This page contains summaries of meeting minutes for the Diversity working group, one among the nine working groups involved in the Wikimedia Movement 2018-20 Strategy process. The full versions of these minutes are accessible on Google Drive, but given their extensive length and detail, only their summaries are being shared here for the time being.

2019

October

22 October

There are some feelings of frustration about the Strategy process, as it seems to set up a lot of expectations/promises for change that may never be implemented. It also seems that the original ideas of the WG members were lost in the process. Others are feeling more optimistic, as the process is gradual and setting high expectations form it will expectedly lead to frustration.

The new three roles are writers, connectors and reviewers. WG members can (individually) sign up for an optional role in the next phase. The time commitment isn’t yet specified. The Core Team is keeping diversity issues in mind and considering options like compensation - though no decision has been made on that. Those who are not sure about their availability can sign up as reviewers, since no certain commitment is demanded.

Most of the WG members expressed potential interest in at least one new role. Marc is willing to sign up as a writer, thus representing the group.

The group feels that the recommendations are in a good shape and that they need no further refinement. The recommendations reflect the WG views in their current sequence and content.

A last call will be dedicated to celebrate and express gratitude.

September 2019

12 September

Revenue Streams, Partnerships and Resource Allocation recommendations will be reviewd by the interested Diversity Working Group members.

Mandate: recommendations will not be shelved, Working Groups will negotiate, merge, during the harmonisation, all the 3 representatives need the support of the whole Working Group for integrity
A mechanism to involve all the other WG members can be created, e.g sending an email at the end of the day for a summary update.
Negotiating at the harmonisation sprint might require to understand who is at the other side of the table.
Focus is on solid recommendations, implementation will be an aftermath after harmonisation. Core Team will get back to the Working Group about this
Confidence in the people that are going to represent the Working Groups, strong interest in the implementation to make the actual change, and not a shelved paperwork, but something that will be an influence to the community/movement.
Fill out the spreadsheet, no need for the next meeting on Saturday, asynchronous work will continue
- Suggestion for Working Group members to have provided recommendations by Friday

7 September

Presentation by the French Language liaison regarding Community feedback for Diversity Working Group
Information about Harmonisation sprint
Review of the cluster documents, for the structure of recommendations

August 2019

31 August

Next steps after Wikimania: The Core Team will coordinate with clusters for creating content.

24 August

Review of clusters
Wikimania feedback for the Diversity Working Group session at the strategy space
Workflow
Response to questions raised on meta
Preparation for the Harmonisation sprint

10 August

Recommendation Drafts

The WG members went through the draft recommendations (particularly the ones proposed to be presented at Wikimania) to resolve pending comments. Most of the recommendations are now finalized and ready to go as draft recommendations.

Recommendations 4 and 7 have pending issues to be resolved later on (post Wikimania). Both will be used as is, for the time being.

Wikimania Prep

Each member will be assigned another WG to explore their recommendations and look for overlap with Diversity recommendations.

Face-to-Face Meeting

Susun to join meetings remotely, in the afternoon, to accommodate time zone issues.

3 August

Key topics to be discussed for Wikimania were selected
Recommendations were updated for finalisation of the draft to be used for community input pre-wikimania

July 2019

27 July

Harmonisation Sprint participants were selected
Diversity topics were to be combined as a set for addition to the recommendations and submission for translation

20 July

Code of Conduct recommendation and how this suits with the existing or other codes of conduct
Discussion with the Community Health Working Group Diversity liaison

13 July

An update from the recommendations overlaps, and ways of working together with the Partnerships Working Group. A follow up discussion will be carried out during Wikimania.
- Diversity Working Group liaison will also link up for participation in the Community Health in-person meeting.

Moving Forward with the recommendations: Some of the recommendations can be merged, and presented as a single recommendation.

6 July

Developing recommendations before Wikimania, including finalising those developed by Working Group members and a review of general recommendations
Working Group members to be reminded about participation on the weekly calls beyond asynchronous work.

