I find the disbanding of the Community Engagement department at WMF to be quite concerning. I will go so far as to say that I view it as a mistake that will have negative impacts well into the future.
For one thing, the structure of an organization is in some sense a statement of priorities. I believe this move does indeed say to employees, the community, allied organization, and the rest of the world that the WMF is now placing less value on engaging the community. Given that many in the community have been feeling this already, this is not an opportune time to make this transition, even if it were a good idea for other reasons.
Another issue is the specific placement of individual teams. For example, you say that returning the Trust & Safety team to the Legal department is intuitive. It certainly is not to me, and that move in particular is concerning. The team's homepage on Meta states that it "identifies, builds and – as appropriate – staffs processes which keep our users safe; design, develop, and execute on a strategy that integrates legal, product, research, and learning & evaluation to proactively mitigate risk as well as manage the overall safety of our online and offline communities when incidents happen." The legal aspect is only one of many in the team's purview, and hopefully not a large one.
In my experience, units within legal departments take a very legalistic view of their work. As one example, many colleges and universities have an office for students with disabilities. In the US, those that are in legal or policy departments tend to focus very much on doing the minimum they have to do under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), rather than being student-centered. (This is the case here at the University of Washington.) Compare this to the focus of units for women, students of color, etc., often hierarchically under student services, who are much more proactive and supportive.
I definitely do not want Trust & Safety to narrow its focus to ensuring enforcement & reducing liability. As you know, legal but negative behavior is a significant threat to the future of Wikipedia and sister projects. The team needs to be organizationally placed to maximize, not minimize, its access to resources, the community, and other staff as well as its impact. Placing it in Legal could, for example, decrease significantly contact and trust from our community members whose experience with laws is that they are used as weapons and tools to oppress rather than engendering fairness and cooperation.
Please, please carefully consider the all ramifications of this reorganization before it is implemented.
Thank you, Paul Weiss Libcub on en.wp
--------- Original Message --------- Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Community Engagement to leave the Foundation From: 'Katherine Maher' kmaher@wikimedia.org Date: 11/15/19 3:36 pm To: 'Wikimedia Mailing List' wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello everyone,
I am writing to let you know that Val D’Costa, Chief Community Engagement Officer, is leaving the Wikimedia Foundation. I also want to share some changes we’re making around how the Foundation organizes staff in the Community Engagement department.
Val joined us last January, bringing nearly three decades of experience launching and growing international initiatives in emerging markets. With the Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy as a guide, Val and her team drafted an ambitious new vision for the work of Community Engagement—focused on decentralization of power and resources, safe and welcoming spaces, equitable collaboration, increased language and cultural fluency, dedicated programs for groups such as women and young people, and expansive partnerships in service of free knowledge.
With this vision in hand, Val and I both see this as the right juncture for her to move on to her next professional challenge. While she will be leaving the position of Chief of Community Engagement, she will remain on as a consultant to me for a brief period.
I am deeply appreciative of Val’s time with us at the Foundation and want to thank her for the contributions she has made to the Wikimedia movement. She has been a passionate and persuasive advocate for our mission and pushed us to expand our vision of what could be possible for our movement. I wish her the absolute best in what she does next.
*== What comes next for Community Engagement ==*
I'll be direct -- we are making changes to the CE department structure.
We will not be starting a search for a new Chief of Community Engagement. Instead, over the course of the next few weeks, the seven teams currently within the Community Engagement (CE) department will be integrated into the Foundation’s other departments. By January, all of the teams will have joined their new departments, and “Community Engagement” will no longer be a standalone department.
The teams currently in CE will be integrated with other Foundation departments aligned with executive leadership goals and based on their scope and focus, as well as how they might grow in the future. Some of these alignments are intuitive, such as Trust & Safety returning to the Legal department; others might not be immediately apparent.
*== What does this mean for your work? ==*
Although we have a good sense of which teams will integrate with which departments, we are still meeting with the individual teams to work on the specific details of the transition. Our focus is on continuity for existing community programs and support for Foundation staff in making this change. You may hear from staff seeking input on those arrangements, and I want to thank you in advance for any feedback you may have.
We expect to wrap up these conversations in early December, to begin transitions in mid-December, and for the transitions to be completed by the beginning of January, at which point we’ll be able to share an overview of the new arrangements in full.
The work of the Community Engagement teams will remain the same throughout this period of transition. For example, if you need something from Trust & Safety or Community Resources, they’ll continue to be here to work with you. If you have a project or program underway with a CE team or staff member, that work will also continue. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Greg Varnum at gvarnum@wikimedia.org or leave your question in Wikimedia Space [1] and we’ll make sure we find an answer to your question.
*== Why are we making this change? ==*
The Community Engagement department has grown and evolved since it was created in 2015. We have brought in people with an increasingly diverse set of skills and backgrounds and introduced new support for additional languages, geographies, and areas of work, such as community health.
While this has helped the Foundation come a long way in addressing the needs of the movement, it has also created complexity. The breadth of activities and competencies now supported by the department is quite large—today, we have people working on issues as diverse as GLAM collection management, participatory grantmaking, and contributor safety—and increasingly, across many geographies, cultures, and languages.
This has created challenges for how we effectively coordinate such a range of specializations, how we assess their efficacy and impact against our mission. At the same time, as the Foundation has grown, we have developed capacities in other departments who will be good partners to those serving our community mission.
In making these changes, we see an opportunity to align the functions of the Foundation with the future of the mission and movement, and better serve long-time contributors and emerging communities alike. Over time, we anticipate these new arrangements will deepen the understanding of community efforts among all Foundation staff and programs, integrate community perspective across program design and support, and open up space for bold and fresh thinking about how to move our movement forward.
*== What about the future? ==*
Some people may be wondering, what does this mean for the proposed work in the Annual or Medium Term plans, or the planned restructure of the Community Engagement department to a new regional approach?
We remain fully committed to the work and goals of the Medium Term Plan. For example, although Val was not able to attend Indaba to celebrate with the African community, our COO and Deputy General Counsel, Janeen Uzzell and Tony Sebro, both attended.
The planned restructure and expansion of CE was intended to help us support the community in achieving these goals. This includes the MTP’s focus on building a thriving movement, increasing community health and diversity, and growing among new languages, regions, and audiences. We set these goals as part of our interpretation of the Movement Strategy, and they will remain our focus for the medium term.
I still believe we need to make many of these changes, as well as be prepared for further changes that may arise from the recommendations of the Movement Strategy Working Groups. We see a future that could include improved regional support, and expanded programmatic support for emerging communities, whether those are new languages, geographies, or areas of practice.
However, we are putting those plans on hold for the next few weeks, while we focus is on supporting the existing teams through this transition. I want us to make sure that goes well, before turning our attention to the future. That said, I fully expect to resume work on how we expand our support for these critical new areas in the first quarter of the new calendar year.
== Final thoughts ==
I want to be absolutely clear that these changes are in no way an indication that the Foundation is decreasing our commitment to support for the movement. I hope you see how this offers an opportunity to do the exact opposite—to set us up to support the movement in the best way we can.
For those with an interest in Wikimedia history, it’s worth noting that the Foundation has taken many different shapes over the years. In 2014, teams focused on community support were embedded in other departments. At the time, we were much smaller, and our ability to truly engage with the full breadth of the movement was more limited. In 2019, the community engagement teams are better resourced, more global, and more representative of the movement (although there’s always space for continued improvement).
We see this as the right moment to integrate the perspectives, experiences, and skills of these teams across the Foundation, ensuring that support for the movement is woven into all the Foundation’s work. As Wikimedians, we know change is a constant—and it is through change that we often do our best work, solve our hardest problems, and find our new path forward. Thank you in advance as we take this next step to support the future of our movement.
Sincerely, Katherine
[1] https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-foundation-chief-of-community-...
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Paul raises an interesting point about the placement of T&S that I hadn't considered, although I am thinking about this from a different angle.
After the departure of Michelle Paulson, I've found WMF Legal to be considerably less responsive to emails that I've sent to legal@, and it would be disappointing if T&S adopted the apparent mentality in WMF Legal that ignoring messages is okay. Once in awhile something will slip through the cracks (I'm aware of my seemingly endless Wikimedia email backlog), but given the number of lawyers on WMF"s staff and how much more responsive the department was to my communications when Michelle Paulson was in charge, I think that some changes should be considered for that department if they haven't already been implemented by the new General Counsel.
Returning focus to T&S, I agree that legalistic minimalism would be disappointing, but I hope that T&S has decided after a wasteful, unnecessary, and high profile conflict earlier this year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_to_the_Wikimedia_Foundation%27s_ban_of_Fram that overreach is a bad idea. There is room for a middle ground of T&S supporting research into ways that community administrators can be more effective and skillful, and collaborating with the community to design features that promote collaboration, while avoiding both legal minimalism or arrogant overreach. I think that the placement of T&S in Legal is a manageable risk, but I hope that WMF will think carefully about how to manage the cultures and priorities for the merged department.
Paul, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 6:29 AM Paul J. Weiss pjweiss@uw.edu wrote:
I find the disbanding of the Community Engagement department at WMF to be quite concerning. I will go so far as to say that I view it as a mistake that will have negative impacts well into the future.
For one thing, the structure of an organization is in some sense a statement of priorities. I believe this move does indeed say to employees, the community, allied organization, and the rest of the world that the WMF is now placing less value on engaging the community. Given that many in the community have been feeling this already, this is not an opportune time to make this transition, even if it were a good idea for other reasons.
Another issue is the specific placement of individual teams. For example, you say that returning the Trust & Safety team to the Legal department is intuitive. It certainly is not to me, and that move in particular is concerning. The team's homepage on Meta states that it "identifies, builds and – as appropriate – staffs processes which keep our users safe; design, develop, and execute on a strategy that integrates legal, product, research, and learning & evaluation to proactively mitigate risk as well as manage the overall safety of our online and offline communities when incidents happen." The legal aspect is only one of many in the team's purview, and hopefully not a large one.
In my experience, units within legal departments take a very legalistic view of their work. As one example, many colleges and universities have an office for students with disabilities. In the US, those that are in legal or policy departments tend to focus very much on doing the minimum they have to do under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), rather than being student-centered. (This is the case here at the University of Washington.) Compare this to the focus of units for women, students of color, etc., often hierarchically under student services, who are much more proactive and supportive.
I definitely do not want Trust & Safety to narrow its focus to ensuring enforcement & reducing liability. As you know, legal but negative behavior is a significant threat to the future of Wikipedia and sister projects. The team needs to be organizationally placed to maximize, not minimize, its access to resources, the community, and other staff as well as its impact. Placing it in Legal could, for example, decrease significantly contact and trust from our community members whose experience with laws is that they are used as weapons and tools to oppress rather than engendering fairness and cooperation.
Please, please carefully consider the all ramifications of this reorganization before it is implemented.
Thank you, Paul Weiss Libcub on en.wp
On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 6:29 AM Paul J. Weiss pjweiss@uw.edu wrote:
I find the disbanding of the Community Engagement department at WMF to be quite concerning. I will go so far as to say that I view it as a mistake that will have negative impacts well into the future.
Actually I think the opposite is just as likely to be true. I've been thinking for a while that actually the best way for the WMF to be good at working with "the community" (or, indeed, the many other communities that we should be working with) is not necessarily for the WMF to have a department called "community engagement". The other departments within WMF should (and, in many cases, do) have many competencies, projects and areas of focus that involve working with communities, and it looks like the aim here is to make 'community engagement' more mainstream within the other parts of the WMF.
