Hi Greta,
Thank you for the explanation.
This reminds me a lot to what happened in Macedonia, albeit with different names of the recognised user groups. The artificially created problem by the Aff Com has eventually ended up in two user groups being eligible for WMF grants (another contentious decision), then a raising concern that the WMF can not extend funds to two user groups in a small country serving community with a small number of speakers and finally a substantial reduction of the annual grants approved for 2019 and threat that no grants will be extended for 2020 if the conflict does not get resolved. My kind advice for you is to start thinking about external funding for the next budget year (though it is not an easy task in our region) because this is something that the WMF might do for Albania as well.
I also strongly agree with Paulo that we need to start thinking about preventing this from happening in the future. The problem is not only that people do not care about the consequences from their decisions in a volunteer community but that they just bagger off after complicating things and simply leave the issue to be solved by the volunteers who did not want it to happen. I was thinking about introducing a complaint process on Meta where people from the communities can directly complain about similar instances of problems created by the WMF, the Aff Com, the grantmaking committees or any other decision-making party. Frankly speaking, my impression is that the movement migrates from decisions about big things made through community-based discussions to a centralised decision-making process made entirely within the WMF or the committees that do not seem to serve all communities equally.
Best, Kiril
On Mon, Feb 25, 2019 at 2:17 PM Paulo Santos Perneta < paulosperneta@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Greta,
Thank you very much for your clarifications and insight into this question.
This is very similar with what happened in Brazil, when the 2013 chapter-like UG (Grupo de Usuários Wikimedia no Brasil) and its clone UG (Wiki Educação Brasil) approved by AffCom in 2015 ended up competing for the same activities and partnerships.
Hopefully this time AffCom will not have the reckless approach they had with Brazil, extinguishing both groups to try to solve a problem they created themselves, and our wikimedian friends from Albania and Albanian Language will be spared the destruction of their community.
I believe that we, as the broad community, really should do something to prevent this kind of thing which is mining and destroying parts of the Wikimedia Movement. It is not possible that we have to stay here quietly seeing AffCom dealing with all those cases in such an incompetent and reckless way. If it's obviously not working, why keep it that way?
Best, Paulo
Greta Doçi gretadoci@gmail.com escreveu no dia segunda, 25/02/2019 à(s) 12:34:
Dear everyone,
First, we want to thank everyone who contributed in this discussion.
We want to start with the first conflict, which is the name. If you read carefully Affcon's email above, and you check the info online as claimed
by
Affcon, you will see that actually Affcon itself has confused both UG names, crediting events to the other UG, that actually are done by our
UG (
WoALUG <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Albanian_Language_User_Group
)
and vice versa.
After the new UG was recognized and people started raising questions in this thread, we received an email by Affcon to explain to them what we thought was the overlapping. We did send our activities and explained why we thought there was overlapping. Reading Camelias and Sami email above, clearly that email was ignored.
Exactly during the time that the new UG was applying, the old one
(WoALUG)
was applying for the annual simple grant, which btw took us at least 4 months to complete, all our activities in Albania were clearly stated,
and
GLAM and EDUCATION were our main goals. There are also institutions mentioned and details of what we wanted to do in Albania. So, claiming
that
theres no overlapping of activities is not valid.
WoALUG goes beyond Albania or Kosovo, because some Albanian contributors who don't live in Albania created it at the first place, so we wish we
can
help Albanian speakers in diaspora to continue to contribute, and if they need information, sources or whatever, our team present in Albania,
Kosova,
Macedonia, or Arberesh in Italy, will use our resources to make that happen. Our UG means to be inclusive of what is a small Wikimedia
language
community anyways.
GLAM and Education institutions are depended on public institutions. To collaborate with an institution, let's say Historic Museum of Albania,
you
need to get permission from the Ministry of Culture. Think about the scenario (which is currently happening): one UG requests to collaborate with Museum of Elbasan and the other UG want to collaborate with Museum
of
Tirana, both should sent the request to Ministry of Culture. Wikipedia
is a
new thing (still) in Albania, considering that is already hard to
establish
collaborations with public institutions, confusing the UGs will result in bad outcome for both UGs.