June 2019

29 June

Wikimania and team time for the Working Group post Wikimania
Incorporating feedback provided on Meta.
Weekly Working Group meetings to resume

1 June

Welcoming (on-boarding) new Working Group members and thanking any that are leaving the group
Support to the Wikimania representatives from the Diversity Working Group
Harmonisation meeting in September - names forward for first two places and extra 2 possible
Update from the meeting with Whose Knowledge and the Steering group.
The recommendations process and community feedback from IBEROCOOP and the Creative Commons Summit.

May 2019

11 May

Participation at Wikimania and in-person meetings

The Working Group needs to determine members that received scholarships in other roles, and members who will have a role at the Strategy space.
- The role requires exclusive engagement at the Strategy Space by Working Group representatives.
If the Diversity Working Group would like a face to face meeting for better coordination and planning, they should send the request to the Core Team.

Preparing for recommendations (milestones and a practical plan)

Having a small team within the Diversity Working Group to do some of the Core activities and get the work done, rather than waiting for the whole group to come together (90 minutes for the call might not be efficient to work and discuss progress)
Proceeded with the liaisons model with the other Working Groups, from the feedback so far, Diversity Working Group documents consisted of individual opinions
- The group enriched the documents to the current format in consideration of the above.
There’s need to identify Working Group members who worked on developing the previous original scoping documents which consisted of some recommendations.
- There is interest in recommendations regarding Language, communities and Technology.
The Working Group would benefit from having an analysis of policies across the Wikimedia projects in different languages regarding diversity and adding/integrating of content about minority themes.

Recommendations format

Some recommendations will call for immediate action points while others will require guidelines for gradual implementation.

April 2019

20 April

Feedback from the Wikimedia Summit

All participants in the call were available at the summit, results from the Summit are on the agenda.

Scoping document review

The Scoping document was updated to incorporate feedback from the Wikimedia Summit (Usergroups, other Working Groups, and Whose Knowledge) including simplification of the language and questions. A new scoping document version was created.

A suggestion was made to start covering recommendations since Diversity is a wide scope, and there is enough feedback from the Wikimedia Summit in Berlin.

Developing recommendations

A proposal was made to have White Papers per topic in developing the recommendations, some of which can be taken up by affiliates, if not generally accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation Board.

Amir’s White paper about language, can still be used as a resource in developing the recommendations (can be changed into the recommendations template/format)
A list of priorities and topics needs to be made, as a basis for developing recommendations, including input from community conversations.

Meeting frequency review

The tri weekly meeting schedule for Diversity Working Group might not be enough to brainstorm the recommendations, it was agreed to extend the meeting time from 60 to 90 minutes.

March 2019

30 March

Timeline and to do-list

All summit notes with feedback from Whose Knowledge, other Working Groups and Wikimedia Summit discussions are saved.
Input from the legal team is also available in the scoping document for members’ review.
The revised scoping document should be finished by April 30
- Recommendation drafting to start May 1
Syncing and a sprint with other Working Groups July-August
- Wikimania in August.
Submit final recommendations to the Wikimedia Foundation Board in November.

How to prepare the recommendations

This can be done in parallel to making the final version of the scoping document, and writing up ideas for recommendations with a similar approach of using white papers
There’s no limit to the number of recommendations to be made.

Post Summit requests

The core team requested a timeline of the Working Groups in comparison with the recommendations timeline provided at the Summit.
The Working Group was requested to provide One paragraph for the community by March 31 to provide insights from the conference.

7 March

The discussion was about review of scoping and submission

As a follow up from the previous discussions, Jorge communicated to Walaa, who responded positively about participation in the Working Group activities, other Working group members had also taken an active participation role asynchronously working on the scoping document by providing comments and suggestions.