You're right to point out that there are ways that this could go wrong, if parts of CE end up being put in places where their new managers and wider teams don't get it or don't prioritise that kind of work. However, it could also go right, if those other teams/departments broaden in scope in response to include more goals around working with the community. It all depends how deeply embedded a culture of community engagement becomes across the organization.
I did just want to ask about this, though:
Some people may be wondering, what does this mean for ... the planned
restructure of the Community Engagement department to a new regional approach?
I'd not heard that this was happening, possibly because I'd not been paying attention or because it's been discussed in other fora but not this one. If this is still likely to happen in the new structure, can someone tell us more?
Thanks!
Chris
hi,
speaking just in my personal opinion and capacity, without discussing it with anyone else: only time will tell whether this structural change works, and jumping to conclusions is definitely premature.
In principle, as a person specializing in management and organizational change, I can tell that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. I can definitely see a lot of possible benefits to the restructuring though, and we definitely DO want all WMF departments to be in touch with the communities. The proposed approach tries to address the siloses. Every department will have good interface with the CE issues, and this is a good thing. Whether it leads to better CE prioritization is unknown yet, but structurally it can definitely help.
On a practical level, given the fact that our previous search for the C-level position for CE took more than half a year, AFAIR, in the short term the assumed approach allows us to leapfrog a lot of turmoil, which could be damaging to community engagement in this crucial moment (last stretch of our strategic exercise effort). In the long run - I am certain that the WMF leadership does not believe in things written in stone.
I'd be really reluctant to assume the restructuring is good or bad for the community as it is, everything depends on how the new structure is used in practice.
best,
dj "pundit"
On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 1:29 AM Paul J. Weiss <pjweiss@uw.edumailto:pjweiss@uw.edu> wrote: I find the disbanding of the Community Engagement department at WMF to be quite concerning. I will go so far as to say that I view it as a mistake that will have negative impacts well into the future.
For one thing, the structure of an organization is in some sense a statement of priorities. I believe this move does indeed say to employees, the community, allied organization, and the rest of the world that the WMF is now placing less value on engaging the community. Given that many in the community have been feeling this already, this is not an opportune time to make this transition, even if it were a good idea for other reasons.
Another issue is the specific placement of individual teams. For example, you say that returning the Trust & Safety team to the Legal department is intuitive. It certainly is not to me, and that move in particular is concerning. The team's homepage on Meta states that it "identifies, builds and – as appropriate – staffs processes which keep our users safe; design, develop, and execute on a strategy that integrates legal, product, research, and learning & evaluation to proactively mitigate risk as well as manage the overall safety of our online and offline communities when incidents happen." The legal aspect is only one of many in the team's purview, and hopefully not a large one.
In my experience, units within legal departments take a very legalistic view of their work. As one example, many colleges and universities have an office for students with disabilities. In the US, those that are in legal or policy departments tend to focus very much on doing the minimum they have to do under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), rather than being student-centered. (This is the case here at the University of Washington.) Compare this to the focus of units for women, students of color, etc., often hierarchically under student services, who are much more proactive and supportive.
I definitely do not want Trust & Safety to narrow its focus to ensuring enforcement & reducing liability. As you know, legal but negative behavior is a significant threat to the future of Wikipedia and sister projects. The team needs to be organizationally placed to maximize, not minimize, its access to resources, the community, and other staff as well as its impact. Placing it in Legal could, for example, decrease significantly contact and trust from our community members whose experience with laws is that they are used as weapons and tools to oppress rather than engendering fairness and cooperation.
Please, please carefully consider the all ramifications of this reorganization before it is implemented.
Thank you, Paul Weiss Libcub on en.wp
--------- Original Message --------- Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Community Engagement to leave the Foundation From: 'Katherine Maher' <kmaher@wikimedia.orgmailto:kmaher@wikimedia.org> Date: 11/15/19 3:36 pm To: 'Wikimedia Mailing List' <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello everyone,
I am writing to let you know that Val D’Costa, Chief Community Engagement Officer, is leaving the Wikimedia Foundation. I also want to share some changes we’re making around how the Foundation organizes staff in the Community Engagement department.
Val joined us last January, bringing nearly three decades of experience launching and growing international initiatives in emerging markets. With the Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy as a guide, Val and her team drafted an ambitious new vision for the work of Community Engagement—focused on decentralization of power and resources, safe and welcoming spaces, equitable collaboration, increased language and cultural fluency, dedicated programs for groups such as women and young people, and expansive partnerships in service of free knowledge.
With this vision in hand, Val and I both see this as the right juncture for her to move on to her next professional challenge. While she will be leaving the position of Chief of Community Engagement, she will remain on as a consultant to me for a brief period.
I am deeply appreciative of Val’s time with us at the Foundation and want to thank her for the contributions she has made to the Wikimedia movement. She has been a passionate and persuasive advocate for our mission and pushed us to expand our vision of what could be possible for our movement. I wish her the absolute best in what she does next.
*== What comes next for Community Engagement ==*
I'll be direct -- we are making changes to the CE department structure.
We will not be starting a search for a new Chief of Community Engagement. Instead, over the course of the next few weeks, the seven teams currently within the Community Engagement (CE) department will be integrated into the Foundation’s other departments. By January, all of the teams will have joined their new departments, and “Community Engagement” will no longer be a standalone department.
The teams currently in CE will be integrated with other Foundation departments aligned with executive leadership goals and based on their scope and focus, as well as how they might grow in the future. Some of these alignments are intuitive, such as Trust & Safety returning to the Legal department; others might not be immediately apparent.
*== What does this mean for your work? ==*
Although we have a good sense of which teams will integrate with which departments, we are still meeting with the individual teams to work on the specific details of the transition. Our focus is on continuity for existing community programs and support for Foundation staff in making this change. You may hear from staff seeking input on those arrangements, and I want to thank you in advance for any feedback you may have.
We expect to wrap up these conversations in early December, to begin transitions in mid-December, and for the transitions to be completed by the beginning of January, at which point we’ll be able to share an overview of the new arrangements in full.
The work of the Community Engagement teams will remain the same throughout this period of transition. For example, if you need something from Trust & Safety or Community Resources, they’ll continue to be here to work with you. If you have a project or program underway with a CE team or staff member, that work will also continue. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Greg Varnum at gvarnum@wikimedia.orgmailto:gvarnum@wikimedia.org or leave your question in Wikimedia Space [1] and we’ll make sure we find an answer to your question.
*== Why are we making this change? ==*
The Community Engagement department has grown and evolved since it was created in 2015. We have brought in people with an increasingly diverse set of skills and backgrounds and introduced new support for additional languages, geographies, and areas of work, such as community health.
While this has helped the Foundation come a long way in addressing the needs of the movement, it has also created complexity. The breadth of activities and competencies now supported by the department is quite large—today, we have people working on issues as diverse as GLAM collection management, participatory grantmaking, and contributor safety—and increasingly, across many geographies, cultures, and languages.
This has created challenges for how we effectively coordinate such a range of specializations, how we assess their efficacy and impact against our mission. At the same time, as the Foundation has grown, we have developed capacities in other departments who will be good partners to those serving our community mission.
In making these changes, we see an opportunity to align the functions of the Foundation with the future of the mission and movement, and better serve long-time contributors and emerging communities alike. Over time, we anticipate these new arrangements will deepen the understanding of community efforts among all Foundation staff and programs, integrate community perspective across program design and support, and open up space for bold and fresh thinking about how to move our movement forward.
*== What about the future? ==*
Some people may be wondering, what does this mean for the proposed work in the Annual or Medium Term plans, or the planned restructure of the Community Engagement department to a new regional approach?
We remain fully committed to the work and goals of the Medium Term Plan. For example, although Val was not able to attend Indaba to celebrate with the African community, our COO and Deputy General Counsel, Janeen Uzzell and Tony Sebro, both attended.
The planned restructure and expansion of CE was intended to help us support the community in achieving these goals. This includes the MTP’s focus on building a thriving movement, increasing community health and diversity, and growing among new languages, regions, and audiences. We set these goals as part of our interpretation of the Movement Strategy, and they will remain our focus for the medium term.
I still believe we need to make many of these changes, as well as be prepared for further changes that may arise from the recommendations of the Movement Strategy Working Groups. We see a future that could include improved regional support, and expanded programmatic support for emerging communities, whether those are new languages, geographies, or areas of practice.
However, we are putting those plans on hold for the next few weeks, while we focus is on supporting the existing teams through this transition. I want us to make sure that goes well, before turning our attention to the future. That said, I fully expect to resume work on how we expand our support for these critical new areas in the first quarter of the new calendar year.
== Final thoughts ==
I want to be absolutely clear that these changes are in no way an indication that the Foundation is decreasing our commitment to support for the movement. I hope you see how this offers an opportunity to do the exact opposite—to set us up to support the movement in the best way we can.
For those with an interest in Wikimedia history, it’s worth noting that the Foundation has taken many different shapes over the years. In 2014, teams focused on community support were embedded in other departments. At the time, we were much smaller, and our ability to truly engage with the full breadth of the movement was more limited. In 2019, the community engagement teams are better resourced, more global, and more representative of the movement (although there’s always space for continued improvement).
We see this as the right moment to integrate the perspectives, experiences, and skills of these teams across the Foundation, ensuring that support for the movement is woven into all the Foundation’s work. As Wikimedians, we know change is a constant—and it is through change that we often do our best work, solve our hardest problems, and find our new path forward. Thank you in advance as we take this next step to support the future of our movement.
Sincerely, Katherine
[1] https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-foundation-chief-of-community-...
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ 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.orgmailto:Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
-- ________________________________________________________ [http://crow.kozminski.edu.pl/minds.jpg]http://nerds.kozminski.edu.pl/ prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry MINDS (Management in Networked and Digital Societies) Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://NeRDS.kozminski.edu.pl http://nerds.kozminski.edu.pl/
Ostatnie artykuły:
* Dariusz Jemielniak, Maciej Wilamowski (2017) Cultural Diversity of Quality of Information on Wikipediashttp://crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/cultures%20of%20wikipedias.pdf Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 68: 10. 2460–2470. * Dariusz Jemielniak (2016) Wikimedia Movement Governance: The Limits of A-Hierarchical Organizationhttp://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/wikimedia_governance.pdf Journal of Organizational Change Management 29: 3. 361-378. * Dariusz Jemielniak, Eduard Aibar (2016) Bridging the Gap Between Wikipedia and Academiahttp://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/bridging.pdf Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 67: 7. 1773-1776. * Dariusz Jemielniak (2016) Breaking the Glass Ceiling on Wikipediahttp://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/glass-ceiling.pdf Feminist Review 113: 1. 103-108. * Tadeusz Chełkowski, Peter Gloor, Dariusz Jemielniak (2016) Inequalities in Open Source Software Development: Analysis of Contributor’s Commits in Apache Software Foundation Projectshttp://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0152976.PDF, PLoS ONE 11: 4. e0152976.
If the changes get staff more directly and personally involved in communicating with the rest of the community it could be helpful to both groups, Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Dariusz Jemielniak Sent: 16 November 2019 12:39 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Community Engagement to leave the Foundation
hi,
speaking just in my personal opinion and capacity, without discussing it with anyone else: only time will tell whether this structural change works, and jumping to conclusions is definitely premature.
In principle, as a person specializing in management and organizational change, I can tell that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. I can definitely see a lot of possible benefits to the restructuring though, and we definitely DO want all WMF departments to be in touch with the communities. The proposed approach tries to address the siloses. Every department will have good interface with the CE issues, and this is a good thing. Whether it leads to better CE prioritization is unknown yet, but structurally it can definitely help.
