trust"
makes it any clearer that the WMF is where to go for legal issues. (Also, I
do find it ironic that the proposal suggests incorporating the word "Trust"
in the name of WMF, given how low the community trust in WMF is.)
"Wikimedia Organization" does not sound like the name of something, but
rather a general description of it.
"Wiki" is too generic to refer to WMF projects--there are far too many
other wikis in the world. I have to say I am truly astonished to see this
presented as a legitmate option. Various other wiki communities (such as
those at fandom.com) would be understandably furious with WMF for trying to
co-opt "Wiki" for themselves. How could that possibly not be damaging to
our reputation?
I think "Foundation" is a good word to describe what WMF does.
Paul Weiss
User:Libcub
[From my comments in the rebranding survey]
Wikimedia vs. Wikipedia
Our overall community centers around the current Wikimedia concept, not
Wikipedia. Naming the whole from one its parts is ambiguous, confusing, and
disrespectful to non-Wikipedia projects. The majority of the population of
the United States is white, but it would be absolutely preposterous to
rename the country to the White United States of America, even if that is
how people in other countries (and Americans) think of it.
We are not selling a product or service. I think it is _good_ that some
organizations and people do not know about our plethora of projects, as
that gives us an opportunity to talk with them about the other projects. I
believe that changing the name to "Wikipedia" will make it more difficult
to get outsiders to pay attention to non-Wikipedia projects.
I believe that moving to "Wikipedia" will damage our reputation. In
addition to the reasons above, it will likely alienate at least some of
those involved in non-Wikipedia projects. It could turn the community into
the Wikipedia community, as our other projects fade away.
Paul Weiss
User:Libcub
Hi everyone-
Today, we are rescheduling the Naming Convention Proposal community review
planned for May 7 - 21, including tomorrow's live presentation. This
critical part of the Movement Brand Project is designed to share and
review compelling,
unifying naming proposals that would sustain our free knowledge mission far
into the future. [1]
We are incredibly excited to talk NAMES with our communities. We know how
important naming is to the Movement, and together we’ve made considerable
progress on options that would allow us to invite and inspire people to
join us. People join the movements that move them, and we want our Naming
Convention Proposals to be both functional and appealing.
We are particularly interested in “Wiki” as a potential direction, often
suggested by the community and widely used in our Movement. However, there
are significant practical issues with "Wiki" due to the relevant trademark
landscape. We do not want to present to you an option that we could not
make work. The fastest thing to do would be to remove it from the
possibilities, but we hear your preferences and we don’t want to do that.
Instead, we need more time to expand the research and risk evaluation with
our Legal team and the Board to fully understand what opportunities we
have.
We recognize that changing timing may appear to avoid a necessary and
promised discussion. Nothing could be further from our intentions. We want
to meet our commitment to you to present the best options based on the
conversations we’ve had so far, instead of a more limited set of options
that we had to narrow in order to meet our deadline. We want to have more
exploration and clarity on the risks, costs, and rewards of naming changes
to share with you at this critical phase.
Collaborating with our Legal team and the Board, we will work to have more
details to share with you soon. The Project Team will meet with the Board
of Trustees during their May 22nd summit, and will follow up as soon as we
can after.
Yours in branding,
- Zack, Essie, Elena, Samir, Rupika and the entire Brand Project team
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_moveme…
--
Zack McCune (he/him)
Director of Brand
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
In line with Asaf's suggestion that discussion stays on-wiki, there
has been initial discussion based on unambiguous example cases of
scientific racism at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Black_Lives_Matter#Scientific_racism
As the incidents are on a large number of different non-English
Wikipedias, an English Wikipedia wikiproject or noticeboard would
probably be ineffective as a place to gain a consensus on actions or
cross-wiki policies.
Please join the discussion at meta, or suggest at the link above any
better venues to analyse and propose constructive ideas to ensure that
Wikipedia articles in all languages do not provide the public with
misinformation rather than current science fact or properly framed and
sourced historical accuracy.
Thanks,
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
Dear colleagues,
On behalf of Wikimedia Armenia, I congratulate all of us on the
establishment of the Wikimedia Foundation. It carries out a very important
mission in all corners of the world, ensuring such important activities
that contribute to free knowledge, content creation, and dissemination. We
are glad to be a part of the Wikimedia movement and to have our
contribution to the promotion and development of the Wikimedia projects.
“Wikimedia Armenia” NGO’s Chair of the Board
Vahagn Piliposyan
Hi Folks,
There is a proposal initiated by the Wikimedia Foundation to call ourselves
the "Wikipedia Network", "Wikipedia Movement" or simply "Wiki".
I strongly suggest that the Foundation should allocate time & resources
with the Wikimedia community fully involved in *identifying and resolving
the real problem *that brought the idea of creating the brands department.
These include opening communication channels like what was done in our
strategy 2030 process to ask recommendations on how we strengthen the
Wikimedia identity (like having online and offline promotion of the
"Wikimedia" identity)
I was puzzled how this Brand project was not fully integrated in the 2017
and 2018-2020 Movement Strategy Process.
But hey, we can do a counter proposal and offer a better and more
acceptable solution to this.
As shared by the Florence in the other mailing list:
1) if you are not aware of the topic, and arguments behind the
proposition ---->
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_moveme…
2) if you would like to read some feedback from the community, check
this :
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Should_the_Foundation_…
3) to read the proposals :
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_moveme…
4) to watch the presentation via youtube :
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3zlBGHHHiY
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3zlBGHHHiY>*
--
Sincerely,
Butch Bustria
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The information contained in this message is privileged and intended only
for the recipients named. If the reader is not a representative of the
intended recipient, any review, dissemination or copying of this message or
the information it contains is prohibited. If you have received this
message in error, please immediately notify the sender, and delete the
original message and attachments.
Please consider the environment before printing this email.
Hi everyone,
This is a friendly reminder that the Affiliations Committee (AffCom) – the
committee responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing and sustaining
Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups – is seeking
new members! The deadline to post your application on the nomination page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Candidates/June_2020>
is 30 June 2020.
-
Application process: Considering the anticipated changes following the
Strategy recommendations, we had a limited scope to introduce changes in
the process. We have made a small but impactful addition to the application
process by introducing the Self Assessment survey form which will help the
committee know more about your engagement as endorsements are not
consistently shared, may not be representative, and often do not speak to
the specific skills needed.
-
Selection process: No change; see:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Rules_of_Procedure
If you have any questions, please contact me and/or the committee as a
whole. We are happy to answer questions about our work if this helps people
decide to apply. Please distribute this announcement among your networks.
Good luck to all the candidates!
On behalf of the committee,
Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (she/her)
Chair, Affiliations Committee