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Current players and their roles

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Diagram of the players in the wikimedia movement. Arrows indicate nomination of each body. Doted arrows indicate recommendations for decision.

Readers

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Composition

Donors

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Composition

On average they give each one about 27 $ (19 €) Accessible via the pages of donation and the data that they facilitate (mail)

Communities

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Composition

Everybody who contributes 300.000 Active authors.http://s23.org/wikistats/wikipedias_html.php?sort=ausers_desc

Roles
  • Describing the strategic plans
  • Rules and tools of collaborative work
  • Edition rules
  • Creation of the works
Roles depending on the permissions
  • Different tools and groups with different role to revise: Selfconfirmed, Registered Anonymous, Administrators... http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_groups More detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_access_levels#Table
  • Accumulable permissions. Summarizing those of more impact in the roles of the users:
    • Administrator: Protecting and to erasing pages, To block users. (In the Wiki where they are administrator(s))
    • Bureaucrat. Administrator + To give permissions of administrator and bureaucrat. (In the Wiki where they are bureaucrat)
    • Steward. Bureaucrat + To give and remove any type from permissions + Qualified in all wikis + To Block at global level.
Roles specific to Projects /language

Projects /language (Viquipèdia, viquillibres...)

Roles specific to global Projects

Global Projects (Commons, Wikispecies, Translatewiki, Mediawikidevelopemnt, Toolserver) (some not of the WMF but I understand that in the movement)

Roles specific to goal

Meta (wiki to deal with the subjects inter projects) + outreach (http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) + strategy (http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

Chapters

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Composition
Characteristics
Roles

Offline work

  • Attracting new authors by contacting them in the real world: Schools, universities, libraries, cultural associations, associations of pensioners, research organisations, ...
  • Help new editors to start editing by publishing posters and books; organizing workshops and courses; and offline materials in general...
  • Help to obtain freely licensed materials. Agreements with entities and authors.
  • Helping Wikipedians gain access to (content at) libraries, museums, events...
  • Press releases, interviews, and media relations
  • Fundraising (both online and offline) [1]
  • Providing microgrants to the community
  • Developing and growing the local Wikimedia community (local meetings, events)
  • Organising local Wikimedia conferences

Other groups not recognized as Chapters

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Composition
Roles

They don't have any agreement with WMF but can perform some roles as the chapters centered on offline work:

  • Attracting new authors contacting them in the real world: Schools, universities, libraries, cultural associations, associations of pensioners..
  • Help new editors to start editing by publishing posters end books, organizing workshops and courses and offline materials in general...
  • Help to obtain free materials. Agreements with entities and authors.
  • Helping the Wikipedians to have access to libraries, museums, events...
  • Raise Funds. [2]

Committees

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Relations with the public

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Ombudsman
  • Composition

Members of the community chosen by the staff of the legal department of the Foundation.

OTRS
  • Composition:

Volunteers chosen by the administrators of OTRS (A wiki)

  • Roles

Dealing with e-mail (and voicemails) received by the WMF and the chapters, primarily related to content issues.

Communication
  • Composition

Initial members nominated by the Board, subsequent nominated by the members themselves (including nominations from chapters)

  • Roles

Communications with: Coordinating, communication with the public, with press, among WMF and communities, outreach of new wikimedians. Maintenance of the guide of style Wikimedia. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_style_guide

Translations
  • Composition

It is a subcommittee of the committee of communications

  • Roles

Translating the WMF messages to the several languages.

Research
  • Composition

Created by the staff of the WMF active members in research related with the projects Roles Help to organize the priorities, practices and rules about the research related with the projects.

Support to the decisions to create projects and Chapters

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Languages

(Initially subcommittee of the extinguished committee of special projects)

  • Composition

3 founding members, 13 members accepted by consensus.

  • Roles

Wikis in new languages.
Location of the mediawiki
Interlinguistic coordination of the communities.
Support to the growth of the new projects.
The subcomite of globalization takes care of keeping the mediawiki information of location updated

Chapters committee
  • Composition

10 members. Board committee. Appointment proceeds via procedures approved by the Board of Trustees through internal consensus. Board can correct membership at all times.

  • Roles

(in theory)[3] [4]
Guide chapters through the approval process
Advise the candidate chapters on their bylaws
Advise the Board of Trustees on the (dis)approval of chapters
Provide advise to and facilitate communication between chapters
(in practice)
Focus on the approval process of chapters:
Is the candidate group trustworthy?
Is it viable?
Do they fulfill the requirements?
Have the bylaws been analized and discussed; do they fulfill the basic expectations by Wikimedia?

Support to internal tasks of the Board

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Nominations Committee
  • Composition

6 members:
2 from the Council
2 volunteers from the communities
1 member of the Consultative Board
1 Executive Director

  • Roles

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Scope_of_Work
::Making a list of potential members of the Board and nominating them for being elected.

Elections Committee
  • Composition

The Elections Committee is nominated by the Board and consists of active editors that are not Members of the Board. They can neither run in elections nor vote.

  • Roles
Managing the details of the electoral process of the Board Members chosen by the communities.
Auditing Committee
  • Composition
Nominated by the Board
  • Roles
Fundamentally relations with the external auditor. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Audit_charter

WMF Staff

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Under the direction of the executive director.

  • Maintaining and updating the servers
  • Complementing the development of software done by the volunteers.
  • Coordinating and encouraging the volunteers.
  • Juridical defence of the brands and of the projects.
  • Fundraising
    • Coordinating annual campaign
    • Applying for public and private aids and grants
    • Merchandising Agreements
  • Development of singular projects
    • Public Policy initiative
    • Usability
  • Statistical studies of the evolution of the projects
  • Accounting, financial administration and fulfilment of bureaucratic duties.

