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

[Liam Wyatt]

I'll admit that that's what I thought it meant when I read it too - that
the WMF was setting up a congressional lobbying department. So it's not
that an outrageous thing to assume. From the link it says that you will be
(in part) focusing on "...seeking ways to increase capacity to safeguard
the movement’s reputation and support the advancement of legal conditions
that support our movement." but it also says that you'll be "Setting up
international meet-ups that recognize and support the role of
administrators and functionaries, including brainstorming ways that WMF can
better help these critical roles within our movement (e.g., Arbcoms,
checkusers, OTRS, etc.)". Finally, it also says "This change will transfer
the community liaison and advocate responsibilities to the Legal and
Community Advocacy team. This move will allow Zack Exley, Chief Community
Officer, and his team to focus on editor retention and recruitment work and
fundraising strategy and implementation".

>From this I understand that the new department will be focused on the
*existing* community (especially those with specialised roles within it)
and also on the legal aspects of defending free-knowledge globally (such as
helping Chapters to write submissions to Government policy reviews etc.).
This will leave Zack's existing department to focus on recruiting new users
and on the annual fundraiser.

Is that a fair assessment?

Peace, love & metadata


On 10 February 2012 13:23, Philippe Beaudette <philippe at wikimedia.org>wrote:

> I'm not really sure where you get that, MZ.  Politics and lobbying were not
> mentioned at all.
>
> What was mentioned was advocacy... advocacy for the community, in varying
> roles and flavors.
>
> So to clear it up: this is not a lobbying or political wing.  Or anything
> that even resembles it.  :)
>
> There's a reasonable discussion in the page, linked from the announcement.
>
> pb
> ___________________
> Philippe Beaudette
> Director, Community Advocacy
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> 415-839-6885, x 6643
>
> philippe at wikimedia.org
>
> To check my email volume (and thus know approx how long it will take me to
> respond), go to http://courteous.ly/hpQmqy
>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 6:08 PM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>
> > Geoff Brigham wrote:
> > > Today, we are excited to announce the start of our building of a new
> > > department called the ³Legal and Community Advocacy Department.²  This
> > new
> > > alignment recognizes that we can combine the best of legal and
> community
> > > advocacy to foster new ways to advance the interests of the community
> > > consistent with the goals and strategies of the Foundation.   For
> > details,
> > > please go to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/LCA_Announcement.
> > >
> > > As part of this reorganization, I¹m pleased to announce that Philippe
> > > Beaudette has been promoted to Director of Community Advocacy.  We will
> > > start engaging our community shortly and enter into a consultation
> period
> > > with it to brainstorm how to build the department.  We anticipate that
> it
> > > will take us about 6-12 months to get the right team and drive the new
> > > department at full speed.
> > >
> > > The community is invited to join us on Friday for office hours to
> discuss
> > > the new Legal and Community Advocacy Department.  Details for the IRC
> > chat
> > > can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours.
> >
> > A political (lobbying?) arm of Wikimedia? And the Wikimedia community and
> > Board have said they're okay with this?
> >
> > MZMcBride
> >
> >
> >
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> >
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