On a practical level, given the fact that our previous search for the C-level position for CE took more than half a year, AFAIR, in the short term the assumed approach allows us to leapfrog a lot of turmoil, which could be damaging to community engagement in this crucial moment (last stretch of our strategic exercise effort). In the long run - I am certain that the WMF leadership does not believe in things written in stone.
I'd be really reluctant to assume the restructuring is good or bad for the community as it is, everything depends on how the new structure is used in practice.
best,
dj "pundit"
On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 1:29 AM Paul J. Weiss <pjweiss@uw.edumailto:pjweiss@uw.edu> wrote: I find the disbanding of the Community Engagement department at WMF to be quite concerning. I will go so far as to say that I view it as a mistake that will have negative impacts well into the future.
For one thing, the structure of an organization is in some sense a statement of priorities. I believe this move does indeed say to employees, the community, allied organization, and the rest of the world that the WMF is now placing less value on engaging the community. Given that many in the community have been feeling this already, this is not an opportune time to make this transition, even if it were a good idea for other reasons.
Another issue is the specific placement of individual teams. For example, you say that returning the Trust & Safety team to the Legal department is intuitive. It certainly is not to me, and that move in particular is concerning. The team's homepage on Meta states that it "identifies, builds and – as appropriate – staffs processes which keep our users safe; design, develop, and execute on a strategy that integrates legal, product, research, and learning & evaluation to proactively mitigate risk as well as manage the overall safety of our online and offline communities when incidents happen." The legal aspect is only one of many in the team's purview, and hopefully not a large one.
In my experience, units within legal departments take a very legalistic view of their work. As one example, many colleges and universities have an office for students with disabilities. In the US, those that are in legal or policy departments tend to focus very much on doing the minimum they have to do under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), rather than being student-centered. (This is the case here at the University of Washington.) Compare this to the focus of units for women, students of color, etc., often hierarchically under student services, who are much more proactive and supportive.
I definitely do not want Trust & Safety to narrow its focus to ensuring enforcement & reducing liability. As you know, legal but negative behavior is a significant threat to the future of Wikipedia and sister projects. The team needs to be organizationally placed to maximize, not minimize, its access to resources, the community, and other staff as well as its impact. Placing it in Legal could, for example, decrease significantly contact and trust from our community members whose experience with laws is that they are used as weapons and tools to oppress rather than engendering fairness and cooperation.
Please, please carefully consider the all ramifications of this reorganization before it is implemented.
Thank you, Paul Weiss Libcub on en.wp
--------- Original Message --------- Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Community Engagement to leave the Foundation From: 'Katherine Maher' <kmaher@wikimedia.orgmailto:kmaher@wikimedia.org> Date: 11/15/19 3:36 pm To: 'Wikimedia Mailing List' <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello everyone,
I am writing to let you know that Val D’Costa, Chief Community Engagement Officer, is leaving the Wikimedia Foundation. I also want to share some changes we’re making around how the Foundation organizes staff in the Community Engagement department.
Val joined us last January, bringing nearly three decades of experience launching and growing international initiatives in emerging markets. With the Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy as a guide, Val and her team drafted an ambitious new vision for the work of Community Engagement—focused on decentralization of power and resources, safe and welcoming spaces, equitable collaboration, increased language and cultural fluency, dedicated programs for groups such as women and young people, and expansive partnerships in service of free knowledge.
With this vision in hand, Val and I both see this as the right juncture for her to move on to her next professional challenge. While she will be leaving the position of Chief of Community Engagement, she will remain on as a consultant to me for a brief period.
I am deeply appreciative of Val’s time with us at the Foundation and want to thank her for the contributions she has made to the Wikimedia movement. She has been a passionate and persuasive advocate for our mission and pushed us to expand our vision of what could be possible for our movement. I wish her the absolute best in what she does next.
*== What comes next for Community Engagement ==*
I'll be direct -- we are making changes to the CE department structure.
We will not be starting a search for a new Chief of Community Engagement. Instead, over the course of the next few weeks, the seven teams currently within the Community Engagement (CE) department will be integrated into the Foundation’s other departments. By January, all of the teams will have joined their new departments, and “Community Engagement” will no longer be a standalone department.
The teams currently in CE will be integrated with other Foundation departments aligned with executive leadership goals and based on their scope and focus, as well as how they might grow in the future. Some of these alignments are intuitive, such as Trust & Safety returning to the Legal department; others might not be immediately apparent.
*== What does this mean for your work? ==*
Although we have a good sense of which teams will integrate with which departments, we are still meeting with the individual teams to work on the specific details of the transition. Our focus is on continuity for existing community programs and support for Foundation staff in making this change. You may hear from staff seeking input on those arrangements, and I want to thank you in advance for any feedback you may have.
We expect to wrap up these conversations in early December, to begin transitions in mid-December, and for the transitions to be completed by the beginning of January, at which point we’ll be able to share an overview of the new arrangements in full.
The work of the Community Engagement teams will remain the same throughout this period of transition. For example, if you need something from Trust & Safety or Community Resources, they’ll continue to be here to work with you. If you have a project or program underway with a CE team or staff member, that work will also continue. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Greg Varnum at gvarnum@wikimedia.orgmailto:gvarnum@wikimedia.org or leave your question in Wikimedia Space [1] and we’ll make sure we find an answer to your question.
*== Why are we making this change? ==*
The Community Engagement department has grown and evolved since it was created in 2015. We have brought in people with an increasingly diverse set of skills and backgrounds and introduced new support for additional languages, geographies, and areas of work, such as community health.
While this has helped the Foundation come a long way in addressing the needs of the movement, it has also created complexity. The breadth of activities and competencies now supported by the department is quite large—today, we have people working on issues as diverse as GLAM collection management, participatory grantmaking, and contributor safety—and increasingly, across many geographies, cultures, and languages.
This has created challenges for how we effectively coordinate such a range of specializations, how we assess their efficacy and impact against our mission. At the same time, as the Foundation has grown, we have developed capacities in other departments who will be good partners to those serving our community mission.
In making these changes, we see an opportunity to align the functions of the Foundation with the future of the mission and movement, and better serve long-time contributors and emerging communities alike. Over time, we anticipate these new arrangements will deepen the understanding of community efforts among all Foundation staff and programs, integrate community perspective across program design and support, and open up space for bold and fresh thinking about how to move our movement forward.
*== What about the future? ==*
Some people may be wondering, what does this mean for the proposed work in the Annual or Medium Term plans, or the planned restructure of the Community Engagement department to a new regional approach?
We remain fully committed to the work and goals of the Medium Term Plan. For example, although Val was not able to attend Indaba to celebrate with the African community, our COO and Deputy General Counsel, Janeen Uzzell and Tony Sebro, both attended.
The planned restructure and expansion of CE was intended to help us support the community in achieving these goals. This includes the MTP’s focus on building a thriving movement, increasing community health and diversity, and growing among new languages, regions, and audiences. We set these goals as part of our interpretation of the Movement Strategy, and they will remain our focus for the medium term.
I still believe we need to make many of these changes, as well as be prepared for further changes that may arise from the recommendations of the Movement Strategy Working Groups. We see a future that could include improved regional support, and expanded programmatic support for emerging communities, whether those are new languages, geographies, or areas of practice.
However, we are putting those plans on hold for the next few weeks, while we focus is on supporting the existing teams through this transition. I want us to make sure that goes well, before turning our attention to the future. That said, I fully expect to resume work on how we expand our support for these critical new areas in the first quarter of the new calendar year.
== Final thoughts ==
I want to be absolutely clear that these changes are in no way an indication that the Foundation is decreasing our commitment to support for the movement. I hope you see how this offers an opportunity to do the exact opposite—to set us up to support the movement in the best way we can.
For those with an interest in Wikimedia history, it’s worth noting that the Foundation has taken many different shapes over the years. In 2014, teams focused on community support were embedded in other departments. At the time, we were much smaller, and our ability to truly engage with the full breadth of the movement was more limited. In 2019, the community engagement teams are better resourced, more global, and more representative of the movement (although there’s always space for continued improvement).
We see this as the right moment to integrate the perspectives, experiences, and skills of these teams across the Foundation, ensuring that support for the movement is woven into all the Foundation’s work. As Wikimedians, we know change is a constant—and it is through change that we often do our best work, solve our hardest problems, and find our new path forward. Thank you in advance as we take this next step to support the future of our movement.
Sincerely, Katherine
[1] https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-foundation-chief-of-community-...
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ 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.orgmailto:Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
-- ________________________________________________________ [http://crow.kozminski.edu.pl/minds.jpg]http://nerds.kozminski.edu.pl/ prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry MINDS (Management in Networked and Digital Societies) Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://NeRDS.kozminski.edu.pl http://nerds.kozminski.edu.pl/
Ostatnie artykuły:
* Dariusz Jemielniak, Maciej Wilamowski (2017) Cultural Diversity of Quality of Information on Wikipediashttp://crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/cultures%20of%20wikipedias.pdf Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 68: 10. 2460–2470. * Dariusz Jemielniak (2016) Wikimedia Movement Governance: The Limits of A-Hierarchical Organizationhttp://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/wikimedia_governance.pdf Journal of Organizational Change Management 29: 3. 361-378. * Dariusz Jemielniak, Eduard Aibar (2016) Bridging the Gap Between Wikipedia and Academiahttp://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/bridging.pdf Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 67: 7. 1773-1776. * Dariusz Jemielniak (2016) Breaking the Glass Ceiling on Wikipediahttp://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/glass-ceiling.pdf Feminist Review 113: 1. 103-108. * Tadeusz Chełkowski, Peter Gloor, Dariusz Jemielniak (2016) Inequalities in Open Source Software Development: Analysis of Contributor’s Commits in Apache Software Foundation Projectshttp://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0152976.PDF, PLoS ONE 11: 4. e0152976. _______________________________________________ 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hoi, What language does the staff, the departments speak.
What chance for the current bias to be sustained and for no real progress where we do a mediocre job at best.. Did we EVER research what the effect was of ending the free access to our articles when we ended our program. Do we know how to make a difference and are we willing to let go of what holds us back?
Just compare the recent conventions and the money spend. Africa could be so much more active when our websites are as good there as what we are accustomed to. Yes, staff went to Africa and then what? Thanks, GerardM
On Sat, 16 Nov 2019 at 16:04, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
If the changes get staff more directly and personally involved in communicating with the rest of the community it could be helpful to both groups, Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Dariusz Jemielniak Sent: 16 November 2019 12:39 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Community Engagement to leave the Foundation
hi,
speaking just in my personal opinion and capacity, without discussing it with anyone else: only time will tell whether this structural change works, and jumping to conclusions is definitely premature.
In principle, as a person specializing in management and organizational change, I can tell that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. I can definitely see a lot of possible benefits to the restructuring though, and we definitely DO want all WMF departments to be in touch with the communities. The proposed approach tries to address the siloses. Every department will have good interface with the CE issues, and this is a good thing. Whether it leads to better CE prioritization is unknown yet, but structurally it can definitely help.
On a practical level, given the fact that our previous search for the C-level position for CE took more than half a year, AFAIR, in the short term the assumed approach allows us to leapfrog a lot of turmoil, which could be damaging to community engagement in this crucial moment (last stretch of our strategic exercise effort). In the long run - I am certain that the WMF leadership does not believe in things written in stone.
