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

[Philippe Beaudette]

I think we'll be doing some combination of all three of those.  But 
here's the important part:  you tell us.  I built out the brainstorming 
page: people are acting as though there's a determined course charted 
for this team - if anything, it's the opposite.  This is the 
opportunity for the community to tell us how you'd like to be supported 
by this team.  From the ground floor, help us design it.  Tell us what 
will work best.  Do we need more Maggies?  Do we need someone to help 
us track issues of free culture?  Maybe we don't, because the community 
has a process in place for that and we just don't know about it.

Help us design the team, and its high level goals.  We have what we 
THINK some of those will be (they're on the page, but I've pasted them 
here [1], also)... but we're open to the community's input - actually, 
we're begging for it.

Edit this team, and edit this plan. :-)

pb


[1]- -
* Maintaining a proactive online content-protection strategy, defending 
the written and media work of the community on the Projects through 
litigation and other means with the involvement of the community;
* Ensuring increasing amounts and efficacy of global community 
participation in WMF-generated initiatives (such as revisions to WMF 
policies);
* 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.);
* Providing international legislative and policy support to the 
community, such as providing information about legislative issues of 
interest like global censorship laws; and
* Creating and learning from a community-based advisory board, 
including implementation of support ideas that serve the advocacy 
interests of the community and Foundation.


On Thu Feb  9 23:42:23 2012, Lodewijk wrote:
> I must say that after reading all this and the detailed page with the
> beautiful graphic I am still confused what the department will actually do.
> There are beautiful abstract goals which everybody would obviously agree
> with, and there are highly diverse skills involved from on one end Maggie
> and on the other extreme Geoff. All great. But I hope you can help me by
> summarizing in one or two sentences of "mortal" English what you will *do*
> everyday. Will you be the ones executing decisions from Legal? Will you be
> nutshelling community decisions and act like an ambassador to the Wikimedia
> Foundation? Will you be working on guiding the community involvement
> processes Geoff handled so well with the Terms of Use?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Lodewijk
>
> No dia 10 de Fevereiro de 2012 07:46, Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com>escreveu:
>
>> On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Casey Brown <lists at caseybrown.org>
>> wrote:
>>>> "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.
>>>
>>> Yeah, that's my understanding of the game plan here as well. I think
>>> the announcement could have been clearer in that regard, but that's
>>> pretty much what Philippe and Maggie have already been doing, and what
>>> they'll continue to do in a structure that's set up for growth.
>>>
>>> Sometimes we have a tendency to speak in management lingo when we
>>> should be choosing simple, crisp & clear terms. Honest feedback: Burn
>>> the chart on
>>>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/LCA_Announcement
>>> and draft a super crisp mission statement to slap on the first page
>>> for this group. I know, I've been guilty of this as well -- no
>>> criticism of the team. When working in an organization this kind of
>>> communication style is often expected from you in day-to-day work, but
>>> it's not necessarily helpful when communicating with people who have
>>> very little time and interest to parse it.
>>>
>>> I think the brainstorming page is a great start and hope it'll be
>>> utilized and further advertised in coming days:
>>>
>>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Community_Advocacy
>>>
>>> Congratulations to Philippe and Maggie for their new roles. I think
>>> it's about time that we're creating this structure, and I think it'll
>>> generate lots of tangible value for the community.
>>
>>
>> Then my suggestion would be, rename the department.
>>
>> I completely agree, it is about time Philippe and Maggie get more authority
>> and a dedicated department. I am happy for both of them. They actually do
>> and have been doing the heavy lifting for years when it comes to the
>> community. I would actually be more in favor of calling their department
>> the community department. ;)
>>
>> Regards
>> Theo
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