Hi everyone,
As promised, we are back with an update and a new timeline to discuss names
as a movement. We are excited to take on naming together beginning 16 June.
Here is an overview of what happened and what to expect:
After additional weeks of legal review and a conversation with the Board of
Trustees at their 22 May meeting, we have alignment to present three naming
convention proposals for movement-wide review on 16 June.
The Board of Trustees affirmed support for the project [1] and vetted
various naming options. They explored legal and financial implications of
different approaches, and evaluated them based on their potential to act as
compelling, unifying tools to elevate the work we are currently doing and
ensure the future of our movement. Based on these assessments, the
movement-wide review will revolve around two naming convention proposals
centered on Wikipedia, one that is a Wiki/Wikipedia hybrid, and an open
response area where respondents can share their own naming proposals. We
feel confident that the vetting process has led to solid proposals, while
we also want to ensure we are open to your ideas and are committed to
reviewing suggestions made in the open response area.
While these weeks of work have reconfirmed that naming structures centered
entirely on “Wiki” would not be legally feasible or financially
responsible, we were able to uncover ways in which “Wiki” can be used as
part of movement naming. We know there will be questions around this, and
look forward to discussing more in detail during the upcoming live
presentation.
***Join us for the live presentation [2] of the three Naming Convention
Proposals on 16 June at 15:00 UTC.***
We will present the various options that were considered, the risks and
rewards of each, and how the process arrived at the three options for
review.
As previously planned, the movement-wide review to follow will be
multilingual and will rely on surveys for individual contributors,
affiliates, and Foundation depts, as well as open discussion on Meta-Wiki,
from 16 June to 30 June. The two weeks of feedback will help to remove,
refine and recombine elements from the proposals into a single, synthesized
proposal.
We look forward to talking names with you soon.
Best,
- Zack & the Brand Project Team
[1]
On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 12:12 PM Heather Walls <hwalls(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi all,
I wanted to quickly follow up and thank you for being patient.
Zack, Essie, Samir, Elena, and the entire project team was eager, working
very very hard, and prepared to share the planned Naming Convention
Proposals this week. Our colleagues across the Foundation, particularly in
Legal, were also tightly involved in this project that is both important
and close to our hearts. Rescheduling feels a bit disappointing to us all,
but we are excited at the chance for us to add more to the future review,
and to set up a stronger discussion across our Movement about the limits
and possibilities of new naming systems.
Thanks,
Heather
On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 11:34 AM Zack McCune <zmccune(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
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/>
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