I'd be really reluctant to assume the restructuring is good or bad for the community as it is, everything depends on how the new structure is used in practice.
best,
dj "pundit"
On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 1:29 AM Paul J. Weiss <pjweiss@uw.edumailto: pjweiss@uw.edu> wrote: I find the disbanding of the Community Engagement department at WMF to be quite concerning. I will go so far as to say that I view it as a mistake that will have negative impacts well into the future.
For one thing, the structure of an organization is in some sense a statement of priorities. I believe this move does indeed say to employees, the community, allied organization, and the rest of the world that the WMF is now placing less value on engaging the community. Given that many in the community have been feeling this already, this is not an opportune time to make this transition, even if it were a good idea for other reasons.
Another issue is the specific placement of individual teams. For example, you say that returning the Trust & Safety team to the Legal department is intuitive. It certainly is not to me, and that move in particular is concerning. The team's homepage on Meta states that it "identifies, builds and – as appropriate – staffs processes which keep our users safe; design, develop, and execute on a strategy that integrates legal, product, research, and learning & evaluation to proactively mitigate risk as well as manage the overall safety of our online and offline communities when incidents happen." The legal aspect is only one of many in the team's purview, and hopefully not a large one.
In my experience, units within legal departments take a very legalistic view of their work. As one example, many colleges and universities have an office for students with disabilities. In the US, those that are in legal or policy departments tend to focus very much on doing the minimum they have to do under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), rather than being student-centered. (This is the case here at the University of Washington.) Compare this to the focus of units for women, students of color, etc., often hierarchically under student services, who are much more proactive and supportive.
I definitely do not want Trust & Safety to narrow its focus to ensuring enforcement & reducing liability. As you know, legal but negative behavior is a significant threat to the future of Wikipedia and sister projects. The team needs to be organizationally placed to maximize, not minimize, its access to resources, the community, and other staff as well as its impact. Placing it in Legal could, for example, decrease significantly contact and trust from our community members whose experience with laws is that they are used as weapons and tools to oppress rather than engendering fairness and cooperation.
Please, please carefully consider the all ramifications of this reorganization before it is implemented.
Thank you, Paul Weiss Libcub on en.wp
--------- Original Message --------- Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Community Engagement to leave the Foundation From: 'Katherine Maher' <kmaher@wikimedia.org<mailto:kmaher@wikimedia.org
Date: 11/15/19 3:36 pm To: 'Wikimedia Mailing List' <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello everyone,
I am writing to let you know that Val D’Costa, Chief Community Engagement Officer, is leaving the Wikimedia Foundation. I also want to share some changes we’re making around how the Foundation organizes staff in the Community Engagement department.
Val joined us last January, bringing nearly three decades of experience launching and growing international initiatives in emerging markets. With the Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy as a guide, Val and her team drafted an ambitious new vision for the work of Community Engagement—focused on decentralization of power and resources, safe and welcoming spaces, equitable collaboration, increased language and cultural fluency, dedicated programs for groups such as women and young people, and expansive partnerships in service of free knowledge.
With this vision in hand, Val and I both see this as the right juncture for her to move on to her next professional challenge. While she will be leaving the position of Chief of Community Engagement, she will remain on as a consultant to me for a brief period.
I am deeply appreciative of Val’s time with us at the Foundation and want to thank her for the contributions she has made to the Wikimedia movement. She has been a passionate and persuasive advocate for our mission and pushed us to expand our vision of what could be possible for our movement. I wish her the absolute best in what she does next.
*== What comes next for Community Engagement ==*
I'll be direct -- we are making changes to the CE department structure.
We will not be starting a search for a new Chief of Community Engagement. Instead, over the course of the next few weeks, the seven teams currently within the Community Engagement (CE) department will be integrated into the Foundation’s other departments. By January, all of the teams will have joined their new departments, and “Community Engagement” will no longer be a standalone department.
The teams currently in CE will be integrated with other Foundation departments aligned with executive leadership goals and based on their scope and focus, as well as how they might grow in the future. Some of these alignments are intuitive, such as Trust & Safety returning to the Legal department; others might not be immediately apparent.
*== What does this mean for your work? ==*
Although we have a good sense of which teams will integrate with which departments, we are still meeting with the individual teams to work on the specific details of the transition. Our focus is on continuity for existing community programs and support for Foundation staff in making this change. You may hear from staff seeking input on those arrangements, and I want to thank you in advance for any feedback you may have.
We expect to wrap up these conversations in early December, to begin transitions in mid-December, and for the transitions to be completed by the beginning of January, at which point we’ll be able to share an overview of the new arrangements in full.
The work of the Community Engagement teams will remain the same throughout this period of transition. For example, if you need something from Trust & Safety or Community Resources, they’ll continue to be here to work with you. If you have a project or program underway with a CE team or staff member, that work will also continue. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Greg Varnum at gvarnum@wikimedia.orgmailto: gvarnum@wikimedia.org or leave your question in Wikimedia Space [1] and we’ll make sure we find an answer to your question.
*== Why are we making this change? ==*
The Community Engagement department has grown and evolved since it was created in 2015. We have brought in people with an increasingly diverse set of skills and backgrounds and introduced new support for additional languages, geographies, and areas of work, such as community health.
While this has helped the Foundation come a long way in addressing the needs of the movement, it has also created complexity. The breadth of activities and competencies now supported by the department is quite large—today, we have people working on issues as diverse as GLAM collection management, participatory grantmaking, and contributor safety—and increasingly, across many geographies, cultures, and languages.
This has created challenges for how we effectively coordinate such a range of specializations, how we assess their efficacy and impact against our mission. At the same time, as the Foundation has grown, we have developed capacities in other departments who will be good partners to those serving our community mission.
In making these changes, we see an opportunity to align the functions of the Foundation with the future of the mission and movement, and better serve long-time contributors and emerging communities alike. Over time, we anticipate these new arrangements will deepen the understanding of community efforts among all Foundation staff and programs, integrate community perspective across program design and support, and open up space for bold and fresh thinking about how to move our movement forward.
*== What about the future? ==*
Some people may be wondering, what does this mean for the proposed work in the Annual or Medium Term plans, or the planned restructure of the Community Engagement department to a new regional approach?
We remain fully committed to the work and goals of the Medium Term Plan. For example, although Val was not able to attend Indaba to celebrate with the African community, our COO and Deputy General Counsel, Janeen Uzzell and Tony Sebro, both attended.
The planned restructure and expansion of CE was intended to help us support the community in achieving these goals. This includes the MTP’s focus on building a thriving movement, increasing community health and diversity, and growing among new languages, regions, and audiences. We set these goals as part of our interpretation of the Movement Strategy, and they will remain our focus for the medium term.
I still believe we need to make many of these changes, as well as be prepared for further changes that may arise from the recommendations of the Movement Strategy Working Groups. We see a future that could include improved regional support, and expanded programmatic support for emerging communities, whether those are new languages, geographies, or areas of practice.
However, we are putting those plans on hold for the next few weeks, while we focus is on supporting the existing teams through this transition. I want us to make sure that goes well, before turning our attention to the future. That said, I fully expect to resume work on how we expand our support for these critical new areas in the first quarter of the new calendar year.
== Final thoughts ==
I want to be absolutely clear that these changes are in no way an indication that the Foundation is decreasing our commitment to support for the movement. I hope you see how this offers an opportunity to do the exact opposite—to set us up to support the movement in the best way we can.
For those with an interest in Wikimedia history, it’s worth noting that the Foundation has taken many different shapes over the years. In 2014, teams focused on community support were embedded in other departments. At the time, we were much smaller, and our ability to truly engage with the full breadth of the movement was more limited. In 2019, the community engagement teams are better resourced, more global, and more representative of the movement (although there’s always space for continued improvement).
We see this as the right moment to integrate the perspectives, experiences, and skills of these teams across the Foundation, ensuring that support for the movement is woven into all the Foundation’s work. As Wikimedians, we know change is a constant—and it is through change that we often do our best work, solve our hardest problems, and find our new path forward. Thank you in advance as we take this next step to support the future of our movement.
Sincerely, Katherine
[1]
https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-foundation-chief-of-community-...
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ 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.orgmailto: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto: wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
-- ________________________________________________________ [http://crow.kozminski.edu.pl/minds.jpg]http://nerds.kozminski.edu.pl/ prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry MINDS (Management in Networked and Digital Societies) Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://NeRDS.kozminski.edu.pl http://nerds.kozminski.edu.pl/
Ostatnie artykuły:
- Dariusz Jemielniak, Maciej Wilamowski (2017) Cultural Diversity of
Quality of Information on Wikipedias< http://crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/cultures%20of%20wikipedias.pdf%3E Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 68: 10. 2460–2470.
- Dariusz Jemielniak (2016) Wikimedia Movement Governance: The Limits
of A-Hierarchical Organization< http://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/wikimedia_governance.pdf%3E Journal of Organizational Change Management 29: 3. 361-378.
- Dariusz Jemielniak, Eduard Aibar (2016) Bridging the Gap Between
Wikipedia and Academia< http://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/bridging.pdf%3E Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 67: 7. 1773-1776.
- Dariusz Jemielniak (2016) Breaking the Glass Ceiling on Wikipedia<
http://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/glass-ceiling.pdf%3E Feminist Review 113: 1. 103-108.
- Tadeusz Chełkowski, Peter Gloor, Dariusz Jemielniak (2016)
Inequalities in Open Source Software Development: Analysis of Contributor’s Commits in Apache Software Foundation Projects< http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.015..., PLoS ONE 11: 4. e0152976. _______________________________________________ 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. https://www.avg.com
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What websites are you talking about, Gerard? I couldn't get that part.
Africa is way more engaged and active that the impression that often passes to the rest of the movement, and I believe that the WMF staff that went to Wiki Indaba has noticed that (it was impossible not to notice it, IMO). I was at Wiki Indaba, and my impression is that the WMF was well and properly represented at the conference, that the money was well spent and that there will be/ already are practical and noticeable improvements in the engagement with the wiki communities in Africa on the part of the WMF after that.
Best, Paulo
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com escreveu no dia sábado, 16/11/2019 à(s) 16:12:
Hoi, What language does the staff, the departments speak.
What chance for the current bias to be sustained and for no real progress where we do a mediocre job at best.. Did we EVER research what the effect was of ending the free access to our articles when we ended our program. Do we know how to make a difference and are we willing to let go of what holds us back?
Just compare the recent conventions and the money spend. Africa could be so much more active when our websites are as good there as what we are accustomed to. Yes, staff went to Africa and then what? Thanks, GerardM
On Sat, 16 Nov 2019 at 16:04, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
If the changes get staff more directly and personally involved in communicating with the rest of the community it could be helpful to both groups, Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Dariusz Jemielniak Sent: 16 November 2019 12:39 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Community Engagement to leave the Foundation
hi,
speaking just in my personal opinion and capacity, without discussing it with anyone else: only time will tell whether this structural change
works,
and jumping to conclusions is definitely premature.
In principle, as a person specializing in management and organizational change, I can tell that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. I can definitely see a lot of possible benefits to the restructuring though,
and
we definitely DO want all WMF departments to be in touch with the communities. The proposed approach tries to address the siloses. Every department will have good interface with the CE issues, and this is a
good
thing. Whether it leads to better CE prioritization is unknown yet, but structurally it can definitely help.
On a practical level, given the fact that our previous search for the C-level position for CE took more than half a year, AFAIR, in the short term the assumed approach allows us to leapfrog a lot of turmoil, which could be damaging to community engagement in this crucial moment (last stretch of our strategic exercise effort). In the long run - I am certain that the WMF leadership does not believe in things written in stone.
