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_f...
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:Wikimedia_APP_Community_Call
Best regards, antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
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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_perspectives_on_the_Global_Council [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_Equity_in_Decision-making#Establish_a_common_framework_for_decision-making [2]. The Foundation’s Board has endorsed these recommendations in principle https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Movement_Strategy_Endorsement 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_Equity_in_Decision-making#Establish_a_common_framework_for_decision-making. 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,_Iterate,_and_Adapt. 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/Goals/Equity [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_p...
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Recommendations/Ensure_Equ...
[3] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Movement_Strategy_Endorseme...
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2024-2025/G...
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