I see one of the key things in the the movement and the WMF has developed is thats leaving behind the volunteers and contributors. There is focus on top down, corporate structures in everything and details fear of failure in attempting projects in some ways a lost of trust of volunteers altogether. Significant bias is developing into favouring those who can write great documents and applications in an academic grant format leaving behind many of our "anyone can edit" community who arent as proficient in grant writing especially in an english/european academic format.

Wikipedia started in the academic model with Nupedia, but it was found that those outside that circle were doing it more effectively in so many ways that when it shifted. The current system we have fallen into is symptom of the lack understanding of the communities where contributors arent as prominent in the decision processes but rather its people entering from those systems that failed Nupedia making the decisions using complex talk fests and year on year never ending discussion. You just need to look at the current BoT elections to see how long it takes to get anywhere, strategy started 7 years ago and yet we still havent even reached the implementation of anything. Many of the contributors that brought into and had input have moved on, there's large cohort of contributors that have joined since then.

Our biggest successes now are coming from people who move outside the systems in place. Even now we chose play it safe and over use things like "Wiki Loves..." rather than step out of the comfortable zones. We need to think differently again and trust to the community to do what cant be done, just like it did 20 years ago, less bureaucracy more trust, be bold nothing should be a big deal.

On Thu, 8 Sept 2022 at 21:19, Nicola Zeuner <nicola.zeuner@wikimedia.de> wrote:

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for bringing up comparability. The paper points out that the historic development of the international office in the sampled cases is different from how the WMF was formed. This does not, in my view, preclude us from comparing systems.

I agree with Andreas that the central value of our movement is provided by volunteers, and they organize in affiliates. The WMF has many central functions, which is probably what you are referring to, including maintaining the platforms, fundraising, grantmaking, community development, advocacy, to name but a few. The sampled INGOs secretariats have a great variety of functions as well, but typically not including fundraising and grantmaking.

With 2030 Movement Strategy's drive toward decentralizing functions (incl. fundraising), those of us working on and contributing to the charter and policies should take good care at reviewing functions to see which ones are still appropriate and effective to be done by a central org, and which ones make more sense to do locally. Studying other global movements, in my view, makes a lot of sense here, especially if they have grown differently and gone through cycles of renewal and reform.

This is our moment of redesigning and re-forming.. So let's be open, and not restrict our view by insisting on our exceptionality.

best,
Nikki

Nikki Zeuner
Senior Advisor Global Partnerships

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Am Mi., 7. Sept. 2022 um 16:06 Uhr schrieb Nathan <nawrich@gmail.com>:
Hi Nicole,

Thanks for sharing this - very interesting reading so far. I'm hoping you can elaborate on WMDE's thinking around selecting INGOs for evaluation. Your criteria is very straightforward - INGOs with a confederation of independent organizations, connected by a global mission.

But each of your selected INGOs is composed of individual organizations that deliver the products and services that advance the global mission within their geographic area, with an "international office" that fulfills a coordination and governance role. By contrast, the bulk of mission-related services from the Wikimedia movement are offered to the world at large centrally by the international office (i.e. the Wikimedia projects). Did WMDE consider how comparable these INGOs are to the Wikimedia movement in this sense? I don't see a section of your paper that compares the service/product delivery structure of these INGOs, so perhaps this distinction did not come up during your review? Or is the thinking that decentralization of project hosting and support is on the table, and the report can inform that consideration?

Thanks for any insight you can share,
Nate
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