I'd be really reluctant to assume the restructuring is good or bad for
the
community as it is, everything depends on how the new structure is used
in
practice.
best,
dj "pundit"
On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 1:29 AM Paul J. Weiss <pjweiss@uw.edumailto: pjweiss@uw.edu> wrote: I find the disbanding of the Community Engagement department at WMF to be quite concerning. I will go so far as to say that I view it as a mistake that will have negative impacts well into the future.
For one thing, the structure of an organization is in some sense a statement of priorities. I believe this move does indeed say to
employees,
the community, allied organization, and the rest of the world that the
WMF
is now placing less value on engaging the community. Given that many in
the
community have been feeling this already, this is not an opportune time
to
make this transition, even if it were a good idea for other reasons.
Another issue is the specific placement of individual teams. For example, you say that returning the Trust & Safety team to the Legal department is intuitive. It certainly is not to me, and that move in particular is concerning. The team's homepage on Meta states that it "identifies,
builds
and – as appropriate – staffs processes which keep our users safe;
design,
develop, and execute on a strategy that integrates legal, product, research, and learning & evaluation to proactively mitigate risk as well
as
manage the overall safety of our online and offline communities when incidents happen." The legal aspect is only one of many in the team's purview, and hopefully not a large one.
In my experience, units within legal departments take a very legalistic view of their work. As one example, many colleges and universities have
an
office for students with disabilities. In the US, those that are in legal or policy departments tend to focus very much on doing the minimum they have to do under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), rather than being student-centered. (This is the case here at the University of Washington.) Compare this to the focus of units for women, students of color, etc., often hierarchically under student services, who are much
more
proactive and supportive.
I definitely do not want Trust & Safety to narrow its focus to ensuring enforcement & reducing liability. As you know, legal but negative
behavior
is a significant threat to the future of Wikipedia and sister projects.
The
team needs to be organizationally placed to maximize, not minimize, its access to resources, the community, and other staff as well as its
impact.
Placing it in Legal could, for example, decrease significantly contact
and
trust from our community members whose experience with laws is that they are used as weapons and tools to oppress rather than engendering fairness and cooperation.
Please, please carefully consider the all ramifications of this reorganization before it is implemented.
Thank you, Paul Weiss Libcub on en.wp
--------- Original Message --------- Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Community Engagement to leave the Foundation From: 'Katherine Maher' <kmaher@wikimedia.org<mailto:
kmaher@wikimedia.org
Date: 11/15/19 3:36 pm To: 'Wikimedia Mailing List' <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello everyone,
I am writing to let you know that Val D’Costa, Chief Community Engagement Officer, is leaving the Wikimedia Foundation. I also want to share some changes we’re making around how the Foundation organizes staff in the Community Engagement department.
Val joined us last January, bringing nearly three decades of experience launching and growing international initiatives in emerging markets. With the Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy as a guide, Val and her team drafted an ambitious new vision for the work of Community Engagement—focused on decentralization of power and resources, safe and welcoming spaces, equitable collaboration, increased language and cultural fluency,
dedicated
programs for groups such as women and young people, and expansive partnerships in service of free knowledge.
With this vision in hand, Val and I both see this as the right juncture
for
her to move on to her next professional challenge. While she will be leaving the position of Chief of Community Engagement, she will remain on as a consultant to me for a brief period.
I am deeply appreciative of Val’s time with us at the Foundation and want to thank her for the contributions she has made to the Wikimedia
movement.
She has been a passionate and persuasive advocate for our mission and pushed us to expand our vision of what could be possible for our
movement.
I wish her the absolute best in what she does next.
*== What comes next for Community Engagement ==*
I'll be direct -- we are making changes to the CE department structure.
We will not be starting a search for a new Chief of Community Engagement. Instead, over the course of the next few weeks, the seven teams currently within the Community Engagement (CE) department will be integrated into
the
Foundation’s other departments. By January, all of the teams will have joined their new departments, and “Community Engagement” will no longer
be
a standalone department.
The teams currently in CE will be integrated with other Foundation departments aligned with executive leadership goals and based on their scope and focus, as well as how they might grow in the future. Some of these alignments are intuitive, such as Trust & Safety returning to the Legal department; others might not be immediately apparent.
*== What does this mean for your work? ==*
Although we have a good sense of which teams will integrate with which departments, we are still meeting with the individual teams to work on
the
specific details of the transition. Our focus is on continuity for
existing
community programs and support for Foundation staff in making this
change.
You may hear from staff seeking input on those arrangements, and I want
to
thank you in advance for any feedback you may have.
We expect to wrap up these conversations in early December, to begin transitions in mid-December, and for the transitions to be completed by
the
beginning of January, at which point we’ll be able to share an overview
of
the new arrangements in full.
The work of the Community Engagement teams will remain the same
throughout
this period of transition. For example, if you need something from Trust
&
Safety or Community Resources, they’ll continue to be here to work with you. If you have a project or program underway with a CE team or staff member, that work will also continue. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Greg Varnum at gvarnum@wikimedia.orgmailto: gvarnum@wikimedia.org or leave your question in Wikimedia Space [1] and we’ll make sure we find an
answer
to your question.
*== Why are we making this change? ==*
The Community Engagement department has grown and evolved since it was created in 2015. We have brought in people with an increasingly diverse
set
of skills and backgrounds and introduced new support for additional languages, geographies, and areas of work, such as community health.
While this has helped the Foundation come a long way in addressing the needs of the movement, it has also created complexity. The breadth of activities and competencies now supported by the department is quite large—today, we have people working on issues as diverse as GLAM
collection
management, participatory grantmaking, and contributor safety—and increasingly, across many geographies, cultures, and languages.
This has created challenges for how we effectively coordinate such a
range
of specializations, how we assess their efficacy and impact against our mission. At the same time, as the Foundation has grown, we have developed capacities in other departments who will be good partners to those
serving
our community mission.
In making these changes, we see an opportunity to align the functions of the Foundation with the future of the mission and movement, and better serve long-time contributors and emerging communities alike. Over time,
we
anticipate these new arrangements will deepen the understanding of community efforts among all Foundation staff and programs, integrate community perspective across program design and support, and open up
space
for bold and fresh thinking about how to move our movement forward.
*== What about the future? ==*
Some people may be wondering, what does this mean for the proposed work
in
the Annual or Medium Term plans, or the planned restructure of the Community Engagement department to a new regional approach?
We remain fully committed to the work and goals of the Medium Term Plan. For example, although Val was not able to attend Indaba to celebrate with the African community, our COO and Deputy General Counsel, Janeen Uzzell and Tony Sebro, both attended.
The planned restructure and expansion of CE was intended to help us
support
the community in achieving these goals. This includes the MTP’s focus on building a thriving movement, increasing community health and diversity, and growing among new languages, regions, and audiences. We set these
goals
as part of our interpretation of the Movement Strategy, and they will remain our focus for the medium term.
I still believe we need to make many of these changes, as well as be prepared for further changes that may arise from the recommendations of
the
Movement Strategy Working Groups. We see a future that could include improved regional support, and expanded programmatic support for emerging communities, whether those are new languages, geographies, or areas of practice.
However, we are putting those plans on hold for the next few weeks, while we focus is on supporting the existing teams through this transition. I want us to make sure that goes well, before turning our attention to the future. That said, I fully expect to resume work on how we expand our support for these critical new areas in the first quarter of the new calendar year.
== Final thoughts ==
I want to be absolutely clear that these changes are in no way an indication that the Foundation is decreasing our commitment to support
for
the movement. I hope you see how this offers an opportunity to do the
exact
opposite—to set us up to support the movement in the best way we can.
For those with an interest in Wikimedia history, it’s worth noting that
the
Foundation has taken many different shapes over the years. In 2014, teams focused on community support were embedded in other departments. At the time, we were much smaller, and our ability to truly engage with the full breadth of the movement was more limited. In 2019, the community
engagement
teams are better resourced, more global, and more representative of the movement (although there’s always space for continued improvement).
We see this as the right moment to integrate the perspectives,
experiences,
and skills of these teams across the Foundation, ensuring that support
for
the movement is woven into all the Foundation’s work. As Wikimedians, we know change is a constant—and it is through change that we often do our best work, solve our hardest problems, and find our new path forward.
Thank
you in advance as we take this next step to support the future of our movement.
Sincerely, Katherine
[1]
https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-foundation-chief-of-community-...
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ 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.orgmailto: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto: wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
-- ________________________________________________________ [http://crow.kozminski.edu.pl/minds.jpg]http://nerds.kozminski.edu.pl/ prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry MINDS (Management in Networked and Digital Societies) Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://NeRDS.kozminski.edu.pl http://nerds.kozminski.edu.pl/
Ostatnie artykuły:
- Dariusz Jemielniak, Maciej Wilamowski (2017) Cultural Diversity of
Quality of Information on Wikipedias< http://crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/cultures%20of%20wikipedias.pdf%3E Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 68:
2460–2470.
- Dariusz Jemielniak (2016) Wikimedia Movement Governance: The
Limits
of A-Hierarchical Organization< http://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/wikimedia_governance.pdf%3E
Journal
of Organizational Change Management 29: 3. 361-378.
- Dariusz Jemielniak, Eduard Aibar (2016) Bridging the Gap Between
Wikipedia and Academia< http://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/bridging.pdf%3E Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 67: 7. 1773-1776.
- Dariusz Jemielniak (2016) Breaking the Glass Ceiling on Wikipedia<
http://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/glass-ceiling.pdf%3E Feminist Review 113: 1. 103-108.
- Tadeusz Chełkowski, Peter Gloor, Dariusz Jemielniak (2016)
Inequalities in Open Source Software Development: Analysis of
Contributor’s
Commits in Apache Software Foundation Projects<
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.015...
, PLoS ONE 11: 4. e0152976. _______________________________________________ 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. https://www.avg.com
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Hoi, It is all a matter of perception. I work at Wikidata particularly on Africa. I notice how little data we have on Wikidata. Today for instance I added ministers of health because we just did not have this. We do not have the geographic data that is what we need if we only want to know where someone was born/died.. I regularly add universities to Wikidata because we do not have them.
You can say that everything is well in hand, we were there, and these nice people are really active. Sure. Compare that with the American meet up where it was professionals getting to grips with how to get the most out of our projects.
We took away what enabled children to make use of Wikipedia, the question is what did we do to compensate. Thanks, GerardM
On Sat, 16 Nov 2019 at 19:19, Paulo Santos Perneta paulosperneta@gmail.com wrote:
What websites are you talking about, Gerard? I couldn't get that part.
Africa is way more engaged and active that the impression that often passes to the rest of the movement, and I believe that the WMF staff that went to Wiki Indaba has noticed that (it was impossible not to notice it, IMO). I was at Wiki Indaba, and my impression is that the WMF was well and properly represented at the conference, that the money was well spent and that there will be/ already are practical and noticeable improvements in the engagement with the wiki communities in Africa on the part of the WMF after that.
Best, Paulo
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com escreveu no dia sábado, 16/11/2019 à(s) 16:12:
Hoi, What language does the staff, the departments speak.
What chance for the current bias to be sustained and for no real progress where we do a mediocre job at best.. Did we EVER research what the effect was of ending the free access to our articles when we ended our program.
Do
we know how to make a difference and are we willing to let go of what
holds
us back?
