Hi Katherine and everyone,
Reading this email, my attention was caught by the fact that the video
link is pointing to YouTube. I don't question the idea of publishing
videos of the foundation on YouTube, the rational of having an immediate
larger audience is obvious. But I think that wherever we can, we should
promote FLOSS solutions and services first. All the more when we aim at
becoming the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free
knowledge, with anyone who shares our vision able to join us.
When it comes to host video, we should encourage Commons, at least when
we point to them in official communications of the foundation. And
include a link to the same video on Commons on every Youtube publication
by the foundation would also be a way to better promote our own
platform, maybe. Regarding video we might also have a look at
peertube[1] as a potential element to add in the Wikimedia supported
service stack. But that's an other point, for now pointing preferably to
Commons would, to my mind, already be a best practice.
On the same topic, there are documents of the foundation which are
written though Google Docs. That might be perceived as less problematic
from a participation point of view as long as they are strictly internal
documents. But of course once people are accustomed to a tool they will
spontaneously use it for other documents, including documents on which
community is expected to participate. When we invite the community to
participate to edit a document using this kind of closed platform, I'm
affraid that the tacit message will be "anyone can join us as long as
they accept the terms of service of the closed platforms we use". /D//e
facto,/ we promote them simply by using them and requiring others to
also use them to participate, thus contributing to the reinforcement of
closed platforms through network effects. I don't say that all feature
of all closed platforms out there have complete FLOSS equivalents, but
most of the time I don't see much interest to use closed platforms given
what FLOSS services can provide. One might look at all services that
Framasoft provide out of the box, based only on free software[2], each
of them could have a wikimedia instance if needed.
Cheers
[1]
https://joinpeertube.org/
[2]
https://degooglisons-internet.org/fr/list/
Le 07/06/2018 à 03:36, Katherine Maher a écrit :
Dear all,
It’s been a while since I sent out the last movement strategy update. A lot
has happened in the meantime, and I wanted to give you a heads-up regarding
an upcoming call for participation!
But first things first:
1. The report from the Wikimedia Conference Movement Strategy Track
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Movement_Strategy_track>
has been published[1]. It captures all the conversations, insights and
outputs from three days of intense strategy work, so it’s a (quite) long
but very interesting read. It is meant to document the state of the process
and to allow for a deep dive into it. It should be especially valuable for
those of you who did not have a chance to participate in the conference or
attended another conference track.
2. Based on WMCON outputs (and various conversations we’ve been having in
our movement for years), the core strategy team has mapped eight key
thematic areas
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups#What_are_the_key_thematic_areas%3F>
[2] -- and some initial guiding questions -- that should to be answered to
enable us to advance towards our strategic direction. These areas include:
- Roles & Responsibilities
- Resource Allocation & Revenue Streams
- Diversity
- Partnerships
- Capacity Building
- Community Health
- Technology
- Advocacy
3. The core team will be supporting the creation of Working Groups to take
on these critical conversations. These working groups will be asked to
assess the current situation of the thematic area, and obstacles and
opportunities. They’ll have access to all the relevant information already
collected, and the chance to do further research if needed. They’ll be
asked to identify the changes needed in movement structures and develop
concrete recommendations for the movement on how to ratify and implement
them.[3] An open call for working group members will go out to the movement
this week -- please stay tuned for an update from Nicole!
I also had the chance to present more about these plans at last week’s
Metrics Meeting. Please do take a look, either look it all up on the
Meta[3] or watch the video![4]
Cheers,
Katherine
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Mov…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working…
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working…
[4]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOaiU-v7PbE (from minute 24:25)