[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department & Promotion of Philippe Beaudette

[Theo10011]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 10:14 AM, Casey Brown <lists at caseybrown.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 10:39 PM, Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > However, the issue of advocacy is not generally agreed upon by the entire
> > community. SOPA blackout was the first and official action of its kind,
> > before we consider an advocacy department, do we have consensus that it
> is
> > something we should seek actively?
>
> "Advocacy" is a much more general term in this context than people
> seem to be taking it as. It does not mean lobbying or fighting for
> something controversial with outside organizations. As I understand
> it, it's the opposite: advocating to the Wikimedia Foundation on
> behalf of the community.
>
> The new "Community Advocacy" staff do what they've always done --
> represent the community to the Wikimedia Foundation, liaise, and
> advocate for their issues. Taking into account Philippe's last role,
> reader relations, it probably also includes advocating for the readers
> as well. This just spins it off into its own department and gives it a
> name that more clearly defines what it does.
>
> Many organizations, especially membership associations, have positions
> devoted to advocacy like this. They're the contact people that
> represent the broader group to the rest of the organization and bring
> up issues that they want dealt with.


Hi Casey

I took "Advocacy" to mean the same as its dictionary definition - "Public
support for or recommendation of a particular cause or policy."

What you are describing falls more under the purview of Communications. If
you need a separate department to communicate to WMF the wishes of its
community, than I must inform you, that the several existing department -
starting with the community department, any internal communication even the
global development department are useless.  What you are talking about is
similar to internal communications.

WMF is there to serve the community, if this department is being created
for the purpose of advocating community wishes to WMF, than it is about
time; only 5-6 years late. The issue comes in when it is joined together
with the legal department and given the scope of "Community advocacy". This
smells of advocating on behalf of the community, to whom we can differ on,
but the way SOPA blackout was handled leads me to believe that there is
going to be a strong handed approach to this. As I stated earlier, the
community is very capable of communicating its advocacy wishes, and taking
action without even the knowledge of WMF.

I do have to state, that the precedent set after the SOPA blackout, and
engaging a lobbying firm, points to this being an extension of similar
activities. Individual board members have already stated their support for
active advocacy for the movement. This does not seem like what you are
describing, which seems more like community liaison work, which actually
should have been the Community department's job since its inception.

Regards
Theo