Just compare the recent conventions and the money spend. Africa could be
so
much more active when our websites are as good there as what we are accustomed to. Yes, staff went to Africa and then what? Thanks, GerardM
On Sat, 16 Nov 2019 at 16:04, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
If the changes get staff more directly and personally involved in communicating with the rest of the community it could be helpful to
both
groups, Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Dariusz Jemielniak Sent: 16 November 2019 12:39 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Community Engagement to leave the Foundation
hi,
speaking just in my personal opinion and capacity, without discussing
it
with anyone else: only time will tell whether this structural change
works,
and jumping to conclusions is definitely premature.
In principle, as a person specializing in management and organizational change, I can tell that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. I can definitely see a lot of possible benefits to the restructuring though,
and
we definitely DO want all WMF departments to be in touch with the communities. The proposed approach tries to address the siloses. Every department will have good interface with the CE issues, and this is a
good
thing. Whether it leads to better CE prioritization is unknown yet, but structurally it can definitely help.
On a practical level, given the fact that our previous search for the C-level position for CE took more than half a year, AFAIR, in the short term the assumed approach allows us to leapfrog a lot of turmoil, which could be damaging to community engagement in this crucial moment (last stretch of our strategic exercise effort). In the long run - I am
certain
that the WMF leadership does not believe in things written in stone.
I'd be really reluctant to assume the restructuring is good or bad for
the
community as it is, everything depends on how the new structure is used
in
practice.
best,
dj "pundit"
On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 1:29 AM Paul J. Weiss <pjweiss@uw.edumailto: pjweiss@uw.edu> wrote: I find the disbanding of the Community Engagement department at WMF to
be
quite concerning. I will go so far as to say that I view it as a
mistake
that will have negative impacts well into the future.
For one thing, the structure of an organization is in some sense a statement of priorities. I believe this move does indeed say to
employees,
the community, allied organization, and the rest of the world that the
WMF
is now placing less value on engaging the community. Given that many in
the
community have been feeling this already, this is not an opportune time
to
make this transition, even if it were a good idea for other reasons.
Another issue is the specific placement of individual teams. For
example,
you say that returning the Trust & Safety team to the Legal department
is
intuitive. It certainly is not to me, and that move in particular is concerning. The team's homepage on Meta states that it "identifies,
builds
and – as appropriate – staffs processes which keep our users safe;
design,
develop, and execute on a strategy that integrates legal, product, research, and learning & evaluation to proactively mitigate risk as
well
as
manage the overall safety of our online and offline communities when incidents happen." The legal aspect is only one of many in the team's purview, and hopefully not a large one.
In my experience, units within legal departments take a very legalistic view of their work. As one example, many colleges and universities have
an
office for students with disabilities. In the US, those that are in
legal
or policy departments tend to focus very much on doing the minimum they have to do under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), rather than being student-centered. (This is the case here at the University of Washington.) Compare this to the focus of units for women, students of color, etc., often hierarchically under student services, who are much
more
proactive and supportive.
I definitely do not want Trust & Safety to narrow its focus to ensuring enforcement & reducing liability. As you know, legal but negative
behavior
is a significant threat to the future of Wikipedia and sister projects.
The
team needs to be organizationally placed to maximize, not minimize, its access to resources, the community, and other staff as well as its
impact.
Placing it in Legal could, for example, decrease significantly contact
and
trust from our community members whose experience with laws is that
they
are used as weapons and tools to oppress rather than engendering
fairness
and cooperation.
Please, please carefully consider the all ramifications of this reorganization before it is implemented.
Thank you, Paul Weiss Libcub on en.wp
--------- Original Message --------- Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Community
Engagement
to leave the Foundation From: 'Katherine Maher' <kmaher@wikimedia.org<mailto:
kmaher@wikimedia.org
Date: 11/15/19 3:36 pm To: 'Wikimedia Mailing List' <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello everyone,
I am writing to let you know that Val D’Costa, Chief Community
Engagement
Officer, is leaving the Wikimedia Foundation. I also want to share some changes we’re making around how the Foundation organizes staff in the Community Engagement department.
Val joined us last January, bringing nearly three decades of experience launching and growing international initiatives in emerging markets.
With
the Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy as a guide, Val and her team
drafted
an ambitious new vision for the work of Community Engagement—focused on decentralization of power and resources, safe and welcoming spaces, equitable collaboration, increased language and cultural fluency,
dedicated
programs for groups such as women and young people, and expansive partnerships in service of free knowledge.
With this vision in hand, Val and I both see this as the right juncture
for
her to move on to her next professional challenge. While she will be leaving the position of Chief of Community Engagement, she will remain
on
as a consultant to me for a brief period.
I am deeply appreciative of Val’s time with us at the Foundation and
want
to thank her for the contributions she has made to the Wikimedia
movement.
She has been a passionate and persuasive advocate for our mission and pushed us to expand our vision of what could be possible for our
movement.
I wish her the absolute best in what she does next.
*== What comes next for Community Engagement ==*
I'll be direct -- we are making changes to the CE department structure.
We will not be starting a search for a new Chief of Community
Engagement.
Instead, over the course of the next few weeks, the seven teams
currently
within the Community Engagement (CE) department will be integrated into
the
Foundation’s other departments. By January, all of the teams will have joined their new departments, and “Community Engagement” will no longer
be
a standalone department.
The teams currently in CE will be integrated with other Foundation departments aligned with executive leadership goals and based on their scope and focus, as well as how they might grow in the future. Some of these alignments are intuitive, such as Trust & Safety returning to the Legal department; others might not be immediately apparent.
*== What does this mean for your work? ==*
Although we have a good sense of which teams will integrate with which departments, we are still meeting with the individual teams to work on
the
specific details of the transition. Our focus is on continuity for
existing
community programs and support for Foundation staff in making this
change.
You may hear from staff seeking input on those arrangements, and I want
to
thank you in advance for any feedback you may have.
We expect to wrap up these conversations in early December, to begin transitions in mid-December, and for the transitions to be completed by
the
beginning of January, at which point we’ll be able to share an overview
of
the new arrangements in full.
The work of the Community Engagement teams will remain the same
throughout
this period of transition. For example, if you need something from
Trust
&
Safety or Community Resources, they’ll continue to be here to work with you. If you have a project or program underway with a CE team or staff member, that work will also continue. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Greg Varnum at gvarnum@wikimedia.orgmailto: gvarnum@wikimedia.org or leave your question in Wikimedia Space [1] and we’ll make sure we find an
answer
to your question.
*== Why are we making this change? ==*
The Community Engagement department has grown and evolved since it was created in 2015. We have brought in people with an increasingly diverse
set
of skills and backgrounds and introduced new support for additional languages, geographies, and areas of work, such as community health.
While this has helped the Foundation come a long way in addressing the needs of the movement, it has also created complexity. The breadth of activities and competencies now supported by the department is quite large—today, we have people working on issues as diverse as GLAM
collection
management, participatory grantmaking, and contributor safety—and increasingly, across many geographies, cultures, and languages.
This has created challenges for how we effectively coordinate such a
range
of specializations, how we assess their efficacy and impact against our mission. At the same time, as the Foundation has grown, we have
developed
capacities in other departments who will be good partners to those
serving
our community mission.
In making these changes, we see an opportunity to align the functions
of
the Foundation with the future of the mission and movement, and better serve long-time contributors and emerging communities alike. Over time,
we
anticipate these new arrangements will deepen the understanding of community efforts among all Foundation staff and programs, integrate community perspective across program design and support, and open up
space
for bold and fresh thinking about how to move our movement forward.
*== What about the future? ==*
Some people may be wondering, what does this mean for the proposed work
in
the Annual or Medium Term plans, or the planned restructure of the Community Engagement department to a new regional approach?
We remain fully committed to the work and goals of the Medium Term
Plan.
For example, although Val was not able to attend Indaba to celebrate
with
the African community, our COO and Deputy General Counsel, Janeen
Uzzell
and Tony Sebro, both attended.
The planned restructure and expansion of CE was intended to help us
support
the community in achieving these goals. This includes the MTP’s focus
on
building a thriving movement, increasing community health and
diversity,
and growing among new languages, regions, and audiences. We set these
goals
as part of our interpretation of the Movement Strategy, and they will remain our focus for the medium term.
I still believe we need to make many of these changes, as well as be prepared for further changes that may arise from the recommendations of
the
Movement Strategy Working Groups. We see a future that could include improved regional support, and expanded programmatic support for
emerging
communities, whether those are new languages, geographies, or areas of practice.
However, we are putting those plans on hold for the next few weeks,
while
we focus is on supporting the existing teams through this transition. I want us to make sure that goes well, before turning our attention to
the
future. That said, I fully expect to resume work on how we expand our support for these critical new areas in the first quarter of the new calendar year.
== Final thoughts ==
I want to be absolutely clear that these changes are in no way an indication that the Foundation is decreasing our commitment to support
for
the movement. I hope you see how this offers an opportunity to do the
exact
opposite—to set us up to support the movement in the best way we can.
For those with an interest in Wikimedia history, it’s worth noting that
the
Foundation has taken many different shapes over the years. In 2014,
teams
focused on community support were embedded in other departments. At the time, we were much smaller, and our ability to truly engage with the
full
breadth of the movement was more limited. In 2019, the community
engagement
teams are better resourced, more global, and more representative of the movement (although there’s always space for continued improvement).
We see this as the right moment to integrate the perspectives,
experiences,
and skills of these teams across the Foundation, ensuring that support
for
the movement is woven into all the Foundation’s work. As Wikimedians,
we
know change is a constant—and it is through change that we often do our best work, solve our hardest problems, and find our new path forward.
Thank
you in advance as we take this next step to support the future of our movement.
Sincerely, Katherine
[1]
https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-foundation-chief-of-community-...
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ 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.orgmailto: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto: wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
-- ________________________________________________________ [http://crow.kozminski.edu.pl/minds.jpg]<
http://nerds.kozminski.edu.pl/%3E
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniakkierownik katedry MINDS (Management in Networked and Digital Societies) Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://NeRDS.kozminski.edu.pl http://nerds.kozminski.edu.pl/
Ostatnie artykuły:
- Dariusz Jemielniak, Maciej Wilamowski (2017) Cultural Diversity
of
Quality of Information on Wikipedias< http://crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/cultures%20of%20wikipedias.pdf%3E Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 68:
2460–2470.
- Dariusz Jemielniak (2016) Wikimedia Movement Governance: The
Limits
of A-Hierarchical Organization< http://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/wikimedia_governance.pdf%3E
Journal
of Organizational Change Management 29: 3. 361-378.
- Dariusz Jemielniak, Eduard Aibar (2016) Bridging the Gap Between
Wikipedia and Academia< http://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/bridging.pdf%3E Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 67: 7. 1773-1776.
- Dariusz Jemielniak (2016) Breaking the Glass Ceiling on
Wikipedia<
http://www.crow.kozminski.edu.pl/papers/glass-ceiling.pdf%3E Feminist Review 113: 1. 103-108.
- Tadeusz Chełkowski, Peter Gloor, Dariusz Jemielniak (2016)
Inequalities in Open Source Software Development: Analysis of
Contributor’s
Commits in Apache Software Foundation Projects<
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.015...
, PLoS ONE 11: 4. e0152976. _______________________________________________ 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. https://www.avg.com
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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Katherine Maher wrote:
Valerie and her team drafted an ambitious new vision for the work of Community Engagement—focused on decentralization of power and resources, safe and welcoming spaces, equitable collaboration, increased language and cultural fluency, dedicated programs for groups such as women and young people, and expansive partnerships in service of free knowledge.