The scoping document had three main sections to review which were evenly distributed between the Working Group members on the call;

Current situation: reduced to 3 paragraphs by merging similar ideas, and removing links that would be added to the Working Group meta page.
Rationale for the scope/area of inquiry was broadened to focus on Movement Stakeholders, rather than the Foundation.
Merging the overlapping key scoping questions to 10, and community questions to 3.

Additional information and an appendix were the final sections to be reviewed before coming up with a complete scoping document that was shared with the Core Team.

Diversity is a wide topic which is also connected with other Working Groups, the white papers developed by the Working Group members were crucial in developing content for the scoping document and process.

3 March

Discussion focused on merging the collected white papers into the scoping template

The previous meeting had focused on completing restructuring of all the white papers into scoping template. These would be merged into the final scoping document.
This meeting was aimed at having all the documents consolidated into one scoping document.
- Further guidance and clarification were provided by the Core Team on the different sections (area of inquiry, current situation, rationale for the scope, key questions, and others). These areas need to be summarised for the final scoping questions.
- The content needs to be clear, overlaps would need to be merged, to create an access point for translation, bring out the essence of the conversation without using so many questions, and make the work of communities easier when the final scoping document is uploaded on meta, and needs to be ready on 7 March taking into account possible revisions by the Core Team.
- Community conversations will start two weeks before the summit, and translation needs to be ready by then.
- If the final scoping document is a shortened summary, other individual documents/white papers will be put on meta to preserve other ideas.

February 2019

23 February

The discussion was mainly about scoping, Working Group participation and virtual facilitation

Virtual facilitation: An update on the current task of identifying the important questions of Diversity, by the Working Group was provided to Orla Cronin, the Virtual Facilitator. Orla provided an overview on facilitation, work allocation in a workshop mode support, and some of the resources to be used for facilitated sessions.

Previous meeting updates: A follow up was made on the questions regarding physical disability, Jorge Vargas had spoken to Volker from the Wikimedia Foundation who is already conducting research and a White paper regarding this diversity. This White paper can be used for further discussions.

Scoping update and other topics: Susun had made use of the Scoping template, other members are request to make use of this scoping template regarding the white papers that were written earlier.

Working Group members who have not drafted the white papers are advised to contribute in collating, merging, and synthesising various scoping documents into a representative and comprehensive document. If members can volunteer to merge (copy and paste) all the whitepapers into the scoping document, then the work can be done by 28 February.
- The Core Team can also look into possibilities of an extension to the deadline in case of challenges.
Other topics that have not been included in the scoping document like ‘geographical diversity’ will be formatted in the form of the Scoping template.
When the scoping documents are ready by the deadline of 28 February 2019, translation of content for community conversations, and distribution on various mailing lists will happen for feedback.
- Working Group members will be able to carry out research and analysis from the above feedback and also answering questions for recommendations.
- There will also be a scoping review in Berlin, when the Working Groups are presenting their work.

Other potential topics missing/pending to investigate included the following;

Physical disabilities (visual, etc)
Mental health / mental disabilities
Race
Socio/economical
LGBT+
Lack of digital skills / digital literacy
Ageism
Variance in educational systems
Behavior/character

Working Group participation

Inactive Working Group members explained reasons for their absence but also expressed commitment to find time and follow up on tasks assigned to them

Next call scheduling

A majority of the members preferred to hold the next call in a week's time when other working group members have worked on the final scoping document, including reaching out to them through asynchronous means.

9 February

The meeting discussed merging of members' white papers, updates from the coordinators' meeting, and /Engaging with the members that are participating less/Materials from the diversity conference/Iberoconf

How to make the collected documents merge (More complete picture of what our work is / What we want to achieve): There are now around five documents that have been compiled basing on What we want to accomplish and can be merged during the next call (with facilitation);

Representation and Gender (by Astrid Carlsen)
Indigenous Populations (by Eddie Avila)
Diversity, languages and new audiences (by Galder Gonzalez)
Diversity: Language (by Amir Aharoni)
Historic marginalization (by Susun Wilkinson)
- Camelia Boban is preparing the document What I learned about diversity in our movement? which was assigned and is work in progress)
- Iván Martínez: Colonial and postcolonial bias on Wikimedia (work in progress)

Update from discussion with the Virtual Facilitation: Camelia talked with Orla Cronin (shared a facilitation document) about the organization of the Diversity Working Group and possible ways for helping like engaging people in the discussions, but she will need a heads up of one week, and will not be taking notes. Camelia will get back to Orla about:

Getting involved in the walk-through and merging of the documents.

