Dear all,
For those following the conversations around the Movement Charter work,
please find below and on Meta [1] the feedback that the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees gave to the Movement Charter Drafting
Committee (MCDC) on April 30. If you are interested in hearing more about
the Foundation’s perspective, we shall also be making space at the upcoming
cross-regional annual planning call
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:Wikimedia_APP_Community_Call> on 15
May [2].
As a note, the letter addresses both high-level things, like values, and
practical matters, like budget. Some of the text reiterates the feedback
provided to the MCDC earlier.
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_Charter#Wikimedia_Foundation_…
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:Wikimedia_APP_Community_Call
Best regards,
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
==============
Dear Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC),
Once again, thank you for your dedicated volunteer work over the past two
years on the challenging task of developing a document designed to foster a
sense of belonging and a definition of roles and responsibilities for
current and future members of our Movement. Below, please find the feedback
from the Wikimedia Foundation. Some parts would be new for you, as a
reaction to the draft you published on April 2, 2024; and some parts are
reiterations of the feedback shared with you directly earlier, like the letter
we sent with perspectives
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_Charter#Wikimedia_Foundation_…>
[1] on the Global Council in February 2024, which remain relevant.
The Wikimedia Foundation’s commitment is first and foremost to Wikimedia's
public interest mission to make free knowledge available to the world. In
the Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy process, participants developed
principles and recommendations that guide how we pursue this goal—among
them ensuring Equity in Decision-making
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Recommendations/Ensure_Eq…>
[2]. The Foundation’s Board has endorsed these recommendations in principle
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Movement_Strategy_Endorsem…>
in 2020 [3].
Having a Movement Charter is a planned and significant change, and the
Board must consider how this particular Movement Charter proposal would
enable the movement to effectively handle present and future challenges
(for example, more external regulation, generative AI, and graver risk of
external interference in sharing free knowledge). In deciding whether to
ratify/adopt this proposal, the Board has a duty to consider the value,
cost, and risk to the mission. The Movement Charter has to be weighed
against the resource demands of every other potential Wikimedia movement
priority, so there must be a strong and convincing argument for its benefit
to the mission compared to making improvements through the current
structure.
The three concerns that we raised about the February 2024 draft of the
Movement Charter remain in this latest draft: the purpose of the Global
Council is not clearly connected to our public interest mission, the size
and cost of the Global Council is unwieldy and impractical, and the values
proposed in the Movement Charter have not been validated by the Wikimedia
communities.
In the present form, and following discussion with our fellow trustees, we,
as the liaisons from the Board of Trustees, would not be able to recommend
that the Board vote to ratify the Charter; substantive changes are still
needed. We do hope there is opportunity to address some of these issues
prior to the final text.
=== Purpose and evaluation of the Global Council ===
The proposed Movement Charter needs to take a strong and clear position on
how it will advance Wikimedia's public interest mission. The Board is aware
that there are different perspectives on the problems the Movement faces
when it comes to Movement Governance. The MCDC has thought about these
questions, as they have been discussed throughout the Movement Strategy
process. Even if there is disagreement, however, the purpose of the Global
Council can and must be clear in the Charter. Only if it is clearly
articulated how establishing it effectively addresses the shortcomings of
the current structures that the Global Council is designed to address and why
this formulation is expected to be impactful, then Wikimedians can truly
understand what they are voting on when they are asked to ratify the
Charter.
Currently, there is no clear and compelling explanation of how the current
Global Council proposal will ensure equity in decision-making
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Recommendations/Ensure_Eq…>.
The document should explain how the Global Council design will make
decision-making more equitable, how forming the Global Council helps the
movement better achieve its public interest mission of collecting and
sharing free knowledge with the world, and the rationale for the proposed size
and make-up of the Council. Having such clarity will also provide guidance
on how to evaluate the effectiveness of the Global Council once it is
operational and define its success.
If we imagine a negative scenario, where the Global Council fails to be
effective at improving our work, and where the Charter does not specify
what particular challenges it would be expected to address, it would be
difficult to justify disbanding it, simply because it is in the Charter. As
another example, if the argument for size is diversity, a size ten times
larger would surely be even more diverse; but that comes at a cost for
effectiveness. This is what we expect to see a rationale for.
=== Size and expense of the Global Council ===
The mission and the goals of the proposed complex structure of the Global
Council—Global Council Assembly (GCA) and Global Council Board (GCB)—are
unclear. The GCA would be significantly larger than any other globally
elected body across the Movement. This poses new and unique challenges,
including how to adequately support it and ensure it will be effective in
improving equity in decision-making, accessible for people to participate,
and not overly bureaucratic to be responsive.