With this vision in hand, Val and I both see this as the right juncture for
her to move on to her next professional challenge.
I'm sorry to hear the news of her leaving. I wish her good fortune in her next endeavour and I wish success for the WMF in implementing the vision of her team.
Katherine Maher wrote:
We will not be starting a search for a new Chief of Community Engagement. Instead, over the course of the next few weeks, the seven teams currently within the Community Engagement (CE) department will be integrated into the Foundation’s other departments.
I believe this change might give a new chance to improve community engagement with the WMF teams. The Movement Strategy community conversations https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations and the office actions consultation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Office_actions/Community_consultation_on_partial_and_temporary_office_actions/09_2019 was a step in the good direction, but the community is looking for a more engaged, real-time, person-to-person discussion with team members, besides the unidirectional flow of these plans. As Valerie's ted talk states: "Think Circles, Not Pyramids". We very much appreciate the contributions of the few working group members, who joined the discussions, but hoped at least one member of all working groups would join. I hope as a result of this restructuring all teams and members will take part to some extent in "community engagement". Direct communication is the most effective way to achieve community goals. With the strong divide between the WMF and the communities, I see direct communication as the only way to bridge those gaps and create healthy cooperation between the communities and the WMF. I believe if engagement with the communities increases, the communities will be more trusting and helpful to the teams, thereby paving the road to success for the Movement's goals.
Katherine Maher wrote:
For example, if you need something from Trust & Safety or Community Resources,
they’ll continue to be here to work with you.
I appreciate the time invested by Karen (KBrown) and Samuel in the partial bans consultation. In other matters however it is very hard to gain the attention of T&S. I assumed it's the T&S team's purpose to address community health issues, but I might be wrong. When I've reported an issue of tool abuse and possible harassment to the T&S - that previously received no response (not even acknowledgment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Procedures#Incoming_mail) from the ArbCom -, almost 2 months (sic!) later I've received the following response: "The issues you have described in your communication to us are a local community governance matters, which fall outside of the Foundation's remit. We respect the autonomy of the Wikimedia communities and, as a rule, do not interfere." This was at the time when Fram was temporarily banned by the T&S for harassment. I've clarified in a response that the issue involved Terms of Use violation, which is the policy of the WMF, not the community. There was no answer in the last 3 months.
As the community health research projects revealed in previous years, editors are occasionally bullied, harassed; often this is done to influence decisions and silence different POVs. Established editors are part of a social network of fellow editors, who can protect them from harm, but new and casual editors don't enjoy such safety. As an example: the first response I've received *from the OTRS*, when I asked how to handle an issue of preferential treatment, that I often see new users are a victim of: "Report them to ANI and *hope you're not hit in the face with a boomerang*." This is the safety new users can expect currently. Needless to say, such response in a professional support team would be unacceptable.
My questions are: Where should new and casual editors seek help in the new team structure if the communities ignore their problem? What team and individuals will work to improve community health?
Paul J. Weiss wrote:
I definitely do not want Trust & Safety to narrow its focus to ensuring
enforcement & reducing liability. As you know, legal but negative behavior
is a significant threat to the future of Wikipedia and sister projects. The team needs to be organizationally placed to maximize, not minimize, its access to resources, the community, and other staff as well as its impact. Placing it in Legal could, for example, decrease significantly contact and trust from our community members whose experience with laws is that they are used as weapons and tools to oppress rather than engendering fairness and cooperation.
I wholly agree with your concern, my first thought too. However, my experience (as detailed above) and observation is that T&S already only gets involved with legal matters, therefore placing it under the Legal department won't change anything in the regard. That's why I have no concerns about that move.
Katherine Maher wrote:
The planned restructure and expansion of Community Engagement was intended to help us support
the community in achieving these goals [of the Medium Term Plan]. This
includes the MTP’s focus on building a thriving movement, increasing community health and diversity, and growing among new languages, regions, and audiences. We set these goals as part of our interpretation of the Movement Strategy, and they will remain our focus for the medium term. I still believe we need to make many of these changes, as well as be prepared for further changes that may arise from the recommendations of the Movement Strategy Working Groups.
This year many long-running community and governance issues surfaced: the mass-desysop proposals of Azerbaijani and Croatian Wikipedias, admin civility issues on English Wikipedia and a few long-term, valued editors being sanctioned. These were present for many years and these are just the public issues known to me.
I believe in the Movement's targets of diverse, inclusive communities and I recognize that we are very far from it. I believe the WMF has the resources to increase community health and diversity, if that target is pursued consistently. Change is not an easy task however and cannot be done without close cooperation with the communities. The key to community acceptance is transparency, communication, and practical solutions; enforcing rules and unilateral decisions would only result in resistance. I hope there will be specific roles in the new structure to engage with the community on a daily basis to resolve community issues and establish healthy practices. I've suggested in the partial bans consultation, that the WMF hire professional arbitrators/mediators to tackle the hardest cases in cooperation with community-elected arbitrators. Professionals would bring a new set of more nuanced tools to the table to resolve issues with minimal sanctions and without punishments.
The WMF is facing a huge challenge. I wish the best luck and good faith from the community to achieve the Movement's targets.
Sincerely, Aron Manning
On Fri, 15 Nov 2019 at 3:36 pm, 'Katherine Maher' <kmaher@wikimedia.org
wrote:
--------- Original Message --------- Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Community Engagement to leave the Foundation From: 'Katherine Maher' kmaher@wikimedia.org Date: 11/15/19 3:36 pm To: 'Wikimedia Mailing List' wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello everyone,
I am writing to let you know that Val D’Costa, Chief Community Engagement Officer, is leaving the Wikimedia Foundation. I also want to share some changes we’re making around how the Foundation organizes staff in the Community Engagement department.
Val joined us last January, bringing nearly three decades of experience launching and growing international initiatives in emerging markets. With the Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy as a guide, Val and her team drafted an ambitious new vision for the work of Community Engagement—focused on decentralization of power and resources, safe and welcoming spaces, equitable collaboration, increased language and cultural fluency, dedicated programs for groups such as women and young people, and expansive partnerships in service of free knowledge.
With this vision in hand, Val and I both see this as the right juncture for her to move on to her next professional challenge. While she will be leaving the position of Chief of Community Engagement, she will remain on as a consultant to me for a brief period.
I am deeply appreciative of Val’s time with us at the Foundation and want to thank her for the contributions she has made to the Wikimedia movement. She has been a passionate and persuasive advocate for our mission and pushed us to expand our vision of what could be possible for our movement. I wish her the absolute best in what she does next.
*== What comes next for Community Engagement ==*
I'll be direct -- we are making changes to the CE department structure.
We will not be starting a search for a new Chief of Community Engagement. Instead, over the course of the next few weeks, the seven teams currently within the Community Engagement (CE) department will be integrated into the Foundation’s other departments. By January, all of the teams will have joined their new departments, and “Community Engagement” will no longer be a standalone department.
The teams currently in CE will be integrated with other Foundation departments aligned with executive leadership goals and based on their scope and focus, as well as how they might grow in the future. Some of these alignments are intuitive, such as Trust & Safety returning to the Legal department; others might not be immediately apparent.
*== What does this mean for your work? ==*
Although we have a good sense of which teams will integrate with which departments, we are still meeting with the individual teams to work on the specific details of the transition. Our focus is on continuity for existing community programs and support for Foundation staff in making this change. You may hear from staff seeking input on those arrangements, and I want to thank you in advance for any feedback you may have.
We expect to wrap up these conversations in early December, to begin transitions in mid-December, and for the transitions to be completed by the beginning of January, at which point we’ll be able to share an overview of the new arrangements in full.
The work of the Community Engagement teams will remain the same throughout this period of transition. For example, if you need something from Trust & Safety or Community Resources, they’ll continue to be here to work with you. If you have a project or program underway with a CE team or staff member, that work will also continue. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Greg Varnum at gvarnum@wikimedia.org or leave your question in Wikimedia Space [1] and we’ll make sure we find an answer to your question.
*== Why are we making this change? ==*
The Community Engagement department has grown and evolved since it was created in 2015. We have brought in people with an increasingly diverse set of skills and backgrounds and introduced new support for additional languages, geographies, and areas of work, such as community health.
While this has helped the Foundation come a long way in addressing the needs of the movement, it has also created complexity. The breadth of activities and competencies now supported by the department is quite large—today, we have people working on issues as diverse as GLAM collection management, participatory grantmaking, and contributor safety—and increasingly, across many geographies, cultures, and languages.
This has created challenges for how we effectively coordinate such a range of specializations, how we assess their efficacy and impact against our mission. At the same time, as the Foundation has grown, we have developed capacities in other departments who will be good partners to those serving our community mission.
In making these changes, we see an opportunity to align the functions of the Foundation with the future of the mission and movement, and better serve long-time contributors and emerging communities alike. Over time, we anticipate these new arrangements will deepen the understanding of community efforts among all Foundation staff and programs, integrate community perspective across program design and support, and open up space for bold and fresh thinking about how to move our movement forward.
*== What about the future? ==*
Some people may be wondering, what does this mean for the proposed work in the Annual or Medium Term plans, or the planned restructure of the Community Engagement department to a new regional approach?
We remain fully committed to the work and goals of the Medium Term Plan. For example, although Val was not able to attend Indaba to celebrate with the African community, our COO and Deputy General Counsel, Janeen Uzzell and Tony Sebro, both attended.
The planned restructure and expansion of CE was intended to help us support the community in achieving these goals. This includes the MTP’s focus on building a thriving movement, increasing community health and diversity, and growing among new languages, regions, and audiences. We set these goals as part of our interpretation of the Movement Strategy, and they will remain our focus for the medium term.
I still believe we need to make many of these changes, as well as be prepared for further changes that may arise from the recommendations of the Movement Strategy Working Groups. We see a future that could include improved regional support, and expanded programmatic support for emerging communities, whether those are new languages, geographies, or areas of practice.
However, we are putting those plans on hold for the next few weeks, while we focus is on supporting the existing teams through this transition. I want us to make sure that goes well, before turning our attention to the future. That said, I fully expect to resume work on how we expand our support for these critical new areas in the first quarter of the new calendar year.
== Final thoughts ==
I want to be absolutely clear that these changes are in no way an indication that the Foundation is decreasing our commitment to support for the movement. I hope you see how this offers an opportunity to do the exact opposite—to set us up to support the movement in the best way we can.
For those with an interest in Wikimedia history, it’s worth noting that the Foundation has taken many different shapes over the years. In 2014, teams focused on community support were embedded in other departments. At the time, we were much smaller, and our ability to truly engage with the full breadth of the movement was more limited. In 2019, the community engagement teams are better resourced, more global, and more representative of the movement (although there’s always space for continued improvement).
We see this as the right moment to integrate the perspectives, experiences, and skills of these teams across the Foundation, ensuring that support for the movement is woven into all the Foundation’s work. As Wikimedians, we know change is a constant—and it is through change that we often do our best work, solve our hardest problems, and find our new path forward. Thank you in advance as we take this next step to support the future of our movement.
Sincerely, Katherine
[1]
https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-foundation-chief-of-community-...
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hello,
Aron - I have posted a response to your inquiry on Wikimedia Space - thank you for sharing it there as well: https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-foundation-chief-of-community-...
Thank you to everyone for your feedback, offers of support, and keen insights. We will share more information in the coming months as we complete this transition.