WMF Board of trustees

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Composition

10 members:

  • 3 chosen by the communities
  • 2 elected by the recognized chapters
  • 5 chosen by the members themselves (1 founder + 4 experts in subjects of interest)
Roles

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_board_manual#Roles_and_responsibilities

  • Describing mission objectives, planning and long-term policies of the WMF
  • Hiring and supervising the Executive Director
  • Approving the accounts and the annual budget
  • Creating and eliminating committees
  • Maximum authority of WMF: All the functions of the foundation that she/he has not delegated to other organs (approving chapters, etc.)

Funding

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At present, funding is collected mainly from donations via links in the projects (whether this be the annual campaign or not). There are also the following sources of funding:

  • The WMF as well as the chapaters obtain grants and aids attached to particular activities or projects.
  • Merchandising
  • Quotas payed by chapter members.

The donations go to the WMF in countries where there is no agreement signed with any chapter, or 50% to the chapter and 50% to the WMF where there is an agreement. Moreover the WMF has a grants program to which the chapters can apply to receive funding for their activities.

Proposed changes by Gomà

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Diagram of the proposed players in the wikimedia movement and proposed relations among them. Arrows indicate nomination of each body. Doted arrows indicate recommendations for decision.

Initial declaration

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Recommends adding an initial declaration where the values of the movement are adopted at the same level as the vision and the mission.

New actors and new roles

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Recommending the creation of new actors with the following roles:

  1. Restoring the idea of a Wikimedia council (see Wikicouncil and Wikimedia Federation) but assigning it the roles of:
    1. Invigorating the direct participation of communities in the different languages in the debate on decisions affecting the whole movement. Acting as spokesmen of the different communities and projects.
    2. Organizing elections for the different community-elected committees and fostering the presence of candidates from the different languages and projects. Those elections could perhaps be held simultaneously with Community representative board elections.
    3. Facilitating dialog between the Board, chapters and communities.
  2. New committees
    1. Committee to coordinate and oversee chapters and organizations. Its duties would be to foster cooperation among them, follow up on their activities, follow up on the information and services they provide to the communities, monitor the results they obtain, consult the communities about the chapters and groups, recommend their continuity or not, establish the rules for accepting and running informal groups.
    2. Committee of relations among projects. Dealing with subjects that affect several projects in order to find solutions where needed.
    3. Committee for aids and grants. Following up on the projects and activities where the money collected in the annual campaigns by the WMF, chapters and other groups is invested. Describing the mechanisms so that the money goes to finance the projects in line with the established goals and priorities. Assuring that every group and every project deserving it receives funding independently of whether or not the group takes part in the campaigns. Supervising the obtained results. Ensuring that the results are made public, are accessible to everyone and are duly disseminated.
    4. Committee for innovation. Dedicated to promoting investment in new activity proposals.
  3. New groups
    1. Non-territorial groups with legal status. See http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Thematic_Chapters/ca
    2. Informal groups
    3. Coordination Council. Its duties would be to coordinate groups and chapters sharing the same language, and groups and chapters active in a single country.

Changes in the current actors

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Recommend that under no circumstances all members of a committee be nominated by the existing members of the same committee but by an external body. In particular

  1. To be nominated by the staff
    1. OTRS
    2. Communications/Translations
    3. Innovation
  2. To be nominated by the community
    1. ChapCom
    2. Languages
    3. Viquimèdia council
    4. Supervision of chapters
    5. Inter-project relations
    6. Aids and grants

Changes in the practices

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  • Recommend to regularly ask for the reader’s opinion about aspects related to contents, quality, aesthetics, by performing periodic surveys. Do those surveys personalized by projects and give that information as feedback to the community to take decisions.
  • Recommend that in the campaigns of donations the donors have the possibility to choose where they want to give.
  • Recommend to open lines of crowdfunding style donation where the groups propose projects and activities and the donors decide where they give.
  • Increasing the weight of the members of the board chosen by the communities. For example 5 from the communities + 2 from chapters and organizations + 2 elected by the board it selves + 1 the founder.
  • Recommend to do the choice of the members of the Board chosen by the chapters and the groups transparent. That everybody can see the questions and the answers and the debate to choose them.
  • Recommend that the participation and influence of the chapters and the groups be proportionate to its contributions and results and not only to the fact of being chapter or not.

Changes in the funding system

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  1. That the fund raising be done by the WMF or the chapters or the groups according to the possibilities to improve the results. According to the advantages they can offer to the donors and if they are able and ready to transfer the collected money to the projects and activities that comply with the will of the donors and the priorities of the movement. In this sense it is recommended to explore the three possibilities of segmentation: geography, language and project.
  2. Give the donors the possibility to choose: a) In which activities and projects prefer that their donation be invested b) Trough which organization they want to give.
  3. That before starting the fundraising campaigns the WMF, the chapters and the groups wiling to participate they can submit plans of activities with the corresponding budgets.
  4. That the committee for aids and grants do a classification of the activities proposed by the WMF the chapters and the groups according to the priorities of the movement and that it recommend to the Board the approval of those priorities for funding the movement. That the board approves the definite priorities and with regard to these be determined the % of the collection that will be destined to WMF and to each chapter and group according to the availability of funds and respecting the will of the donors.
  5. That every none planned activity be funded by grants supervised by the committee for aids and grants.

References

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  1. ↑ In the case of those chapters that have signed the fund raising agreement WMF they have the additional tool off directing the fund raising banners campaign to their landing page.
  2. ↑ Up to now none of this groups have signed any agreement with WMF providing them the additional tool off directing the fund raising banners campaign to their landing page.
  3. ↑ Chapters_committee
  4. ↑ Board resolution approving the ChapCom roles
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