And of course, for the other private institutions, it is a competition
who
is going to contact them first.
Splitting institutions is also not an option because for sure we will aim the same ones, since there's not that many of them.
We were confused, we still are and none of our members have the time to follow this even after a year.
on behalf of Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Albanian_Language_User_Group
.
On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 7:30 PM Фархад Фаткуллин / Farkhad Fatkullin < frhd@yandex.com> wrote:
Dear Kiril and Paulo, Thank you for explanations.
You have my deepest respect for showing your concern for our fellow colleagues from Albania, so they avoid repeating the mistakes that have been made previously elsewhere. Just like you, I certainly hope that
our
volunteer-colleagues serving in AffCom did their best to assess and minimize possible risks that might come in case of competition. As for Albanian language & Albania centered multilingual UGs, let's hope they
are
getting along well and work hand in hand on the aspects in which they
can
help advancing each other's missions.
Our current situation is actually encouraging us to consider developing Russian-speaking UGs in all regions of Russia, and my home Republic
might
be one of the first ones where this will be useful. Our chapter consist
of
representatives of various Wikimedia projects, languages & ethnic
groups,
but our weakness is rather low regional representation and empowerment, which we hope to balance through UGs. The world is in constant flux, so eventually we might also witness similar competition for attention that
you
are talking about. We currently don't seem to have reasons for conflict between Wikimedia Russia chapter and Russian & other language or territorial UGs because:
- UGs have representatives in the national chapter
- National chapter meetings are broadcast live on YouTube,
- Chapter leadership prioritizes country-wide tasks of importance for
growing the movement,
- Wikimedia projects in Russian and other languages are not that famous
yet,
- neither affiliates, nor individuals in Russia get their grant
requests
approved by WMF (there are reasons for that), and
- Russian language is teaching us to be anarchic inside (affiliate
structures are nothing more than just legal tools), whilst locals have centuries-old history of living together in Hunnic Empire, Cumania, Mongolic Empire, Golden Horde, Russian Empire, Soviet Union & now
Russian
Federation (something we remember despite the fact that Golden Horde
and
earlier ones don't get much coverage in high-school history courses).
regards, farhad
-- Farkhad Fatkullin - Фархад Фаткуллин http://sikzn.ru/
Тел.+79274158066 /
skype:frhdkazan / Wikipedia:frhdkazan
15.02.2019, 17:37, "Paulo Santos Perneta" paulosperneta@gmail.com:
Hi Farhad,
It is very easily understood by the so called Brazilian scenario:
Step 1 - AffCom recognizes a chapter style UG, with geographic focus Step 2 - Dissidents from first group start warring first UG while attempting to form a second UG, clone of the first UG Step 3 - AffCom recognizes second UG Step 4 - Conflict between UGs dramatically increases with time,
spreading
into the Wikimedia projects Step 5 - AffCom dissolves both UGs
Current status: No recognized Wikimedia community in the country
My opinion: Terrible disservice by AffCom to the Wikimedia Movement.
Best, Paulo
Фархад Фаткуллин / Farkhad Fatkullin frhd@yandex.com escreveu no
dia
sexta, 15/02/2019 à(s) 10:59:
Dear Kiril, Philip and colleagues,
Please explain the nature of reasons that cause trouble in having
multiple
Wikimedia affiliates in the area, as this seems to be context
specific.
It's possible that our context in Russia is very different, which
is
why
we are actually welcoming creation of new UGs throughout the
country,
both
territorially and thematically oriented ones (on top of the
Wikimedia
Russia national chapter). Should you give more reasons why this seems causing conflict, I
might.
Over here we are quite happy with existing collaboration at all
levels
and
are even looking forward to developing a mechanism to speed up
their
formation throughout the country - namely
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Languages_of_Russia_Community_User...
