Hi Chris,
That is precisely what concerns me the most: That the system seems to be designed to not bring significant changes to the current situation, by assumedly being focused on what is already done, and the way it was done.
I am part of a Wikimedia group of communities that only has "emerging communities" and countries where Wikimedia penetration approaches zero, despite being one of the largest in the world. When I read "Our focus was indeed on the organized part of the movement, and then to work with the Working Groups on getting the message to the project communities and to those who would be interested in such discussions and enrich them.", I read "Wikimedia First World" designing strategies and approaches for "Wikimedia 3rd World", most probably based on their own experiences. If that approach has failed here in the last 17 years, why would it be bringing something new now? It's ironic that at the same time we had that wonderful "Decolonizing the Internet" conference in Wikimania, we are faced with this kind of "colonial" approach.
I can't help but feeling that Strategy approach do not includes us, not resonates in any visible way among our communities. That was pretty much evident in the last round of Strategy discussions that was being published in our Village Pump, at the Portuguese Wikipedia, where the interaction of the community was minimal. Everybody I talked to perceived it as something alien to our reality, about which there was nothing to say at all.
It may be a wonderful set of Strategy Working Groups for many things, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to bring any significant guidance that could help us changing our reality.
All the best,
Paulo
2018-07-23 16:54 GMT+01:00 Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com:
Hi Paolo,
In my experience Wikimedia staff are always just as committed and enthusiastic as volunteers - it's not a job anyone takes if all they care about is collecting their paycheque. :)
But where I share some of your concern is with the balance of some of the working groups. Staff and board members of large organisations are much more represented in some WGs than others.
Roles and Responsibilities has 8 members, including three Chapter EDs, two staff and one board member from the WMF, and two volunteers drawn from FDC and AffCom.
Resource Allocation has 11 members presently, of whom 9 are from the WMF, from large chapters, or from the existing FDC.
Are these groups really going to be considering significant changes to the way things happen at the moment?
By contrast the Diversity WG is wonderfully volunteer-led and diverse, but then I suspect the Diversity Working Group isn't going to be the one making important governance recommendations.
Chris
On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 2:20 PM Paulo Santos Perneta paulosperneta@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
"*Given the extensive time commitment required for participation in the WGs, I think that it's reasonable to expect that a significant
percentage
of the members will be staff who are paid to participate because the
time
commitment is probably too heavy for many volunteers *" (
2018-07-23 0:04 GMT+01:00
Pine W )
Isn't that a problem of "bias by design"? If the design of the groups favors the participation of staffers, who are paid by the chapters to
look
after their interests, isn't this an obvious conflict of interest? Why would a staffer of Wikimedia Antarctida, whose relation to the Movement
is
mainly defined by the salary (s)he gets at the end of the month, paid by his/her chapter, be interested in participating in strategy discussions
for
other reason than to advance the points and interests of Wikimedia Antarctida? Even assuming those interests do not conflict with those of
the
Wikimedia Movement (which is not granted), the expected input would still be very limited in scope.
All the best,
Paulo
2018-07-23 0:04 GMT+01:00
Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com:
Speaking in general terms about diversity of the WGs, this is a
challenging
topic even for people who have the best of intentions. What do we mean
by
"diversity" and "bias" in regards to the composition of the WGs? That discussion alone could be extensive and there might not be consensus
on the
definitions.
If the goal in general is maximum diversity on as many factors as
possible,
that is a difficult goal to achieve. Given the extensive time
commitment
required for participation in the WGs, I think that it's reasonable to expect that a significant percentage of the members will be staff who
are
paid to participate because the time commitment is probably too heavy
for
many volunteers, and our existing volunteers already have plenty of important activities to do.
There are other ways that this phase of the strategy development
process
could be run that would be less burdensome for volunteers - and I personally would advocate for such an approach - but the downsides
that I
could foresee are that (1) the staff involved would likely also not be sufficiently diverse for the aspirations of many of us, and (2) the
culture
and mindset of staff can be very different from those of the
volunteers, so
there would almost inevitably be some loss in terms of the richness of
the
conversations.
What I'm trying to do here is to encourage us to have realistic expectations.
I lack the knowledge to comment on why particular individuals or groups were or weren't included in the WGs and I hope that Nicole and Kaarel
can
respond to the concerns that people raise here, perhaps in private communications.
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