-greg
------- Gregory Varnum Communications Strategist Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ gvarnum@wikimedia.org Pronouns: He/Him/His
On Nov 17, 2019, at 1:56 PM, Aron Manning aronmanning5@gmail.com wrote:
Katherine Maher wrote:
Valerie and her team drafted an ambitious new vision for the work of Community Engagement—focused on decentralization of power and resources, safe and welcoming spaces, equitable collaboration, increased language and cultural fluency, dedicated programs for groups such as women and young people, and expansive partnerships in service of free knowledge.
With this vision in hand, Val and I both see this as the right juncture for
her to move on to her next professional challenge.
I'm sorry to hear the news of her leaving. I wish her good fortune in her next endeavour and I wish success for the WMF in implementing the vision of her team.
Katherine Maher wrote:
We will not be starting a search for a new Chief of Community Engagement. Instead, over the course of the next few weeks, the seven teams currently within the Community Engagement (CE) department will be integrated into the Foundation’s other departments.
I believe this change might give a new chance to improve community engagement with the WMF teams. The Movement Strategy community conversations https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations and the office actions consultation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Office_actions/Community_consultation_on_partial_and_temporary_office_actions/09_2019 was a step in the good direction, but the community is looking for a more engaged, real-time, person-to-person discussion with team members, besides the unidirectional flow of these plans. As Valerie's ted talk states: "Think Circles, Not Pyramids". We very much appreciate the contributions of the few working group members, who joined the discussions, but hoped at least one member of all working groups would join. I hope as a result of this restructuring all teams and members will take part to some extent in "community engagement". Direct communication is the most effective way to achieve community goals. With the strong divide between the WMF and the communities, I see direct communication as the only way to bridge those gaps and create healthy cooperation between the communities and the WMF. I believe if engagement with the communities increases, the communities will be more trusting and helpful to the teams, thereby paving the road to success for the Movement's goals.
Katherine Maher wrote:
For example, if you need something from Trust & Safety or Community Resources,
they’ll continue to be here to work with you.
I appreciate the time invested by Karen (KBrown) and Samuel in the partial bans consultation. In other matters however it is very hard to gain the attention of T&S. I assumed it's the T&S team's purpose to address community health issues, but I might be wrong. When I've reported an issue of tool abuse and possible harassment to the T&S - that previously received no response (not even acknowledgment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Procedures#Incoming_mail) from the ArbCom -, almost 2 months (sic!) later I've received the following response: "The issues you have described in your communication to us are a local community governance matters, which fall outside of the Foundation's remit. We respect the autonomy of the Wikimedia communities and, as a rule, do not interfere." This was at the time when Fram was temporarily banned by the T&S for harassment. I've clarified in a response that the issue involved Terms of Use violation, which is the policy of the WMF, not the community. There was no answer in the last 3 months.
As the community health research projects revealed in previous years, editors are occasionally bullied, harassed; often this is done to influence decisions and silence different POVs. Established editors are part of a social network of fellow editors, who can protect them from harm, but new and casual editors don't enjoy such safety. As an example: the first response I've received *from the OTRS*, when I asked how to handle an issue of preferential treatment, that I often see new users are a victim of: "Report them to ANI and *hope you're not hit in the face with a boomerang*." This is the safety new users can expect currently. Needless to say, such response in a professional support team would be unacceptable.
My questions are: Where should new and casual editors seek help in the new team structure if the communities ignore their problem? What team and individuals will work to improve community health?
Paul J. Weiss wrote:
I definitely do not want Trust & Safety to narrow its focus to ensuring
enforcement & reducing liability. As you know, legal but negative behavior
is a significant threat to the future of Wikipedia and sister projects. The team needs to be organizationally placed to maximize, not minimize, its access to resources, the community, and other staff as well as its impact. Placing it in Legal could, for example, decrease significantly contact and trust from our community members whose experience with laws is that they are used as weapons and tools to oppress rather than engendering fairness and cooperation.
I wholly agree with your concern, my first thought too. However, my experience (as detailed above) and observation is that T&S already only gets involved with legal matters, therefore placing it under the Legal department won't change anything in the regard. That's why I have no concerns about that move.
Katherine Maher wrote:
The planned restructure and expansion of Community Engagement was intended to help us support
the community in achieving these goals [of the Medium Term Plan]. This
includes the MTP’s focus on building a thriving movement, increasing community health and diversity, and growing among new languages, regions, and audiences. We set these goals as part of our interpretation of the Movement Strategy, and they will remain our focus for the medium term. I still believe we need to make many of these changes, as well as be prepared for further changes that may arise from the recommendations of the Movement Strategy Working Groups.
This year many long-running community and governance issues surfaced: the mass-desysop proposals of Azerbaijani and Croatian Wikipedias, admin civility issues on English Wikipedia and a few long-term, valued editors being sanctioned. These were present for many years and these are just the public issues known to me.
I believe in the Movement's targets of diverse, inclusive communities and I recognize that we are very far from it. I believe the WMF has the resources to increase community health and diversity, if that target is pursued consistently. Change is not an easy task however and cannot be done without close cooperation with the communities. The key to community acceptance is transparency, communication, and practical solutions; enforcing rules and unilateral decisions would only result in resistance. I hope there will be specific roles in the new structure to engage with the community on a daily basis to resolve community issues and establish healthy practices. I've suggested in the partial bans consultation, that the WMF hire professional arbitrators/mediators to tackle the hardest cases in cooperation with community-elected arbitrators. Professionals would bring a new set of more nuanced tools to the table to resolve issues with minimal sanctions and without punishments.
The WMF is facing a huge challenge. I wish the best luck and good faith from the community to achieve the Movement's targets.
Sincerely, Aron Manning
On Fri, 15 Nov 2019 at 3:36 pm, 'Katherine Maher' <kmaher@wikimedia.org
wrote:
--------- Original Message --------- Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Community Engagement to leave the Foundation From: 'Katherine Maher' kmaher@wikimedia.org Date: 11/15/19 3:36 pm To: 'Wikimedia Mailing List' wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello everyone,
I am writing to let you know that Val D’Costa, Chief Community Engagement Officer, is leaving the Wikimedia Foundation. I also want to share some changes we’re making around how the Foundation organizes staff in the Community Engagement department.
Val joined us last January, bringing nearly three decades of experience launching and growing international initiatives in emerging markets. With the Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy as a guide, Val and her team drafted an ambitious new vision for the work of Community Engagement—focused on decentralization of power and resources, safe and welcoming spaces, equitable collaboration, increased language and cultural fluency, dedicated programs for groups such as women and young people, and expansive partnerships in service of free knowledge.
With this vision in hand, Val and I both see this as the right juncture for her to move on to her next professional challenge. While she will be leaving the position of Chief of Community Engagement, she will remain on as a consultant to me for a brief period.
I am deeply appreciative of Val’s time with us at the Foundation and want to thank her for the contributions she has made to the Wikimedia movement. She has been a passionate and persuasive advocate for our mission and pushed us to expand our vision of what could be possible for our movement. I wish her the absolute best in what she does next.
*== What comes next for Community Engagement ==*
I'll be direct -- we are making changes to the CE department structure.
We will not be starting a search for a new Chief of Community Engagement. Instead, over the course of the next few weeks, the seven teams currently within the Community Engagement (CE) department will be integrated into the Foundation’s other departments. By January, all of the teams will have joined their new departments, and “Community Engagement” will no longer be a standalone department.
The teams currently in CE will be integrated with other Foundation departments aligned with executive leadership goals and based on their scope and focus, as well as how they might grow in the future. Some of these alignments are intuitive, such as Trust & Safety returning to the Legal department; others might not be immediately apparent.
*== What does this mean for your work? ==*
Although we have a good sense of which teams will integrate with which departments, we are still meeting with the individual teams to work on the specific details of the transition. Our focus is on continuity for existing community programs and support for Foundation staff in making this change. You may hear from staff seeking input on those arrangements, and I want to thank you in advance for any feedback you may have.
We expect to wrap up these conversations in early December, to begin transitions in mid-December, and for the transitions to be completed by the beginning of January, at which point we’ll be able to share an overview of the new arrangements in full.
The work of the Community Engagement teams will remain the same throughout this period of transition. For example, if you need something from Trust & Safety or Community Resources, they’ll continue to be here to work with you. If you have a project or program underway with a CE team or staff member, that work will also continue. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Greg Varnum at gvarnum@wikimedia.org or leave your question in Wikimedia Space [1] and we’ll make sure we find an answer to your question.
*== Why are we making this change? ==*
The Community Engagement department has grown and evolved since it was created in 2015. We have brought in people with an increasingly diverse set of skills and backgrounds and introduced new support for additional languages, geographies, and areas of work, such as community health.
While this has helped the Foundation come a long way in addressing the needs of the movement, it has also created complexity. The breadth of activities and competencies now supported by the department is quite large—today, we have people working on issues as diverse as GLAM collection management, participatory grantmaking, and contributor safety—and increasingly, across many geographies, cultures, and languages.
This has created challenges for how we effectively coordinate such a range of specializations, how we assess their efficacy and impact against our mission. At the same time, as the Foundation has grown, we have developed capacities in other departments who will be good partners to those serving our community mission.
In making these changes, we see an opportunity to align the functions of the Foundation with the future of the mission and movement, and better serve long-time contributors and emerging communities alike. Over time, we anticipate these new arrangements will deepen the understanding of community efforts among all Foundation staff and programs, integrate community perspective across program design and support, and open up space for bold and fresh thinking about how to move our movement forward.
*== What about the future? ==*
Some people may be wondering, what does this mean for the proposed work in the Annual or Medium Term plans, or the planned restructure of the Community Engagement department to a new regional approach?
We remain fully committed to the work and goals of the Medium Term Plan. For example, although Val was not able to attend Indaba to celebrate with the African community, our COO and Deputy General Counsel, Janeen Uzzell and Tony Sebro, both attended.
The planned restructure and expansion of CE was intended to help us support the community in achieving these goals. This includes the MTP’s focus on building a thriving movement, increasing community health and diversity, and growing among new languages, regions, and audiences. We set these goals as part of our interpretation of the Movement Strategy, and they will remain our focus for the medium term.
I still believe we need to make many of these changes, as well as be prepared for further changes that may arise from the recommendations of the Movement Strategy Working Groups. We see a future that could include improved regional support, and expanded programmatic support for emerging communities, whether those are new languages, geographies, or areas of practice.
However, we are putting those plans on hold for the next few weeks, while we focus is on supporting the existing teams through this transition. I want us to make sure that goes well, before turning our attention to the future. That said, I fully expect to resume work on how we expand our support for these critical new areas in the first quarter of the new calendar year.
== Final thoughts ==
I want to be absolutely clear that these changes are in no way an indication that the Foundation is decreasing our commitment to support for the movement. I hope you see how this offers an opportunity to do the exact opposite—to set us up to support the movement in the best way we can.
For those with an interest in Wikimedia history, it’s worth noting that the Foundation has taken many different shapes over the years. In 2014, teams focused on community support were embedded in other departments. At the time, we were much smaller, and our ability to truly engage with the full breadth of the movement was more limited. In 2019, the community engagement teams are better resourced, more global, and more representative of the movement (although there’s always space for continued improvement).
We see this as the right moment to integrate the perspectives, experiences, and skills of these teams across the Foundation, ensuring that support for the movement is woven into all the Foundation’s work. As Wikimedians, we know change is a constant—and it is through change that we often do our best work, solve our hardest problems, and find our new path forward. Thank you in advance as we take this next step to support the future of our movement.
Sincerely, Katherine
[1]
https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-foundation-chief-of-community-...
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org