An email will be sent to other members to get confirmation about recording meetings

Update from the Coordinators' meeting: There is logistical support to the Working Groups.

At Iberoconf there was a conversation between Working Group representatives on
- How could we (Diversity Working Group) integrate ourselves with other Working Groups. Diversity is an angle around human characteristics, access to technology, and influences all other eight Working Groups, there’s need to share our work with the other Working Groups (the Core Team or someone from the Diversity Working Group can send an update regarding the progress)
The Community Health Working Group has five broad categories important in regards to Community Health and each one works on one topic.
- One thing to consider, is identifying, documenting and merging five or more different types of diversity issues (gender, language, different physical abilities) for example:
  - Journalist query for Women in Red as something that works on content and also about Iberocoop who are organized around Roman languages.
  - African diaspora in contrast to people living in Africa. How well are they organized and how well people know about this? This is a different type of diversity and group might give a thought to this.
Diversity Working Group needs to have external experts (just like some of the other Working Groups) to hold conversations on topics such as disability, all matters around accessibility have changed as there have been devices that cover some of the challenges faced by people with disabilities.

Material of diversity conference: We need some information from the Wikimedia Foundation regarding the work that is being done in order to improve the compatibility of screens and other platforms (ios, android) for their (disability people’s ) contribution.

People with different mental disabilities, especially autism spectre. There are people like this in our movement and it especially applies to conferences where we want to be inclusive and open to differently abled people.
- A point that needs to be redirected to the attention of the Product and Technology Working Group for ideas.
We have the responsibility to use not only Wikipedia but also other projects. Wiki Mujeres Lainhas a project that looks at people with mental disabilities using Wikiquote.
We need white paper/position paper that will involve interviewing or speaking to some of the contributors to our movement or talk to people who would be working with such contributors. There are some volunteers we can speak to (contributor to education project, who attended the CEE conference 2018)
There is also a list of people in Community Health Working Group for people with disabilities, which can be shared, it could include people in Indaba communities?

The biggest issue is interface via technology and access for a example a device that allows to talk and transcribes speech to characters and an editor then follows-up improving what voice recognition has missed.
- The question is also access to this type of technology. It might be out there, but not necessarily available for everyone everywhere.
- We need to diversify within our diversity related conversations. There might be different perspectives regarding a particular challenge depending upon geography, social order and language.
- This is a question that we must bring to our own communities. Having conversations with members who face disabilities and contribute to our movement.
- Sam will be chatting with someone from the Nigerian community or the Wiki Indaba community regarding this conversation.
  - Working Group can propose (in list) to have chats with people with disabilities.

Engaging with the members that are participating less: The Working Group has a diverse list of Members, but has not heard from some of them in a long time, It would be good to have their input, we are missing a lot of geographical diversity.

Reaching out has been tried in other Working Groups. In some cases this has led to people resigning from the group and some cases leading to increased participation.
It could be access capabilities, People who live in places where technology has issues may not be able to participate not only because they don’t want to, but they just can’t, and this is something that can be fixed.
Although some members have not been present in calls, they have reviewed and added comments to documents.
Jorge Vargas will reach out to the missing members and inquire

Iberoconf 2019

There is good interest in activities of the Working Group, every Working Group has one member at Iberocoop.
The Diversity Working Group can conduct an activity to consolidate feedback from the Iberocoop members and collect answers/feedback.
- Could probably make use of the Telegram group set up for Iberoconf 2019 to have a conversation about the themes of the Working Group.