Myself and other representatives of Wikimedia Russia discussed this
in
detail and welcomed by AffCom secretary during Wikimania 2017
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frhdkazan/Wikimania2017#Aug.12
And
in the framework of https://ru.wikimedia.org/wiki/Smart_region initiative, I will eventually proceed to registering a
Tatarstan-oriented
thematic multilingual UG, on top of recently registered
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_of_Tatar_language_User_G...
& Wikimedia Russia, in both of which I am currently a member.
regards, farhad
-- Farkhad Fatkullin - Фархад Фаткуллин http://sikzn.ru/
Тел.+79274158066 /
skype:frhdkazan / Wikipedia:frhdkazan
14.02.2019, 03:25, "Kiril Simeonovski" <
kiril.simeonovski@gmail.com
:
Hi Paulo,
Camelia's paragraph that you referred to tells a story that is
exactly
the
opposite of what the Affiliations Committee is doing in practice.
The
so-called 'Brazilian scenario' emerged in Macedonia when, in
2016,
the
committee decided to recognise a second user group on the same
territory
without consulting the existing one. This has eventually
developed
into a
problem regarding the overlap in the scope of the two user groups
and the
resolution was normally sought from the people (more importantly volunteers) who were not willing this to happen. It should be
also
noted
that Macedonia is a country with only 2 million inhabitants
unlike
Brazil's
over 200 million and this has been mentioned numerous times by
different
people in the movement to refer to the severity of the problem.
My opinion is that the Affiliations Committee has no vision on
the
future
of the Wikimedia movement and their main efficiency indicator is
the
number
of user groups they recognise with no care about the
consequencies
of the
apparent wrongdoing. They managed to bring the tally to over 100
user
groups and the Wikimedia Foundation even got engaged to celebrate
this
achievement, while they did not give a damn about the problems
that
they
have posed with their light-minded routine. Moreover, when you
approach
them with some relevant questions, they simply brush off and
respond
with a
months-long delay.
In conclusion, the Affiliations Committee is artificially
creating
problems
as a result of their recognition policy and is seeking resolution
from
volunteers that were not consulted at all about the potential consequencies. This is a waste of volunteer time and efforts for
something
that could have easily been prevented. Unfortunately, the
Wikimedia
Foundation and some other voices in the movement contribute to
this
misery
and it is highly unprobable that any complaint to any one in the
movement
would pay off.
Best regards, Kiril
On сре., 13 фев. 2019 г. at 16:13 Paulo Santos Perneta < paulosperneta@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello, > > camelia boban camelia.boban@gmail.com escreveu no dia terça,
12/02/2019
> à(s) 11:18: > > > (...) > > In line with the philosophy of the inclusion of the movement,
AffCom
has
> > acted as it always does when it receives affiliation requests:
it
> assesses > > the territorial overlap and the declared purpose of the
requests
with
> > others affiliates present in the territory, contacting the
already
> > recognized affiliates to hear from them about any concerns,
using
the
> > experience and knowledge on the territory of each of its
members.
> > > > I suppose this was not in effect back in 2015, when Wiki
Education
Brazil
> was approved, as neither the existing affiliate in Brazil - UG
Wikimedia
> in Brazil -, nor Wikimedia Portugal, have been consulted about
it,
even
> when it totally overlapped with the territory of the existing
affiliate in
> Brazil, and was announced by AffCom as having a Lusophone
target,
therefore
> interfering in Portugal as well. Furthermore, at the date it was
approved,
> Wiki Education Brazil was already in open conflict with the
existing
> affiliate in Brazil, which makes the approval decision by AffCom
absolutely
> incomprehensible. > > Actually, I really fail to understand why the candidatures to
AffCom
> continue allowed to be proposed in absolute secrecy, leaving any
problems
> caused by their approvals to be dealt with by the community
after
the
> problem is already installed. Does not seem a very clever way of
acting.
> > Best, > > Paulo - DarwIn > Wikimedia Portugal > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe:
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