Iberocoop/Buenos Aires Letter
This is an English translation of a document originally written in Spanish. To read the original document, please see Iberocoop/Carta de Buenos Aires.
We, the representatives of the organizations gathered in the Fifth Iberoamerican Wikimedian meetup – Iberoconf – taking place in Buenos Aires from June 10th to 12th of 2017, want to communicate to the Wikimedia Foundation the following:
- We are convinced of the richness, diversity, identity, and interculturalism of the people that are part of the Wikimedia movement. As the Occitan artist Benjamin Vautier said, "There is no people without culture, and no culture without language".
- We value the fact that there have been effective measures to increase the language diversity in the Wikimedia movement. We urge that translation becomes a priority both in all collaboration sites as well as those for international governance, and that effective measures are taken in the following: simultaneous translations at international conferences, for example.
- Communication between the organizations and the Wikimedia Foundation – particularly around grant requests and public reports – should have the option to be written in the native language of the grant applicants. This should not have any influence in the acceptance or rejection of such requests and applications.
- We want that those who evaluate and approve budgets in the Wikimedia Foundation – and the overall movement – are cognizant of the fact that each applying organization has a particular context and specific reality. Thus, success models can be different. We suggest that the metric models continue to be diversified, taking into consideration a balance between the qualitative and quantitative.
- The making and execution of the 2030 Wikimedia Strategy was a success, as it considered the effective participation of people in their own language. We believe that such inclusive logic must continue and should permeate all aspects of the Wikimedia movement, including decision mechanisms, important communications, and in-person events.
- Communications made by the Wikimedia Foundation should be equitable, diverse, non-stereotypical, and must consider editorial lines that respect the particular acting contexts of the Wikimedia affiliates. We request that all communication resources within the movement increase the editorial attention over the organizations and their activities, and not only personal cases and stories that may blur the collective spirit of the affiliate organizations.
Signed in situ by:
- Wikimedia Argentina
- Wikimedia Chile
- Wikimedia México
- Wikimedia Venezuela
- Wikimujeres
- Wiki Educação Brasil
- Wikimedistas de Colombia
- Wikimedia Uruguay
- Wikimedistas de Ecuador
- Basque user group
- Grupo de Usuários da Comunidade Wikimedia no Brasil
- Wikimedia España
- Wikimedistas de Colombia
- Wikimedia Uruguay
- Wikimedistas de Ecuador
- Wikimedia Italia