Pending topics to address: Some of these topics are intertwined, so we need to make sure that they are covered, since they are coming up in the different documents that we are working on. We need to make a list so that we ensure we encompass all aspects of Diversity. The Working Group members are requested to take up any of these topics;

Physical disabilities (visual, etc): we asked for input to Helaine Blumenthal (Wiki Education) and Comp1089 (from Para-Wikimedians Community User Group) but haven’t answered
Mental health / mental disabilities (Andrea Kleiman - user Jaluj in eswiki - started a project in Wikiquotes in a hospital)
Socio/economical (Eddie+Susun)
Lack of digital skills / digital literacy (Galder’s document)
Ageism (Galder’s document has a small section on this topic as does Susun’s, Ivan Martinez is interested in this topic)
LGBT+
Race
"Character/personality/behaviour"
Diversity of education systems

Scheduling the next call: Working Group had decided to have weekly calls, which are good up to a time when scoping is complete, then take it back to the bi-weekly schedule. Weekends might be preferable for some members.

The next call can be scheduled next week, the doodle is still active and can be modified t include a weekend.
This group has shown that they can work asynchronously. The next call would be an understanding call (not a discussion call) and taking things forward to determine who does what?, the reading list can be done during the week.
- This can be a very productive way for using our time.

January 2019

25 January

Diversity Conference

Would be good to look into the comments from the active facebook group created before the Diversity conference to find out what's relevant for the Diversity Working Group’s discussions.

Liaisons with other Working Groups

Diversity Working Group needs to get a clear focus before engaging other groups for intersections.

Product and Technology Working Group was suggested as ideal to liaise with. Galder can be a liaison if there's no other volunteer from the Diversity Working Group.

Bringing in other experts

Members preferred consulting experts to ask them questions, rather than have them as full Working Group members

One suggestion was someone from the disability community to evaluate recommendations for technology (Penny Richards, editor in chief of the disability Journal), Rosie would be glad to reach out to her.
Core Team is already in touch with Whose knowledge usergroup

Timeline between now and the Wikimedia Summit in Berlin

The deadline for final draft of scoping documents is 2-3 weeks before the Wikimedia Summit in Berlin.

11 January

Merging collected documents into one voice

Amir shared document is very instructive. One of the problems it highlights is working in multiple languages. On the existing platform it is easier to contribute to English Wikipedia than on Yoruba Wikipedia, the user interface does not support all the characters. Amir shared a newly launched extension for the newly launched languages in Nigeria. The biggest issue in contributing non English language is the character support.

Everybody from the Working Group needs to read the document, Amir wrote about this because it’s her domain, if people would write similar documents on gender, ethnic diversity and support, it would be a particularly useful outcome for the group.

The Serbian script couldn’t be translated without any other method besides Google translate. It is not intuitive, for example the name is spelled differently and the script is also different. There is no ease of connecting people to where they belong.

In the document, Incubator was mentioned to require an easier start for beginners to understand, resources can be a controversial discussion for some people as some communities might need different resources than others, and a factor that can affect people from participating for example privileges of volunteering like the Wikimedia Foundation’s hardware program for people who might not be able to participate from diverse populations like indigenous communities such as Latin America. Amir will incorporate these and any other ideas that can be added: please email or add it to the document.

The main message of the document other than policy changes is that we are special and we need to look at diversity at a very special level, not everyone is able to volunteer, people are not that privileged.

Sam Oyeyele is working on geographic diversity which includes language diversity as well. It is important that everyone in the group draft something that falls in your domain, be bold with your ideas and proposals: by creating this, we might identify common themes and that could be the first step in merging of the document, once we merge the document we can share it with the (other) Working Groups to identify common areas that are overlapping.

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (here as a liaison from the Community Health Working Group), has a background in working with the diversity related projects, this is needed (Rosie) because there is an overlap between the Diversity Working Group’s work and Community Health.