Moreover, the Global Council cost, both in financial terms and in terms of
volunteers' time, is still unclear, and could require significant
trade-offs with other Mission priorities. With all these complexities and
uncertainties, we believe that the Global Council needs to be approached as
a pilot initiative, in line with the Movement Strategy Recommendation
to evaluate,
iterate, and adapt
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Recommendations/Evaluate,…>.
The financial and volunteer resources to support the Global Council's
success must be considered alongside the support for other critical work in
the Movement. This includes other initiatives aimed at improving equity–the
concern is not whether equity should be funded, but how best to use such
funds for the greatest impact.
A one-off meeting of such a body is unlikely to lead to decisions that
couldn't otherwise be made with a simpler community vote or consultation
and would be considerably less inclusive; and year-round staff support and
expenses would consume a significant sum from the operating budget. The
MCDC itself struggled to start working even with active facilitation and
staff support, and a much larger group would struggle even more. This
money—as well as volunteer time and effort—would be diverted from other
work that is directly pursuing our mission of collecting and disseminating
human knowledge. And we are unconvinced it will benefit the Movement in
more effective and equitable decision-making. For instance, whether equity
would be better served by a large assembly where it is difficult to have
qualitative conversations or with a small group that would also be able to
travel and meet people where they are to accommodate diverse perspectives?
Again, if the Charter were to describe how the Council would be delivering
objectives it is being set up to deliver, it would be easier to assess the
necessity of this size.
Assuming the Charter articulates the mission and goals of the GCA and GCB,
then practically speaking, it is reasonable to move forward in the short
term with the level of support that was provided to the MCDC, a body of
approximately 15 volunteers, over the past two years (selection,
onboarding, translation support, facilitation, note-taking, project
management, stipends, and travel to name a few). Such support can be
reassigned to the selection and work of a new body of roughly the same size
without cutting into the programmatic work that is done by the Foundation
and other Wikimedia organizations. For the piloting stage, a body of this
size is a reasonable commitment to start preparing for and accepting
responsibilities while reviewing and improving needed structures to do so,
and sorting out the next steps for us as the Movement. The best use of the
resources should be determined in more detail at the implementation stage
itself.
We therefore encourage you to amend the draft to explicitly allow for the
Global Council to be bootstrapped gradually, starting small, and verify if
the approach works, before we commit to supporting a larger body. As with
any pilot, we should have clear goals to understand if the new approach is
an effective and useful approach and, if not, be prepared to modify the
approach by expanding or taking a new direction.
=== Values require wider validation ===
Our concern with the Values section mentioned in the letter titled Wikimedia
Foundation feedback on Movement Charter 1.0 Draft remains. These values
have not received wider validation by the Movement to affirm that they are
shared and also that they are properly prioritized. We have heard this
concern voiced by other Movement participants.
== Next steps and ratification ==
The Charter ratification vote at the end of June will be a critical time
for community members and affiliates to share their perspectives, as the
voters would be able to leave comments and arguments for why they voted the
way they did, even though the vote itself is just yes or no. If the Charter
is ratified, the data would provide some reasons why it was supported. If
it is not ratified, the data would provide some indications of how to plan
the next steps. This was extremely valuable in the second iteration of the
Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines, which technically passed
its first vote but also raised significant enough concerns that we paused
to address them.
Regardless of the outcome of the ratification vote in June, the Board and
Foundation staff are discussing immediate steps that the Foundation can
take to ensure that certain significant functions for the Wikimedia
movement are overseen jointly with the appropriate Movement-led bodies. As
we have mentioned on Meta before [1], these functions for now include:
decision-making
on Fund dissemination, decision-making on Affiliate recognition and
strategy, and advice on Product & Technology. We shall also soon be sharing
considerable trust and safety work with the upcoming Universal Code of
Conduct Coordinating Committee. More details are outlined in the draft
2024-2025 Foundation annual plan
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2024-2025/…>
[4], which is currently undergoing a community consultation.
We want to thank you again, MCDC members, for the extraordinary amount of
time, creativity, and commitment you have all brought to this process. The
Board is encouraged by many of the conversations, ideas, and proposals that
have come out of the MCDC’s two years of work, and the Board supports the
creation of structures for more participatory Movement-led bodies in
resource allocation, affiliation strategy, better collaboration between the
Foundation and volunteers on setting product and technology priorities, and
more.
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_Charter#Wikimedia_Foundation_…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Recommendations/Ensure_Eq…
[3]
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Movement_Strategy_Endorsem…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2024-2025/…
==============
*NOTICE: You may have received this message outside of your normal working
hours/days, as I usually can work more as a volunteer during weekend. You
should not feel obligated to answer it during your days off. Thank you in
advance!*