Thank you Christophe, all,
It is truly heartwarming to see so many familiar names come up again to engage in this conversation. It means a lot to me to see that you still care. I recognize and appreciate many of your points. [after almost 100 emails it feels time to start a new thread]
Yesterday I posted yesterday my post on Diff about how Wikimedia communities have a hard time making decisions on policy. The timing is quite coincidental indeed. In that, I was primarily thinking about our online communities. However, as many of you know, this gets so much more complicated when we look at the movement at large.
When I think specifically about our movement-wide processes, I can see many problems that contribute to this, but I would like to point out a few especially: - We don't manage to get a good balance/representation in our conversations. Our movement is biased enough as it is, but we make that even more problematic by not actively engaging later cohorts in conversations. They are more diverse, perhaps less attached to 'the old ways' and would expand the range a lot. But more importantly: they are important colleagues. - Recently, I understand that there is an active fear among a significant part of WMF staff to engage in meaningful strategic conversations or engage with communities in problem solving mode. This cripples our movement. - Showing up when it matters: while constructing solutions. Too many people only start to pay attention when others have put together a proposal that they can shoot at. I don't blame them -- they often don't know, or have to prioritize many things. But this does mean going back to the drawing board several times. We don't have that kind of time, or energy. How can we go ahead?
I would like to propose a few very high level suggestions (I may have more specific ones on Tuesday): 1. *Invite missing voices*: I like the initiative of Christophe. And... that should not be the end of it. Rather than trying to do everything 'in plenary' it would be helpful if someone could help set up some representative groups to make recommendations. It *shouldn't be just the people who have been around for more than 10 years* who can weigh in on this.
2. *Who do you trust*? So I ask our community at large to think ahead: do you really want to be one of the people spending at least 10-20 hours per week on this? Because that is what it takes. And if you're not: *who would you trust to represent your concerns*? Please tell that person, and tell them why. There are more formal ways to implement this, but this may be a start to get the ball rolling. In parallel let's think whether there is a way that we can leverage such trust to make better and faster strategic decisions that can count on support.
3. *Let the staff participate*: If these signals reach me, they must have reached you. Whether fear of retaliation is realistic or not, shouldn't matter - when it is there, it cripples. I encourage the WMF leadership to think urgently whether there is a way that staff can be permitted, no, encouraged, to participate in these processes without fear of retaliation.
In the meantime, please *don't wait*: These changes are happening all around us. We don't have time to wait for a perfect strategy. I would encourage everyone in our movement to consider this as they do their part to boldly improve the chances that open knowledge can thrive in the age of AI. If we keep doing things the way we are doing things, we will not be able to keep our community healthy for long (although personally it doesn't feel very healthy).
We will need to tap into the creativity of our entire movement. Come up with experiments, try things out that may help rejuvenate our community, that may reach new audiences, that make work easier. Often we as a community are pushing back. It is only natural: we worked so hard for it, and feel protective.
Everything has risks attached to it, but when someone proposes or tries an experiment, as yourself please: how much damage can it really do? Could we afford it to just let them try? How can I help make it better, more effective?
Be kind. Be forgiving. Open up.
Lodewijk
On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 9:23 PM Christophe Henner via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
I love this discussion, thank you all for speaking up. :)
One note on "the community can just do it," I do think it's the right direction, so please read the next couple of paragraphs as a friendly amendment (just to make sure everyone's on the same page) rather than a pushback.
"The community can just do it," feels very appealing right now: because we are missing ownership and leadership, self-organizing is kinda the only option with that vacuum. It probably is the best tool we have to rebuild/respark the ownership we are missing.
That being said, a couple of comments:
- Community means staff too, to me. Many of the people the movement pays
are also among its most committed contributors, so let us not run this as volunteers versus the Foundation/paid staff. I know it sometimes reads simplistic, but we're all in the same boat, or at least we should be.
- At this scale the work will need people with dedicated time on it.
Because the Foundation is not taking leadership doesn't mean it doesn't have a responsibility. The Foundation owns most of the resources in the movement, and if we, as a movement, are to change/evolve, we need those resources. It can't rely only on volunteers. However, I'm not saying we need X, Y or Z, just that we will need people with dedicated time at some point.
Brooke, to your comment on the Foundation being a service organisation, I would agree if the Foundation was being supportive. But it's neither leading the change nor being supportive on that topic, in my opinion. And don't anyone get me wrong, I do know how hard it is first hand to do either (or both), but I also know it can happen. And I hope they'll take the first opportunity to join in the discussion.
Speaking of opportunities, I've started a second thread with an invitation to meet next week. It's a bit of last minute notice, but I'd love to keep the momentum :)
-- Christophe
On Fri, 3 Jul 2026 at 00:10, Samuel Klein via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Dear Nada, excellent framing. It is entirely in our control to fix outreach, build welcoming and forgiving environments, make strides with less-resource languages and communities.
Christophe, thanks again for persisting in this thread (and planning a range of activities around Wikimania!) I see many people engaged with these topics who don't want to engage in discussion about angst over current problems, but are deeply enthusiastic about, and actively engaged in, building new things / working on new possibilities.
Brooke writes:
Wikimedia is a participatory system... We have to put in the work
ourselves.
Absolutely. The civilized netizen's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco anything truly important from scratch.
Galder writes:
One correction: I'm not a trustee!
But we surely trust you, including to make the world's best Txikipedia.
We have many good ideas and talented people in the community. We do need persistent spaces to discuss and make plans, in part because in the last growth spurt we fragmented communication channels across hundreds of pages, sites, lists, and apps. Recombining many of those streams would be good for coherence and continuity.
But our wikis are better suited to experimenting, reverting, and iterating than distilling large-scale consensus. Quick decisions by ~sortition (or by the first few people to turn up) help polish the roughest edges. Having spaces that push back against the iron law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy of oligarchy and preserve freedom to experiment is essential, even when simultaneously waiting for delayed consensus.
Our strongest shared identity is as people committed to building freely-licensed knowledge together, in every language, accessible to the entire world. More people care about this today than ever before. We simply have to make space for it again.
𝐖♡, SJ
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