She asked if the Diversity Working Group had considered discussing ‘ageism’: people who have time on their hands and people who are differently abled.
- Both of these topics had been discussed but not in detail. We can not just look at post internet, we need to look at pre-internet, and not focusing on “things” that just happen under the bus.

If we do have a list of different kind of diversity (like language diversity), we might be able to facilitate moving a step further, without focusing on historic representation: history typically told from the side of the Victor: so typically concerned that the stories we represent have a balanced opinion, not European focus or simply what’s happening right now, but look at the history of what happened before/in the past.

It is quite difficult to bring to bear upon people who have taken to Wikipedia platform to only prove or make a point.
Many new languages and communities find it very difficult to create a new project. If we make things easier to collaborate there will be diversity. We need to open our projects to more collaborations. By making these procedural requirements easy, our chapters and affiliates will be more diverse.

Galder shared the languages he’s working with ( kaqchikel, maputxe, kitxua, nasa, maya yucateco, nahuatl, kurdish, amazigh, guarani, quiché, q´eqchi´ and kashinawa) - through a course about language activism, where he identified “something that can be made with the kaqchikel language ”

How do we support the communities that are not in the mainstream of both technology and contributors, diversity of participation.

There are examples where underrepresented communities can be involved in different aspects of sharing knowledge, it doesn’t need to be only editing. It could be about analyzing the information about themselves on Wikipedia and working with allies to produce the content.
It’s intersectionality, where you have several issues at once like nationality, gender, age, e.t.c which was addressed partly by for example having partnerships with organisations, but this might not be enough
- We need opinions on other people who are experts in diversity.

Draft of recommendations on diversity (Wikimedia Summit in Berlin)

What are we going to do, what can we focus on, something like a long document with footnotes or a small document with easier points, how are the Community Health Working Group making recommendations?

In a 2 step process:
- Recommendations to the core team that are non-controversial that don’t need a lot of questions, and can be discussed at All hands
- Secondly, discuss topics most important for Community Health, just like the Diversity group is doing.
Community Health Working Group has grouped these in 5 documents which will be synchronized into one document.
- The other thing done is to have 5 people who are liaisons in other WGs in an effort to learn, contribute, bring back and include overlaps/synergies with other Working Groups.

The Diversity Working Group can have timelines to have different people work on sections and give deadlines, it would be simpler if we set up regular bi-monthly calls, in whatever way we do it we need to get better organised

Virtual facilitation (Core Team update)

In order to have these documents and timelines achieved, the Core Team has provisions of a facilitator who would need someone from the Working Group to volunteer and work with the facilitator for twice a month, but the working group can meet more often.

The Community Health Working Group has worked with the Virtual Facilitator, who was so professional, and enabled them achieve alot for different discussions, including;
- Break out rooms and at the end a google doc from every break out which was merged, e.g 16 google docs are synthesised in 2-4 days.
- Taking notes for two hour sessions, which would give the Working Group a starting point for the 5 topics previously mentioned in our scoping approach.

Jorge Vargas volunteered to liaise with the Virtual Facilitator and would liaise with any other Working Group Member, also seeking the opinion and availability of Camelia. An introduction mail to be sent by the Core Team to make this connection.

Scheduling the next call

The normal working time for some members is variable, and there’s no specific preference. The previous conversation had a suggestion of one meeting in the morning, and another to cater for different time zones, which considers a work week or weekend.

December 2018

7 December

Get unstuck and have things done

Most of the members wanted to know what are the next steps after scoping. They were concerned the renewed momentum in the group might be lost as a result of waiting for next steps from the Core Team. This scenario had happened in the initial stages of the Process.

