Talk:Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Iteration 1/Capacity Building/1

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it.

Most likely, new comments will not be taken into account by the new three Working Group members in their work of developing the final Recommendations. You are free however to continue discussing in the spirit of "discussing about Wikipedia is a work in progress". :)

Question

What is meant by "Building Capacity for Capacity Building"? Either this is poorly phrased, or a tautological statement. Either case, it makes no sense. -- Llywrch (talk) 22:04, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Llywrch, I didn't write that, the Working Group members did, but I think I get their point. Any capacity building is about education. According to the WG members, we need to find people and create processes and resources to provide such education. This is recursive: every teacher was a student once. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:29, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Llywrch, Bootstrapping? (my interpretation). · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 11:45, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

train the trainer. Slowking4 (talk) 11:17, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

The explanation given below suggests far more than just training the personnel who would be the next generation instructors. Building the infrastucture is mentioned. Training the trainers is an important part of the proposal, but by no means the whole thing. I find the original title quite reasonable in conjunction with the bullet pointed list of components, but it would appear that it is not clear to others. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:11, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Answer

please read the detail of the recommendation, which should answer your question. In short, in order to facilitate the building of capacities with people, groups and organizations in the movement, we first need to build a few capacities at the movement level.--Nicola Zeuner (WMDE) (talk) 12:45, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

I'll overlook your condescending tone, & state here that my intent was to point out the wording of this title is awkward & unhelpful. It's apparent that many people both reading & writing this page are not fluent, let alone native, English speakers. So to express ideas here simply & clearly is of primary importance. And even if I read the text of the recommendation I may not properly understand what the title is supposed to say, & despite being fluent in my native language I may only compound the obscurity of the title. -- Llywrch (talk) 14:59, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

@Llywrch: thank you for the feedback, apart from Nicola's feedback, I want to provide you a brief version of the capacity building 10 recommendations - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Capacity_Building_One-Pager_for_Wikimania.pdf . You can see we have changed the "Building capacity for capacity building" into "Building the base" with a visual aid there. What our group wants to describe is to create basic infrastructure (e.g. terminology, toolbox, a common description for all Wikimedia movement capacity building related topics). I hope the one-pager makes more sense to you. Thanks in advance --Liang(WMTW) (talk) 20:41, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

"Building the base" makes a more sense & quicker understanding than "Building Capacity for Capacity Building". As long as the section is changed to that, I consider that issue settled. -- Llywrch (talk) 20:56, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Translation badly needed

Here are my remarks on this recommandation:

• Translation

I think one of the top priorities is to invest heavily in translation capacities. One example : a francophone contributor wanted to discuss strategy 8somenthing that should be available to all wikimedians) but said he could not do it in English and would need translations in French. Well, there is a strategy liaison, but that does not seem to be part of her job (it would be too long). Only a resume of the recommandation was made, meaning that I, bilingual, can express myself here directly (with more chances of my voice being "heard") but this contributor will have to rely on the transcription of his voice to a strategy liaison, with more chances of being misinterpreted, and no chances of debating or discussing.

• Mapping capacities

This is a great idea, but it should be done in collaboration with the projects and in all languages, because otherwise I am afraid it will remain a secret WMF drawer with access only to those privileged who can attend the wikiconference or wikimania (the places where you usually learn from such beautiful projects). And... It should be translated and updated in all languages. That is huge work indeed.

• Volunteers

We have to train the trainers, that part is obvious, and often we speak about training newbies, when a lot of contributors are willing to get training on specific aspects. I think to recognize the volunteer work, these trainings should be the occasion of receiving some king of aknowledgement that the training was completed. We should also definitively have moocs to sparql queries, reporting, managing an editathon. But we should have them at the minimum in the 5 most used languages in the world to start with, and with no predominance of English. Nattes à chat (talk) 07:02, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

• Translation: This could be a good place to have paid staff, or even paid work for editors. Should be relatively uncontroversial when it is not project content and there is a pressing need. Let volunteer translators concentrate on translating content.
• Mapping capacities: It might not be economically viable to translate everything into all languages, but there should be an abstract or basic summary in all languages, and a full translation where there is a reasonable need established. Also I entirely endorse the request to put the results where they can easily be found.
• Volunteers: Concur in general, though it may be more practicable to run the pilot training programmes in one language to get past the steep part of the learning curve. The pilot does not have to be in English, it can be in whatever language is most convenient for the developers working on that specific project. Translation will be more economically viable when it is of a system that is reasonably stable. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

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