A general timeline was provided for what’s next after scoping as mentioned on meta
Any other steps in the scoping phase will be shared with the group
Members should not lose momentum, at any time that feel stuck, they can reach out to the coordinators
- Have any concerns discussed at the Interim Coordinators’ meeting.
- Or get in touch with the Core Team
Afifa started a doc shared with all you where to collect everybody thoughts about what Susun says during the call: what we need to accomplish?

Scoping discussions

The scoping document is ready, the sub groups that had been previously agreed upon were created and most of the members have worked on the document. There are around 2-3 members who have not yet contributed, and these members had taken a while without attending Working Group meetings. There was an outreach to the community on the talk and Facebook page of the Diversity Working Group.

Members present in the call and had not contributed were asked to contribute,
Other members can be reached out via the asynchronous channels to ask them for input.
If all members have contributed, the document can be submitted to the Core Team

Organise periodic calls

This had been previously discussed, and meeting time agreed to be a bi-weekly schedule, Working Group members wanted to find the best time that could have everyone’s participation irrespective of the geographic differences.

Community hours, sub meetings, were suggested that could suite specific timezones like Asia/Africa or Europe
Periodic meetings would also depend on whether there’s a discussion, document or topics set for the meeting.

The need for a physical meeting before the Wikimedia Summit

There was a discussion about an in person Diversity Working Group meeting, however a drawback was mentioned that this might not yield much results, until there’s an agreement and a more frequent turn up of all the members in the Working Group.

Organising the in-person meeting requires a lot of preparation: venue, costs of travel, timing, e.t.c which requires a dedicated person in the Working Group to look into all these options, and it might not be possible at the moment.

Wikimedia Summit representatives

Some of the Working Group members had an automatic ticket, the request was to have 2 names per working group, and a third name on the waiting list. Choosing members might not work well because of different commitments and schedules, so members who were available to attend were requested to self nominate themselves.

A doodle poll will be sent and also other members informed on the signal channel

November 2018

27 November

Getting things done, unstuck, and organise periodic calls

One of the main objectives for this call was to have Diversity Working Group members resume strategy discussions especially about the scoping phase. Despite the fact that discussions had continued asynchronously on the signal channel, the members realized there was a need to hold periodic calls.

An inquiry was made on whether all the members for example Lama Cat, received communication both on the mailing list and signal channel to have everyone’s’ participation in the conversations.
Some members miss the meetings due to timezone differences, the following were suggestions for periodic calls
- Meeting twice a month and rotating time zones including a Sunday: matching the availability of Working Group members.
- Working together across communication channels, and continuing asynchronous work.
- Sharing information, arriving at **meeting** dates using the scoping document.
- Run another doodle poll to arrive at the most convenient time for regularizing calls.
- We can pick arbitrary dates and fix those as the dates for our meeting.
The Core Team had noted there are some Working Groups that use asynchronous mode of working and making good progress, which (progress) sometimes surpasses Working Groups that rely only on the online calls.
- Not all Working Group members need to be present in all the calls but working asynchronously is also important.

Scoping

Members discussed the importance of filling the documents and being engaged within the pledged 5 hours of work to the Working Group per week. Ideas were requested from anyone in order for people to complete the document. The following ideas were talked about;

Understanding the focus and the expertise of members and tagging them for specific content.
Following up on different channels like the signal chat, and tagging people on documents.
Sending out (motivational) message like ‘you are here because your voice matters’.
Mailing about the documents in between the meeting times.
Sending reminders, Camelia sent a reminder which was helpful.
- Healthy peer pressure can be a good thing.

A deadline (till Sunday 12/2/2018) was proposed for members to comment on the document and respond to the questions.

Questions on facilitation during scoping

Members asked about facilitation: if coordination is facilitated by the core team or from within the Working Group.

The Core Team is finalizing with external facilitation, which is hoped to begin by next year (2019). In some cases the Core Team can also facilitate but has been advised not to get involved too much into content discussions of the Working Group.

Will the role that Camelia is playing continue or will it be taken over by an external facilitator. Who is the person that will be pushing the documents, and keeping an eye over the deadline?

An expectation for the facilitator is to work with the Working Group members as they provide content, work within the group, needs to be pushed forward by the Coordinators and the Core Team
- Coordinator is a contact point and face for the Working Group; we expect to ensure that the Coordinator ensures coordination and flow of information. In some groups this is already helping and in other groups the Core Team steps in
- The Core Team has three primary roles for the facilitators:
  - Facilitation role: we are in the process of procuring the services of external facilitators
  - Administrative role: taking notes and minutes with the core team,
  - Coordinator role: see shared roles of the Coordinators

Exchanges and liaison with Other Working Groups (Community Health)

Members asked about the status of other Working Groups, and any items for sharing with the Community Health Working Group or partnerships (with other groups like Product and Technology).

Response was on the approach being taken to Map the scoping document and identify overlapping areas, Working Groups advising areas of engagement and activity, which is collected in a master approach and discussed in the Monthly Interim Coordinators meeting.

The need for a physical meeting before the Wikimedia Summit

There has been some synergies among Working Groups, they are planning to meet in Berlin around January. There’s another in person meeting that’s shaping up by the Product and Technology Working Group
Generally there has been an interest for the Working Groups to meet and optimize their time and at the same time balancing resources.
- The participation at these meetings depends on the members who fill the doodle.
Diversity Working Group members can meet before the Wikimedia Summit if they can consider
- Geographical diversity in the group.
- Travel guidelines which were provided by the Core team.
- Willingness of a Movement affiliate to provide facilitation/hosting the group
The discussion would be resumed on the Signal channel, considering a ‘Visa relaxed place’ and upcoming conferences like Iberocoop being organised in Chile.

Wikimedia Summit representatives

Susun: Going on a ticket of Wikiwomen, not as a Diversity WG member
Camelia: Going as a member of WikiDonne or AffCom
Jorge: slots were limited, might also represent on the ticket as a WMF Staff.
Esra: Not confirmed yet, but will be on the Board ticket
Astrid: Might go as ED for Wikimedia Norway
Galder: Previously said to go on a ticket of Basque Wikimedians UG member

Framing reminder

What’s the expectation on the framing call (with Katherine Maher, Executive Director: Wikimedia Foundation)

Inspiration and discussion plus moving forward in scoping
Katherine has been provided with a brief about the group composition, discussions taking place in the group and that’s what will be used as a basis for the call

Questions to the Core Team

There were no further questions; all questions to the core Team were answered by Tanveer and Kaarel.

October 2018

03 October

Working Group composition

An evaluation of the core and secondary expertise, background for members, geographic distribution and need for diversity of the Working Group to gather.

Input from the disabled communities, particularly with themes such as ‘sensory input’
Other members will be on-boarded depending on the need and availability.

External diversity, taking into account language, expression, audiences, demographics, people with disability, and opening up the scope not only to who is part of the movement also to the product that’s being recommended.

Guiding questions and materials from Phase 1

Are available for reference on meta. When the scoping begins synergies across other Working Groups can be identified.
The answers from these discussions are going to be the recommendations for supporting diversity in our movement both online and offline. It is a good first step to engage with the material on Meta to build the definition of terms and themes.
- What is essential for the strategic direction?
- Who needs to be involved for Knowledge to be equitable?
- We do not only thinks about the things that we are doing today but also take into account the future and the possibilities that can emerge.
- What kind of organisational expertise does the Working Group require? to expand the sources (notability), and tackle entrenched systemic bias.
  - Acknowledging the bias and determining the structures that we need to have for projects and communities to have diverse knowledge and to ensure the health of the community, and aim to fix the Wikimedia Movement as a positive example.

Working Group coordinators

The Working Group can initiate a process to select a chair (coordinator), and a co chair to provide balance in the Working Group, coordinate output and the right way to produce recommendations.

The frequency of Working Group meetings was decided to be once in two weeks or less, with a continuation of asynchronous discussions.